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Episode 010 - Jewel in the Brown
8 Plays1 year ago
We discuss our recent viewings including Jacques Audiard's "Dheepan", Romolo Garai's "Amulet", Damien Leone's "Terrifier", Olivier Assayas’ “Personal Shopper” and Jim Archer’s “Brian and Charles” among others. We also have a look at brilliant performances in terrible films.
Sifting through decades’ worth of mass media consumption, my friend and fellow cinemaphile Scrumpy joins me in discussions on film from the low to high brow
CREDITS:
Intro clip from Jared Hess' "Gentlemen Broncos" (2009) from HH Films (distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Opening music: https://pixabay.com/music/id-116199/
Closing music: https://pixabay.com/music/id-11176/
Two Oceans is a creation of Siouxfire & Scrumpy in association with SiouxWIRE
Recommended
Transcript
Eclectic Scene Descriptions
00:00:05
Speaker
To oceans. To oceans will begin. Cyclops there. Cyclops there. Cyclops there. Turrets. Moon buggies.
00:00:35
Speaker
Oh my, holy crap. Surveillance does. I hate those. This is ridiculous. That's the most well-guarded yeast factory I've ever seen. Kananka? Kananka? Show me your bag of secrets. What's all this crap?
Introduction to Hosts and Podcast
00:01:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Tuitions podcast, where myself, Sue Fire, along with my friend and astute colleague, Scrumpy, discuss film and other media through a decades-long lens of mass media consumption. In this episode, we'll be going through our recent viewing, including Jacques Odiard's D-Pan, Romolo Gare's Amulet, and Damien Leone's Terrifier, as well as picking out our choice of fantastic performances in terrible films.
00:01:27
Speaker
This is the tuitions podcast. So hold hands
Influence of Twin Peaks and David Lynch
00:01:31
Speaker
and look out the window while Project Mayhem begins as we start episode 10. I've been watching the third season of Twin Peaks and realized, you know, we need to do just our David... well, specifically our Twin Peaks, but David Lynch.
00:01:49
Speaker
Episode just because that's that's the filmmaker, you know, that got us to you really that we bonded over right? Oh, totally totally. We did the pilgrimage. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And we saw, you know, what do we see on opening day, you know, like,
00:02:04
Speaker
Wild at heart. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did we see Firewalk with me together? I don't know. I think that was that was later enough moved to different places. But, yeah, no, Lynch was really, really important. I, you know, I think he's sort of for me, sort of broaden my horizons in terms of what I expect a movie to be. And yeah, no, we definitely need to do that.
00:02:33
Speaker
I know you've talked about, you know, you listed off like the main directors and things like that. And I'm like, Oh, like, since I'm right in the middle of it, you know, now it's the third season. I mean, I'm only six episodes in and it's so, so, so good. I can't even, like, I'm just nerding out the whole time. It's like how good it is. Not just, not just as a fan of the show, which it also is good for that, but also just what it does. Like here, we're going to take your main character that everybody loves and totally screw with them.
00:03:04
Speaker
Oh, it gets better and
Remembering Kevin Conroy
00:03:06
Speaker
better. And so I've heard, you know, five years. And not to say that the first two episodes aren't just like fantastic and can be standalone movies on their own. Because that's another thing is like, I like going into a movie and sort of feeling like I've been somewhere else, you know. And I always get that with Lynch movies and Twin Peaks as well. And
00:03:31
Speaker
You know, my son's about our age when he watched it for the first time. And I was a bit, you know, I don't know if he's going to like it. And it was the first time he'd seen anything even near that. And he loved it. So, you know, so. Yeah. So you succeeded as a father. Yeah. Yeah.
Collaboration Speculations: Studio Ghibli and Lucasfilm
00:03:52
Speaker
That box is ticked. It's all done. Don, see you, son. I have done my work. It is done.
00:04:01
Speaker
All right. So this is episode 10. We're in episode 10 now. So double digits. No looking back. Yeah, that's right. We got to pat ourselves on the back for that one. However, like I said, I've got it. I've got a few bits of news here. One, which is quite interesting. One, which is quite sad. You probably heard that Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman, has passed away this week. Yeah, that was very sad.
00:04:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's pretty gutting. And I would rank Mask of the Phantasm, the one feature-length movie that they made with Batman, the animated series, as one of the best Batman movies that was made. I mean, just solid. Easily. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And my favorite Batman, I would say, too. I've liked most of them. I think mine too. But Conroy, I mean, of course, he got how many episodes to really
00:04:58
Speaker
Feel it out and explore it that he and just using his voice and that's all you needed because it's Batman right? That's all you need and he nailed kind of the thing Oh man, you're right out of the gate. Yeah, right. So yeah, very sad to hear Very sad to hear that news. I know he'd been struggling some health issues. So yeah, that's what 66 that's still too damn young
00:05:21
Speaker
And yeah, just, just this week, all these stories about fans who met him. Oh yeah. And he was like the sweetest guy on the planet. Yeah. Exactly. And it's quite interesting. I, I didn't realize this, that he went to the Juilliard school to acting and he was roommates with Robin Williams while he was there.
00:05:43
Speaker
Well, that explains a lot on both sides. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Sadly, we've lost him both. But yeah. R.I.P. What a legacy, though. You know, Conroy is left behind. And and you know, you and I coming from the comics as well, he is probably the representation of Batman that comes closest to, you know, what was originally conceived for Batman as well. Yeah.
