Welcome to Deep Dive Film School. I am Adam Sherlock. And I'm Adam Pulcher. And if you like what you see slash here, please like and subscribe. You can find us in all this. Spaces and places that people what? Find good media. That's right. Our most active channels are YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Also, I'm on Letterboxd now. It's in the comments below. Find me there. I'm super active.
active on it as i was through this whole sundance season so we'll be highlighting sundance 2025 i'll give my favorite festival this year and then we'll get into our tops and flops of 2024 it's always weird to do tops and flops in february but with sundance
and being able to see everything in the theaters, I'm excited to talk about some of our favorites and non-favorites. I was going to say, and you know, if it's good, it spans past the year, and if it's bad... Spanning time. Yes, spanning time. And if it's bad... It also spans time. It's true.
Let's get to Sundance though. You just, you just wrapped this up, right? Yeah. I sold 29 films this year. In how many days? I mean, it's spread over 10 days. Okay. Okay. But you know, half of that's online probably. And then the other half is, is in.
person but a lot of good stuff um not a lot of great stuff but there's definitely a handful of good stuff i i realize this year you know sundance used to be all about the documentary right and seeing documentaries you couldn't see anywhere else but now you can go on netflix and there's like 20
20 documentaries about the kind of shit that you're looking for, whether it's social justice or just like a weird thing. Like one of the best ones I saw this year was called predators about that show to catch a predator. And it was an extremely challenging, challenging watch.
kind of like had you feeling all over the place it was a challenging watch but it's hard to rank those because documentary formula is pretty much the same each time now right it's got to get pretty wild in order for it to kind of stick with you think i saw like eight documentaries and they were all pretty solid um that predator has probably been the best one and uh it was you know it's it's just yeah unless you're switching it up like i watched a john and uh yoko one uh that was
really their story told through the media so all the clips and interviews that they did not necessarily talking heads or anything like that which i you know i enjoy when it gets uh things get mixed up like that they did a similar one with uh princess diana a few years ago but if it's not like if it isn't something like
tickled or capturing the freedman's or waltz waltz with the sheer where you're like okay this is brand new yeah so um but still uh and i i try and gravitate towards the you know the narrative stuff the world uh competition stuff and the new stuff All right, my number five is All That's Left of You, directed by Sharon Davis. This is just this heartbreaking, heavy generational story of this Palestinian family basically just being born.
like uh it kind of reminded me of to live to some degree okay generations of families going through this horrible war and trying to adjust and losing people and gaining people and changing perspectives and all these things uh the main uh sharon davis she directed the film wrote it and it stars in it and this is about her and her family so it's a very personal story you know tragic beautiful well done just an amazing drama.
heavy, though, obviously. A lot going on that is hard to be a Palestinian person, especially when you're just born into war. Oh, yeah. And, you know, this has been going on since basically after World War II, right? And so, yeah, heavy one, it's called All That's Left of You, if I didn't say that, but All That's Left of You. Really enjoyed that one. It was timely. But a well-done narrative film that, yeah, just, I hope it gets some good exposure.
Um, okay. So my number four, uh, this one, I was dying for a comedy. There's some heavy movies this year. I mean, it's always, it always is because you know, there's just, everyone has a spouse that died or like, you know, dying or you know there it's just about some heavy shit or something like that so I was really happy when I saw this one it's called the tropia directed by Hayley gates I saw somebody's letterbox review call it if three kings
It's like Three Kings meets Wet Hot American Summer. Oh, wow. And so I wouldn't say it's as ridiculous as Wet Hot American Summer, but essentially it's about this kind of, this like pseudo... you know, Middle Eastern town that they train all of these guys in. So they hire actors to be the part of the town and they have to go through different scenarios. And so this is just out in the California, Nevada desert. And so it's California. So it's close enough to LA.
where there's all these actors coming out and trying to take it seriously and everything. And Ellie Shawkat, who is in Arrested Development, she kind of heads everything and she's awesome here. It's darkly funny, but I was ready for something to... laugh at and so there was uh i really enjoyed atropia i think this one will do really well all right jimpa this is my number three this is a movie with the only one i've probably heard and read uh quite a bit about yes this one was my first
movie and I saw it in person, luckily. And it's hard to have a shitty movie with Olivia Colman and John Lithgow as kind of the main characters, right? And so... Plus he's buck naked through the whole thing, isn't he? He goes full hog. I love it. Multiple times. You spoiled my job. I'm so sorry. I can finally say that I've seen John Lithgow's penis. Yes. You've been holding your breath for that since. Third Rock from the Sun, really. since World According to Garth.
