Best Picture Countdown to the Oscars: "The Secret Agent"

Hey that folks.

We continue now with Oscar movie number eight, The Secret Agent.

This one was a surprise for us.

Yes, well, first of all, I did not know anything about it, and I wasn't sure what language it was in. So look, I don't mind a subtitled movie because I actually feel like I get to read a book and watch a movie all at once, and after a few minutes, I forget I'm seeing subtitles, and it's so interesting. Even when you're watching a movie in another language, you can still tell when the acting is amazing, and that was the case with this film.

This Oscar nominated film. Yes, The Secret Agent has four nominations among them other than Best Picture, Best Actor, Best International Feature, and Best Casting. Now, the leading the this one is Wagner Mora. He's your main character, and he is the one who really got awards season off with a bang, I guess because he pulled off what was considered an upset.

He won.

One of the first big acting awards of the season was that the Golden I think it was.

The Golden Globes, and I think everyone was looking at Timothy Chalomet or Leonardo DiCaprio or Michael B.

Jordan and all of a sudden, Wagner Mora wins.

Yes, that actually put the secret agent on the map, at least for me, because it was the first time I had even heard of this movie.

I think on the map for a lot of people. This was not a movie that was considered a big box office movie, only made eighteen million at the box office, but it is quite frankly, and we should probably say Robes, the beginning of this one had us more intrigued than any movie we saw.

Yeah, that is true. So this here's the synopsis of the movie. In nineteen seventy seven, a technology expert flees from a mysterious past and returns to his hometown town of Recife in search of peace. He soon realizes that the city is far from being the ref huge he seeks.

But you're right that opening.

Scene, the yellow Volkswagen Beetle driving down a seemingly deserted desert road in the middle of Mexico, and there's just this dead body and it just starts out unexpectedly and very mysteriously.

Yeah, we didn't know what to expect. Again, expectations are a lot of a part of these movies and what you get out of them.

But robes.

At the very beginning we said, oh my goodness, we got a good one here. We didn't know what we were expecting because the runtime is so damn long that we went into it with kind of a bad attitude.

Yeah, two hours and forty one minutes tied for the longest movie of the ten here nominated for Best Picture, and so yeah, we were kind of like gearing ourselves up for it because thinking about it, a two hour and forty one minute movie that's in Portuguese nice, sounds like a party. No, we were concerned, but actually, yes, that opening scene was gripping and all of a sudden you wanted to know what is going on. And the cool thing I will say about this movie is it

You don't know what. You know he's fleeing from something, but you don't know what. And it takes a while.

Yeah, and you don't know he's the good guy or the bad guy. We don't be rooting for him, or should I be concerned about him. It was an interesting movie that Robes has a damn near perfect critic rating on ron Tomatoes.

It certainly does.

Yes, the critics and the audience loved it, but the critics more ninety eight percent for the critics eighty three percent from the audience. And look, I do think it may have something to do with the fact that it was in Portuguese, that it was two hours and forty one minutes, and that it was.

A long and winding row.

And to that point, we'll have to come clean about how long and winding our road was.

Watching this kind of epic storytelling.

It took us a while. I can't remember it took us four days. Wait, it took us longer on train dreams and this one, this was the.

Four day one.

Because the funny thing was, I remember it was so interesting because you kept saying this is so good, this is so good, and then I'd look at you and you'd be asleep, and I would have woken up from taking a nap as well, and then we'd started again and we'd be like, Okay, this is really good, and then we'd just start falling asleep.

I don't know.

If maybe when you're reading subtitles and you're later at night.

You had a long day, and we did have lots.

Of long days this week us almost like you know when you go to read a book before you go to bed and you just fall asleep.

But that's kind of what kept happening. So I don't even want to blame the movie.

It might have been the subtitles, It was the time of day and the week we had. But every time I remember, you kept saying, this is just so good, and then you'd be a sleep later.

A ringing endorsement of the movie is that it made us co night night. Apparently three or four nights it did in a row.

What how do you? What do you do? How do you describe?

I'm not sure when you talk about a movie that you find so interesting, so good, so well acted, so well shot, that you respect as a piece of art, but then you go, yeah, I didn't have a good movie experience. Should you enjoy a great movie? Or enjoy is the wrong way to look at it or the wrong way to say it? Should just not appreciate?

Is that? What? Well?

I do think a lot.

I think when it comes to Best Picture nominees, I think you probably should go into watching each one of these with that level of expectation that I'm here to appreciate this piece of art.

