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1995 - City of Lost Children; 12 Monkeys
49 Plays2 years ago
Wherein your hosts rant further and consider that this might just be a podcast about two old friends chopping it up with a little bit of movie talk thrown in.
Produced by Bud Cutino
Music by oji, "rooms for music" - https://freemusicarchive.org/music/oji
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Transcript
Introduction to 'We're Spanning Time'
00:00:34
Speaker
All right, welcome back to another episode of We're Spanning Time. This is a podcast in which we explore the films of a particular year. This season's year is 1995. I am Bud Catino. And I am Beth Martini.
Film Discussion: 'City of Lost Children' and '12 Monkeys'
00:00:46
Speaker
For today's episode, we are covering the City of Lost Children, directed by Mark Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet and 12 Monkeys, directed by Terry Gilliam. Why do we choose these movies? Obviously besides that they're awesome, but yeah, what is your relationship to these movies, Beth? Well, so I started watching, I can't remember,
00:01:10
Speaker
It must have been right around the same time. I saw City of Lost Children for the first time after I went down a rabbit hole of what else the folks behind Amelie did, basically. Because I saw that movie and I was like, oh my god, it's so good. And then I found out that they did City of Lost Children and Delicatessen, which is also awesome if you haven't seen that.
00:01:36
Speaker
And sort of the same thing happened with my fascination with Terry Gilliam because I saw Brazil when I was living in Olympia in the theater and I was like, this is incredible. And then I went down like a little Terry Gilliam rabbit hole. But then I never, 12 Monkeys was like not anything that I, I never, I didn't watch it for the first time I think until like maybe during the pandemic.
00:02:05
Speaker
like lockdown. But I definitely was like looking at all of 1995 and thinking like what thematically and stylistically could possibly like fit with City of Lost Children.
Cultural Context: Ebola and AIDS in 1995
00:02:20
Speaker
And I was like, I think 12 Monkeys would be a good choice. And then having watched both of them, I definitely feel like it's true.
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, they're they're both very weird eccentric French films. Yeah. I know that. I don't think 12 Monkeys is not really a French film, although it is, you know, based on the jetty. Yes. Which is a French film to do. I watched that recently, although. I was drunk at the time, and so I don't remember. So I do a lot of stuff when I'm just drunk. I watch a lot of movies when I'm drunk late at night, which I don't know.
00:02:56
Speaker
My little Chihuahua is just up and deciding to leave the room. Oh, sad. Let's see. She's like, I've had enough of hearing these clicks and stuff. I think it's because I boisterously started to speak. I think the podcasting voice freaked her out. So she just is up and wandering around. Are you OK? That's kind of funny because
00:03:21
Speaker
You know, Rachel has a really nice little convoys, sweet convoys, and she does, you know, Zoom work calls all day, every day in here. And Spider just like, just like zonked out with her tongue out, just like loves it. And in fact, we're, Spider and I were up early.
00:03:39
Speaker
Friday morning, I think, or Thursday morning. And Spyder just, like, fed her lunch and, like, went to Rachel's office door where Rachel was having a call. I was, like, trying to get in because she just wants to, like, bask in Rachel's. Sweet. Yeah. Soft voice. Sweet soft voice. Exactly. Yeah. OK. So we can just clip this in. But I did find a really fascinating 1995 factoid current event moment. Go for it.
00:04:08
Speaker
apparently in the middle of 1995 is when the Ebola virus is ramping up. Oh, interesting. Which would not have been happening while the movie was in production, right? Because if it was released in 95, then like, it would have been like,
00:04:30
Speaker
finished probably in 94. They would have been filming in 93, doing post in 94, release in 95. So I wonder what it felt like for people to watch 12 Monkeys and be like, wait, what?
00:04:48
Speaker
Like how how big was Ebola at that time? That was like it was starting to come into like worldwide attention. Well, because like it had only killed 244 people. But I think that that was like the lead up to it getting really bad. Yeah, it's it is truly, truly terrifying. Because like,
00:05:15
Speaker
what it does and how it's transmitted. The crazy thing was people were getting it from burying the dead.
00:05:22
Speaker
Oh, so gnarly. So fucking gnarly. Also, possibly AIDS. Like, because this is like post like the big I mean, this is like, you know, the not tail end, but it was like the AIDS epidemic was like just out of control. So we had like these two very publicized, very nasty viruses murdering people. So
00:05:48
Speaker
I wouldn't be surprised if either of those were influential in the plot line of 12 Monkeys. Yeah. 12 Monkeys' plot line does not reflect on anything that's happened recently. Luckily. Although... Luckily for us. Relatable! Isolated, toxic people trying to figure out what's going on with this disease and how we can possibly stop it. Yeah, and then not doing anything to actually stop it.
00:06:17
Speaker
Yeah, just just fucking around with time travel and being crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Being unnecessarily nostalgic for bygone times and also and also trying and trying some chicane to try and destroy the system at the same time. Yeah. Doesn't doesn't track for contemporary times at all. Not at all. Not in the least. So Le Jette, I
00:06:47
Speaker
was reading about and then kind of started watching. But it's fascinating how it really is almost beat by beat in the 12 Monkeys movie. And also that it was all done in still photographs.
00:07:01
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I think that's great. I think I saw Le Chate, I think I must have been like in my early 20s, maybe living in Davis, so like 21, 22. That's right. Yeah, it's great. And then I didn't, yeah, I didn't know, I had seen 12 monkeys before that. And so yeah, it was an epiphany for me when I saw Le Chate. Yeah, the one is obviously based on the other, but it's cool. It's fucking rad.
Current Entertainment and Rewatching Strategies
00:07:27
Speaker
And I think they like,
00:07:29
Speaker
Reuse stills over and over again, which I really like. Oh, that's nice I didn't get all the way through it, but I did I thought I was really really striking What what are you reading watching and listening to creating? What do you what are you doing for fun these days out there for fun? Seen anything good recently seen anything good so We
00:07:56
Speaker
Like I love, I love just having like a TV show on in the background while I'm like working. It's kind of just like a, like a comfort blanket. So I started rewatching Battlestar Galactica.
00:08:07
Speaker
the 2003, not the 70s. And that first season is a banger, like it's so good. And then the second season like starts to like kind of turn into like military propaganda bullshit and excuse me. And but it's still like funny to watch like something that has like such terrible CG in it.
00:08:36
Speaker
And then tonight we're gonna go see John Wick 4 in the theaters, which is pretty fun. I'm very excited for you. I really want to as well. I'm so jealous that you have a partner that's down to watch John Wick. I don't have one of those, unfortunately.
00:08:52
Speaker
I'm all alone. You don't even have one friend who's like, yeah, no, I probably no, I probably do. Yeah. Yeah, I could think of a couple of friends here in town that would be dumb, but I want to go back and I've got such a bad memory. I want to go watch all the first three again. I think today is the day.
00:09:13
Speaker
Today's the day. Well, so what we did was we watched a recap of one and two because we knew we had seen one and two and then we rewatched three last night. Oh, OK. That could save some time. Yeah. Yep. It was it was a good move because we had combined two and three into just one really long movie in our minds. OK. Like I've seen one enough times. Like I've probably seen one like five times. So like.
00:09:39
Speaker
I've seen it enough to like definitely have the story of one like nailed in. Hilariously though, in okay, it might not be in two, but definitely in one and three, there's a Game of Thrones actor in that movie in the movies, which I just think think is hilarious because there's only like 25 British actors in the world. In existence.
00:10:05
Speaker
Uh-huh. And they're all in everything that requires some kind of British-ish actor. Is it the same actor in one and three? Mm-hmm. It's two different ones. Oh, two different Game of Thrones actors. Uh-huh. Interesting. Yeah. I never got past, like, season two of Game of Thrones. So I can't write down with you about this. That's fine. As a person who also read the books, I can tell you that you're not
00:10:34
Speaker
You're not really missing much. Season one and two, seasons one and two were fairly, one was very faithful to the book, as I'm sure you can attest. But seasons three through the end were just not faithful to the books. They were still fun, they were very entertaining. The last season was just like the showrunners just decided to shit on their entire fan base.
00:11:02
Speaker
Oh really? Was it like lost where they were like, okay, let's just wrap this shit up and get out of here. We got like other things to do.
00:11:11
Speaker
You know, it felt a little bit like that. It felt like they crammed two and a half
Sci-Fi Literature: 'Murderbot Diaries' and 'Broken Earth' Trilogy
00:11:16
Speaker
seasons worth of content into one season. The ending was just stupid. It was just so dumb. And, you know, I found out relatively recently that Amelia Clark was suffering from some very serious health issues. Apparently she had two strokes.
00:11:37
Speaker
during, like, Daenerys Stardearian, the actress who plays Daenerys. Really, that young person had two strokes? Yeah, she has now, basically, doctors are like, you're lucky that you can speak. Dang.
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah, like her memory is shot like a lot of like not good physical ramifications. And so although they didn't talk about it at the time in retrospect, I'm wondering if that influenced how they ended the show because she was such like a massive part that like they couldn't afford her to not be able to finish the show. So they kind of just like mashed everything down into eight unfulfilling episodes.
00:12:23
Speaker
Um, I was watching, I was on the internet and like some stupid BuzzFeed listicle popped up and it was like people, like men on the internet are being assholes to Emilia Clarke for aging because she's not fucking 20 anymore. And so then I read the article and it was because she like posted like a, like a, I'm still here picture basically that was like her and her house with like having a cup of tea without makeup on and like,
00:12:52
Speaker
shitty men on the internet were like, oh, remember when she was a sex symbol or some bullshit like that? Yeah. Yeah. And like BuzzFeed was just like, remember why men are gross? Here's a bunch of reasons. In case you needed a reminder, men are still disgusting.
00:13:11
Speaker
So I'm excited for you to see John Wick. I'm probably going to watch John Wick this week, like I said. Rachel and I did watch a movie and we did discover a genre that we could share in film, which is
00:13:25
Speaker
overblown up Chinese epic, like war epics. Whoa. Because Rachel doesn't like punching and shooting movies like John Wick, but if it's couched in insane period piece epic style, like the movie Shadow, which we saw last night. Have you ever seen this movie? I have not. Came out in 2018.
00:13:51
Speaker
Director is, I'm going to mispronounce his name, Zang Yumou. It's very good. It's black and white, and it's kind of a very ridiculous plot premise. It's like,
00:14:06
Speaker
This commander of the King's army, growing up his uncle found another boy who looked just like him and he always kept him in the shadows. That's his shadow in case he needed to replace him for any reason.
00:14:24
Speaker
And this commander gets in a duel and he loses and he's so fucked up that they just like tag his shadow in and to pretend to be him. So his shadow is just living his life while he's like really creepily is recovering in like the caverns underneath his house. And his shadow is just like sleeping with his wife and like carrying on, you know, stuff at court and political intrigues and shit.
00:14:52
Speaker
And it's, you would really like it. It kind of has a, I don't know if I should say this, it has like a Kurosawa feel to it. It's real gritty, it's nasty. The characters are like, you can really feel their pain. They're really emotive. Yeah, fucking moves. There's rad battle scenes. They fight people with metallic umbrellas. It's still worth a watch. I love that Rachel loves the period piece.