Anyways, this is actually an absolutely stunning, beautiful film directed by Sophie Hyde. Sophie Hyde is actually Olivia Colman in the movie. Her real trans daughter plays the main trans character in the movie, which is their daughter. Jim Pa, which is John Lithgow's character, is an old gay rights activist. He now lives in Amsterdam. So they go and visit him and it's about them. You know, they're obviously, you know, understanding, but I've never really.
seen the kind of boomer gay versus modern queer conversation happened before interesting and in a lovingly way but also a way where they Still two generations that don't understand each other. Right. And so it was really. wonderful and lovely and an obviously personal story about her father and now her you know her uh you know they um he calls her the my grand thing
throughout the movie. And she calls him Jim Pa. But it's a lovely, personally written story. I thought it... hit a lot of right notes especially now i'm obviously not i'm not a queer person so maybe it doesn't hit all the notes maybe someone like that but it's a great representation i thought of a very personal story and those two generations clashing that i i just
It was super powerful. It's very when I found out that that's what the writer had kind of really focused on. I thought it was such an interesting thing because I think that I. encounter that a lot at my work, working with younger queer people and then seeing their attitudes towards older queer people.
And just like, it's still generational. Like it's not like younger queer people go, oh, you fought for my rights. Like that's not, it's a very different, like they understand it. I think they understand the history of it, but it still is very different generationally.
is a thing and it wasn't back then exactly yeah you know for the most part but it's a very moving uh portrait of these people's lives and the fact that it you know the director and her it's everything's so self-involved i hope it does well i i'm sure it will it's fantastic i really loved it um all right getting on to my second favorite movie this one yes i love this one again ready for a
And this one is a dramedy, which, you know, Sundance almost invented the dramedy. Right, right. And so this one's called The Ballad of Wallace Island, directed by James Griffith, who also stars in it. Tim Key, he plays... charles he is this man on an island and his favorite band is these two people played by carrie mulligan and tom bastin and um they
are kind of a broken up duet from his past, but he's a lottery winner. And so he pays them to come to this island and put on a show, but they don't necessarily know it.
Tim Key plays Charles. Like, I want to hang out with him. Like, I wish he would invite me to his island. Like, dad jokes, everything. He has this, like... dramatic turn i thought it was fully earned but wasn't expected like because it's easy to play up the comic relief in a movie especially about a relationship movie or whatever but it's so much more uh the writing was fantastic the music was awesome and
Tim Keith's performance as Charles. I hope he gets recognized for it. What's this called again? The Ballad of Wallace Island. W-A-L-L-I-S. Fantastic one. I hope it does really well, but it's around music. It's around love. it's, it was just a, and then it's just, yeah.
I just love the sense of humor in it. It just got me. So love this one. Really love this one. And my final one, my favorite one of Sundance was Train Dreams, directed by Clint Bentley. I think I kind of flippantly talked about one of his movies in a past Sundance. was called Jockey. And he, you know, it's about a jockey, I think was my idea. It's fine. It looks really pretty. But it's exactly what you think it's going to be. And it's obviously about more than that. But, you know.
you really got to capture a story i think i mean that's really what a movie comes down to is those performances and the story right like if you have both of those you could have a shitty director but if you have either one of the bad writing or bad acting then it's gonna show right right Not that either of those were that, but it just wasn't as attention grabbing.
This one, Train Dreams by Clint Bentley, floored me. I literally think it's like the next American masterpiece. It is so amazing. It is Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones. And Joel Edgerton, he's one of those actors. who just has those faces where he can be complex just by just staring at him. And so he, he's just a fascinating character. He is.
It's essentially this American dream story. And it's very Malik-y in some aspects of how it's told, but all the good parts of Malik. Like all of the... No dinosaurs. I didn't want to bring it up. I'll always, I will always bring it up. He can tend to linger a little too long or, you know, whatever. And this is like. Everything about it, I absolutely loved. An absolutely superb piece of filmmaking.