It might not be what I.

Would typically watch in terms of we like horror, we like comedy, so none of these really fit those exact genres. But if you can go into it with the idea, I'm going to appreciate an art form, and I'm maybe going to learn something, feel something, have something evoked in me that I wouldn't have otherwise just going about my day or going to the typical kinds of movie and entertainment I seek out.

I think maybe I am a simpleton when it comes to movies. I've said it for a long time. I think you're to some degree the same way. We just deal with so much day in day out that when it's time where you have the option a choice to be entertained. I want entertainment. I don't want heavy, I don't want weighty. I don't want to think, I don't want to feel. I don't what do you call them? The show the Love Island things, that's.

My palate cleansing, plate cleansers.

Yes, so no, but you and I have talked about this. It's one of the things we connected on.

And I think perhaps it is because of the business we live in. But everyone thinks it's shocking because you would imagine journalists would like documentaries and to be what you know, and we do watch a lot of news. But when I'm actually sitting down not watching news, the last thing I want to do is watch a documentary or some long epic, tragic story and look up to each their own. But I want to escape. I want to escape, I want to laugh, I want to lighten

Yes, that is a year, right, babe. That is useful. There is useful.

I just when it's time to watch a movie, it is time to be entertained. It is time to be entertained. And yeah, and you know the thing that made me interested in this was when he won the Golden Globe. He some guy never heard of, beat out all these guys I have heard of and watched all their movies. Like, oh, then I need to sit up and pay attention to whatever this is and that was the first thing.

They got me.

Yeah, And when we watched it, there was some very memory scenes, Like I love that it was set in the year nineteen seventy seven, the year of your birth, but also the year of Jaws, and they had that play predominantly as a through line in this movie.

You remember when they had the was it the tiger.

Shark that found the murder the murder victim's leg and they had the kid who was obsessed with Jaws like you just had some There was some kind of grotesque which is in up our Alley, some grotesque, dark comedic moments. And I just I liked some of the cultural references on Chicago song if You Leave Me Now. I would never have thought that song would be playing predominantly in the movie. There were just some cool nostalgic parts about

You appreciated it. I did feel connected to it. But would you tell somebody to watch it or skip it?

What was that long?

You just referenced as we continue here talking about the secret agent?

But what was it? You just made a reference that didn't.

Because it's white kind of if you leave me now by Chicago, If you leave me now you take away the greatest.

All of me.

Oh, it was the band, not the movie, not the show.

I got so off there.

Yeah, Chicago the band, not the show. Yeah, okay, there was a play called Chicago a musical.

Right right, But I wasn't referencing that.

I got confused.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't know wish way we're going in white culture. Okay, but the Secret Agent two hours of forty one minutes, I would definitely he's worth watching. He's very cool. He's a cool character throughout this movie. There was something about his I'm not familiar with him, so I liked his style. I just like how he came across throughout this whole movie that was a cool confidence but of vulnerability the whole time. It seemed like he knew what he was doing with at the same time,

Yeah, and I would also say to watch it. I thought this movie had some really cool, stylized elements to it, a kind of what's happening next, a mysterious element to it, and then you actually had some There was love. There was love stories you found out about his past and his son, and you see this beautiful relationship between.

Father and son that was the centerpiece.

Yes, and so there's a real heart to this movie. And there's also this fun mystery around it. So I just think, also, it feels I felt, I felt like I experienced something that I that thought was beautiful and it was cool to see another culture. I felt immersed in this Brazilian culture. It just it was an experience that I valued. So I would absolutely say watch it.

You a cultural experiences and experience and his performance are worth watching. So true, those two things are worth watching in this movie. It is it's a lift, it's an effort to watch the movie. However, this isn't just a one one bag of popcorn movie.

And the funny thing is, yes, that's true.

And the funny thing is we're saying this and it took us four days to watch it, and so that's actually I feel like that tells you something. Maybe we're blaming ourselves rather than the movie for not being able to stay up. But we a lot of times would just say ef it and move on and say we saw enough of it. We kept going back to it. We kept the next day saying, wait, let's pick up where we left off. I really want to see where

I think that's a pretty bringing endorsement for people who fell it.

Yes, chick that went out, this was number eight. We're getting through these. A cliff notes on The next one will be for a movie that's the short one on the list, but it took us a long time to get through it as well Trained Dreams. You can look for that. It'll be the next one in the fee folks always appreciate you hanging talk soon.