00:06:12
Speaker
And it's the voice I hear when I read the comics now. Exactly. Yeah, it's no longer Adam West. Yeah, we did have to have to deal with that, didn't we? And the other bit of news, which is a little bit of a strange one, is there is going to be a collaboration between Studio Ghibli and Lucasfilm. Really? Haven't said what it is yet. Hmm.
00:06:37
Speaker
Yeah. I wonder what it could be. I mean, it may kind of leading towards Star Wars if they're saying Lucasfilm, but it might not be. It might not be. There's another property in there.
00:06:52
Speaker
But but then again, the scope of what they've made the Star Wars universe, especially with Andor, you know, yeah, I'm not even bothered if it does turn out to be Star Wars was before you would have known that they would have said, you got to go between these two points here, which are very narrow. But yeah, can you imagine like even Princess Mononoke? Well, I remember that was the first Ghibli film I saw. And it was being compared to Star Wars and all the posters. It isn't very Star Warsy, but
00:07:22
Speaker
but there's a strong female character so star wars yeah good job guys way to put in the effort yeah um well i think more like that visions that nobody seems to talk about oh my god the anime it's fantastic it's utterly fantastic which is hit and miss even exactly even in its misses though exactly it pushed about like i mean the kid uses the star wars thing and it's like to
00:07:46
Speaker
be a singer in a band like that's like what what and it's it's watchable like it's like what that shouldn't know that should not work or even from the first episode where they had like an astromech droid and it had one of those straw hats uh-huh like it was like that's amazing that's fantastic and the jedi collecting the red kyber crystals just like
00:08:11
Speaker
Oh, and the twists and the stories. They were so short, but they were actually so well structured, you know? Again, they're good at that. Those animation studios that it went through, I mean, right? That's why they were chosen.
00:08:24
Speaker
Oh, totally. Totally. What a great choice. I would like to see them do that with other territories as well, and their animation, just so they can bring that kind of local flavor to it. Because it's... The only other one I saw that I liked that they did that way was the Rick and Morty, the Akihabara, great Yokai Akihabara, which was fantastic.
00:08:47
Speaker
like and it's only what 12 minutes 15 minutes maybe and it is it is pure genius for it's everything Rick and Morty is and everything that like you know when anime deals with yokai battle things like it's it's everything
00:09:03
Speaker
perfectly enmeshed. It's like ridiculous. At that in the end, they're like, fans of this style anime are going to watch this anyway. So we're just going to do what we want. Yeah. Well, the reason I started thinking about other territories is I've seen a few interviews with Diego Luna talking about when he was growing up with Star Wars and his view just from Mexico over the border is so different.
00:09:33
Speaker
Like R2
Film Reviews: Die Pan, Amulet, and Terrifier Series
00:09:34
Speaker
-D2 is actually called Arthur, just because phonetically R2-D2 sounds like you're saying Arthur, the Spanish equivalent. But yeah, no, it's just kind of really, really kind of weird. Now I'm imagining him voiced by Dudley Moore. C3PO is the butler, yeah. John Gilgood is C3PO.
00:10:03
Speaker
cool. Have you watched? Actually, that's not far cry, actually, from what it is. Actually, I was going to say that that's not too far off, is it? Character wise. Yeah, it's spot on. Steering back, pulling the wheel back over the line. So have you watched anything new this week? Oh, did I watch? I watched
00:10:25
Speaker
2015 French film called Die Pan, which is about the Sri Lankan refugees that end up in France, and they pose as a man, a woman, and a girl, and they pose as a family. They're not.
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, uh, that's like so they get they get out they managed to get out of the fighting in too long and he was a soldier for the Tamil Tigers and so some of that's just a matter of what lingers when they get to his Apartment complex housing complex in France and he becomes the handyman and
00:11:02
Speaker
Everyone gets to process what they've lost and what they've gained and how things have changed and how they've not. It's like how you create a family out of nothing and what a refugee community can be for good and for bad and then.
00:11:16
Speaker
or how they could be exploited or dismissed or subjugated, even though they're going to a place of refuge, it's not like it's peaceful necessarily. And so it deals with the inner conflict being the outer conflict and things like that.
00:11:33
Speaker
uh it was outs and the ending of it the last 30 minutes of that movie just i mean it's a great drama up to that point but then the last 30 minutes just skyrockets oh i love that when they and it's an act it's an action sequence not to not to ruin it because it's an action sequence basically
00:11:51
Speaker
that kind of comes out of nowhere, but not. And, but it's so well done and it fits. That's the thing. It fits organically with everything else. It's kind of this, you know, pinnacle of what everything's been boiling to and what's necessary to move, for them to move on. And, you know, they're not like, he's not the Deepak, the name of the main character. He's not the best guy in the world. And he has no idea how to be a husband or father.