And yeah, I really, I think when people see it, I got it. I saw it compared a lot to the assassination of Jesse James. I think it's kind of in, it's shot in that kind of old West style. Is it a period, it's a period film? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. But you know, I don't.
spoil anything that happens but it's a beautiful story and i was drawn in the whole time and quiet and meditative yeah just like gorgeous looking drama based on a novella powerful complex um and an amazing performance by edgerton so um really happy i saw that one but again check it check me out on letterbox adam pulcher and look me up there did you review all of your all of the films
and i'm reviewing everything i rewatch and uh that are new this year so check it out there all right but yeah it was a fun festival i hope it stays in utah uh we got one more year um uh to see if that happens or not but uh i'm It's a little big for its britches up at Perk City. Yeah. Positive vibes. Good. Good.
Yeah, that was my 26th year going. So crazy to think. That is crazy. Shall we get on to the tops and flops of 2024? I think we should do it. Would you like to start or would you like me to start? I've been talking for a while.
gonna say why don't i go ahead and start so uh as everybody knows you you've seen more movies in the last three weeks than i've seen in the last three years um except for maybe we have to do this yeah I've seen the same movies over and over again and so usually it's hard for me to do a top five but I can do a bottom five of those I'm glad that I missed there are several here that I tried watching
or watched clips of and so uh some of these decisions are based upon those choices also but going into this knowing you haven't fully watched these movies and there's a reason why there's there's a damn good reason why so uh and and And a couple of these I've clumped several movies together because I think they fit under the same umbrellas. For number five, we're going to go ahead and talk about a couple of remakes. These are two movies that I don't know if they just got made so that they can...
and hold on to the licensing of it, you know? Usually. Or if they're like, well, this would be a tax write-off, so let's just go for it. One of them was Roadhouse, which I'm like, Roadhouse. Like, it's so weird also that you have somebody like Jake... Gyllenhaal, who's such a great actor. There's no like if you don't remember what Roadhouse is actually about, you just remember Patrick Swayze and his mom jeans.
It's actually about that a guy is what's called a cooler at this really wild roadhouse bar where like he's the bouncer who's going to keep everything. He's going to keep everything in check, right? And it's this ways. And it's the dumbest idea for a movie. Perfect for the 80s. And it's perfect for the 80s. And there's like a small-time gangster that I think is played by...
Oh, I'll put, I'll, we'll put them up here. Ben, what's his name? He's in Big Lebowski. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, and he drives like a huge jacked up pickup truck. It's so dumb and hilarious, but like, why do you need to remake that with Jake Gyllenhaal and, and that.
It's got a built-in audience. I'm sure it's what they're saying in the pitch room. Oh, it's so stupid. Okay, so that's the first one of the remakes. The second one is the remake of The Crow, which again, I was just like, and listen. Bill Skarsgård, we all know, he's been in some banger movies. But I don't know if you've noticed, for every good movie he's in, he's in like three pieces of shit that you're like, did that come out? He's been in like...
20 movies. He's been in like 20 movies and TV shows in like the last four and a half years. It's just wild to me. And I'm like, did we really need a TikTok tattoo face rapper version of The Crow? Because that's what he is. Like, it's so embarrassing. And now if it was that embarrassing and then it had done really well, you might just shrug.
be like yeah i guess i don't know but instead sure yeah they pulled it off yeah but instead it just fits into the same box as like oh yeah they did a remake of why jacob's ladder one time didn't they oh yeah they did a remake of total recall one time didn't they they did a remake of robocop yeah they've done like three of karate kid yeah like what's the point so anyway those are my two is is roadhouse and the crow both with really great actors as the leads yeah
And it's not like they were shelved movies that they brought back out. Like, they did these. Sure. I do think there is something to the built-in audience of certain studios, I think. And just owning IP, let's get anything we can out of this IP.
which is sad Hollywood has definitely lost all originality I'm just surprised that they got such good actors in both of those and that they weren't like you know matthew mcconaughey and texas chainsaw massacre where it's been shelved for a decade or something they don't have originality but they end up picking up stuff like from sundance right so and that stuff ends up being effective and they read the coattails of that
And they have so much money. They're like, who cares if this does well? Absolutely. All right. My number five. I talked about this on the last Sundance episode, but it's one I haven't even been able to watch because it hasn't really gotten its due. So I hope people go see this movie. It's called Ghost Light.
