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What kind of a show you guys putting on here today?
You're not interested in armed now?
No, Look, we're going to do this thing.
We're going to have a conversation.
From Chicago.
This is Film Spotting celebrating our twentieth year.
I'm Adam Kempinar.
And I'm Josh Larson.
I don't understand at all. Why just her classroom? Why only hurt a children?
We have a lot of emotional parents here.
I think his best.
If you keep some that's from this place, I'll tell you who didn't keep their distance, Josh. Moviegoers. Zach Kraiger's horror mystery Weapons was number one at the box office last weekend.
Josh Brolin and Julia Garner starring that one. We've got a review, plus the new doc It's Never Over Jeff Buckley, that and more.
This is where the story really starts.
Ahead on film Spotting, Welcome to film Spotting. I know you're very happy, Josh that Weapons was released in August. You have plenty of time to get your Halloween costume ready.
You're all set.
There's one very obvious direction you could go with Weapons, Adam, and I'll be curious to see if that happens when Halloween rolls around for a lot of people.
Yeah, we've got a review of Weapons coming up. Plus I'll have some thoughts on the new doc It's Never Over Jeff Buckley, and we'll play Massacre theater.
But first Weapons. Late one night in the suburban town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, every kid from a singer classroom disappeared at the exact same time, and that, as the opening narration tells us, is where the story starts. Here's Josh Brolin, the father of one of the missing children, confronting Julia Garner, the Missing Kids teacher.
Hey, I want to talk to you.
I don't think we have anything to say to each other.
I think you have a lot to say you and.
Every other person in the city.
Believe me, the message is a loud and clear I'm the problem, got it?
You know what? I think.
That's the first honest thing I've heard you say you are the problem?
What you want to get in my face?
You want to threaten me?
Nobody's threatening you right now.
That's the wrong tree.
Aren't you have this whole victim persona that you're taking on?
It might have to be.
Maybe it was always obvious. The Weapons trailer features imagery of a tense town hall meeting with angry parents demanding answers, snapshots of departed children, and a candlelight, flower filled memorial outside an elementary school adorned with a sign that says, may Brook strong And have I mentioned that the movie
is called Weapons? If you didn't go into Zach Craiger's sophomore feature already assuming the writer director intended an allegory of American school shootings, you almost certainly walked out considering the strong possibility during a dream sequence in which Brolin's grieving father, Archer HMM, a weapon iSER, chases after his missing son Matthew. A large assault rifle appears floating above one of the neighborhood houses. Craiger also introduces and underscores
how bullying regularly occurs amongst this group of students. Since many studies have connected bullying to school shootings, it's reasonable to assume that he expects us to make the same connection. We like to pose deeply flawed questions here on film spotting Josh, So pardon me if this one follows suit. Craiger's invoking of school shootings is a entirely intentional and powerful offering, a meaningful added layer to unpack while unraveling
the chilling mystery of Maybrook's lost children. B entire lif intentional, but also entirely hollow and as a result, possibly even distasteful or see. I don't know whether it's intentional or unintentional, and I'm not convinced Craiger himself knows, but I don't care because I was having too much dreadful fun.
Boy.
This is gonna be an addition of how dnse is Josh, because I'm gonna take you Adam through the timeline of my wrestling with this very question. Uh and and I'll, you know, get to the end right now and say, see, I loved weapons. I think it's I think it's incredible, but I will allow, not only allow, but give way to anyone who feels be that was the unethical choice,
right that this that you posited. Essentially, it's interesting. You know, this is the week of Cinema interrupt Us and a listener came up to me just yesterday after we had screamed Robert Altman's the Player, and I thought, you know, we're we're gonna talk a little bit about what we just saw, and she wanted to talk about weapons. And if you want to follow this listener on letterbox, she's there.
She posted about weapons. Kurt Runs is her handle crt Runs, and she was quite distraught about what she called the ethical choices made by the filmmakers. Now, I should say we didn't end up getting into it too much, so I am not certain that she's talking specifically about the school shooting's connection. It seemed to be perhaps more generally about children and the use of children in the film. So it's just an example that I want to use to put out there is anyone who does have those
concerns I think are legitimate. I mercifully have not been personally touched by what has become all too common in American society school shootings, and if I had, I might have a totally different perspective on this. I did end up in that place where I found this to be a potent allegory, a cathartic allegory from the vantage point of a person who witnesses this from afar but still
feels an impotent rage about it. But to the denseness question, Adam, I'm telling you, I'm in that group where not only was it not walking out of the theater, it was looking over my notes and trying to piece things together, where I was suddenly like, oh, that's it, Like this is absolutely it, And maybe that moves me more towards the intentional category on the part of Craiger and his collaborators.
You know where I started right away, though, Adam was with the Tale of the Pie Piper, and as soon as I knew the premise going in, But as soon as we get it anew in the opening segment of Weapons and Craiger pretty much gets it out of the way before the title, I think, even with these haunting images of the children fleeing at night, you know, I was thinking about that legend of the Pied Piper, the rat catcher, who the town refuses to pay for his services,
and so he leads the town's children away and they disappear. And I'm thinking as I'm watching, what was that legend about and why does it persist? And you know, read up some more when I got home and realize that some people suggest, well, this was a way for medieval communities to deal with mass deaths of children, maybe to natural disasters, maybe to disease, and a story like that
was helpful in processing it. So I thought, Okay, how might weapons which is very much about children being lost to inexplicable evil, right, just something that you can't rationalize, like a natural disaster, how might weapons be working in the same way or is it hollow or is it you know, not really serving the purpose? Is it ecsploiding this? And that's when I usually go to the text. You know, during the movie, I was thinking, is this like a
Gaza situation? We've been inundated with images of starving children in Gaza. Obviously that couldn't have been intentional, But is that a way to go with this where there's a potent metaphor or allegory here. I thought of a couple of other directions, and then, yes, you mentioned it in the setup there, Adam, this image of a gun over
a house. In the moment, I didn't make the connection, but I did think about other things in the text, and you counted them off right, this empty classroom, the memorial candles and flowers, and I'm realizing these are bitterly familiar. And I do think that this movie works as a modern pied piper tale. And we can't really at this point get into why I found it. So in the end there is a Bonker's climax. Let's just say that is darkly funny, insanely sustained on the level of filmmaking.