00:15:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. Rachel has, like, bad filters when it comes to movies, and it can't be, like, too dramatic. Otherwise, she just, like, it pops her, like, suspension of disbelief just falls apart if things are too dramatic. So I think this one is quite dramatic, but it kind of walks the line a little bit. And yeah, there's lots of stabbing people with swords and metal umbrellas. But I think because it's so exotic
00:15:47
Speaker
to her that it can kind of keep her attention, as opposed to like a, you know, a punch, like a standard, you know, like extraction or one of those movies or, or Ant-Man and the Wasp, which is the immediate one she brought up was like, she just could not pay attention to you at all. Cause it's free setting. That's super fair.
00:16:09
Speaker
But yeah, we watched that last night. Have you read the Murderbot Diaries? No. Have you ever talked about Murderbot? I'm rereading Murderbot because that's very much like the character of Murderbot themselves. The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells is like a sci-fi series that I can always go back to and I always find endlessly entertaining and just
00:16:34
Speaker
almost like a guilty pleasure, but Murderbot is a security robot, SEC unit, way, way in the future. And all SEC units, security units have a governor module that governs how they interact with their human clients. But Murderbot has hacked its governor, so the governor doesn't work anymore.
00:16:56
Speaker
And usually in movies, when a second it goes rogue, they just go around killing people, but in actuality, Murderbot just wants to be left alone and just wants to watch movies on its internal Netflix stream and read novels and listen to music and watch movies. It's pretty much like a giant teenager.
00:17:15
Speaker
Or it's a human robot construct. And so it's clones, cloned human parts to it. And it's very uncomfortable with its body. It's very uncomfortable with the fact that it's part human. It's almost, I always say this, I might be talking out of my ass, but it's almost kind of a perfect queer YA narrative, where you have this character that doesn't have a gender.
00:17:45
Speaker
you know, has a revelation about its true nature and and goes to great lengths and make sacrifices to like really bring its its true nature to fruition, risks its life to really truly be who it is. Yeah. And then is constantly having cares about other people, but hates that it cares about other people and then eventually finds its, you know, community in the most unlikely of places.
00:18:12
Speaker
It's sort of like a classic queer narrative. Yeah. I mean, that's really it is. And you're rereading this right now? Yeah, for like the fifth time. Yeah.
00:18:23
Speaker
Yeah, I'm about to I think I'm about to start reread the the Broken Earth series by N.K. Jemisin. Oh, do it. Yeah. So I I got the books for Christmas a few years ago. But I I want to say that I read them during my covid.
00:18:48
Speaker
like, period, like my COVID recovery last year. And so I remember them, but I don't really remember them. You know what I mean? Like, I was just kind of like putting information into my head. But I distinctly recall like,
00:19:08
Speaker
loving that series and it's also kind of has that same sort of like thing of what you're describing about like the realization of like who you are. It definitely has some of those like YA themes even though it's really really really like well written like not the YA isn't well written but it has like
00:19:29
Speaker
It's like dealing with adult themes of care and what does it mean to be present. It's also really incredible because N.K. Jemisin is one of the only modern black female science fiction authors.
00:19:50
Speaker
And this is the first time that I've ever read a science fiction book where the main character was also black. And I thought that that was really extraordinary in that regard. I also love a broken timeline narrative, like a dual or triple timeline, because it really forces you to pay attention.
00:20:18
Speaker
Yeah, you have to do your work. And the author is not going to do the work for you. And so you just have to really pay attention. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, and similarly to the Murderbot, similarly to Murderbot, the main character of the Broken Earth trilogy is like, I have these insane powers that I have to hide from people. Yep.
00:20:40
Speaker
I can never truly let anyone in and I really care for people so much in this gut-clenchingly way. And also going on a journey and then finding
00:20:58
Speaker
like community and allies in very strange places. Like that trans woman that she finds, she meets on the road. Who turns out to have been her weird friend from when she was a kid? I think so, yeah. Yeah, that's right. And then like also just like the, it also like really touches on like these themes of like, you know, what does it mean to be a caregiver?
00:21:27
Speaker
when you can't give yourself care. Right. So there's like a lot of like humanity given to like generational trauma too because like it very much has that like under underlying narrative like the main character like experiences this like emotional and physical trauma and then has to then grapple with also being a parent and also like not being able to be present for her children.
00:21:56
Speaker
and making difficult decisions and terrible realizations and then kind of watching it all crumble anyway. It's like really, it was a fucking, it was an excellent. And like, you know, this is a spoiler. So if you haven't read these books, you should probably just fast forward a little bit. But like the realization that it was our earth all along.
00:22:23
Speaker
And that it was our moon all along was just like, it was like,
00:22:29
Speaker
There was like, I just had like a ha moment. I was like, oh shit. Because it's not explicitly clear until you realize that that's what it is. And then you're like, okay, that was really well done. Like so like well couched in the storyline that like I was transported to a fictional planet in a fictional solar system until I realized it wasn't that. Which I thought was awesome.
00:22:59
Speaker
All right. For further reading on black female sci-fi writers with black main characters, you can see Octavia Butler also. True. True, true, true. Rest in peace. R-I-P-A, indeed. I had a customer who, he just like went off on Dune one day and I looked at all the other, his coworkers in the break room and they're just like buried their faces in their hands. But I was like, okay, lay it on me. Because I love Dune also. Yeah.
00:23:30
Speaker
And then I was like, you know, when like sci-fi or even just reading people are like, oh, yeah, you like this author? What about this author sort of situation? I was kind of doing that to him. I was like, I was like, do like N.K. Jemisin, do like Octavia Butler. And he liked neither of them.
00:23:48
Speaker
And I was like, well, sure. And I was like, I had this realization. I was like, well, you're a middle age man and and Kay Jamison and especially Octavia Butler write about what it means to be like a not sexy black woman with a family to care for. And just like.
00:24:10
Speaker
the stress of living in that role and having a female body and giving birth. And shit just being not heroic or glamorous, right? Yeah, yep. Yeah, very much that. No surprise. This random middle-aged man was not doubtful this hour.
Cooking and Podcast Professionalism
00:24:32
Speaker
And then the only other thing that I did for my spring break was I made a super insanely delicious banana bread.
00:24:41
Speaker
Like so good. I used the topping from a, of course I can't think of what it's called now. It's like a French pastry where you cook the fruit or vegetable face down in a pan and let it get caramelized and then you put pastry on top of it and then you flip it over. It's basically like a bougie upside down pineapple cake sort of thing. But I did basically an upside down banana bread.
00:25:10
Speaker
and it was outstanding. That sounds fucking amazing. Yeah. Tart tatine. Have you had that before? No. So traditionally the tart tatine is used, you make it with onions. So like an onion tart tatine is where you take like fresh spring sweet onion and you cut it and then you put it like
00:25:35
Speaker
half down in a pan with a bunch of butter and a little bit of sugar and you let it cook until it caramelizes and then you place like pastry on top of it. So like puff pastry or like short pastry or whatever, and then you bake it and then you flip it over and all the like juicy, caramel-y juices spread out over it. So I did the tartateen style to the bananas, which is what effectively influenced the
00:26:02
Speaker
the classic pineapple upside down cake. But then I made like a classic sour cream base walnut banana bread over it. So it was like this like sweet, crispy, dark, like slightly bitter caramelized banana situation on top. And then just like a much less sweet, almost savory banana bread. So good. That sounds really good. I'm not even a sweets person. I'm not a bakery person, but that sounds really good.
00:26:33
Speaker
I mean, I don't love very sweet things, but this really hit the spot. I'll send you the recipe for it. Maybe we can post it in the show notes. Yes, in the show notes. Which we will have when we post this.
Review of 'City of Lost Children'
00:26:46
Speaker
One day when we're proper podcasters. Indeed. This week, I'm gonna edit this week. Amazing. We'll have two in the can. All right. You wanna review these movies? We'll just do like 10 minutes each and this podcast will just be about us like, oh, what'd you read?
00:27:02
Speaker
That's cool. You very graciously watched this with me while I was, where was I? Iowa. I think I was in Wisconsin. Iowa. I think this was the week you were in Iowa. Yeah. Well, I was staying in Wisconsin, but working in Iowa, right over the Mississippi River. Oh, man. That's why everybody was so nice because you were in Wisconsin.
00:27:24
Speaker
People are quite nice. Did I tell you that Thursday night, I had wrapped up a very good installation for work. And, you know, Thursday, Friday is when I travel out. So Thursday, I would like to eat a good meal and go drink some whiskey. And then I was like, okay, oh, there's live music. I guess I'll just play drums with these random people. What? Which is really like a,
00:27:50
Speaker
That's kind of a you thing to do. Oh, sure. Yeah, that's I mean, that's a hyperbolic way of saying that, like, I sat on their drum box and like banged the drum with my hands and they allowed me to do it for one or two songs. But I also had just enough self-awareness to stop. That's the key before I'd gone too far.
00:28:12
Speaker
That's the key before you kicked the actual drummer off of the kit and then started playing moderately well. Well, it was a it wasn't it was like a jam night like local musicians and it was like you could tell that they all play with each other all the time. One of them was the bar owner who I got kind of chatty with. And no, they had like, you know, one of those boxes that you can sit on it and then you just like hit it with your hands and it's like a drum and yeah, one of those things. And like, yeah, I was just like,
00:28:39
Speaker
you know, drinking my double whiskeys, which is a bad habit I have these days. And then I was just like, what? Why is no one playing that drum box? This is kind of. Anyone can. Anyone can do it. I can just picture you like holding a glass of whiskey, walking up and like pointing and like making eye contact and like I just sat down. I just I just yeah, pretty much pretty much. I just sat down and did it.
00:29:08
Speaker
Incredible. Yeah, I could send you a video. I would love that. Yeah, the older couple that I was chopping up with took videos of me doing it. They were very nice. And if I ever go back, I will definitely see them again. I'll definitely go back to that bargain because everyone's super nice. It was cool.
00:29:23
Speaker
Dude, the Midwest is awesome. The Midwest is awesome, yeah. It's the best. Yeah, Iowans are nice. Wisconsin's are nice. It's kind of funny because we're from San Diego. San Diego is a very large place geographically. I was on the Wisconsin side of the river and I was like, yeah, there's kind of some fucked up roads over there.
00:29:44
Speaker
this Wisconsin guy was like, hey, what's wrong with your roads? Why do you guys have dirt roads to someone from Iowa? And it was like, it was just a real thing. And I was like, what do you guys eat around here? And they're like, well, on the Wisconsin side, they eat this and in Iowa they eat this. I was like, are you serious? How is this not just the same place?
00:30:04
Speaker
There's definitely more regional variants in shorter areas, you know, like in all of San Diego County, you can get the identical burrito anywhere that you go. Whereas, you know, if you go from the south side of Chicago to the north side of Chicago and you ask for a sandwich, there's no guarantee you're going to get the same sandwich because they're going to have a different style of doing it. Like just like nine miles away from each other. You know what I mean? Right.