It's kind of this modern age, unexpected take on Romeo and Juliet that was absolutely amazing. Again, a wonderful dramedy that I saw at Sundance that just did not... see the light of day i hope people start seeing i hope it starts being released but it's absolutely fantastic unexpected performances by a bunch of people i've never seen before and just an amazing well-written story like
Brought me to tears in multiple, multiple times and just really well done. So love that one. Go see Ghost Light. Ghost Light. My number four is another lump together of several movies. Two times in a row? This is... The 2024 Blumhouse movies. We have Night Swim, Imaginary, Afraid, and Afraid with AI in the middle, like, ooh, and Tarot.
These PG-13 horror movies. Oh, they're all PG-13. With the most lukewarm scares, the most lame acting, and the worst special effects. And they're all bloodless movies. It's all like... Like Night Swim's about a haunted swimming pool. It's like Deathbed. It's like Deathbed, the bed that eats people. It's exactly that. And like Imaginary is about a teddy bear.
And these are supposed to be like scary movies. And here's the thing. The inanimate object thing has gotten out of control. Here's the thing. Jason Blum house or whatever your name is. If I put on one of your horror movies while I'm making a piece of art, so I'm barely watching it anyway, and I end up fucking turning it off. Me. who's watched every horror movie known to mankind, I turn it off because I'm like, God, this is really bad. You've made a terrible movie.
If you can't even keep me. If you can't keep me. And that's four movies. Yeah. And I'm only partially watching it to begin with. I tried watching both Tarot and Night Swim and was like, oh my God, I got to turn these off. So anyway. Thanks a bunch. Awesome. Thanks, Mr. Bloom.
All right. Yeah. I really just think shutter is killing it and no one else is. Yeah. Movies. No shutter. Like late night with the devil. Have you seen that? I've seen it. I've seen it four times. It's amazing. I love that movie. No, there was amazing horror movies this year, but. Blumhouse was not responsible for any of them. That's unfortunate.
all right uh my number four again a movie i talked about a sundance last year don't worry the rest of them are not but uh sorry some of these just hold up throughout the year and um you know also end up getting nominated for a lot of things uh mine is a real pain um the jesse
Eisenberg movie with Colkin. It's absolutely fantastic. I said it back then. Colkin will get nominated. He is nominated. He won, I think, a Golden Globe already for his performance in this. It's a really, you know, again, a dramedy. with a lot heavier subject matter.
Him and Jesse Eisenberg as cousins going to visit their grandma's home in Poland, you know, where she lived and was taken from for many years. And so it's a very heartfelt thing, but it's also really funny and charming. But you're talking about a very hubby. heavy subject. They visit concentration camps in this movie, but you also have Kieran Culkin just being Kieran Culkin, you know, and just doing his thing. And it's a really wonderful balance, a wonderfully made film. I'm really glad.
that he made a good film because I did not like his first film. And so, yeah, a real pain. Go see it if you haven't. It's highly entertaining and well done. My number three, I... I wandered into seeing just a section of it. Somebody else had been watching it. And so I kind of just walked in probably two thirds of the way through and ended up watching about 10 minutes of Ghostbusters Frozen Empire.
And I had this thought while I was watching it where I was like, If I didn't know anything about this IP, if I had zero knowledge about Ghostbusters at all, and I was just watching these 10 minutes, I would have no fucking clue how I was supposed to feel. I was like, is this thrilling? And I'm like, no. I'm like...
It's like an adventure comedy. Is it scary? And I'm like, no. Was it funny? No, not really. Like, you know, there were some quips and some one liners that I could tell some characters are supposed to be kind of snarky or a little like prickly around the edges. But it was like. you know oh no like we have to get the special amulet back from garaka so we can save the people of new york city from freezing to death and i was like
this is the dumbest shit I've ever seen in my life. Like I, it's so dumber, but yeah, but, but it's like, it's so, it's so cynically made to me where it's just like, well, like time to make another ghostbusters movie. When you consider like, like what an original feat the original movie was. Obviously we all know how brilliant that movie is, but just like catching those 10 minutes in the middle, I was like,
I don't like this isn't what the original was like. There was never a moment where the original had like action in it. Okay. The only thing I would argue here is that think of that. But if you were 12. Right, but the original wasn't made for 12-year-olds. It wasn't? No, man. I mean, I loved it too, but it wasn't made for 12-year-olds. It was made for people. It's a PG movie. Right, but it was made for people who've been watching...