But also I found myself, Adam like, feeling disturbingly cathartic emotions from that, because subconsciously, I think I had been connecting it to this recurring, recurring crisis in America that fits a few things. We hear Archer, the Josh Brolin character, saying I see something that doesn't make any sense at all, and later accusing the teacher. You're either negligent or complicit. We are both negligent and complicit as a society when it comes to sacrificing kids at the idle of firearms.
And I personally found weapons to be entirely effective as an allegory for that, even if it took me a while being dense and not usually watching movies as puzzle pieces while I'm in the moment, it took me a while to get there, but I got there, and I think I like where the movie landed, or at least where I landed with it.
We'll see where the conversation goes if you feel like we need to get into that sustained bonkers ending, and I agree. We can certainly make some room for some spoiler talk here, and we will provide plenty of advanced warning if we do decide to do that. You talk about some of these other references potentially, I don't think this movie has anything in common with the other movie I'm going to mention, or the book I'm going to mention.
But when you talk about losing children and how we process that, does it have to be losing children to something evil? It can just be nonsensical, unfathomable. The Sweet hereafter that am Agoyan film The Russell Banks novel is something I thought about as I.
Have you been talking to Scott's bias.
No, I haven't.
Actually, our friend critic and Next Picture Show hosts he was at the screen and I was at and afterwards he's like, I'm going to try to sell the group. I'm pairing it with the Sweet look after which I think, I think you're exactly right. I think that's great. That would be a brilliant YEP. That would be a brilliant pairent. I hope they do that.
And you mention things that people viewers could potentially get upset about, like the person who came up to you after Cinema interrupt us. There's even another potential aspect, and I know some people have, and that's regarding who and what? Maybe what is the better way to phrase it, what the villain is? That again, we would have to leave to some spoiler talk in terms of my answer to the question. And I like this movie too. I don't like the movie quite as much as you do, but
I do like the movie. I maybe tempted to say d all of the above or or can I go with other in that I think it's it's maybe a bit of a red herring. You certainly can't ignore it for all the reasons I outlined and you discussed. I don't necessarily think that Craiger is trying to make an overt political statement, nor do I think he's saying something particularly profound about how we as a country or society
process collective trauma. And if you were inclined, I'll go back to this notion of maybe getting a little bit upset about the film, If you were inclined to be annoyed that the movie is exploiting these tragedies, another strike against it could be This just occurred to me today as I was prepping for this conversation Josh, the narrator
tells us this little girl's voice. We never find out exactly who she is as far as I know, right, but we have this girl's voice narrating the story at the beginning and comes back at the end, and she tells us that the powers that be in the town are going to cover up what really happened to the kids.
Sod unresolved. I have unresolved questions about the narrator and the logic behind that. I don't think that's a strength of the film and even really necessary.
Well, yeah, I bring that up only because now now Craiger is potentially harnessing the language of conspiracy theories, which I don't know that we necessarily want to bring up when it comes to conversations about tragedies involving school shootings. But for me, I suppose it it speaks to the challenge and the limitations of these types of allegorical interpretations.
And I've maybe talked about this a little bit before.
We've talked about Mickey seventeen this year, We've talked about Tarkovsky during our Tarkovsky Marathon, So there's been a lot of allegorical talk. But it doesn't necessarily expand my understanding or appreciation of a work to read what happens in a movie as representative of something else. I'm more interested in what the text itself is giving me or not giving me, and what I grasped onto here, And I don't mean grasped onto to try to decipher some deeper meaning.
I mean just keeping me engaged in the story and feeling like you've got a filmmaker actually wrestling with something. Maybe even something personal and not just trying to usher us forward toward a bloody resolution. Within this pulp fiction esque or magnolia esque nonlinear structure that we have, and that is what we have. We have chapters divided by characters,
character names, and it overlaps. We get repeating moments from different points of view, different perspectives of these individual characters. It's not just that each one of them, Josh, each one of these characters is dealing with individual pain and trying to forge ahead. There are lots of movies about characters who are suffering. Here we have very lonely, isolated, hurt characters who consistently and I would say arguably always
unintentionally hurt other people. Not only are none of them bad, We're usually sympathetic to their circumstances, we understand, but their pain leads to choices and a spiraling that causes other pain. I'll give you just two examples. The first two characters we meet Justine the teacher, Julia Garner's character. She is certainly a victim here. She is not someone to blame for anything that has happened. She's not to blame for this tragedy, despite how some people feel or think have
to believe. They're clinging to this notion that she must be to blame because they need they need someone to blame. She's not a witch, but she chooses to self medicate excessively with alcohol. It's an issue that we learned she had before this tragedy, and selfishly, again understandably but selfishly, she brings another character down with her, and that character makes their own choices. I'm not discounting that, but it's a cycle. And what do his choices lead to another
person's unintended pain and disappointment? Think about Josh all that ensues in this film, all the dominoes that fall that you can trace back to Justine at the bar, and of course before that, the tragedy. But Justine at the bar insisting just have one drink with me, Please drink Yeah. And then we go to Archer. The pain of losing his son not only causes him to lash out at Justine, amplifying her pain, which leads to her going to the bar and meeting with that person and wanting to have
just one real drink. But Kraiger shows us one interaction one interaction with Archer's wife, her saying goodbye to go to work. He's sleeping, he's waking up in his son's bed. It's clear from that one terse interaction that their marriage is completely on the ropes since Matthew's disappearance. Rather than turning to each other, rather than relying on each other, Archer anyway has completely turned intword. He is understandably here again but selfishly let the pain completely consume him, and
he's completely detached from his marriage. And I think there's a corollary with every other main character, certainly every other character who gets to chapter save one. And I won't get into that because of spoilers. And it even connects back to the character who we shall not speak about, because then we're really getting into spoilers that villain character
as I'm identifying them. But that connection to Josh even confirms further from me that Krager explores the way pain consumes and controls us, how it can be weaponized, and the collateral damage it causes.