00:30:33
Speaker
But it's, I don't know, I literally like just like little shout out to the Midwest. I fucking love it here. It's the only place that I will voluntarily live in the U.S. I'll move somewhere else if we have to for school or for work. Like if Trevin gets like, you know, a super cool space job or something, I'll move to wherever that is or like whatever. But
00:31:01
Speaker
I don't think I want to move outside of the greater Chicagoland area for anywhere else in the US, voluntarily, basically. You wouldn't come back to New York, say you got a design job or something?
00:31:20
Speaker
Yeah, so yes, but that's not
Living in Small Spaces and Chicago Architecture
00:31:24
Speaker
voluntary. That's like following work. It's the means of survival, basically. I wouldn't move back to New York unless I had a stellar, stellar job. It would have to be incredible.
00:31:42
Speaker
Because I would rather live in Europe, honestly. I would rather move somewhere that I've never been, that I've never lived. Because I've lived in a lot of places in the States, a lot of fucking places. But in the Midwest, we got really into this YouTube channel about small spaces. It's called Not Too Small. How small of an apartment
00:32:12
Speaker
can a couple functionally live in? How can you make a small space? Well-designed, beautiful, and easy to live in is effectively what these YouTube shorts are about. And we started really thinking about how much space do we actually need? Do we need to have all of this shit? In our home specifically, could we have a studio? Could I have a studio instead of having it in my apartment?
00:32:41
Speaker
The answer is absolutely. I don't need to live in a space that's got this much stuff in it, but how small would be too small? We went on this very brief moment of looking at apartments for sale rather than full homes or buildings for sale in Chicago and discovered that
00:33:04
Speaker
There's an apartment for sale right now in the Wilco buildings. It's also called, the actual name of it is Marina City, I think. But you know which ones I'm talking about, like the Corn Cob buildings from the cover of the Wilco record. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:33:22
Speaker
So iconic Chicago architecture, these buildings were built to be like the thing that revitalized the downtown to encourage more people to live in the urban center. They are called Marina City because it was supposed to be like
00:33:37
Speaker
you could literally drive your boat into the bottom if you had one and park it there. There was a hair salon, there was a small grocery. You could drive your car up the spiral so that you could park and then get out on your building. The buildings are wild and really novel concrete construction that hadn't really, really been done
00:34:04
Speaker
in this way like the round concrete with this like wedge building style.
In-depth Analysis: 'City of Lost Children'
00:34:09
Speaker
They're marvels of architecture. But like the apartment is like $216,000 or something.
00:34:22
Speaker
Holy shit, Jesus. And it's not, it's like not small. It's like, I think the listing was for like 526 square feet, which like is small, but it's not, it's like a two, it's like got a two bedroom footprint. And the HOA fees are only like $600, which is very affordable for these types of buildings.
00:34:46
Speaker
But like to have an apartment in it, it is like literally downtown. Like it is on the Chicago River and like iconic architecture, like just it kind of really like, I don't know, it sort of changed my ideas of like what I would want to be comfortable. You know, I used to think I needed to live in an apartment like the size of the one we're in now. And now I'm like,
00:35:16
Speaker
man, if I'm going to stay here, maybe I don't need to buy a house. Maybe we could just buy a really dope apartment. And like, that would be that, you know? I mean, Chicago downtown, that area is just like, yeah, this last time I saw you was kind of my first time going there. It's absolutely gorgeous. It's insane, right? Yeah, it's beautiful. Maybe I should buy one of those apartments. You guys can just live there. That's what we should do. That would rule. I'll send you the listing.
00:35:46
Speaker
Okay, let's talk about these movies. All right, so yeah. Wait, I had some other tangent I wanted to talk about, but let's not. Okay, City of Lost Children, Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, written by, I don't know, I don't speak French. Do you want me to try? Yeah, are you a French person? Go for it. I mean, I should be able to speak it. I've taken several French classes. Hold on, let me pull it up.
00:36:16
Speaker
Okay. All right. Guy Adrian, Jean-Pierre Genet, and Marc Caro are the writers, starring Ron Perlman, Daniel Amifolk, and Judith Vitay, I want to say. Vitay? Yep, yep.
00:36:45
Speaker
Okay, stop playing that right now. IMDb wants to like just automatically play the preview when you open it. Yeah, so did City of Lost Children win any awards? They did. Like hella awards. Yeah, I mean it was like an incredible
00:37:07
Speaker
an incredible film. They were nominated for some really incredible films. So I think it was mostly foreign awards, I want to say. Yeah. Like the Felix Award. I don't know what that is for best cinematography, best foreign language, best costume design by Jean-Paul Gaultier. The cinematographer, Darius Kanji, is kind of insane. I pull up his Wikipedia page here.
00:37:38
Speaker
He did Delicatessen. He did just ones that stick out to seven. He's a Fincher guy. Evita, Stealing Beauty, Alien Resurrection, which is Jean-Pierre Junet's next film. Oh, I'm really excited for that, Loki. Yeah. No, no, no. That's his next film that he did after this movie. Oh, I thought you were saying, because isn't there another Alien? No, it was the Predator movie that just came out. Oh, does it? Yeah. Yeah, apparently it's some very good side note.
00:38:08
Speaker
Um, yeah, so Alien Resurrection is Janae's next film. And I think Mark Caro was, which is, yeah, his longtime collaborator, you know, Delicatessa was their first movie together and also City of Lost Children. Um, I think Mark Caro went to work.
00:38:24
Speaker
on Alien Resurrection, it was just like, fuck this. This sucks. It's a big budget Hollywood film. There's all these restrictions. And then I don't think they work together again, because by the time Amelie comes around, it's just Jean-Pierre Genet.
00:38:40
Speaker
I want to, now I want to deep dive into the hot goss about why they stopped working together. I wonder if Mark Karo was bummed that he didn't get asked to come on to Alien Resurrection. No, he did. He did like, I don't know, I think he did like six weeks of pre-production work.
00:39:01
Speaker
And then I think he was like, dude, fuck all these like, it just was like a big bunch of Hollywood film. And he's like, fuck this shit. I don't like we're indie filmmakers. I don't want to do this. Right. And then he might have been bummed when it came time to do Amelie, which is very much like in line with their aesthetic. But yeah, I don't think I don't think he came back for Amelie.
00:39:23
Speaker
Fascinating. They were nominated for the Palme d'Or, which is like the highest award you can win at Cannes. The César Film Festival or awards was best production design, also nominated for music, cinematography and costume design.
00:39:46
Speaker
So they were nominated for quite a bit. They won the Cesar Award for Best Production and the Felix for Best Cinematography, Best Born Film, and Best Costume Design. Jean-Paul Gaultier really fucking come in hot in the 90s with that costume design.
00:40:03
Speaker
The costume is fucking amazing in this film. Everyone looks great. You get to see Ron Perlman's midriff a lot, which is really fun. And eventually his sweater unravels and you just get to see topless Ron Perlman in his prime, I would say. A little Bolero situation he has gone on. What does that mean?
00:40:24
Speaker
So Valero is like the, it's called after Spanish bullfighter costume, but it's like where it's just like the upper part. It's like a tiny jacket that you wear that just covers the shoulders and the arms. And that's like effectively like what happens to the sweater. It becomes like just the collar and then the arms.
00:40:45
Speaker
That's right, which is a very like on point for like go to his style of the times like he loved a mid drift moment as we can see in fifth element like
00:40:58
Speaker
Um, he loves like a bolero moment because the, the alien costume, when they're like going through the airport, she's like one of her costumes, she's wearing like the human face of one of those crazy aliens is like a crazy like bolero sweater situation. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. This was like, I remember girls wearing the bolero sweater or modifying their sweaters to be like that shave, like in the early 2000s, late 90s, early 2000s, for sure.
00:41:28
Speaker
Yeah, it was definitely a thing.
00:41:31
Speaker
Yeah, so basically the film follows the main character played by Ron Perlman. His name is Juan in the film. He is a strong man, literally strong, and then also sort of a, you know, the trope of the carny is really prevalent in this film. And, you know, he performs his feats of strength.
00:41:59
Speaker
We follow him as he searches for his little brother, Montpetit Foyer, who is kidnapped. He ends up sort of in a surreptitious and simultaneously clandestine agreement with some orphans.
00:42:28
Speaker
whose ringleader is a little girl named Mietz. The long and short of it is that they go up against a nefarious group of religious zealots. They're nefarious, the cyclops, so whatever they are.
00:42:48
Speaker
I mean, they were in trench coats, and they skulk around in the dark stealing children. And steal children, yeah. Yeah, they're fucking stealing children. Nefarious. Yeah, and Don Rhee, who is, yeah, Montpetit Frere, one's little brother, he just found in a trash can one day, which is a really funny description of how he found him.
00:43:09
Speaker
And it's delivered to Mia with such gravitas, but in me it's just like, oh, brother, get out of here. Literally. Yeah, she has no patience for any of their antics. She's certainly the adult of the group. She's the most adult person in the entire movie, I would say. 100%. 100%.
00:43:32
Speaker
Maybe second to Irv, who is just a giant brain. That lives in a tank. That lives in a tank. He's he's adult, too, but he doesn't have very much agency, obviously. But yeah, she's the most mature person. Yeah, the the the third, I would argue, is probably the inventor. Who suffers from. Yeah, yes, but he is. Yeah, he's also damaged irreparably until the original.
00:44:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, one is he's a big strong man, but he's a dummy. So it's kind of a classic trope. He's a little delayed, unfortunately. And yeah, he just has a lot of emotions. And Mia is just always like, OK. Well, and she likes him. Maybe she kind of needs him. She's just kind of using him. They have a sort of strange romance.
00:44:26
Speaker
Yeah, in a weird way. I did see an interview with the directors and the interviewer was like, yeah, what's what's going on with this weird, like sort of like romantic tension between me and one. And and then they did draw a parallel between that and the strange romance that you see in Leon, the professional. Oh, I haven't seen that.
00:44:49
Speaker
Oh, you never saw The Professional? I think I've seen the famous clips or whatever. It's Jean Renaud and Natalie Portman. Natalie Portman's like...
00:45:03
Speaker
She's like 12 or 10 or something in that film. She's like a teenager, like just barely a teenager. And the premise is that her dad is like a sketchy drug dealer and he runs a foul of some crooked DEA agents played by Gary Oldman is the villain.
00:45:26
Speaker
And the professional doing an insane, sweaty, cracked out, wearing a white linen suit in New York City in the summer. Just like greasy hair, listens to like, takes drugs in like a very silly way where he's like cracks a pill between his teeth and just like shivers and then listens to classical music and then fucks people up.
00:45:48
Speaker
sort of incredibly villainous character. But very similar, like Jean Renau plays this like big kind of like beefy assassin. He's a hit man, pretty much. And he's a little dimwitted, but he's very good at his job. And he takes, you know, Natalie Portman under his wing. And then they do have also sort of like a weird romance.