00:12:19
Speaker
But the woman in it is outstanding actors. This was the guy playing them the main Actually was an ex Tamil tiger and had never acted before But you wouldn't know it Amazing and but the gal the police his wife in it is like really, you know obviously gonna be the rock or the you know, the
00:12:39
Speaker
The undercurrent of it and even the kid is great. I mean, it's just all around it's a and I believe it won the palm that year Oh, I'm gonna door and it's check that out. Yeah, it is. It just blew blew me away. How how good it was I figured it'd be good but not how good it was
00:12:55
Speaker
So that was the biggest one to watch this week. So along with that, I watched a movie called Amulet this week that has kind of a similar setup at the start. It's 2020 release. It's about this ex-soldier from some Eastern European conflict. He comes to the UK. But he's having these flashbacks.
00:13:33
Speaker
We only see what happened in the forest in bits, but we know that something happened there that really upset him. And this is actually a horror movie, by the way. So he gets to London, and he ends up moving into this derelict building with this other refugee, sort of acting as a handyman. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah. I've heard of this. Yeah. Yeah.
00:13:48
Speaker
to his time when he was in the forest
00:14:02
Speaker
But it's not in his house or whatever. No, it's not. Yeah, that's another great refugee one. It's very similar, right? They move into the house and there's something wrong with the house, right? That's right. That one's a little bit more intimate. This one is a bit more. Yeah, it's got a completely different structure. There's, Imelda Staunton is a nun in it and she's kind of giving him advice in terms of what he needs to do.
00:14:32
Speaker
But yeah, it has a really nice payoff at the end. It brutal payoff, but really good. And that's the thing. And I think you just sort of mentioned there is I don't mind if the last act suddenly takes an abrupt turn as long as they've been setting that up and it makes sense. It's consistent with the rest of the movie.
00:14:56
Speaker
What else did you watch this week? Well, I watched the trilogy. I didn't know it was a trilogy. The Terrifier.
00:15:04
Speaker
series was still following on the horror thing and Terrifier 2 came out and it's made what, like over $10 million and it costs like a quarter million? That's right. Did you know the first one, the first Terrifier, by the way, I did watch the first two, the preceding Terrifier 1 cost $35,000, which blows my mind. And it does not look like it.
00:15:28
Speaker
Not at all, not at all. And this one with 250 still does not look like it's that I don't want to say cheap with air quotes here. Yeah, when you got an effects guy, that's just getting to show off. He knows how to do it. He knows how to do it cheap. But there's the first one the All Hallows Eve.
00:15:48
Speaker
Which isn't that good. It introduces the character and it tries to go with the VHS montage. I didn't really like it very much. No, it's not good. Except the end is good.
00:16:00
Speaker
And at least it's short, unlike Terrifier 2, which is almost two and a half hours long, which is so stupid. Well, that's kind of what put me off watching it. I will watch it at some stage, because as I watched Terrifier, and I think it is an effective Grindhouse slasher,
00:16:20
Speaker
Right. I think it's really good. I was surprised. I had all the things that you want in a roller coaster. Right. It doesn't pretend to be anything more like there's no subtext, which is fine because it's so easy. There's no downtime for you to think, gosh, all this is is or pick apart the kind of ridiculous story. But it moves so quickly and he maintains the suspense.
00:16:47
Speaker
Right. It's supposed to be unrelenting. Yeah, throughout, throughout. And it gets more ridiculous as you go. But it is a roller coaster ride. That's what you're paying for with your ticket. You know, exactly. And you know, it's going to be ridiculous. Yeah, it's OK. Yeah, you switch off your brain. You know, you get that catharsis you get out of watching like a sustained, gooey horror and then safely walking away. You know,
Exploring Extreme Cinema and Horror
00:17:13
Speaker
that's what it's for. Right. In a decent amount of time.
00:17:18
Speaker
in a decent amount of time. The only thing I've seen in the reviews in Terrifier 2 is that it does a lot of the good stuff from the original one again.
00:17:33
Speaker
But then it's it's it's two and a half hours, which is, you know, I don't know. I'm going to have to be in the right mood to sit down for two and a half hours with a slasher movie like that. Yeah. I mean, it does move at least. But and there's elements introduced that work, but they take a lot more time with a lot of the kill scenes and things like that, which allows them, I guess is the right word.
00:17:59
Speaker
venture into a little more of the traditional 80s misogynistic uh uh exploitative uh kind of tendencies to indulge them was pretty quick you know it was almost it skirted right it just kind of it was like texas chainsaw type yeah yeah like exactly it didn't linger uh terror fire too is not that
00:18:23
Speaker
Yeah, I've heard that, yeah. It moves more into like maniac territory. Right, right. But again, it's not as good as maniac, but yeah, exactly. It's within that, but it's just kind of unfortunate. It's like, you know, it's 2022, guys. Come on.
00:18:43
Speaker
but other directors are proving that you can still pay homage, pull those elements in, make people uncomfortable, do all that stuff, but you don't have to repeat the things that are regrettable.
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, totally, totally agree with that. But it did make me sort of think about it because, you know, there's various types of sort of shock cinema. And if you look back at any of the movies by John Carpenter,
00:19:14
Speaker
Um, they weren't, there was always another level to them, right? There was always something else going on. There was something else being said. There was another point to the movie. You don't get that with these, which is fine. Like I said, it's a roller coaster ride. You ride it, you go through, you get to the end, job done. Um, but, uh, I, I,
00:19:34
Speaker
I'm a little bit apprehensive about the second one if he's trying to build up a story. It's cool if he's building up a mythology around it. That part actually works. I'll give it credit there, what they introduce and how they introduce it and how it plays out to the end. It's like, okay, I'll appreciate what you're trying here.