Saturday Night Live. It was made for stoners, right? That was what the original one was made for. I guess maybe parts of it, but I think it's absolutely a kid's movie, Ghostbusters. Yeah, but the new one isn't. It's dark. Everything that was PG back then is PG-13. I'm not necessarily fighting for this movie, but there's worse crimes out there as far as it goes.
having jason reitman be at the helm gives me a little confidence but do they need to be made no we've had this discussion before yeah i just to me i'm like if i think about the scene in the original where they have to take the stairs to the top, you know, to fight Gozer. Yeah, yeah. And he's like, you know, tell me when we get to 100 because I'm going to throw up. That's the culmination of an action scene in the original. Yeah.
And this new one's like... No, I agree. It's so dumb. And the one before was Afterlife. And that one's okay. It's kind of a restarting... It's okay. This one is... copycat of that one basically i really have a problem with the cgi ghost version of egon
That was fucked up. Like, they should not have done that in Afterlife. I don't care. I don't care if it's a Reitman. I don't. It was definitely interesting. Dude, that is a bad idea. I'm like, that's, if you might end up cursing yourself because of something you did. I don't think it's that bad. he was he's like their friend in real life and he's dead and they're like we're gonna make a cgi ghost version of him in the movie yeah i don't know i mean it was more uh
Probably taken from old footage, I'm sure, but I'm not excusing anything. I wouldn't have done it either. It's a terrible idea. All right. Okay. Let's move on from Ghostbusters Frozen Empire. Sorry. And go to my number three, which is The Brutalist. I saw this yesterday, still trying to ingest it. It is three and a half. half hour epic and you know there's there's some i mean this is filmmaking like i could see why people are comparing it to like there will be blood not only kind of the uh
the American story, the immigrant story, but also just kind of how it's made, how it makes you feel. It's a stunning feat. Like the art direction and some of the set pieces are like, what the fuck? How, how, how did you get this made? And just like, uh, Even down to the titles and the score, just so powerful. Adrian Brody and Guy Pearce are fantastic in it. Some of the story...
There's a few plot points like it's not a perfect movie. I don't think everyone's saying it's like the best movie ever I don't think it's that I think it's really good but The achievement of filmmaking here is why it's on my list, because it's so well made. Who directed it? Brady Corbett. He's one of the kids in funny games. Oh, my God. Really? Yeah. He went on to direct stuff. And, you know, he's got a dark side for sure. It's a fascinating movie. A beautiful movie.
I do feel like they hit on like a lot of, they spent three and a half hours telling the story and there's a lot of. major plot points that seem major that just never really got addressed again and so there's some storytelling elements that i was hoping for like there's no reason this couldn't have been three hours that i haven't wanted to complain about a long movie necessarily or need everything spelled out to me
But it seems like, why didn't you ever go back to that? Or, you know, certain things. And, you know, you're trying to span somebody's life. So I get that's kind of a, you got to pick and choose your battles or whatever. And in the grand scheme of everything, you know, it makes sense. And it's part of the story. whatever but i just seem like some missed opportunity but still wonderful movie um absolutely worth seeing i i you will love it
Awesome. I can't wait to check it out. It looks really fascinating. And, you know, people hear brutalists. My wife thought this. She's like, I thought this was going to be more brutal. I'm like, no, that's the kind of building. The type of architecture. The kind of buildings that he's creating. It's not really brutal. She's like, oh.
Yeah, it's the big blocky, which brutalist architecture is one of my favorite kinds of architecture. You'll love this. And it's a fascinating story. Guy Pearce, holy fuck. My number two. This one I took personally because I love the graphic novel that this was based upon. Richard Maguire. first in the late 80s, and then again in 2014, revisited this particular comic style that he had done, and the book was called Here.
Okay. Robert Zemeckis decided to get his grubby hands on this thing. The graphic novel was so fascinating because...
It owns nonlinear storytelling as the basis of the way that it's done. Like, this is an image from the graphic novel. As you can see, there's, you know, the box and we're inside of a static room, but then there's... smaller boxes inside of it that are also parts of that room but we're jumping back and forth between time speaking of dinosaurs we go all the way back to like molten lava era of this same living room
you know, hundreds of millions of years in the past in certain moments. It's like a ghost story. Yes, but it's all happening in frame at the same time, right? Yes, I know what you're getting at. What makes it so interesting is that... it ends up having deeply meaningful spots But they're based upon luck, right? So we will see one character saying one thing. We see the words being said in one timeline. Seems like it would be a cool idea for a movie.