I think you're onto something that I was trying to piece together, and this is helpful in that vein about the notion of parasites in a way and feeding off others and these characters, it really is. Yeah, it's a motif. There are characters watching a nature documentary and we see a good thirty seconds of it, and it's about a form of parasites. And it's not that the characters you're
describing are necessarily meaning to feed off others. But I like how you're talking about the recurring, the transferring of pain, and I think that fits. Yeah. The structure I think is is very intricate and smart and clever and effective. I want to return to it, but first I want to say that I like what you were talking about in terms of appreciating the experience that you're given, not necessarily putting all your eggs in the basket of the allegory.
And I wanted to return to that because I'm not, despite what I said at the top, I'm not as enthusiastic about weapons because it does function for me as an allegory for school shootings. I mostly appreciated this as an expertly constructed, terrifying, like heart thumping horror movie. And and then if I can afterwards, when I'm going home trying to catch my breath and I missed my stop on the train, can I point out because I was so discombobulated by this movie. I wouldn't one stop too far.
If after that great experience, I can then have that. Oh but it could also mean this, then it's a bonus. So just wanted to kind of like agree with you. It's kind of prioritizing that.
And real quick.
My version of that was seeing it late afternoon and coming home and sitting at dinner and I was being a bad husband and father, where Sarah looked across the table at one point and said, you seem to have something on your mind, and I had to be honest and say, I just kind of can't shake the movie.
I just saw I have a few things on my mind. Yeah, yes, and I'm never going into the basement again. Oh right, so I already you're there right now, I believe.
Yeah.
So we were, Oh the structure.
I wanted to ask you so a question I had in my notes, and I think this might have already come up on the film spotting Family discord a listener who had seen the movie. I think that's where I saw it, and they were talking about the chapters and what that might have added, and I did actually have that in my note. Did the structure add anything? And
where I landed after thinking about it some more. Yes, the things you talked about absolutely allowing us to make these connections, I think what it does it also kind of excruciatingly but inventively doles out the pieces of this increasingly terrifying puzzle. I think it's effective that way. But also, you know, I do think that it allows us to
get a fuller sense of this traumatized community. I found myself forming more intimate connections with each character and learning about their foibles to your point, in a way I probably would not have if this was all focused on Justine Say or all focused on Archer, those others would have been more supporting character. And by making everyone a supporting character, I felt like I knew this, this place, this town better than I would have otherwise, and so
I appreciated that. And I also think, you know, it allows the actors to really dig in and get not scenes, not even just one scene where they get to be the main focus, but an entire section. And I think Brolin is excellent and Garner is incredible as this exasperated basket case you described her well, you know, she is not the villain, but boy, she's making almost every wrong choice you could given the situation she's in. And I think Garner is incredible in the role.
Yeah, she's very good because she is making all those wrong choices, but we see her as flawed, we see her as human, and I think we understand, at least I understood that she was thinking about her students, that she was making us choices that weren't here. Again, she wasn't making choices that were driven by selfishness, but her pain was eating her to make what often were very
bad decisions. I was at first a little bit confounded by the structure, Josh, because I was so interested in those first two characters, and especially Justine, especially Garner and her performance too. And once we started going from Justine to Archer and then to Paul, which is the Alden Ehrenwright.
Character who is he was also great, He's very good.
But once I went from him, and then I went, I think we go from from him maybe to James, who is a character we do meet earlier. Again, all these these stories overlap, and he's someone who is asking for money and he's he's looking.
For a fix.
There may be another character in between, but we do meet James at one point, and the point here is regardless of what order they go in. H I started feeling like, Okay, you're right, he is being very clever about how he's doling out information, and I almost felt like Craiger was being too clever.
You're being a little too deliberate.
You're being a little bit too precocious about how you're doling out the information. And I, maybe, to the movie's credit, Josh, I was so invested in where the story was going that I wanted to get some of the resolution at a little quicker and I felt I felt like he was going down some paths that were distractions. But I want to go back to why I really felt that way and why I felt like some of those storylines were kind of At first, I felt like it was
the movie spinning its wheels a little bit. I started to feel sitting in my seat, I started to feel myself become a little disengaged from the story. And as I said, it really was because I was so tied to those characters, Justine an Archer, and I think that that's because the movie fundamentally is about them. It understands that at the core of this film, seventeen kids disappear all from one teacher's classroom, and he's the one who says it, why only hers for different for different reasons.
This is what she's also trying to learn, what she's trying to understand, So they're both trying to understand this central mystery. And we try not to play screenwriter here and rewrite the movie. But there's a part of me that wonders if this movie would be just as effective, if not more effective, if you sort of played the movie straight and let let Justine be the main character, let Archer be a co lead or a supporting character,
and have their storylines intersect. But what we would miss in that, Josh and how I ultimately came around is at some point, at some point when we got we got into those chapters, what clicked for me is what I articulated earlier. Clicked for me was, oh, there's a reason why we're meeting all these characters, and the through
line is the pain and the transference of pain. Yes, it's also cleverly giving us new information and we're starting to put together the pieces of what's really happening here, but it's the transference of pain, and that that for me then made me understand what Craiger I thought was really up to and it justified it for me. Now, I'll also add quickly, I saw this today because it popped up in my feed Letterboxed published it. He really
is just a huge fan of Magnolia. And I swear to you the first time Alden Ehrenreich popped up on screen, I sat there as he walked into that bar, and I cannot totally explain it, but I sat there and stared at him on screen and went mustache, huh, mustache?
Like why?
And he's a he's a police officer and he's got that mustache. The first time we see him, he's in his uniform and he's got a mustache. And I kind of just sat there. There was something about it. I'm not even saying I responded negatively to it, but there was something that just made me dwell on it.
And then I read.
Today that that was just Craiger going, I just love the character John c Riley plays in Magnolia. So I had Alden Aaron Reich have a mustache like the cop in Magnolia.
Okay, there you go. We have to find all kinds of inspiration, all kinds of places. Sure, Yeah, yeah, definitely magnolia a touchstone. You can see that throughout this movie and to your point about you know, once you connected with the through line of pain for all the characters that's tied to what I was saying about, then it
became a portrait of communal pain for me. The structure allowed it to be a community's pain that we're holding, and the pacinge I never flagged because again I don't remember where we get these set pieces, and I'm going to dance around this for spoilers, but there is a gas station incident which the way that is staged is the opposite of a jump scare, and so Adam I think, I think my heart leapt when I realized what was happening, and then it like tried to literally crawl out of my throat.