00:19:56
Speaker
And on that note, I ended up watching a video that was talking about some of these extreme movies and things and what differentiates some movies from others. Some are just meant to be Splatterfest and nothing more. And then you have things like, I don't know, have you ever seen Martyrs?
00:20:18
Speaker
Oh, yes. Okay. So that is another one of those ones that shocks, but is so grim, right? There's no humor in it. It is just relentless. It's modern French horror. Going in, at least you know, okay, it's going to be hopeless and I'm going to feel dirty at the end of it. You just don't know how dirty you're going to feel, whatever movie it is you're going into.
00:20:48
Speaker
I mean, yeah, you kind of wonder how long they had to film that movie, because boy, you know, they, they, they, boy. And then, so, so I watched another movie and, and, and I thought this would be a little bit okay because they kept mentioning this one. It's called The Wolf House. And it is a Chilean movie. And it's mostly stop motion.
00:21:15
Speaker
And the thing is, it runs around 70 minutes, but it really gets under your skin. It is a
00:21:26
Speaker
hypnotic but nightmarish propaganda fable told from the perspective of a Chilean Nazi cult. And it's like, imagine the Brothers K and the Brothers Grimm goose stepping in unison. And that is this animation. I mean, it just, I mean, it's good. So basically it's done like a sort of a found footage type thing where there is this German colony
00:21:54
Speaker
in Chile and this girl escapes from the colony and she comes upon a house in the woods. She's being chased by a wolf and she gets to the house and there are two pigs in the house. Okay.
00:22:11
Speaker
And that is the beginning. So she's left the cult, but there's an introduction at the beginning saying, and here's a movie that this cult has made. You know, we just live off the land and we just want to sort of help people and live naturally. And they're kind of like the Amish, by the way, they're presenting themselves. So, but, you know, all these terrible stories about us, but, you know, we're really good people kind of thing. And here's a movie that we made.
00:22:33
Speaker
Um, but the thing is it's based off of an actual group that was in Chile that were a group of Nazis that were doing terrible, horrible experiments on people, right? Stuff you cannot make up.
00:22:48
Speaker
you know, food for for for Terrifier movies, but in real life. So apparently this is something that they know really well. And they've got these like hidden elements in the animation where you're like, did I just see a swastika? And you know, you've got all these things in there and it's just everything is animated and stop motion at full scale, Nolan. So so they they've got a set that's full size.
00:23:14
Speaker
and everything that's being animated like they're painting on the walls and you're getting 2D animation on the walls and then and you're getting like furniture and mannequins and stuff moving around and it took them five years to two which is kind of understandable but it's mental it's absolutely crazy I mean it's something to look at but it is it is it is grim it is grim but you might like it it's only an hour it's so you know it doesn't overstay its welcome
00:23:42
Speaker
Okay. I will. It's got my interest peaked enough anyway. Stop motion on Nazis. All right. No, Michael Bay attached. You're good.
00:23:58
Speaker
And just one, I've watched a bunch of other movies, but, you know, I'll pick up and talk about this at some other point so we can actually get to the meat of it. So I watched the, just to round off the horrors, I watched Oliver Olivier Asaias's Personal Shopper, which, by the way,
00:24:18
Speaker
worst title for a horror movie ever. I was not convinced it was a horror movie, even though I kept seeing it in lists of recent horror movies to watch. And I'm like, that's not a horror movie. Even reading the synopsis, I was like, that's not a horror movie. It is. It is. It's a pure ghost story to the level of the Haunting on Hill House type
00:24:42
Speaker
You know, it goes there. And it actually has Kristen Stewart in what I think is her best performance.
Diversity in Film: Smoke Signals and Moonlight
00:24:50
Speaker
So I think I've seen her best and worst performance in the last couple of months. But it's really good. It just swaps between different genres.
00:25:01
Speaker
uh throughout the movie so you know at one point you know like is it a thriller it's a horror oh no it's definitely a horror and then it turns into a drama because as she's a medium her brother has died and they had a pact that whoever died first would try to send and send a signal to the sibling who um is still alive because they're twins
00:25:24
Speaker
And that's kind of the premise of the beginning. But then you have this other side story where she's working for this celebrity who is just awful and scary and a narcissist. And she does buy solar clothes and jewelry and all this other stuff. So you have that going on as well. And yeah, several threads start coming together.
00:25:50
Speaker
But it does all come together at the end it and it is really good. So that's worth checking out I saw bad luck banging or loony porn, which is a Romanian movie And I think the only thing I need to say about it is the only film I've seen anywhere near it was Sorry to bother you which is one of my favorite movies over the past few years It's it's done in three parts all
00:26:20
Speaker
pretty experimental. It's about this woman who her and her husband sex tape gets leaked on to the internet and she is a very successful teacher at a private school in Romania and that kind of kicks things off and the first two minutes make you watch that video and it is it is graphic man. It doesn't hold back
00:26:46
Speaker
But that plants the stake in the ground going forward. And when you actually meet her in the first act of the film, she's just like everybody else. She blends into the crowd. She just seems normal.
00:27:05
Speaker
I don't know what you would expect, but if the first time that you see a person is in their private sex tape, it's kind of a bit jarring when you get to that point, but it is meant to be a comedy. It is funny. It does a good job while also having all these other sort of political layers and stuff to it.