And then glimpses from other times that might give those words that are being said here meaning in that other one. It's perfect for a graphic novel, right? Because you're like, oh, you just have the one box with different boxes inside of it. but zemeckis used it as another excuse to turn uh tom hanks face into silly putty
I don't know why he has such a hard-on about that, especially with Tom Hanks. He loves it. He's like, let's make you into Santa. He just cannot get enough of messing up. He must have... months worth of footage of tom hanks face with those little green dots on it like right just from every possible angle oh yeah and again just like when we did uh
Marwin, welcome to Marwin, it's like he missed the point of the thing that made him want to tell the story, right? And instead used it as an excuse to be like, let's de-age all these actors and it's so dist- distracting it's so endlessly distracting i haven't watched it and and when i watched the trailer i'm curious though i have to say when i watched the trailer it actually made me well two things happened
A, I thought that Zemeckis or whatever producer had stolen the idea from Maguire. That was the first thing, because I was like, well, this isn't that, but it is that, but it isn't. And so at first I was angry for that reason. Then when I found out this is the film adaptation of that, I got even more angry because just from the trailer, I could tell that he missed the point. Right. Just from the trailer. I was like, oh, you missed the point. You missed you missed the.
the vagueness of the surreal concept, right? That puzzle it together. Yeah. Like the, you think about in, um, what is it? Room, uh, two 13, that sort of faux documentary about the shining. They do a version.
of the shining uh at a theater where they played it from the back to the beginning and then linearly and they they superimpose them on top of each other and there are all these moments where it weirdly linked up right where it's like one image just randomly linked up with the other and you could surreptitiously draw meaning from it even though it was a complete
random juxtaposition you're putting together yeah you're like oh wow that that was a total coincidence but it has meaning to it now that's like the whole point of mcguire's thing yes again it seems like a good idea But just execution, if you're missing the point, then I guess not. If you focus the whole time on making Tom Hanks' silly putty face, make him look like he's in Splash again, then yeah, you did.
And it seems like that's what they spent all their time doing. It's CGI, though. Is it makeup? It's all CGI. Oh, God. Yeah. No, he looks... It's super distracting. It's like the upper lip on Superman when they had to do those reshoots for the Snyder movie.
All right. Yeah, I haven't seen it, but I have been curious just to see because I've heard not good things, but I still kind of like... I mean, I feel like it's the exact same thing that we've talked about Zemeckis before so many times, which is just that when it works, he can do amazing stuff with technology to help along storytelling. And then when it doesn't work, it just turns into this like car wreck. Yeah. And it's not the eighties anymore. Everyone has technology now. So yeah.
um all right my number two film of 2024 was the latvian animated movie flow have you ever heard of this movie no it is a absolutely Stunning, wonderful animated movie. Gave me Miyazaki vibes different, but like it gave me the same effect of watching Miyazaki the first time. It has this very like... Strange character animation where things are kind of fuzzy around the edges. It kind of looks real. This is fully dialogue list movie through the eyes of a cat.
kind of his world around him and the other animals and friends he meets along the way i would watch this movie five times before i watch another talking animal movie this movie had me so gripped it's so well done the world is flooding as you know through the eyes you know so she has to escape somewhere um and you know they you know it goes through so many different waves and different things and it's the ultimate show don't tell which you know i love um
On paper, this sounds like I would hate this movie, but it floored me. And there's truly shots in it that I've never seen before. like you look at that you're like i've never seen anything like that before wow it's called flow flow highly highly recommend this i think i'm pretty sure it got nominated for best foreign film and best animated film so wow um check it out um it is
Absolutely stunning. You know, it is art, so you have to be patient with it and let the world come. But, like, I was washed away in this movie. I couldn't believe how well done it was without saying anything. But saying so much. And, you know, in a time where it does feel like the world is imploding, it felt very relevant. And just like you related to these animals, which we are.
That's awesome. So, uh, loved flow. Please check it out again. Another movie. I feel like just hasn't got a ton of play. Yeah. Uh, my number one, glad I missed this is it's it. They keep doing this and it's. So embarrassing to me. And I get that, again, it's just muscling out any amount of dollars from an IP, but it sure doesn't seem like it's working. My number one is the latest.
in the attempt to make money with the leftover characters that Sony still owns from Spider-Man. This is Madame Web. And there's even like a guy who looks like Spider-Man in this one. Like he's black and gray, but otherwise it's basically Spider-Man suit. But it doesn't have anything to do with it because they're not allowed to mention Spider-Man because he's no longer part of the property, right?