00:46:11
Speaker
Um, more explicit in the professional where Natalie Portman at some point was just like, I think I'm in love with you. And he just like spits his milk out and it's just like very, she's like more like, uh, low, uh, more like trying to seduce him in weird ways or more explicitly flirting with, with him. But anyways, there's a parallel between the two movies where like you have this sort of like big lunk head, um, and a smart, who's a middle aged man and a teenage girl having like a low key, uh, sort of coded relationship.
00:46:42
Speaker
Yeah, that is definitely one of the weirdest cinematic tropes that I'm fairly certain has died at this point, for which I am grateful. Thank goodness, yes.
00:46:57
Speaker
is adults having low key relationships with child girls, children? Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah. But yeah, so this like blossoming coded relationship is happening under the duress of hiding from Miet's handler, the
00:47:24
Speaker
The Octopus. The Octopus. She is conjoined twins and they're conjoined from the hip to the foot. Circus performers come orphan ringleader, I guess.
00:47:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. It's sort of like a, I haven't really read Dickens, but it just feels very Dickensian, right? Yeah, yes, yes, very much so. And, you know, that trope has not died. We saw it carry all the way through to modern Star Wars franchise with how the plot line of Solo goes that, you know. Absolutely.
00:48:07
Speaker
children abandoned, forced to become hardened criminals at a young age, have no other option than to grow up and to be charming rock scallions. That's right. Played by a recently TBI recovered Emilia Clarke. Zing! Call back. There we go. There we go. This is so good. Such a good podcast.
00:48:39
Speaker
So yeah, the Octopus, the Octopus is great. Like I fucking love the Octopus because she's like, she's two separate people. They're conjoined twins, but like they're cooking and they can like taste each other. Like one person, one of them will eat something and the other like adds extra spice. It's so fucking brilliant. There's so many- That cooking scene is just outstanding. It's so incredible.
00:49:04
Speaker
Like, yeah, I mean, what's so fun about it is like, they're also in a, they've like put on comfy clothes to cook because they're at home. Yes. Which I really love because like, I don't know, like movie characters don't change into comfortable clothes. They just kind of wear their costume the whole time. Right. But yeah, they're wearing like these sort of like frumpy sweaters. And they're just kind of taking it easy and cooking like a small amount of vegetables for each other.
00:49:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's, um, it, I think that they're, they're cooking, um, they're cooking, uh, what was it? Uh, zucchini specifically. I remember because I was like, Oh, that looks good.
00:49:45
Speaker
But yes, so the, you know, Mietz and one have sort of linked up in their search for Little Brother, and they go on a series of adventures throughout the city of lost children, which brings them to realize that Little Brother has been kidnapped,
00:50:10
Speaker
and taken to a, I guess is it like a old oil rig? Well, first he gets kidnapped and they're just like on this, like kind of like that, it's like a train, right? It's like a train of locked up children. Or am I conflating this with Batman Returns?
00:50:30
Speaker
You might be mistaken. No, because the okay, so like, the city is all built on pylons. So it's all the entire city is over the water. Oh, I didn't gather that. Okay. Yes. So whatever world that they live in, the water is
00:50:50
Speaker
like become like there's no ground, there's no like dirt anymore. So has very like water world vibes. Everything is built up on pylons over this ocean and
00:51:06
Speaker
the children are taken to a like coal, like where the cyclops is dead is effectively, like this religious fanatic, we should probably talk about that a little bit. There is this group of men who are led by a charismatic leader who is blind.
00:51:32
Speaker
and he takes in people who are naturally blind, either visually impaired or completely blind, but then they also take in people who are seeing
00:51:46
Speaker
And those people can be blinded to participate in this cult of true seeing is kind of the thing. Like they have this like philosophy of that only through like this wild augmentation that they go through where they are bypassing like the cochlear like
00:52:14
Speaker
hearing that is associated with the eardrum and how sound is processed, that through these augmentations is how they can truly see. They have these implants that bypass the ear that give them the ability to hear sound through these artificial ways. They have microphones that they point
00:52:35
Speaker
Yeah. And it's also their hearing is like overly sensitive because when the army like eats like an apple or whatever or it's a carrot, a carrot. Yeah. They all freak out. Right. Yeah. And it seems to me, too, that they are given vision through like sort of almost like a lidar system, like like the hear me out.
00:53:03
Speaker
You see that look on my face? Yes. So the way that they're seeing is portrayed particularly in that death scene that they did. They have these lenses that transmit some kind of pattern to the brain. The only way that they could be seeing like this in my mind is through a sound wave patterning situation. Because they don't have cameras.
00:53:34
Speaker
they have those sound amplifiers. Oh, interesting, okay. So in my mind, it's like a radar, LIDAR situation where the sound waves are bouncing off of things and giving them like a way to see through this like audio implant. Right. I don't know. And these implants are provided to them by Crank.
00:53:59
Speaker
No. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's right. That's the trade that the technology is given to them by Crank in exchange for the children. That's correct. Because Crank, who is kind of I guess Crank is like the villain of this story, although I don't know, I guess like capitalism and like rampant technology
00:54:24
Speaker
is also kind of the villain of this film, and also people's gross bodies is also like the villain of this film. But Crank is, he's like a clone also, right? Crank and all the little weird clone brothers played, which are all played by Dominic Pinon, and the brain in the vat, which is Uncle Irvin, and then the,
00:54:54
Speaker
the princess? What's her name? Oh, I don't remember. Does she have an actual? Is she get Martha? Martha? Yeah. Who's meant to be like
00:55:09
Speaker
the original's wife, I think, and she's like a beautiful princess sort of, well, sorry, the brain in the tank describes her as a princess, but she's also like a little person. So everyone is sort of cloned from the original, who's played by Dominic Pinon, or created by the original, but there's always something wrong. And Crank, who's the main villain, his problem is that he's like, he can't dream, correct? Yes, he can't dream, and then he ages,
00:55:39
Speaker
A lot. He ages overly, overly fast, because in actuality, he's like the same age as the Dominic Pinyon characters, like very silly looking clones that run around beating each other up. Who all have, who are all narcoleptic. Oh yeah, that's right. That's their problem. It's like, yeah, they'll just like fall asleep, slap their faces down into like piles of cake and stuff.
00:56:06
Speaker
Yeah, so Krank is always kidnapping children and stealing their dreams. Is that what he's doing? Yeah, he's trying to steal their dreams. He's trying to steal their dreams because he thinks that if he could just dream a happy dream that he would be able to be happy himself.
00:56:26
Speaker
Right. And he has this hack where he like he'll like sit up and be like falling asleep and he gets one of the little clone brothers to like tell him stories in lieu of dreams. Yes. And it's I don't know that that actor, Daniela Emma Fork, I think I guess he's just like a Chilean stage and film actor.
00:56:53
Speaker
who, yeah, most of his career is in French cinema, but he's done a fuck ton of stuff. He's so good, like he's old as hell in this movie and his face is so expressive and just like, yeah, all of his crazy facial, his facial features are really intense. And he's so kind of like,
00:57:20
Speaker
evil and mean to the children. But it's really, you see a couple of emotional turns when Irving, the brain in the tank is kind of, is trying to, it makes him cry by telling him a story, which is kind of a big exposition dump about all the characters who are living on this oil rig. You know, talks about the clones and talks about himself, the brain in the vat and the tiny princess and talks about crank and how crank can't dream.
00:57:47
Speaker
And he just gets a crank to cry. And yeah, just the way that he's able to go from being like evil mad man to vulnerable. It's like I love it. It's just like so captivating. And especially when he's like during that scene when the clones are telling him like bedtime stories and he just is such he has like such childlike wonder during when he's experiencing the story, the storytelling. It's a yes, I love it.
00:58:16
Speaker
Um, the, the octopus is played by two actual twin sisters. They, that was not like screen. That was not like movie magic. Um, and one of them, uh, Genevieve Brunet, she's a very, very, um, famous in French theater. Like she's a, a stage performer, predominantly.
00:58:41
Speaker
which I thought was really interesting. And you can really kind of see that theater aspect that comes through in a lot of the moments in the film. I think too, you can really tell that it was influenced pretty heavily by stage theater, just the way that the scenes are filmed. It's a very vignette-based film, which I think is pretty awesome.
00:59:09
Speaker
It does feel kind of blocked like a stage production for sure. And definitely it doesn't look realistic. It looks very believable, but it doesn't like realistic. Not at all. Yeah, not at all. And the colors are like crazy. Everything's like a nasty gangrenous sort of color. Yeah, a gangrenous feel to this movie, I would say. Yeah. Sort of slimy and moldy and dank and green.
00:59:35
Speaker
Well, there's also that moment where Crank has the bad dream and, or no, it's when the original, okay, so long story short, they tracked down little brother. He's been taken to Crank's hideaway in the oil rig.
00:59:54
Speaker
And there's that moment towards the end of the film where like the the nightmares released on the city and that green, the green fog sort of kind of starts to travel through and you hear babies waking up crying and like
01:00:09
Speaker
Dogs start barking and it's it's a it kind of adds to that like grotesque sort of feeling that the entire the entire film has.
Humor and Cultural Reflection in Film
01:00:21
Speaker
There's really like no moment, even when like, you know, the the main characters are sort of like victorious in their plan that the film ever has like a joyous feeling ever. Hmm. It's always very like desolate, desperate.
01:00:39
Speaker
You know, yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. Horrifying.
01:00:45
Speaker
Yeah, even at the end when they're all kind of paddling away from the oil rig that's about to explode, it's sad. And even like when Miet looks back, she looks she has a sort of like forlorn expression. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the moment where when the original when he finally comes out of his amnesia and it's right before a seagull lands on the plunger and then blows up the whole thing. Yeah. He like shots like I remember or something like this. Yeah. Yeah.
01:01:15
Speaker
Um, so the, you know, the, the overall plot is really funny. It's, you know, there's like, there are a lot of like really funny moments, but it's also like many of these movies sort of, um, vaguely, there are like these vaguely inappropriate themes. They're like, you know, there's like some racist overtures. There are, you know,
01:01:43
Speaker
The moment in the tattoo parlor? What fucking movie was it? 16 Candles?
01:01:55
Speaker
the stereotypical Southeast Asian gong gets like dropped, you know? I don't need to ever see, well, we're gonna see it with all these old movies. They will never do this again, but that was the thing where like the Chinese man bows and then like a gong sounds in the background. It's like, it's just like, you know, it's very, there's like so much, like it's such like a sign of the times, you know? Yeah, yeah.
01:02:25
Speaker
But like overall, it's a pretty I would I pretty much Yeah, I loved this movie. I think like, you know, I don't know, I think that the the plots kind of funny because there's really, it almost doesn't. It's like a very simple idea. You know,
01:02:49
Speaker
boy gets kidnapped, unlikely friends get made, they go through a series of harrowing trials, they survive death several times, they rescue little brother, the bad guy is taken care of. Like really, that is like the plot, right? Right. But the way that it's the story is told, it's like, there's just like, all of these little things, these little nuances that happen, it's like they
01:03:19
Speaker
They really cram a lot into a relatively short period of time.