00:27:23
Speaker
I'm going to try to limit myself to half past. Another movie, and I recommend this one, and it's pretty light, is a movie called Brian and Charles by a director called Jim Archer. And it's kind of like a magic reality fable.
00:27:41
Speaker
about isolation and parenting. It's another comedy and this guy lives in the middle of Wales in a small isolated village and he's constantly building things so at the very start in the first five minutes you meet him he's kind of showing off all his inventions like he's got a belt to hold eggs
00:28:01
Speaker
You know, just look ridiculous. He's like a holster for eggs. And he's trying to build this bicycle that has like a clock on one side so he can go flying around the village. And when anyone needs to know the time, they can look up and oh, yeah, Brian's flying his bicycle and there's the time. And he builds this robot that has a body base. It's basically a washing machine.
00:28:28
Speaker
with legs and a mannequin head at the top. It's the most ridiculous looking thing. And during a lightning storm, something happens and he comes to life and that becomes Charles. He just introduces himself as, hi, I'm Charles Petrescu. And it's just really good. It's just the interplay between those two. It's kind of one of those oddball scenarios. And yeah, that's one worth keeping your eye out.
00:28:57
Speaker
Then one more. I won't say too much about this one because I think this has had a lot of coverage. I watched Marcel The Shell with Shoes on. It is really, really good. It's got Isabella Rossellini in it who has a fantastic part in it. But it's actually bittersweet all the way through.
00:29:21
Speaker
right? Which I like. I mean, because it's like from the first frame, there's a touch of melancholy about the whole movie. But you know, not too much, just enough, just enough to keep it like from being like too sweet. But it's really good, really good and really wise, I think, because you sort of see the whole world do this
00:29:44
Speaker
uh shell with shoes on um and and and yeah it actually is uh actually turns out to be quite like thought provoking and and deep um yeah that's most of the movies i watched this week i left a couple off but we can pick it up next week all right
00:30:08
Speaker
Did you watch any others or? The only other one I know that I watched was Smoke Signals, I finally got around to that. What did you think? I really enjoyed it. I was struck by the similarity it has to Powwow Highway in terms of its structure and its characters and such. I mean, obviously.
00:30:29
Speaker
the what of what they're processing is different and how, but kind of the why and the who are the same, which I thought was interesting. It's like, well, okay, that's good source material to go with though. So, you know, if you're going to get inspired by something, you know, there's what, one was what, 81, the other was 98. So a few years in between, so.
00:30:56
Speaker
But no, I enjoyed it. I liked how they, again, leaned into the, they leaned into the medicine man storytelling aspect of it, which is another, you know, it's another big part of, obviously, Native American indigenous culture as well. But they did it in a way that was like,
00:31:17
Speaker
uh, kind of confronted you with it. Uh, in fact, the one character, the one character that is that, that embodies that could be really annoying, but he's not. To
Classic Documentaries and Cultural Portrayal
00:31:26
Speaker
me, at least he was very endearing. And you can understand why he, uh, annoys the main character. I love those two lead performances in that movie. Um, and, and yeah, yeah. And there's also some genius editing with flashbacks and how they're incorporated.
00:31:46
Speaker
I can't remember that. I'm going to have to watch that again. Well, there's one where he's imagining him chasing after his dad who's driving the truck and he's running on the street and he's running down the road and the shot of him running down the road. And then it pulls back and as he disappears into the bus that his older self is riding him. Nice. That's one. It's like, wow. There's a couple like that that are sprinkled throughout. They don't overuse it as well, which is very good.
00:32:12
Speaker
Uh, but, uh, yeah, there's some, there's some little, uh, things like that in there that are very well, very well handled, very well done. The reveals that are very well, uh, laid out, uh, so they don't feel contrived, nor does it feel like just like, uh, you know, this is a, you know, indigenous documentary or, you know, uh, dramedy or something. It feels much more than that. You know, not that those don't have their place, but you know, this, it's kind of like in the.
00:32:40
Speaker
a lot of what we can determine is gay films. A lot of them are like, this is a movie about someone dying of AIDS. You know, it's like, okay, I'm sorry. Yes, it's horrible. But is that the only narrative? Like, is no one happy? Or is no one just going through normal shit? Like, what's... I mean, I think that's what I really liked about Moonlight that came out a few years ago. And
00:33:10
Speaker
When I went in, I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know that the protagonist was going to be gay. I didn't know what the story was about, none of it. And I just thought that was done in such a just, it didn't matter in a most human way. It was just a, I mean, I thought it was just a really good story. And it was probably what,
00:33:33
Speaker
One of the
Actors Shining in Flawed Films
00:33:34
Speaker
times where it wasn't distracting the fact that, okay, this is a gay movie and this is what it's about. Like Broken Back Mountain, I found it really distracting because I knew the two leads weren't gay for a start. And there was such a hullabaloo around that fact.
00:33:55
Speaker
that it just became distracting. And I don't think it's entirely the movie's fault, but just the time that we lived in when that movie came out, but like when Moonlight came out, I thought, you know,
00:34:08
Speaker
I got to the point where there's a particular scene, where a song comes on, and I was sitting there welling up just thinking, oh my gosh, oh gosh, I hope these two get together. And yeah, no, I just think it worked really, really well. It really surprised me. And yeah, it was one of those few Oscar nominations where I thought, yeah, yeah, you deserve that one. I'm glad you got it.