Yeah, it was cusation right before that happened. You heard the audio, Yeah it was.
It was this, yes, sensation I don't know that I've had since maybe I was a kid's watching The Shining too young. And then there is another moment which I think occurs earlier that I will not describe in detail
as well. It is I'll just say Justine is asleep in her car and particularly vulnt where you're going, and the way Craiger uses delicate movement of the camera, very specific blocking and then sound design to communicate what could be about to happen without it's a single take, I can say that, and it's just an unbearable experience of dread. And connected to it, the mileage they get in this movie out of a suburban homes front door opening to
a blackness. I don't know how they managed that, but it is unlike anything else I think I've seen the cinematographer Larkin Seeple here, who worked on everything everywhere, all at once. Actually, the blackness when that door opens is underworldly. I don't know how you describe it, but it's terrifying just a shot of that every time you see it,
because it's a motif I never got used to. So there are The overall point is there are enough well brilliantly crafted horror set pieces in this for me to just hook me and keep me, allowing me to catch my breath when we do then go follow another character for a little while while also being fearful of but in some cases I know is coming that they don't, that a character might not which brings us back to Craiger's you know earlier movie Barbarian, which which I liked
well enough, but it did cleverly play with narrative perspective. Barbarian is you know famously a good way into the movie cuts off from the people we've been watching and introduces someone entirely new, and then has that person in the situation we'd been watching, so we know more information there, and he's doing something similar here. I think it's more effective here playing with the idea of narrative perspective.
Well, I wouldn't know, because I tried to do my homework and finally catch up with Barbarian the other night.
You had to bail and two Krager's.
Credit as a filmmaker when it comes to building dread, because at this point there had been no Gore, zero Gore, zero monsters on screen. Here, I was Josh thinking I was finally a big boy at middle aged, at middle age, I could handle horror finally. Yeah, right, yeah, I've had this string of horror movies that I've enjoyed for the most part, or I've enjoyed talking about here on the show, and I pretty much remember the exact moment it was
about forty minutes in. I think I can say it's when the main character goes to the basement.
The second time another I said, another basement.
I said, you know what, I'm out. The dread, the feeling, the anticipation of dread was so overwhelming. I just said, I can't do it. I don't want to know what's coming. I'm bailing on this film and I will just go in to weapons without having the benefit of seeing this film, and I don't know that I ever will see it. I mentioned Tarkovsky earlier, and you mentioned the door We go back to the Tarkovsky marathon, all the films and all the filmmakers that he references, Kraiger and including on
that letterbox article. He doesn't mention Tarkovsky. But the significance of doorways, remember, is something we keyed in on and it comes up again and again.
Here.
It's not just that door and it happens even in Barbarian in the first forty minutes that I saw. Yeah, in Tarkovsky, sometimes it's just the archway itself. It's the entryway that is like this this threshold, this powerful threshold that that becomes an entryway, It becomes this powerful force.
Almost he is obsessed with doors and the creepiness of a door opening slowly beckoning you to enter, the unseen force that's kind of ushering you you in, and even if it's just opening on its own and the way he also repeatedly mounts the care on like Archer's truck door, so even the truck door, so when it shuts, you
get that very sudden jarring effect. And you mentioned both the scene in the car with Justine and the gas station that we heard a little bit of the gas station confrontation, and in both those cases what he does so well there because there are so many other examples where he's lifting moments from the shining where he's using the steady cam to great effect, and he's using those
more jarring effects and he loves movement. What I love about both of those scenes, it's Julia Garner first alerting us with their eyes that something is coming, and that's what clues us in and gets us a little nervous first, gets us anxious first, and then the camera just kind of swings a little bit before it even shows us what's coming towards us. And then in that shot in the car, it is a still camera that is just focused on her in the driver's seat of her car,
and it's all what's happening off camera. That's what's killing us, is view us, the waiting, the waiting, and the not knowing what is happening and.
What could be about to happen.
So he understands how to use that space within the frame, but also the space outside of the frame to build that dread. And then even you think about the poster and the imagery that comes back that recurs in this film again and again, the running shots of the children, it does become clearer what that is meant to evoke.
To me.
It really does feel like a jet plane where their arms are spread back like wings and obvious lead for them all to be running to the same place at the same time, they must be here again that idea of control. They must to be lacking some control. But there's also this sense, Josh, that while some force must be driving them, they also look like kids who are using their imagination and that they're totally free in the moment. And so that juxtaposition, that contradiction is so striking.
And it's you know, you, Sometimes horror can be reduced to one image like this, and then if the movie backs it up, it will go down indelibly as a landmark horror image. And I think that is going to be the case with this shot of the kids running. I mean, it's instrumental to the marketing campaign, but it's more it's richer than that when you actually see the film. And I do like how he uses it sparingly. As I said, we get this before the title of the movie,
and we don't really return to it. Let's say this, we don't return to it for the majority of the film otherwise save for one one little reference that you know is effective. But it's not like he's way using it too much to my mind, basically, And I think it's just going to be a marker. It's going to be like the you know, the blood coming out of the elevator in the Shining. It's going to be like
Heather's face looking in the camera in Blair Witch. I think the silhouette of a kid running down a dark suburban street is going to ten to twenty years from now have that cultural cachet and impact, and I think it earns it. I think it earns it now. I don't think Weapons is a perfect film, and I want to ask you something that's somewhat related to your Barbarian experience, which I loved hearing about the part you didn't get to. For me, the ending of Barbarian is kind of what
lost me. Where Craiger did start really amping up the insanity. I almost felt like the movie had abandoned not not only given a new perspective to what came before, but a band in it in trying to trick us and
be clever. I don't think that happens in Weapons, but I do think while I found the ending, particularly the climax, cathartic, I do think there are and this is a question for you because it goes to like horror logic, I do think there are some we're gonna have to dance around this, some logic plot holes that were not big enough to throw me off. But let's just say to totally buy in on weapons, you have to understand that this is the most incompetent police force in the history of the world.
Is that fair? And if you really did that, did that throw you off?
With Once we once we understand what's really going on here, and the movie does tell us it puts all its cards on the table quite clearly, and then your mind starts thinking, Okay, if this is what happened, how did it actually go down? And we see some of that, but then your mind starts saying, like I was anticipating, like they're going to have to answer this big question I have, and the answer was, you know, like these guys needed a few more years of training.