01:03:23
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's it's all nuances. This this whole movie is all nuance, which is what's so amazing. Like, I think I don't know when my favorite scene is just when one is sitting on the stairs all sad and he's just like punched the wall so hard that like people are complaining at him for like shaking the chandeliers and shit. Yeah. And then like you could like a little tiny cute dogs run runs up the stairs like who cares? Just a fucking cute dog. And then in the background, you can just see the matte painting of like the skyline.
01:03:53
Speaker
And yeah, just absolutely everything like you got you got the junkie flea circus guy. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like sweaty and crying and like, you know, heartbroken all the time. And like truly does look like every junkie we've ever met in a weird way.
01:04:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think my favorite scene is probably when they capture one and they're killing them in this really ridiculous way that doesn't make any sense, but they have them on a pirate's plank over the water and they're tied up within an inch of their life. It's just like big rope wrapped from ankle to shoulders just around their body to incapacitate them. And they're on these balancing boards and
01:04:39
Speaker
they're on the edge of the board at the opposite end of the board is like baskets of dead fish. Yeah. And as the seagulls take away the fish, then that upsets the balance and they fall into the water, right? It's just like, it's just so ridiculous. Yeah.
01:04:54
Speaker
I think that that kind of whole portion of the film from when the whole dockside portion of the film I think is really, really incredible. The moment when Miet is rescued and brought into the lair of the original and I noticed for the first time the skeleton with his feet in concrete, which really kind of
01:05:21
Speaker
it really like stages the world that they live in right like that this is just like a regular thing people getting murdered like people get thrown into that water all the time like toys are getting thrown into the water because the children are getting taken away on a boat um
01:05:39
Speaker
The ship scene is one of the best, in my opinion, and like the scale that they were able to achieve with the ship coming in the dock was just like so cool. It was like so, so, so cool. Well, it's it was so good because they're like, fuck, I bet they were like, oh, we have to design a giant ship. And they're like, they don't just make a big wall and call it a ship like it's so like you never see the whole ship, right? All you see is just like the prow of the of the boat.
01:06:07
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think that, you know, this is one of those movies that I wish I could see like a behind the scenes on because like I suspect that it was done in miniature. Like the, you know, they used tricks of camera to create like this, like imposing situation. And when in reality, it was probably like a like a small thing that they filmed to make it look
01:06:36
Speaker
actually taller or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, the and then the way that the octopus laughs when the when the the ship stops right before where they're conjoined, it like stops right at their foot and they just like start laughing hysterically and then they get bit by the flea and they start fighting one another. It's so awesome because the
01:07:06
Speaker
the sister that the flea landed on is the first to react and starts. And then you kind of see like you, they like play it out where like she's infected first and then the second one is infected and then she starts fighting back. You know, it's not like this instantaneous thing. So there's like this like sort of like magical realism aspect to it. You know, that's how, you know, if a foreign substance was introduced to two different respiratory or like circular systems, that's what it would look like. Right.
01:07:36
Speaker
Right, right. Oh, I see what you mean because they're so connected that it flows from one to the other. And that's right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that
01:07:49
Speaker
It really speaks to how well made this movie is because like a flea that jumps on you and injects poison into you is a completely ridiculous idea and not believable whatsoever. But even down to the CGI, it just works. It works really well. It's very satisfying. Well, particularly considering that the poison is activated by a creepy song. Yeah, that's right. Played on a hand-crake organ. That's right. Yeah.
01:08:19
Speaker
How? Who invested all that time into training these fleas? And also how long do fleas live for? Makes no sense whatsoever. And the creepy Carnival organ flea trainer guy is so invested in these fleas. He loves them so much. And when he thinks that one of them has died,
01:08:45
Speaker
he's like he's as bereft for the flea as he is over having had to kill miet for the um or have like thinking that he killed miet for the octopus right right yeah just all the interpersonal relationships yeah the connection between the the flea circus guy and the octopus is like you explain it to me as he's like was has always been in love with him right that's how i've interpreted it because there's like
01:09:14
Speaker
There's a moment when they come to visit him to enlist him in the crime where you see an old weathered painting that has the octopus, the women, has them as their younger selves in the painting with him and his flee circus. And they kind of come to him to enlist him in this sort of
01:09:44
Speaker
faux, you know, loving sort of like rekindling of romance sort of like connotation. And so like, I've always interpreted that they're like that they had like a forbidden love in their youth kind of thing. And that he was like, sort of easily manipulated by them as a result of that past.
01:10:08
Speaker
Yeah, because he says like, I'm sorry, I didn't do it for money, I did it for love. Yeah. Or something like that. He says something to that effect. Or just, I didn't do it for money. Which implies he did it for love. Right, right. You want to rate this movie or what? Yeah, let's rate it. Cool. So in our previous episode, we did a scale between 1 and 500. And then I did a divider.
01:10:38
Speaker
I think I want to throw out the divider because I would like to just kind of keep track of how we rate these films and then like, you know, in the future when we're, you know, a lot of lines when we're professional podcasters and pulling in like, you know, five grand a month on Patreon, we can look back at our archive and be like, compare movies, you know? Yeah, I think that's good. So if you don't make the scars arbitrary, then it'll actually kind of make sense to compare them later on. Agreed.
01:11:05
Speaker
All right, on a scale between one and 500. Enjoyability, I did 499. This movie is hell of enjoyable. Totally, absolutely agree. The enjoyability of this film is it's so fun. It's like
01:11:21
Speaker
very it's very like engaging, I would say I'm probably going to give it like a 475 because there is like a little there's like a little lull towards the end where I'm where I find I've found myself in rewatches being able to just kind of tune out. I think we even we even experienced that ourselves when we just kind of started talking quite a bit through
01:11:51
Speaker
through like, there's like a look, I can't even place where it is, but there's just like a little moment in like the third act, I would say, where you and I just kind of started talking more. So like very enjoyable, but I think there's like, I guess, all right, let's say this.
01:12:09
Speaker
I'm gonna keep, I'm gonna go with the 4.99 score, but I'm gonna say like 4.75 for immersiveness because I do fall out of it a little bit. Okay, okay. So immersiveness. You know what, I had 4.75 exactly for immersiveness. That's so funny. Yeah, I think so. I think I can't, similarly, I can't exactly pinpoint exactly where we lose that, but
01:12:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think it is towards the third act, I want to say. Yeah. Veracity, I've got a 483. It feels very real. It feels very true, the people's interactions with the junky flea circus guy and his interiority and his reasons for helping out the octopus.
01:13:00
Speaker
you know, Mia feels like a very incredibly well-rounded character even though she doesn't truly have that much to do and she doesn't have a ton of dialogue. She just, it's the way she interacts with one and just she's like, oh, this guy's okay. He's helpful. He's an idiot. I do kind of love him, I guess, but he's laying it on a little thick. Like I wish he can kind of control himself, you know?
01:13:23
Speaker
All the machinations of, I don't know, the kind of the economics of how this movie works and the interactions between characters and the systems that draw everyone together. It all works for me, more or less, I would say. I think that the
01:13:44
Speaker
the way that the characters are written gives life to an entirely fictional world. There's no place that exists that is this place. And yet, the way that the characters are written and the way that they're performed gives it this very relatable, real life
01:14:11
Speaker
thing. So it's like the world itself completely unrealistic, completely unbelievable, absolutely not. No. But then the characters are so real that it's like that, that split, you know, and I would, I mean, if I were going to average the two, I would have to say it's like somewhere around 400, right? Because like characters are super believable, but the world is not so like, you know,
01:14:36
Speaker
And I think that that speaks to that magical realism narrative style too. Let's put these real experiences in this completely unreal world and then still have relatability.
01:14:53
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that even when the things that are unrealistic, and you're like, this would never happen, they also serve as very good metaphors, like, yes, the cyclopses are, you know, like, who would ever do that? That's completely ridiculous. But is it a good metaphor for like, viewing the world through social media, and it only only interacting through
01:15:17
Speaker
with your loved ones and through the world outside, through your cell phone. That's pretty truthful in and of itself. Yeah. And I guess that speaks to the next topic of does it accomplish its purpose? I think I said 483 again. I think we're kind of talking about the same thing here. It's creating a world.
01:15:43
Speaker
It's maybe doing some commentary on, you know, capitalism and post-industrial society and how people interact with each other and sort of like the nasty nature of like transactional relationships, I guess. And also, like, what is the value of being alive?
01:16:03
Speaker
Right. You know, that's a good point. Like, yeah, you are. You're kind of unsure of, like, why are any of these people still living? Like, what is the point, you know? Yeah. And where do you where do you get value from? Right. Like, so this this idea that like the emotional toll of not having dreams
01:16:26
Speaker
And like what what robs your dreams from you and like how does how do you stay youthful? What ages you like all of these like kind of bigger questions. And so like I think that it is fairly philosophical that like it's a fairly philosophical film that is like kind of hidden in this like sort of fun sort of fantasy world. Right. Like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
01:16:53
Speaker
So I think, yeah, I gave it a 490. It did accomplish its purpose very much. So the intended audience, I mean, fucking art film nerds, like, I don't know, like, I don't know who was going out and seeing this movie in 1995. I mean, it's kind of a classic, it has classic,
01:17:23
Speaker
themes of that time. Right. But yeah, I wrote the same thing. I wrote like romantic young artsy adults. Right. The main thesis, you know, I would say it is that idea of like, it's like this. What does it mean to live, like live well, right? Like, what does it take to live well? Like,
01:17:50
Speaker
Because, you know, me and one and like, don't worry, they don't have much. But when they're together, they're happy. Right. Like at the end, that's sort of like they get to like have this like happy life together. Right. You know, and I think that they did a good I think that if I'm remembering correctly, there is this moment where, you know, it's little brother and little sister. So they do kind of try to like
01:18:21
Speaker
flip that romantic moment into something that was just like, it was misplaced love that could be like.
01:18:35
Speaker
Like- Yeah, I think they kind of hit the release valve on that pressure. Yeah. On that weird romantic pressure where he's like, well, like, Donnery is my little brother and you're my little sister. So yeah, I know there's some weird tension building here, but we'll just like, you know, hit the valve on that. Right. Make that go away. Would you watch this movie again? What score would you watch this movie again?
01:19:01
Speaker
I mean, I would honor one to one to five hundred. I mean, this is like a this is probably like a on a flight. Definitely. Five hundred easy on TV with commercials. Absolutely not because I don't watch fucking anything with on TV with commercials. No, I think I think I put these like on a flight on TV with commercials, drunk by yourself at midnight, streaming on purpose, revival theater. Choose one. Oh.
01:19:27
Speaker
like 10 out of 10 revival theater. If this, if like the music box, which is our local sort of like indie theater that shows movies that are out of print, if the music box is like, hey, we're going to show Delicatessen and City of Lost Children and Amelie, would you go see it? I would go to all of them. 100%. 100%. Yeah.
01:19:53
Speaker
So put you down for 500 for that one. Yeah. Her revival theater. Absolutely. Cool.