00:34:36
Speaker
Oh, and another Native American movie I watched, I watched one this week, I'm trying to keep up with these before we actually get to our episode, is Nanooka the North from 1922. So I'd never actually seen that. Oh, okay. I haven't watched that in probably 30 years.
00:34:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, it's quite interesting. And I know that they had to stage stuff. But part of that was down to the fact that the cameras weighed like a hundred pounds. You know, they had to. And there weren't really documentaries until that movie came along. So it was also a sort of godfather for documentaries. And then the rules weren't laid down. And like I said, the cameras were really big.
00:35:18
Speaker
Uh, but you know, I thought it was really pretty sympathetic. Um, you know, uh, I, I think the interaction between, uh, you know, some of the white characters in it and Eskimos, um, were quite sweet as they call them Eskimos.
00:35:34
Speaker
They call them Eskimos, yeah. And it's weird to me because I sort of imagine like Alaska being from the Pacific Northwest and it's like Hudson Bay, what? Okay, sure.
00:35:51
Speaker
But yeah, no, I thought it was quite interesting. It's good to have that sort of perspective as well. I mean, there is a thing in the introduction where they kind of refer to like half-breeds and stuff. And like, it's a really helpful half-breed help. There's some very troublesome language in the way it's handled. You know, it's like that movie is how then it's like, oh, that's how Eskimos live. Yeah.
00:36:16
Speaker
Cool. So great performances and bad movies. I got a great big list here. I've got a few things that I've looked up on the internet just to get a reference. So maybe I'll pick out some of those. Yeah, you leave because my thinking was more organizing around
00:36:39
Speaker
actors uh and that's miss email and and other and um you know who pop up and stuff and you know they're always going to be good regardless of what they're in right okay there there are a few like that and in fact i think i think the first one is probably the best performance to terrible movie ratio is this one which is eric stoltz in the fly 2
00:37:06
Speaker
And Eric Stoltz is one of those actors that I think is consistently good in anything that he was in. And he sort of disappeared off the radar for a while. Then he came back in like Pulp Fiction very briefly and played a very memorable part in the movie.
00:37:23
Speaker
But Eric Stoltz in the fly too, and to punish myself, I did rewatch most of it this week just to see his performance in it to make sure that I wasn't imagining things. But he does really well pre-fly. And when he is the fly, he's on a par with Jeff Goldblum as the fly, totally.
00:37:51
Speaker
While while not sort of mimicking him and making it his own and he's so good in it And the rest of the movie is so so bad so bad But yeah, that's that's the first run I've got listed here. But again, yeah, I think he's just like consistently good as Eric Stoltz and you know, originally he was meant to be Marty McFly, wasn't he? Yeah, he was just not a comedic actor and
00:38:17
Speaker
Right, right. That is the thing.
00:38:22
Speaker
what else do I have here? I have, now I tried to mix it up. And you know, the thing is, is, is, has been trying to go through these is trying to, I was putting the list together and just realizing these are a bunch of white men. Nothing but white men. And it's, it's, it's hard because as, as we're only sort of getting to that point where we're a little bit more balanced, um,
00:38:50
Speaker
But one that stands out for me is Viola Davis and Margot Robbie in the first series Suicide Squad.
00:39:00
Speaker
like Viola Davis is the perfect Amanda Waller, right? Margot Robbie does great with Harley Quinn, but, you know, they're kind of having to work with, you know, very little, but they're so good, which is why they featured so heavily in the trailer and why people's hopes were so high going into that first movie. We're talking about the 2016, by the way, so. Yeah, yeah, that's what I figured.
00:39:30
Speaker
the one I have not watched because I won't watch Snyder stuff because it's garbage. I don't have to watch it. I don't have to step in shit to know what it is. All you got to do is watch the trailer for that one. And those are the two good performances right there. Yeah, that's all you need to see. I've got some vague ones here too. Let me see.
00:39:55
Speaker
trying to vary these a little bit. Sam Rockwell in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Well, Sam Rockwell again, that's another one where you can just. Yeah, someone who's consistently good. And also I was going to put Sam Rockwell in Gentlemen Broncos. But I make an argument that that's a really good movie. It's got a really low rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But I think it's a solid movie. I think it was just a bit too weird for some people.
00:40:24
Speaker
That's actually from the director of Napoleon Dynamite. It's got Jennifer Coolidge in it. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I mean, I really enjoyed that. But yeah, it's not bad. It's only Yeah, I wouldn't classify it as a terrible. Yeah. And Sam Rockwell is very good at it. Great. Well, it's the same like in I mean, say what you will about the first Charlie's Angels remake movie with
00:40:51
Speaker
Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz, but he's the turncoat bad guy in it. And he's fantastic. I mean, he's great. Just like, okay, just go nuts kind of thing. Justin Thoreau and the second one, I guess I watched both of these.