I think, Okay.
You know what I would point out, Josh, is the thing that undoes the film even more is this is a movie that does, for the most part, play by the rules. It plays by real world rules, and it acknowledges that this is a world that has, as our world does, ring cameras that captures neighborhood activity. And I will say, if only there was one ring camera placed in one particular area, then there also wouldn't be an entire movie. So there are there are ways that we
could certainly undercut it. But for the most part, I really respect that Craiger tries to play by rules in ways that I don't think a lot of horror movies try to. And I'm I'm game for getting into some spoiler talk if you want to save that. And maybe at the very end of the podcast. We can do that, I think in terms of just kind of putting a
bow on this conversation, I am interested. I find it interesting to hear that you weren't necessarily totally on board with the ending of the film, because I wasn't either. And the way I would describe it is it does get openly silly. There is I think and my audience. I didn't see it with a huge crowd, but the crowd laughed. I don't think there's any I don't think there's any response you can have to what happens at
the end of this film, but to laugh. It seems decidedly intentional on the filmmaker's part, and I do have I do have tremendous respect for Craiger for going there, and it requires, I think, great confidence as a filmmaker to do it when you have a film that otherwise is so gory and so portentous and is so dread filled.
My questions would be, based on everything that came before, should there be some kind of should there be real and you mentioned this, Josh, should there be real emotional Catharsis at the end, and then did you have it or did the silliness undercut that and my answers are yes, there should be and no not really, I didn't really have it, and the silliness is part of what undercut it. I walked out of this movie more with kind of a grin on my face, thinking, boy, Craiger's really is
such a cheeky filmmaker. So it never it didn't fully deliver on the promise of its provocative premise for me.
Yeah, to be clear, I was all in on the climax, the actual ending, and what I was referring to is once we start seeing the logistics of the answer to the mystery.
So that's where I love the silliest.
Yeah, answered the bottom it was I was like, no, this isn't going to happen, is it.
Yeah?
And then I was like, oh, it's happening. Yeah, And it's like it's it's still happening, and it's happening like that and not and it's like it's almost like they knew they had a good joke. And then I mean it is played as a comedy bit because it's now let's up the ante here. Now what if it happens here now here? And the audio that goes with it, we really can't we really. I can't talk in detail here about why it works for me, but I will say out of my my intellectual response gave way to
the Catharsis. And again, this was before I had made the allegorical connection to school shooting, so it was like a subliminal, subconscious like. I didn't know why I was feeling so cathartic about this crazy climax, because every bone in my body was probably telling me I should not be enjoying this, I should not be disturbed laughing. Why am I finding this?
Like?
Yes, like, And I think for a couple of reasons, the brilliance of the filmmaking, and deep down there was something this movie was nagging at me about that I needed a cathartic experience. So I really do believe that's what I had. And I completely understand if you were taken out by because it is a big, big swing.
And I think the distinction in what I'm hearing or what I think I'm hearing from you is you're speaking about Catharsis more in the sense of the movie itself delivering a sense of Catharsis, And I'm thinking very specifically in terms of the characters. I'm thinking about where Justine is at, where Archer is at. I'm thinking about where another character or characters are at that I don't want to get. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the Catharsis. I need the movie to deliver, and I think the movie tries
to deliver it. It's not that it's not there, but I didn't feel it on the level that I thought I might based on everything that came before.
Yeah, the final moments, and this is related back to my qualms about the voiceover narration that bookends this and the final moments, I maybe fell closer to that. When we do get that narration again and it again opens some questions, I think maybe I don't know how you feel. I feel like we've covered a lot of good stuff, and maybe we hold spoilers for like if we get listener feedback emails and you know, that might be a
chance to dig into some of the particulars. But I do want to say real quickly, because we praise the performances overall. Austin Abrams, who plays James, who's the young guy who is looking for a fix, and really I think anchors a significantly comic section of the movie. I was like this, this guy is amazing. He is fantastic. And then I was looking at the credits and do you saw Wolf's right the Clooney and Brad Pitt thing.
Remember that grungy goofball the third Wheel who hangs around with them, He's sort.
Of like and he had that same sort of effortless kind of.
Yes, effortlessness Austin abras right, like so good?
Here too interesting? Yeah, I'm glad you looked that up. Weapons is currently playing in wide release. If you've seen it and you agree or disagree, or you have any other thoughts you'd like to share, we would love to hear from you feedback at film spotting dot net.
Listening is the number one thing you can do to support an independently produced show like ours. Here are a couple of other things you could do. Take a minute to give us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Every new review helps us each new listeners, so please send one of those along. Even better, how about joining the film Spotting Family. We are continuing our celebration of film Spotting's twentieth year by sharing voice messages
from film Spotting Family members. So these were submitted ahead of Film Spotting Fest back in March. Here our messages from Aaron as well as Eric Nelson from Racine, Wisconsin.
I've raised three kids on Film Spotty. They all love film in their own way. My oldest Ambrose, obsessions about John Williams and did the Christopher Nolan Marathon with me to become a completist.
But he also saw Puss and Boots in the theater five times.
I discovered Get Out with Vigo and we even agree with Josh that Jordan Peel's US is the better film.
But then Vigo fell in.
Love with a girl in part based on their shared affinity for the Saw movies. My third son, Keanu, he only loves good movies like Dog Day Afternoon, Whiplash.
Fury Road will probably.
Find a way to burn Film Spotty Nation to the ground if they don't give Sherlock Junior its rightful place among the pantheon. And this is what you get for young adults when your kids don't know a world without Film Spotting. As a cinephile, there's stuff I worry about
with the trajectory my boys are on. But then I listen to episode fourteen from two thousand and five, Adam enthusiastically hope that Ian mcdermot's portrayal of emperpor Palpatine would finally get him Oscar attention, while Sam praised A Boy and his Dog, a nineteen seventy five film where Don Johnson telepathically communicates with his dog in a post apocalyptic world while battling Jason Robards, who wants to use the hero for a sperm bank. Thank God, people grow and change, Adam, Sam, Josh.
They continue to surprise us because they love film. They share themselves authentically while they interpret art. I see that in my boys. I love that about my boys, and I'm not sure my family would be this kind of awesome if it wasn't for twenty years of film Spotting.