Introduction to '12 Monkeys'
01:19:58
Speaker
All right. So my total is 2390. Let me tell you a course real quick. All right. So your score was higher than mine. 3,263. That tracks. I mean, I loved and loved this movie, you know? Yeah. I would definitely watch it again. I said like I would even watch streaming on purpose.
01:20:20
Speaker
Um, but revival theater, absolutely. Oh, yeah. That would be amazing. Definitely. Um, cue musical segue. I guess that's what we would do here. Also it's time for a commercial. Just kidding. We don't have commercials yet, but one day, one day we will. And now a break. Now a word from our sponsors. Okay. And we're back.
01:20:46
Speaker
We are back. Thanks for bearing with this podcast so far. We just finished wrapping our little synopsis of City of Lost Children. Let's talk about 12 monkeys.
01:20:59
Speaker
All right. 12 monkeys release date, December 29th, 1995 here in the United States. So yeah, just barely squeaks in for this season's topic. The year 1995 director, Terry Gilliam written by David and Janet peoples. Um, because we discussed, they also wrote blade runner. So that's kind of crazy. Starring Bruce Willis, Malin Stowe, Brad Pitt, Christopher Plummer as the villain. Um, cinematographer Roger Pratt. Let me see what he's up to. Probably some other fun shit as well.
01:21:31
Speaker
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. He did Brazil. So big Gilliam collaborator. Big Gilliam guy. Yeah. Paris by Night. Tim Burton's Batman. The Fisher King. That tracks. Mary Shelley Frankenstein. The Avengers, which is not a Marvel movie. That's like I want to say a Ray Fiennes movie period piece where it's a bunch of like
01:21:58
Speaker
Maybe that's Liam Neeson though. Ray Finds is like a secret agent British guy with a sword cane. Literally never ever heard of this before. Yeah, it doesn't exist. Chocolat. Oh, love that movie. Me and my grandma used to watch it. Oh, yeah, you know, I've never seen that actually. And probably problematic now.
01:22:19
Speaker
What is the premise of that movie? Oh goodness gracious. So Chocolat is a movie. It's another French film about a woman and her daughter.
01:22:34
Speaker
who's the woman, the mother, she is a chocolatier, but she learned it from presumably her South American grandmother. Because there's like, some like, there's like a special way of crushing up the chocolate. And she tells a story about how her grandmother can never stay in one place, she had to follow the wind. And she's exactly the same way. But basically, like, there's, you know, some
01:23:03
Speaker
There's like the woman with a child out of wedlock trope in a religious conservative Catholic French town. There's a like
01:23:18
Speaker
Roma troop that is led by, what the fuck is his name? Johnny Depp? Yep, that's it. Is that where Johnny Depp comes in? Yep. So, you know, that's problematic in itself because Johnny Depp is as best as I know, white as fuck. It's like, yes, yes, he is. Right? Like he doesn't have, he's not of, he's not.
01:23:46
Speaker
I was going to say something annoying like Johnny and Deb and I are like the same color. So you never know, but vaguely ethnic. Yeah, ethnically ambiguous. Yeah. But so, you know, she's further demonized because she befriends these the travelers.
01:24:08
Speaker
And it's a story about how she awakens this repressed village with her chocolate and, you know, etc, etc. It's like a romance and
01:24:24
Speaker
I don't know. It's cute. I watched it with my grandma. We loved it. But it's like a love story sort of thing with a little bit of fairy tale woven through it. Sounds low stakes to me. Yeah, pretty low stakes. OK. That's good. How do we get there? Yes.
01:24:53
Speaker
Oh, and that Darius Kanji, that's the last guy. Roger Pratt, cinematographer. Okay. Moving right along. Awards. I think no awards, but I think like plenty of nominations. Yeah, 10 wins actually. You know, Oscar nominations. Oh, 10 wins.
01:25:14
Speaker
Yeah, they won Best Art Director from the Felix, the Felix Awards. So again, they won quite a few Saturn Awards, which is pretty prestigious in the sci-fi community. Best science fiction film, best supporting actor, best costumes. They, you know, were nominated for Saturn's ACAs. Japanese Academy Awards didn't really realize that that was a thing.
01:25:45
Speaker
Terry Gilliam was nominated in a bunch of international film festivals. He won the Best Director Award for the UK Empire Awards. They won best performance by an actor in a supporting role in a motion picture, Brad Pitt, for the Golden Globes, which I think had more to do with Brad Pitt, although his performance was pretty outstanding.
01:26:10
Speaker
Um, the Brad Pitt of it all that was the Brad Pitt of it all. Um, the, they were nominated for five Hugo awards. Didn't win any of them, but that's still pretty incredible to be, um, to be nominated for a Hugo. Uh, you know, sci-fi universe magazine, they won some best supportings and best actress there in a genre motion picture.
01:26:39
Speaker
But yeah, you know, like pretty much like all star cast. Really excellent production. I just read a hilarious, a hilarious quote about the casting. Terry Gilliam, because he was sort of like at the height of his like
01:27:07
Speaker
you know, Hollywood esteem kind of was being pushed by the studios to hire, like put a star or several stars in the film just to really like ensure its success in the box office. And he had originally been pitched Tom Cruise and he was like, absolutely not. Under no circumstances will I be, you know, having Tom Cruise in this role. He was also pitched Nicholas Cage.
01:27:34
Speaker
He was like, no, but he didn't want to originally. He didn't originally want to. Casper's Willis because he thought that his mouth, this thing that he did with his mouth in films made his mouth look like an asshole. The literal. The actual quote is.
01:28:02
Speaker
I hated that pursed lip expression he does in his films when he gets a bit nervous. I thought, God, that's horrible. He does a mouth with his mouth. It's a Trumpian mouth. For a moment, it goes all Trumpian, rectal. Looks like I'm looking at somebody's asshole. That's a hot take. It's a hot take. Bruce Wallace has that sort of like,
01:28:31
Speaker
mid century, lipless mouth, white guy mouth, I would say. And like, he purses it in this weird way. And the moment that I read that, I was like, Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. 100%.
01:28:43
Speaker
Um, that quote comes from a really interesting article from inverse that is, uh, sort of, they're calling it the 12 monkeys oral history where they interviewed everybody involved in the production and they just like sort of compile this like oral history of the making of the film, which is really quite interesting. We can include the link in our show notes. Um, but yeah, basically, um,
01:29:11
Speaker
Terry was just overwhelmed with how cool Bruce Willis is, like smart and clever and interesting that he was like, I can get past the mouth thing. And then Brad Pitt actually approached Terry Gilliam about playing the role that Bruce Willis had just been hired for. And so they cast him in the role of, what's his dang name?
01:29:38
Speaker
I'm so bad at Geins. Jeffrey Goins. Jeffrey Goins, yeah. So they cast him in the Jeffrey Goins role and nobody knew if he was going to be able to pull him off because Terry Gilliam had this like very strong desire to have this like motor mouth, like brrrr thing. And he was like, he's like, I was genuinely scared shitless. He was not going to be able to do it.
01:30:05
Speaker
That role, he fucking nailed it. That crazy eye that they gave him? Yeah. Did they happen to mention how he did that? Let me see. Places, I guess there was an asbestos issue on one of the sets that they were filming on location, which is really fascinating. That doesn't surprise me. They're set in some old fucked up buildings. Yeah. Let's see.
01:30:35
Speaker
Yeah. Cause Brad Pitt hadn't really done anything like that. Right. They do not mention how what they did. I think, I think they just gave him an ill fitting contact. I think that that's what it was like the contact that wasn't the right size for his eye, which is how it gave him that like wild looking
Casting and Character Dynamics in '12 Monkeys'
01:30:55
Speaker
eye. Yeah. So we'll see him again in seven, which has already been mentioned here. But yeah, I mean, prior to that,
01:31:03
Speaker
Legends of the Fall. Yeah, like Interview with the Vampire. These are all sort of like... Serious moody drama roles. Very moody. Cool World. Did you ever say Cool World? No. Cool World is Gabriel Byrne. It's like, I think... Gosh, I don't know the difference between Cool World and Johnny Suede.
01:31:29
Speaker
Johnny Suede is like, oh, oh, completely different. Cool World is like Gabriel Byrne, oh no. Brad Pitt, it's a live action slash animated black comedy starring Kim Basinger, Gabriel Byrne and Brad Pitt. It's like a cartoonist who finds himself in the animated world that he has created. And I think Brad Pitt like lives there also.
01:31:54
Speaker
So yeah, like the Jeffrey Goings character for Brad Pitt is definitely departure from the other stuff that he's doing at the time. Yeah. What did you think about his performance? I found it on older as I'm older, I find it kind of annoying. But in the like, I don't know, the whole the whole movie feels annoying to me in the same way. But I think at the time, it was probably like fun and probably pretty powerful and quite useful, I guess.
01:32:20
Speaker
Yeah. And I think, you know, the the first thing that I commented on about like Brad Pitt's character and like setting the tone is the immediate like anti-capitalist sort of like exposition that he has. And I just was like, oh, this is how Brad Pitt was cast in Fight Club.
01:32:48
Speaker
Like this role is what informed his like sort of because they're they're very they they're those characters marry each other very much. But it's also, you know, like like it's a it's a trope of mental illness, you know, Rod Pitt's character. It's like, you know, like this, like
01:33:13
Speaker
this person who's clever enough to see the world as it is, but is so, has such a difficult time participating in the prescribed way of living that he has to be locked up in an asylum, right? And I saw, you know, I very much saw
01:33:38
Speaker
glimmers of Angelina Jolie's character from Girl Interrupted. Oh, interesting, okay. There's a couple of really strong parallels between how their mental illness is portrayed, that it's because they're anti-establishment that they're sick, not because they, you know what I mean? That the only way they could think these things is if they were mentally ill.
01:34:05
Speaker
I can't quite pin down exactly what Terry Gilliam is saying with the Brad Pitt character.
01:34:16
Speaker
Is it more like a generational thing? Is it like, oh, these kids these days, yes, they can see through the mask that society is wearing and the kind of like stupid rules and social mores of past generations. But are they still so wacky that they're unable to make like a real difference and they're still unable to function? Like I just see like Brad Pitt as like he's like a hot
01:34:45
Speaker
erratic trickster. But luckily he's so goofy that he can only disrupt and he can't really destroy anything.
01:34:59
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not really sure what the theme is exactly. I mean, he definitely has like this. I think that like there's this like element of like short sightedness, you know, and that that that he can see it, but he lacks like the follow through to actually do anything impactful. And, you know, that's kind of it's like.
01:35:22
Speaker
It's like the people who, I don't know, cause there's, you know, there's these two competing sort of plot lines, right? It's this idea that the 12 monkeys are this like radical outspoken group who do this thing that destroys the world. When in reality, it was like the quiet doomsdayer who actually was going to destroy everything. Right.
01:35:48
Speaker
And it's like, I think that there is like a commentary there about like, um, you know, how, how easy it is to talk a big game, but then you don't actually do anything that affects long lasting change, you know? Um, and I think that there's a commentary about, you know, and this is true of like some of other Terry Gilliam's other work that's like, he seems to be drawn to these stories of,
01:36:17
Speaker
the fringe and the outlier who is demonized by society, you know?