00:41:11
Speaker
It was like Justin Thoreau in the second one. He's fantastic as this Irish gangster thing. Like it just works. It shouldn't work. Um, but also, uh, Rockwell in Iron Man two. Oh, totally. Totally. You know, Iron Man two is not great. That is mediocre at the most charitable. Exactly. But he, you know, he, he's the one that steps up and he has very little screen time, but you remember him, right? So, uh,
00:41:41
Speaker
And okay, now this actor for sure is just good across the board. I've never seen him give a bad performance, but specifically I'm talking here about Gary Oldman in Dracula. Like that movie in my mind would be nothing without him.
00:41:59
Speaker
True. True. But however, if we're talking about, it's supposed to be terrible movies, right? And I will, I will defend that one as I have for like, since it came out, basically, that I have said how much, how good I think that adaptation is and how much fun I think that movie is. Part of that is because you just, they let old men, they basically, you know, Wes and Road Warrior, they took on, they cut the chain.
00:42:29
Speaker
I said, okay, it's you go carry this movie. And he's like, okay. And just goes proceeds to go absolutely nuts. Totally. And that whole era, that's all he did. Like you cannot have Gary Oldman in a movie and he didn't take over like in the professional and the professional element. And yeah, it's just like, what is he doing? I guess nobody cares what he's doing. Okay. He's got a Ross Perot accent now. Okay.
00:42:57
Speaker
Uh, you know, yeah. Cool. Um, what else do I have here? Oh, this is quite a big one. Kind of obvious one is, uh, Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody in the past few years. Yeah. Yeah. The, the movie overall, I thought was fine. It was a bit filtered though. I felt. Yeah. Yeah. It was a bunch. Uh, I mean, it was, it was your standard musical biopic rather than.
00:43:27
Speaker
you know, when Sacha Baron Cohen was attached to it, it was something else. Oh, totally. And I was excited for that. You know, that would have been cool, right? Yeah, but I do appreciate that. Rami Malek did, did, you know, did a good job with what he had. Okay, here's a vague one. Anthony Hopkins.
00:43:49
Speaker
in the road to Wellville, which in some ways I would stand up for. I don't know if you've ever seen that. That's not familiar with it, but it is. Oh, my God, Nolan, I went to go see it when it came out, which is around 97 or 98 sometime around there. And it is Anthony Hopkins is playing Kellogg as in like Kellogg's cereal.
00:44:14
Speaker
And he is running this sort of wellness camp, you know, for health with all these ridiculously dangerous things to improve your health. You know, like in the old movies where they had those steam boxes where your head sticks out and they like cooked you. And he also had like these electric dildos and like it just
00:44:42
Speaker
is batshit crazy. And you just think, how are they getting away with this? How have Kellogg's allowed this? Because they don't hold back. And it is bizarre and funny. And you have Matthew Broderick as quite a straight-laced guy going there with his wife.
00:45:03
Speaker
And he is just kind of flabbergasted by all these weird things that Kellogg is putting forward. But Anthony Hopkins puts in a really good performance in that one. It's been a while since I've seen it, but I think it's worth watching. I'm going to throw in a couple for the nerd variety. One is Thomas Aiden Church.
00:45:32
Speaker
in Spider-Man 3. Spider-Man 3 is not a good movie, but him as Sandman is just like, he's so, like there's just a vulnerability and he just plays it really close and honest. Like Sandman is like, he's like, he's not a bad guy. He's just trying to, something terrible happened to him. He's just trying to figure it out. And it's just like this weird, you know, in the movie, they try to parallel that with what happens to Venom. Yeah.
00:46:03
Speaker
It doesn't, and they don't really work out, but the Sandman, and then I think they really capitalized that and of course corrected for JB Fox and the newest Spider-Man, No Way Home. That's what it was, right?
00:46:19
Speaker
I completely agree with you on this one. He kind of comes out of nowhere. You're like, Oh, that's actually, you know, it's, it's surprisingly solid. I mean, not surprising for church, who's always solid. But yeah, again, yeah. But that just what he brings to this is, you know, there's like, Oh, there's another villain. It's like, but he's not really a villain.
00:46:42
Speaker
Like he lets to, you know, he kind of comes out of that movie. Okay. The other, so like that too, the other one throw up is in the, the sequels. Uh, uh, Adam drivers, uh, Kylo Ren. Uh, yeah, I've had that one down. Great. He is terrific. I mean, he's fantastic anyway. Right. But given, given, I mean, very little to work with.
00:47:07
Speaker
I think his character as well is probably the character that had the best arc in it as well. I think it made sense. Unfortunately,
Anthony Hopkins' Unique Roles
00:47:20
Speaker
that's not true of all the characters. There's so many loose ends that weren't tied up, but his character, yeah, I thought it was solid in all three. Another I would throw out too.
00:47:35
Speaker
Kevin Costner's Robin Hood, absolute garbage, except for Alan Rickman as a sheriff and knocks it out of the plate. Like that movie is watchable still solely because of him just letting to be, you know, just be an Alan Rickman. I'll agree on that one. And again, Alan Rickman is another one of those that is good in just about anything that he's in. Um, uh,
00:48:05
Speaker
Okay. Another one that I've got is, um, Hillary Swank in million dollar baby. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Cause that one's yeah, not a, not a great movie. Yeah. Yeah.
00:48:23
Speaker
and uh this one's a vague one this is going back a bit but i'm so scarred by the experience because i was there and hoping night was uh Ralph Fiennes in The Avengers and not
00:48:39
Speaker
the Marvel Avengers, but the British, exactly, Avengers. And out of all the properties that I thought, okay, Ralphie Enns and Uma Thurman, sure, let's go for it. And I had a hard time not leaving in the middle. It's awful. It's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen awful. It's bad.