Hey, film Spotting. This is Aaron Neworth and Lagua Hills, California. Happy twentieth. I've been listening to this show since two thousand and eight, which is.
That's a long time.
I want to talk about my favorite film Spotting moment money to choose from. I of course love Adam and Josh together, but there were the Mattie Ball game years and one that's the moment that's always stuck out to me is episode two thirty four, it's when you reviewed Seneca Kyaw York, the Charlie Coffin film that I'm quite a fan of. You guys gave a wonderful review of it.
You went over the film and its themes and what you took away from it and all that, and then you also laid into at the movies in its final incarnation at that time, and how disappointing it was to see what passed his film criticism on that show to go out there with their frankly very underwhelming thoughts on the film. Meanwhile, here we are, twenty years later, Film Spotting is still going and I'm happy to listen while I have. The movies in that form is no longer
anywhere to be found. So thank you for preventing such wonderful reviews over the years.
And cheers always great to hear from Aaron and Eric Senecticky New York. Yeah, episode two thirty four, that's a that's an infamous one in the Film Spotting catalog, when Maddie and I got a little upset at the Benz for their review, and I use that term loosely, it was like.
A film critic brawl going.
Yeah, it was a little bit of a brawl, a one sided brawl for sure.
And then you've got Eric.
Now, I don't know how this is possible, great great voicemail, Thank you, Eric, But he's chiding me for hoping that Ian McDermot might get OSCAR attention for playing the Emperor in Revenge of the Sith. By the way, after hearing this voicemail, I looked up who was nominated for Oscars in two thousand and six and who won. And you know what, Ian McDermott got robbed. He deserved a nomination.
I support you, I support you and your crusade. He is fantastic.
And then Sam, Now I haven't seen a boy and his dog. It sounds like Eric may have a case against Sam. But how is it, Josh, with all of your opinions over the years, how is it that only me and Sam are getting taken to task by Eric for terrible movie thoughts.
I mean, I have not seen a boy and his dog either, but just reading or hearing that description, I should say it's hard for me to even top that one.
Yeah, we do appreciate all the great feedback that we get, of course, all the love and support that we get from longtime listeners. And supporters like Aaron and Eric. I think we only have one more of these very special messages to share. We'll get to that in a few weeks. We think all of our Film Spotting Family members. In addition to keeping us doing what we're doing, your support
comes with perks. You get to listen early in ad free, you get our weekly newsletter, you get exclusive opportunities like being part of the Film Spotting Family discord, and you get monthly bonus shows. In July we shared with you are we were wrong once and it turns out I was wrong again about the Coen Brothers burn after reading and in August. Later this month, we haven't taped it yet, but we're doing a blind cow review of Akira Kurrosawa's
Stray Dog that's available on the Criterion Channel. Now why are we talking about Stray Dog. We gave Film Spotting Family members a vote. It was up against The Rocky Horror Picture Show for its fiftieth anniversary and Gaslight, which is a forties film, and we have nineteen forties Madness coming up. Straight Dog is also a nineteen forties film, and with highest to lowest coming out, we thought, why not. We've got the Kurrosawa tie in there because Highest to Lois,
of course, is a remake of a Kurrosawa film. It turns out it's a Blind Cow because it's blind spotting for you, Josh and for Sam, but a sacred cow for me. I've seen Stray Dog Straight Dog one. I do look forward to revisiting that film. You and Sam will be seeing it for the first time.
Cannot wait. It's been a curs hour summer for me. I think we had our trip to Japan w and I so before that we watched Yo Jimbo, and then when we got back Thrown of Blood. I just watched High and Low this past week for the first time. If I can add Stray Dog to the pile, that's just great. Can't wait to watch it.
If you'd like to be part of the Film Spotting Family and hear that conversation later this month, you can do that at film spotting Family dot com.
I mean, he was literally the best singer I've ever heard.
This is a less and he's my favorite vacation.
I stayed with my father, you had a whole other family.
No calls were returned, and.
Put his little hands on my face and shape We're going to be okay, mommy right.
Welcome to Adam's Alcove, your source for Under the Radar music doc reviews. Do we have some I feel like we need some soothing music to go along with this.
Yeah, this is going to be short lived, though. I think this segment's over after this week. Oh no, no, are there other raid docks coming out hitting the ratings?
A great are getting canceled already? Yeah.
That was from the trailer for It's Never Over. Jeff Buckley, a new doc about the singer songwriter who died in nineteen ninety seven at thirty, but whose music has lived on, in particular his now ubiquitous cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, which appeared on his only studio album, nineteen ninety four's Grace. The documentary was directed by Amy J. Berg, who made the Janis Joplin doc Little Girl Blue in twenty fifteen and was OSCAR nominated for the two thousand and six
documentary Deliver Us from Evil. I mostly know Jeff Buckley from that Hallelujah cover, Adam, but I think you were more of a fan of his work, So tell us. Does the new doc offer anything for non fans.