But they've done the Venom. They've done multiple Venom movies. Three now. Oh, my God. They're all terrifying. The Morbius movie. Yeah. And coming up next after Madam Web is Kraven the Hunter, which is another villain from Spider-Man. Why don't they shut down? There's no one. Who's giving these people money? So here's my hypothetical.
You and I own the studio. We own 20th Century Fox or whoever the fuck it is that owns like Harry Potter, right? Yeah. And Harry Potter gets... Warner Brothers. Okay, Warner Brothers. We're at Warner Brothers and Harry Potter gets wrestled out of our producer hands. Everybody except for Dolores Umbridge and one of the Weasley brothers. And we're like, can we, without mentioning Hogwarts or Harry Potter or...
any of the lore tell like an origin story about Dolores Umbridge and would anyone watch it? You mean Black Widow? I mean, Madam Web? This is the thing, right? Like, that's what it's like. I'm like, you...
It's so, again, I hate to use the word cynical, but I can't think of another word where they're just like, I don't fucking know. Writing the coattails? Yeah, maybe, you know, it's got Dakota... johnson in it maybe somebody will watch it yeah and of course we she was in 50 shades of gray right right be good of course we did get the famous line out of madame webb which was uh i know him he was with my mother when she was
I know him. He was with my mother when she died unexpectedly while she was studying spiders in the Amazon, I believe is the line from... No exposition there. Yeah. It's just so I can't believe that they're doing another one. I can't believe that they're doing Craven with like another great Aaron Taylor Johnson. That guy's a great actor. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Just squeeze the blood out of that rock. Yeah. Them and Mr. Bloom need to have a meeting. And then that building needs to blow up.
100%. I'm glad I only saw one of your Glad I Missed. Which one was it? Ghostbusters. Oh, that's right, you did. Of course you saw it. Yeah, of course you saw it. I have kids. I'm sure your son loved it. Oh, he did. And you know what? And if I had watched it with Caden...
I would probably love it, too. It's true. I have no doubt about it. All right. This one is definitely the opposite of the rest of these. It didn't get a lot of play. This is... which is my favorite movie of the year it's dune 2 denise dune 2 i i mean can you think of a better movie you saw this year i think it's the best sequel since two towers probably i could see that yeah where it doesn't even feel i mean it just feels
like there was an intermission and then you got the second half exactly and as obviously knowing the story knowing where it's going but when he rides the shai halud the first time i like got fucking chills yeah and it's so craftily made like he does every little detail he
He shows you Dune, how Dune should be shown. No offense, David Lynch. I love your Dune as well. It does a lot of things right that that one did. If you're going to update and remake something, you've been talking about a lot of remakes, right? is this is how you do it i appreciate so much how much in both the first and second but definitely in the second one
He focuses on the Lady Jessica storyline because I think that that's a huge storyline in the book that doesn't didn't get as much play in the Lynch run because she's so powerful and she's such an interesting Rebecca Ferguson. Yeah. I mean, she's. come on yeah uh but the just like that character's transformation is is so everyone
Everyone's still in Sarsgaard. It's a good time to be a Sarsgaard. It's a damn fine time to be a Sarsgaard. Even if you're like, oh yeah, the worst movie I did this year was The Crow. You're like, I also did Nosferatu. I'm doing okay.
But, you know, I mean, I think Denis in the conversation for one of our generational directors and he continues to prove it with everything he does. I mean, look at his catalog. The Blade Runner movie shouldn't have worked. Staggering. It shouldn't have worked at all. he just remake everything because wait five years for every movie a dune remake shouldn't have worked at all either
But, uh, no, it's a stunning movie. It's, it's stuck with, I watched it like three times this year. Like it's every time I'm just like a little kid and I know it's like star Wars for adults, but like I get fucking wrapped up in it and, um, and it's, it's so. Well made more than any George Lucas movie. Well, that's not saying. Well, you know. Wait, I don't know. Have you seen Red Tails? It's pretty good. I'm just saying, you know, he has a reputation.
Yeah, it's no, it's a fantastic. All right. Thank you very much for listening to the Sundance 2025 recap and our tops and flops of 2024. Please join us next week. We're going to continue our movies about movies festival. with Federico Fellini's 8 1⁄2. And follow us on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and my letterbox at Adam Pulcher. And we'll see you then. Bye, you guys.