Terry Gilliam's Directorial Style
01:36:25
Speaker
And trying to understand how that person exists in the world that they're put in. But yeah, I mean, I think that the character is very well acted. I just don't know. I just feel like the character is a trope.
01:36:46
Speaker
Sure, yeah. Yeah, it's well, yeah, it's definitely well acted. I think the directing was kind of annoying. I found like,
01:36:57
Speaker
when he's going through his Jeffrey Goins machinations and flailing about in the psychiatric facility. And there's little cartoonish noises overdubbed over his actions. It's just very silly. And I think I'm not, I think that probably back then that blew people's minds, because no one had really done a performance like that or directed things like that. And definitely the camera angles are real wacky and goofy.
01:37:25
Speaker
They're very Gilliam. Very Gilliam, oh yeah. So Gilliam. And those little moments I think are, you can see his Monty Python roots kind of showing through, you know? Yeah, for sure. Having to balance everything with levity.
01:37:43
Speaker
Yeah. Just like those weird looming camera angles where like the characters are like towering over the audience. Right. Yeah. I especially noticed that in the when like, you know, when they're when the escape scene is attempting to happen and Cole is like kind of stumbling towards the gate with the key in his hand and he looks through the gate bars and they do that really intense like tracking and
01:38:12
Speaker
and not perspective shift. They changed like the like the depth of field and they like draw out to like show like under the influence. I was like, oh yeah, that's like, that's a very that's a very Gilliam sort of use of film and like to tell to like really put you in like that first person experience.
01:38:38
Speaker
Yeah. But so, you know,
01:38:45
Speaker
having only ever seen this movie once one time before I sort of just was like taking notes like as I was going through each scene and you know one thing that I did note is how much you can tell about the world just through the the costuming and the background noise.
01:39:09
Speaker
because like Gilliam's like really sort of relies on that sound editing to really like kind of create exposition so that like you don't have to have as much in the film. Which I thought was really interesting. Should we talk a little bit about the plot? Yeah, let's go over the plot.
01:39:32
Speaker
Or can I say just one thing? I think that was kind of touching on earlier, which is that part of these two characters, because you have the Brad Pitt character and the Bruce Willis's butthole mouth character. And it almost feels like Boomers versus Gen Xers. Oh, sure. Yeah. Because you have
01:39:54
Speaker
Yeah, and going back to what you're saying, it's sort of like, Brad Pitt wants to make a change, but he just is up to shenanigans. And it almost feels like Terry Gilliam's talking about, oh, kids these days, you're wacky and you have some good ideas, but you can't really make any change. Unfortunately, the only generation that can make a change is the Gen Xers, and they're just hell bent on destruction, unfortunately. I'm so sorry to tell you.
01:40:20
Speaker
They're earnest and they're hardworking and they're smart, but they're a little bit too nostalgic and they're just gonna destroy it. They're just cut off the nose despite the face. They're just gonna destroy the world. That was kind of what struck out to me. Yeah, like Brad Pitt as sort of like childlike, nostalgia-based. Like Brad Pitt's character would be like your age in actuality, thereabouts.
01:40:47
Speaker
I think he's younger. I think maybe a little bit younger,
Generational Perspectives and Global Issues
01:40:50
Speaker
actually. Yeah, I like imagine him like in the middle to late 20s. Maybe like maybe late 20s and then he lists this like naive group of young 20s like like the no, no, no, no, I'm sorry. I mean, Bruce Willis, Bruce Willis's character, like I just I mean, like time timeline wise, like that character was probably born in the early to mid 80s. Right.
01:41:18
Speaker
Yeah, probably. Probably, yeah. And he has all this like, kind of unbelievable nostalgia for like fifties and sixties music. Right. Which, which like, I don't know. I don't think, I don't think if, if I like never heard music, I would be like, oh, I really love, you know, this 60 music that's playing on the radio. I would be more like, oh yeah, the spin doctors. I love it. Well, I feel like it's what his parents would have listened to.
01:41:45
Speaker
I guess so. I guess that makes sense. The radio that he would have listened to growing up from age born to age eight when he went to live underground, his parents would have probably been listening to a lot of stuff from the 60s and 70s. Right. That makes sense.
01:42:12
Speaker
Okay, so he was eight in 96, right? Because that's the timeline when he had to go live underground. He said he moved underground when he was eight. So that would have made him be born in 89. So he would have been younger than me, which is insane because I feel like he looks like he's 45 years old.
01:42:37
Speaker
Oh, yeah, he does. Yeah. But yeah, so in like so and then they say 30 years later, so he's 38 in the film. Yeah. So he is my age now, but he is technically younger than the character is younger than I am. He's like, yeah. So he's an elder millennial.
01:43:01
Speaker
before we knew about the term millennials. Exactly. Oh yeah, that kind of blows my theory apart. No, because you have like Dr. Peters, I believe his name is David Morris' Dr. Peters. Right. He's a boomer for sure. He's a boomer who's destroying the world.
01:43:22
Speaker
Right. Dr. Peters, the, you know, the dad to like goins his father. Yeah, like, even, you know, and then the the the psychiatrist, she's very much a Gen Xer. You know, goins is a Gen Xer, technically, right? Oh, very much so. You know, and so like, we have this like, this,
01:43:53
Speaker
in the moment, this in very much in the Gen X moment, look at Gen X and the boomer generation. And then we have the introduction of someone who is
01:44:10
Speaker
not of that generation who is younger than that those generations but the way that it's portrayed like they they never really expected i don't think anybody expected our generation the the elder millennials to be as um as like radical or artistic like i don't know what they thought we were going to be because like
01:44:36
Speaker
you know, maybe that that is part of the commentary, like the future so unknown, the future is so at peril. Because even in 96, we were starting to see conversations around global warming, we were starting to see conversations around like explosive population, we were starting to see conversations around what does that like what, what does
01:45:01
Speaker
the future hold now that we're having these technological advancements and everything.
Plot Dissection: '12 Monkeys'
01:45:07
Speaker
They had really no way to really hypothesize what our generation was going to be like. He has a non-personality covered up by this global tragedy. Interesting. That's a good point. Yeah, because the bread
01:45:33
Speaker
Bruce Willis character, I've been talking for too long at this point. Yeah, the Bruce Willis character, yeah, doesn't really have much of a personality. He's just kind of rage. He's like either quiet and soft or rage filled. Right. And kind of like nothing really in between. Right. And like, you know, he's dealing with his personality is basically the loss of everything. Yeah. Right. His personality is trauma.
01:46:01
Speaker
So they got that one, right? They nailed that. Our entire generation would be fueled by trauma. His whole generation is like a lost generation. They all have to go underground. That's why he's so childlike all the time. He falls into these childlike lapses where he's behaving like a child. So yeah, the plot is there's a worldwide, there's a pandemic in 1996. I can't imagine what that would be like.
01:46:31
Speaker
Everyone has to shelter in place in these tiny little cubicles. I can't help but feel his little cage that he lives in with his cool hammock. I just always, I found it so cozy and I always felt a little jealous and I wanted to just live in a trench coat and sleep in a hammock made out of a shower curtain in my little box by myself.
01:47:00
Speaker
Uh, how do you still feel like that after 18 months of living in a tiny box wearing a robe? You know, I went to work every day during the pandemic. Yeah, that's true. Like I went out of the house and messed up and, you know, I did not. I worked in a machine shop the whole time. So, and I also lived at the beach. I lived in a tiny box at the beach. That's pretty nice. Front of my bedroom window was ocean beach pier. Uh,
01:47:30
Speaker
And so we got out, even though surfing was outlawed for a period of time there, that was kind of crazy. It was so wild. And you could get a ticket from cops with their noses hanging out their masks for like surfing or getting in the water at the time. So they never explicitly say why Bruce Willis is in prison.
01:47:51
Speaker
Yeah, so that's kind of the thing is like, that's kind of lends to the lack of veracity with this film at times is he acts like a child, because they're like, we're kind of led to believe that he goes from living in the normal world to living in a cage and sleeping in a hammock made out of a like a shower curtain.
01:48:11
Speaker
immediately, but like just because he went underground doesn't mean he immediately went to prison. Like he may have had like a, he would have had a normal life. He would have like lived with his parents and friends, whoever that was, he would have had a normal community and probably would have grown up to be a normal person.
01:48:29
Speaker
So that's a kind of like weird plot hole. I think that it's a Terry Gilliam movie. Like it is, there's like a lot of magical shit going on and you're not really supposed to like look behind the curtain too much and just kind of enjoy the ride. I think enjoy the aesthetics, enjoy just the crazy plot that's happening. Yeah. I do want to say that I have to leave the house in like 25 minutes. Oh, fuck. You want to wrap this shit up quick then?
01:48:58
Speaker
that or we will have to pause it and pick it up.
01:49:03
Speaker
Let's do a speed, let's do a speed run. How do you feel? Speed run, yeah, we can do that. I'm like, I don't wanna pick this up. We're already at like two hours plus, so. Yeah, okay, so the plot line is loosely. Let's just- Okay, hold on. Do you need time to get ready and stuff? I don't wanna- I'm literally just, no, it'll be fine. Just walk it out the door, okay. Pretty much, throwing a hat on. So plot line is loosely,
01:49:31
Speaker
We pick up in the past or in the future. They have developed some kind of time travel scheme to go back into the past to try to pinpoint the moment when the virus was released.
01:49:45
Speaker
to attempt to possibly develop a vaccine or some kind of cure to restore humanity to the surface after they've taken shelter underground. They send Bruce Willis back in time, several times, the first of which he is sent to the wrong time, he meets Goins, he talks about the virus, he gets pulled back.
01:50:07
Speaker
He had set back to the correct time, 1996, but having already been in that world, he re-encounters several of the characters he made his first time around. And long story short, he is attempting to stop the virus from being released for which he blames himself because he was sent to the wrong time and gave Goins the idea to release a virus.
01:50:34
Speaker
Turns out, wasn't goings. He was ineffectual, to say the least, and everything happened in exactly the way that it was supposed to, which was he, Bruce Willis's, character ends up dying in an attempt to stop the virus. So all of this has happened before all of this will happen again. Thanks, Battle for Black.
01:50:56
Speaker
No resolution, it's all circular. He watches himself die as a child. Which is probably the most realistic part of this whole thing. It is an accurate description of a time paradox. Yeah, it's weird timey-wimey shit, but it's well done. I would say as far as timey-wimey stuff, it's well done. Yeah, like time travel shit, because that's always tricky and kind of unbelievable, but I kind of dig it. I think the esoteric nature of the time travel process is kind of fun.
01:51:26
Speaker
um just the whole mechanism the fact that he accidentally goes back to like world war one and he's like entrenched warfare shit naked running around oh yeah great amount of great amount of bruce willis buns in this movie love it yep give me more a few things that i i have a few things that i i wrote in my notes as they were happening was oh shit a bear
01:51:53
Speaker
and then, oh shit, a lion.