00:49:03
Speaker
Yeah, no, it totally is. And but Ralphie Enns, yeah, I bought him. In fact, he kind of, you know, it reminds me a lot of like the performance in the Kingsmen, which was a better movie. But what were they thinking? What were they just trying to update everything, you know? And there's no there's no need to do that.
00:49:29
Speaker
Yeah. Another that same sort of sequels thing or things moving three movies that shouldn't have been made. The Hobbit films. Jackson, but Martin Freeman as Bilbo. Like, it's like he's on another planet. He's so good.
00:49:52
Speaker
Yeah, he is perfect. He is really, really good. But yeah, I completely agree. I mean, it's a waste of everybody's talent, I think, in those movies, but especially his, like, it's just, and I like every, there's a montage, you can see there's a video of every behind the scenes shot of him, like somebody's taking of him, you know, when they're not shooting or something, he's just flipping the camera off of like, okay, he gets it. He gets it.
00:50:20
Speaker
Yeah, no, but as Bilbo, yeah, he's fantastic. He's really, really good. They shouldn't have stretched it to what they did. That was a real...
00:50:33
Speaker
real shame. And it wasn't even like, well, but the book had all this stuff. It's like, no, you're adding stuff that wasn't in the freaking book. Well, also somehow leaving things out that were in the book, you know. But yeah, yeah, I completely agree on that one. I've got one here, Eva Green in Tim Burton's Dark Shadows.
00:50:58
Speaker
where I thought she was really good in it, but the movie was awful. Like really bad. Yeah. Now one people would, uh, if you go like, if you go in like, you know, bad movies by based on the review, uh, which for this one I do not actually go quite the opposite. Yeah. Is it max on side out in strange brew?
00:51:22
Speaker
Oh wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I gotcha. He comes out and it's like, did he owe somebody money or something like that? Like, why is he in this movie that's set in Canada? Like, what? Huh? And he's fantastic as the villain. He's fantastic. It's like, and again, for me, that movie is not terrible. That movie is absolutely brilliant. And I
00:51:43
Speaker
could go into that I could do a whole episode just on that breaking it down how it's basically Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's a
Nostalgia in Quirky Movies
00:51:52
Speaker
great movie. But yeah, that one just that one just sings out to me that and was the other Oh, just think it through the Scooby Doo movies.
00:52:06
Speaker
I mean, they're not terrible, I wouldn't say. They're not James Gunn's best work in terms of his writing and such too, but they're not awful, but Matt Lillard, and Matt Lillard at that time for me, it's like everything he shows up in, most of the time it's a mediocre movie, except for him. And he's just, he just shines. And he's kind of come back more recently now and it's just like, oh, it's good to see him. And like, oh, he's still really, really good at this.
00:52:35
Speaker
Yeah, it is really good to see those people kind of come back. Actually, that's just not connected, but it just made me think of an actor going further back is Patrick McGowan, who played the prisoner, was an ice station zebra.
00:52:52
Speaker
and all this, but he's consistently good. I think he's got a bit part in the scanners. I think you've seen that recently. He's always good. He stands out in anything that he appears in, but unfortunately, he never really was in any sort of
00:53:09
Speaker
you know, big movies, you know, after after the 60s and which is kind of sad because I prove your nerd capability or depth by knowing who he is. Yeah. Well, the prisoner and the fact that he wrote it himself as well kind of shows what kind of person he is. And I think, yeah, I like you know, completely anti-fascist all the way to the marrow.
00:53:36
Speaker
And, and, and, but just having these great performances, you know, um, just, just really, really consistently good as well. It's, it's just a shame. He wasn't in, in more stuff, really. The other, uh, that popped up, you know, this again, looking for through this stuff would be, and it was his final performance, but Ralph Julia in street fighter. Oh, that, that, that's a painful one.
00:54:00
Speaker
that that had to be his last performance. Yeah, that he had to go out on that note exactly. Yeah. Yeah, the movie's awful. The movie's not really watchable. But he, again, he just I think and I think it was a thing that the notes and such to from his time on it was like he knew that was going to be his last. So he just gave it everything. And it was far more than the filmmakers or the producers or anybody involved there deserved. Because
Discussion Wrap-up
00:54:28
Speaker
it was, yeah, it's really good.
00:54:31
Speaker
Well, and then there's some actors that you can't put on this list, though on paper you think it would make sense, like you think of someone like Marlon Brando, but then they're terrible performers. Like he doesn't even make an effort in bad movies. Do you know what I mean? He just gives it like Island of Dr. Moreau. It's like, you know what, I'm going to completely sabotage this movie by being fucking ridiculous. So he doesn't even try when he goes into a bad movie.
00:55:01
Speaker
Yeah, cool. Well, I think that's pretty much rounded us up to the end of the hour this week. That went by fast. It really did. Yeah, of course, you know, you cataloging what you watch this week was, you know, the majority.
00:55:18
Speaker
All right, you got five minutes left. So what do you think? What do you think of the movies I watched? I didn't even finish. To be fair, there's only two others I watched this week.
00:56:00
Speaker
That's the most well-guarded yeast factory I've ever seen.