Like me, absolutely, and I don't know how you couldn't be a convert after seeing the movie and to that point. Unfortunately, as people hear this, they won't have this opportunity because my understanding is this is exclusive footage that Magnolia is only Magnolia Pictures is only making available the first week of the movie's release, so eight eight through eight fourteen. But I saw it in that window opening weekend and after the movie and they say this with some text
at the very beginning. Stick around after the credits, because they've got twenty six minutes of exclusive remastered footage of a rare solo performance from February nineteen ninety four of Jeff Buckley at a place called the Middle East in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I saw it on a Sunday afternoon, not a huge crowd, but every person there Josh stayed for all twenty six minutes of that footage, some of which you do see
in the dock itself. But it makes sense that anybody who considers themselves to be a Buckley fan would want to stay and see that footage. But I have to imagine there were some people there who were there at the movie out of curiosity who weren't that familiar with his work or familiar with it at all. And the doc is so powerful a testament to his talent that getting the chance to watch him perform unfiltered wasn't one
anybody was going to miss out on. I shared a little bit of personal music background last week during Adam's doc Alacove talking about the Mark Bowland doc. I might as well do it here. I don't want to disparage that doc when I say this, I want to properly appraise this one. It's never over is a greater cinematic, musical,
and emotional experience then the Bowlin Dock. Not just because of my deeper appreciation for Buckley's music, It's largely attributable to how Berg approaches Buckley's life with the same intense empathy that Buckley himself approached his art. I was a year late to Buckley. Grace came out in the summer of ninety four, and this is yet another part of my life. Like film spotting, I can connect back to
my college roommate, Kevin Rich. He introduced me to Sam after they both moved to Chicago after graduation from their respective colleges. In the summer of ninety five, when school got out for the year, I drove down to Saint Louis to visit Kevin in his Saint Louis suburb, and I'd already gotten to know some of his high school friends, and I met Jeff Halquist for the first time. Jeffy he was a musician, one of Kevin's friends. Obviously, Jeffy
was a musician like me. And we're hanging out and he's telling me about Jeff Buckley, who I had never heard of. And he's telling me about this album Grace and how incredible it was. And I don't remember if we listened to it together or not. I do know that when I heard it, within the first thirty seconds, I knew that I could trust Jeffy's taste in music, because that voice and that songwriting was otherworldly. It was
like nothing I'd ever heard before. And that's because to explain what Jeff Buckley's music sounds like to someone, the best way I can characterize it now is this radical combination of Led Zeppelin, Nina Simone, and Tim Buckley, his father. In ninety four, I knew Zeppelin, I didn't really know Nina Simone and I wasn't familiar at all with Tim Buckley. That combination itself is singular, but there just was no
context for Jeff Buckley. His sound was that distinctive. And I want to highlight, to go back to your question asking about what's in it for people who don't really know him or aren't fans of his music other than hopefully being turned on to it because he's such a remarkable artist. I do want to highlight two choices that Berg makes that really elevate this documentary. And I haven't seen any of Berg's other films, I'm very curious now, and they tie back to Nina Simone in a way.
One's overarching in Berg's approach, and one's very specific to the song you mentioned, the one Buckley is best known for, Hallelujah, the Leonard Cohne cover. You know the doc's going to have to devote time to it, right, It's only a
matter of when and how and maybe how long. A lot of other music docs would spend this time, having various musicians and industry luminaries and honestly probably a lot of dudes talking about what Buckley's version means to them, breaking down what makes it so special musically, and Berg grounds it in Buckley's relationship at the time to a fellow musician, Joan Wasser. You actually hear her talking for a good chunk of the song. Over the top of
the song. Buckley wrote that the song you see this in the film, that the song wasn't some spiritual please so much as a song about sex. And whether you believe that or Buckley believed it, it's really irrelevant. The point is that Berg doesn't make it all about spotlighting the song. The song's a tool to further express very real emotions and physical desires. It's about spotlighting this relationship,
this really powerful relationship that they had. And then, really what I think is Berg's boldest stroke, Josh, the majority of time we spend in this movie with talking heads reflecting on Jeff and these relationships, it's devoted to the women in his life, his mother, his first significant love, Rebecca, Joan. And it's not something that Berg structurally is imposing on the material. It's there organically. Jeff laments later in the film that he doesn't really understand how to be a man.
There's talk about how he was raised by his mother. We get into how he was raised by his mother because his dad split before he was born, the fact that he's got this voice that can go into those very higher registers, and he's sings so powerfully, but it's kind of this androgynous voice. And before led Zeppelin ever gets mentioned, the first three influences that are invoked are ain't no Mountain high Enough. I think it's the Diana
Ross version. It's definitely a female singer, Judy Garland and his obsession with Nina Simone, and the movie makes that influence explicitly clear. It's almost like Berg decided that the best way to honor Buckley was was to not let the ghost of Tim Buckley continue to haunt him at the expense of the women who knew him best.
It even starts.
The movie starts with Rebecca, the first girlfriend, saying that she's been hesitant to speak about Jeff and their relationship since his death because the girlfriend isn't always treated well in these types of stories, and it's true that they're either marginalized or worse, they're villainized. And Berg reclaims the portrayal of women in these tragic rocktails, and in so doing renders the more honest, intimate portrayal of who Buckley was.
I thought that was fascinating, fascinating choice, really effective, and then you've got the incredible music on top of it. I think it's a must see, all right.
Yeah, it definitely makes me want to put on grace and give the whole album a listen after this, and maybe catch up with the doc itself soon.
Yeah, it's never over. Jeff.
Buckle is out in limited release. If you get a chance to see it, and if you do and have any thoughts to share, we would love to hear from you feedback at filmspotting dot net. Next week on the show, we had intended to talk about the return of Spike Lee and Denzel Washington. Highest to lois a remake slash reimagining of Akira Krosawa's nineteen sixty three film High and Low. This is their fourth collaboration and first since one of my favorite films two thousand and six is Inside Man.
Highest to Lowest, and we're now discovering that it's getting such a limited theatrical release. I don't know how this is possible. I actually am able to see it in Iowa City, Josh, but somehow you're not really able to see it in Chicago this weekend.
Yeah, we got to clarify this, so there's a chance we can still do this next week, but it appears it's not coming to Chicago until the following week, and with Cinnamon interruptus, I wasn't able to make the press screening. So yeah, we're going to get to this no matter what. It's just a question of if it's going to be sooner rather than later. We'll stay tuned on that one.
Yeah, will it be next week's show or the week after, As Josh said, stay tuned for that. What we do know for sure is that next week on the show we will have a Pantheon Project conversation, another Sacred Cow conversation coming Dog Day Afternoon, the Sydney Lamette film. This is why we held off on including this in our Lamette Marathon. Now, of course, we also tried to keep
that marathon, as we usually do, two blind spots. Sydney met films we hadn't seen, but we knew we didn't want to talk about Dog Day Afternoon because it was turning fifty this year and it is in the Pantheon, so we're going to give it that Pantheon Project treatment.
Next week.
I don't remember the last time I saw Dog Day Afternoon. It might have been in college, Josh. Just like One Flow Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
It's been a while. We're going back to the seventies, back to you. Would you consider Pacino an anti hero? A seventies anti hero for sure? Thinking about Hackman and Nicholson and Newman. I know that goes back to the sixties, but that's a conversation we've been having. So yeah, very eager to take another look at Dog Day Afternoon, just in general, but also in the context of some of these other conversations we've been having.