Social Commentary and Nostalgia in Film
01:51:57
Speaker
I wouldn't trust that chair either when he gets brought in to be sat in front of the doctors. I thought that the mechanical device element of this movie and the mechanical device element of City of Lost Children, there was a really awesome parallel there. That's funny, you said, oh shit, a bear and I wrote bumps into a bear.
01:52:22
Speaker
Um, much more casual. Uh, you know, I think that there's something that can be really like sort of, uh, there's something to be thought about, about the fact that trying to explain a time paradox to a bunch of doctors who already have a penchant for disbelief is a sufficient task. Right.
01:52:41
Speaker
Uh, there is like a Sisyphean element to the entire film. Oh, for sure. Um, and then, you know, uh, I wrote Lowell, the feathers, you know, in the, in the asylum where, uh, Bruce, uh, Brad Pitt rips up the pillow and then it's just an inordinate amount of feathers falling for the so long, just like so unrealistic amount of feathers.
01:53:11
Speaker
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Oh, go ahead. One of my notes is, hey Christopher Maloney! I actually wrote, I wonder if this is how he got cast in Law and Order. Totally, yeah. I attempted to see if there were 12 monkey references throughout the film.
01:53:35
Speaker
Oh, interesting. I got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I got seven monkey, explicit monkey references that were not related to the story. OK, got it. There might be 12. I'm not sure. I started thinking about stuff like that when I realized that the movie 200 Cigarettes was called 200 Cigarettes because they smoke 200 cigarettes throughout the entire film. Oh, wow. Yeah, I did not realize that either. Yep.
01:54:06
Speaker
I was struck by the excellent pre-9-11 air travel rules. I remember back then you could just be like, oh, I'm just gonna go through security. Like you still have to go through security, but you're like, I'm just gonna walk my friend to their gate. Like no big deal. And also there's just a straight up shooting in the airport and people are still chilling. And like, remember like the villain just gets on his plane on time. They don't ground any of the planes. There's a straight up fucking shootout at the airport. And they're like, yeah.
01:54:34
Speaker
Hello. Yes, I'm traveling to Miami or wherever he's going to. He's going to San Francisco first. That's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. I asked the question, is fifth element just if Cole had been sent to an alternate future or perhaps what the world would have been like if the virus had never been released? Right.
01:54:53
Speaker
You know, I'm constantly trying to tie the fifth element into other Bruce Willis movies. Yeah. Because somebody else proposed that the fifth element is actually just the last diehard film. That's right. That's great. You know, there's a lot of a lot of reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
01:55:19
Speaker
um there's like some biblical stuff and uh the last thing that like okay the the last two things that i thought that i was like that were just like what um was i wanted okay
01:55:38
Speaker
This is so pedantic, but how the fuck were we supposed to believe that the doctor was able to blend the edges of a lace front wig in a shitty movie theater bathroom?
01:55:56
Speaker
that fucking wig was absolutely 100% like a human hair lace rented wig. And the edges were perfectly blended. And like, you have to have acetone, you have to have scissors, you have to have like a full makeup situation. But they couldn't figure out how to keep fucking the Bruce Willis is mustache on. Like,
01:56:18
Speaker
I think they're, yeah, they're addressing that tension where they're like, no, no, no, it's shitty. Trust me, it's really shitty. See, the mustache is falling off. And then like, what, what I noted at that point was like, they're all goofy and giddy at that point, but like, Oh, I guess they think that they solved the problem. Yeah. They, they, they thought that, well, they were like, everything's going to be fine.
01:56:42
Speaker
She was still operating in a world of disbelief that the virus wasn't real. And because Goyens didn't release a virus, he released the animals from the zoo. That that meant that Bruce Willis's character actually was schizophrenic and that they didn't have anything to worry about.
01:57:02
Speaker
She was like, LOL, he's just crazy. I guess I'll go to the Key West with him. Yeah. There's also like four different references to the Florida Keys throughout the movie. You know, and then the last thing that I was like, what the fuck? The doctor, the fucking doctor was sitting next to the guy with the briefcase on the film and she introduces herself and she was like, I'm an insurance.
01:57:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's like another one of those like weird Gen X potshots that Terry Gilliam is taking. I don't I don't know what rampant capitalism, I guess, or that's that's got to be what I don't I don't know. I don't know what it was about. I could have done without that, I think. Well, to me, it's like is the inference there that they knew
01:57:54
Speaker
they knew what happened and they knew where it happened and that they should have been able to they should have been able to pinpoint it and stop it and that all of this like going back in the past and like all of the time travel shit was them attempting to prove that they like because like, you know, she
01:58:17
Speaker
If she knew that that's who she had been sitting next to, he was infected. So wouldn't she have been infected? He opened the vial in the airport.
01:58:31
Speaker
Well, like one way to look at it is that the dude, you know, Bruce Willis, his neighbor from jail gives him the gun in the airport. And one way to look at it is that he went back to the future and he reported, OK, well, I saw him get shot. So that's clearly the dude who lets out the virus is here on this flight. So in theory, she could have gone back in time.
01:58:55
Speaker
Right to do, but she is also now infected because everyone's infected. So, yeah, I don't know how that resolves anything. Right. I don't know. That was just a weird thing. I was like, what the fuck? All right. So no. Do you agree? Like no real resolution? This is just like a circular thing. Yeah, forever. 100 percent. We're just fucked forever, pretty much. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. That feels that feels relatable to. To reality. Should we rate it?
01:59:25
Speaker
Let's rate it. Okay. I'm going to say enjoyability 368. I was going to say 375. Yeah. I'm a little older now and it doesn't hit in the same way as it used to probably when I first saw it, you know, living through a global pandemic, I think really, really, uh, really seasoned. Season this one for me. Uh, you know, cause like,
01:59:53
Speaker
I will not watch anything that is about the coronavirus. There have been several shows that have tried to be about our experience, and I'm just like, you guys can get fucked. I am not prepared to fucking watch a fucking show about this already. Get out of here with that.
02:00:18
Speaker
um, veracity. I mean, it's completely unrealistic. Every aspect of it is completely unrealistic. Like, the characters are not, to me, very, like, like, the doctor's arc. I think that the only part of this that really held any type of, like, realism to me was her reaction to him kidnapping her in the beginning. Right.
02:00:45
Speaker
like in the car, you know? But like, it all kind of just unravels from there. I'm gonna give this a 185. Yeah, I did 200. Yeah.
02:00:56
Speaker
Um, I would say like thematically honest, but the actions and personifications of character lack veracity to campy cartoonish. Yeah. I mean, they literally, they literally draw a parallel to a cartoon. There is a cartoon playing where the mad scientist has invented the time tunnel, you know.
02:01:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think that there's also possibly like an element of this is like, are we supposed to think that maybe are we supposed to go through the arc that that Bruce Willis is going through and like recognize that he
02:01:34
Speaker
He too is, he has this moment where he's like, maybe I am just crazy. And I'm like, are we supposed to think that as well? Like maybe this entire thing was just a figment of his imagination the whole time, possibly. Yeah, that didn't work for me. Yeah. I was like, can we just get past this, please? Yeah.
02:01:54
Speaker
It is immersive though, it's an immersive film and that is I think one of Terry Gilliam's strengths is that he can build these worlds that are so unrealistic but do like send you into it. You know there are moments where I was like taken out of it like there's an eagle call in the middle of the night when he's running through the forest
02:02:19
Speaker
an eagle would not be calling in the middle of the forest in the middle of the night. Like, you can hear the sound of an eagle being like, grrrr! Yeah, it's like, grrrr! And it's like, okay, we are in the suburban forested region of Pennsylvania, and there is an eagle call as he's running through the forest.
02:02:42
Speaker
No. That was intense enough for me to distinctly notice it. Is there some symbolism there? Probably. Do I know what it is? No. I think Terry Gilliam just needs someone to take the reins at some point. He just goes out of control. What's your score for immersive? I did 4.95. I might actually scale that back. I'm going to say a solid 3.82. 3.82. Yeah. I'm going to do 4.35.
02:03:12
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. Uh, did it accomplish its purpose? Uh, for any three is what I said. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to say like, I'll say 425. I mean, yeah. I mean, if its purpose was to be like an entertaining, uh, like, and hypothetical look at a time paradox. Yes. It accomplishes purpose. Is it a social commentary? I don't know. You know, it comments.
02:03:41
Speaker
It comments on society, but what commentary is it making? Right. You know, and maybe that's because we're looking at it through this lens of like back in time. I know we're going to make so many enemies based on our opinions of these movies. Like I am aware of it. I am probably going to just get like raked over the coals on the Internet when these fucking episodes are released. But like there's I don't care.
02:04:09
Speaker
I don't either. And it's just like, you know, it's it is everybody's gonna disagree about everything. But like, it's a good movie. Like, it's good. It's just like, what was what is the point of it all? If the point of it all is to just be entertaining? Hell yeah, definitely. If the point of it is to make some kind of like social commentary, then what is it commenting on?
Final Thoughts and Ratings
02:04:38
Speaker
Is it commenting on the fear of the loss of control? Is it commenting on the fear of the ruin of society? We could go deep into all of those things.
02:04:54
Speaker
At the end of the day, it's just like a wacky Gilliam film to me. Yeah. Are we all trapped in an ever-endering self-referential capitalist hellscape? That's the theme that I get from this review. Then 500 out of 500, because fucking yeah, we are. We sure are. We've known it all along.
02:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. All right. Would you watch this again? I said 315. On which category? I'm gonna say, I would definitely do Revival Theater.
02:05:30
Speaker
Yeah, I think it'd be really fun. If it came back, yeah. I don't think I'd watch this on a flight. I definitely would not watch a TV with commercials streaming on purpose. I don't think so. But yeah, revival theater, definitely. Yeah, I think so. I think definitely like a 375 like school night, probably not free weekend matinee. Sure. Yeah, we'd go do that. Yeah. Or like, yeah, there again, like a double feature with like Brazil. Yeah, you know, I would not Dr. Parnassus just for kicks.
02:05:59
Speaker
Uh, what is the other one? The time, the time bandits. Oh yeah. Time bandits. Yeah. That's very long. I have never made it all the way through. Uh, speaking of being a time bandit, huh? Yeah. Right to the, right to the end. Um, so overall, I think that these movies were great to look at together. Definitely.
02:06:25
Speaker
I think that there was a lot of really cool parallels. I hope that this inspires people to watch them together too, because I think that would be really fun. Should we close this out?
02:06:41
Speaker
Yeah, thank you again for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to rate, review, subscribe. And in case you need to be reminded, you go to the charge nurse and tell her a day and time the show you want to see is on, but you have to tell her before the show is scheduled to be on. There was this guy and he's always requesting shows that had already played. Yes, no, you have to tell her before. He couldn't quite grasp the idea that the charge nurse couldn't make it be yesterday. She couldn't turn back time. Thank you, Ainsai Nahi.
02:07:10
Speaker
He was nuts. He was a fruitcake, Jim. Incredible. Beth Martini, thank you for the episode. Thank you.
02:07:39
Speaker
I'm going to need some more
02:08:25
Speaker
you