We'll also have results from the current deeply flawed film spotting poll. We're asking you, aside from Jaws, which of the nineteen seventy six nominees for Best Picture, So the films of nineteen seventy five should have won the Oscar the other options maybe the greatest ever lineup of Best Pick nominees. We got Kubrick's Berry Lindon, We have Dog Day Afternoon, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Robert Altman's Nashville.
Josh.
I was surprised. Now this was early when I looked at the initial voting, but I thought for sure this was going to be Dog Day Afternoon, or it would be Cuckoo's Nest and Nashville was in the lead for a show killing me. It's not in the lead anymore as I take a quick glance. But this is one of those polls where maybe it's not deeply flawed because it's almost a four way race. Oh wow, Oh yeah, it's very very close.
Yeah, no shade on Nashville. I just that wouldn't have been my guest that it would have the lead at something. It's not in last place, but that it's in the running does make sense.
Yeah, not in last place. I'm a little bit surprised. I thought maybe that one would take up the rear. But it is in contention. Your vote really does matter. You can vote in that poll and leave a comment at film spotting dot net. And since we're mentioning Altman here, I'd be remiss, Josh if I didn't ask. I'm very curious myself. We're taping this here. D two has been completed. Cinema interrupt us the player too. How it's been going.
It's well, it was a lot of fun, but we're a little behind at them. As you know, the goal is to finish the movie in three days, stopping and starting repeatedly. I just checked before we started recording, and we are only twenty minutes into the player after an hour and a half.
Are you killing of interrupting now? I'm oho, it's not as short, Josh. I didn't like the sound of that. Laugh.
I'm trying to make myself. I've never been in all the years i've been doing this this far behind after the first day of interrupting. But wow, you know the opening shot.
I was just going to say, how the player you spend just on the opening shot?
Guess how many minutes I mean the full day one?
No, it was. It was not that bad. Thirty minutes. We spent thirty minutes breaking that down obviously. I mean, you know, if it's going this long, we're having a good time. That's the way I'm looking at it right now. And I will panic on day three when we have like I don't know, an hour of screen time to get through or something. But yeah, it's going great. The players holding up to screw as I knew it would. And here's a really cool thing. This always happens when
I do this at the conference on World Affairs. There are other speakers there and I'm usually able to find someone to bring in as a guest and they can add something to it, and didn't have someone this year. But a day before this started email out of the blue from Alexander Julian, who's credited as a costume designer but really slash wardrobe designer because he outfitted all the studio executives in their suits for the Player, which, as I'm sure you can realize, is crucial to that movie.
He I guess, worked out of a boutique on Rodeo Drive from nineteen seventy something on he heard we were doing this and he's just like, he's just sending me these emails full of details. He's like, I just got to get this out while it's in my head. Use it if you can. And there are some gems in there. So we've already talked a little bit about one of the suits, and there are a couple other mom moments we'll get to now.
Adam, now you can see.
Why we're barely through this movie. You can you can get so granular at interrupt us. It's wonderful but we might have to pick things.
Up a little bit.
So you're saying this man Alexander Julian played a major role in communicating Tim Robbins tremendous douchebaggery in that film.
Exactly, mil Yeah he is.
He's very particular about the shade of green he chose for that particular reason. So yeah, Unfortunately, by the time this airs will have wrapped up, hopefully have finished the movie, so listeners can't join us, but there are some there. Thank you so much to those film Spotting listeners who have stopped by to be a part of it. And yeah, we'll see if we can.
Get through Altman.
We got Nilosh Foreman, Lamette Kubrick all in that Film Spotting poll question. You can vote now at film spotting dot net and you can check out our show schedule at film spotting dot net.
Slash episodes this week on our sister podcast, The Next Picture Show, looking at Cinema's present via its past. They have a new pairing that is for the Naked Gun fanatics. They are looking at the New Naked Gun twenty twenty five with Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson. And of course the first episode is going back to nineteen eighty eight to consider the original. New episodes of the Next Picture Show drop every Tuesday and you can find them wherever
you get your podcasts. It's time now for Massacre theater, where we perform a scene and you get a chance to win a film spotting prize. Last time we massacred this scene.
This may seem like a really stupid question, and there are no stupid questions. You inherit five million dollars the same day Aliens land on the Earth and say they're going to blow it up in two days.
What do you do?
That's the stupidest question I've ever heard. I don't operately row out to the middle of a lake somewhere, bring along a bottle of tequila, my sacks and some buck.
How very That was Christian Slater as J. D. Dean and Winona Ryder as Veronica Sawyer in nineteen eighty nine's Heathers, written by Daniel Waters and directed by Michael Leeman. That masacre was part of Our Jack Nicholson Show A couple of weeks ago, a fiftieth anniversary Pantheon Project review of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and our Top five Nicholson scenes. So why that scene from Heathers.
Here's Taylor in Chicago. Another incredible, another incredible Josh Larson performance in this scene from Heathers, it will there you go? His Christian Slater doing Jack Nicholson was almost at the same bizarre meta impression level as the time you all did a scene from Vertigo where it ended up as Adam doing Jimmy Stewart doing Andy Samberg's Nick Cage. WEO, that is exact eactly what I was going for.
It was okay, yeah, I didn't remember that, but uh huh.
Aside from the influence of Jack Nicholson this episode's focus on Slater's performance in Heathers, I also have to note that Heathers is a movie set in high school. This week's episode featured a voicemail from the great Trip Burton, who was a high school teacher. Yes, that's that's the tie in we were going for Old Taylor.
Wow, Wow, nice work, Taylor. Here's David Zobel from Roswell, Georgia. At first I thought it might be Mars Attacks, which might be the first time it recorded history. Those two movies have been confused. Then came along the how very Yeah, yeah, you thought that had to be a giveaway ad him.
Josh, this might be the most incorrect entries we've ever received for MASc Theater in the show's history. A lot of Mars attacks, So I think that speaks to how good you're nicholson impression it was.
That's how I'm going to take it.
Here's Bruce McClintock in Seminole, Florida. Heathers was such a formative experien that I remember exactly when and where I saw it in the theater. I'm guessing that you paired Heathers with one floor over the Cuckoo's Nest, because each highlights the absurdity and harshness of an institutional existence. Both introduce a charismatic but anarchic character to disrupt the status quo. High School is purgatory as well. Or maybe it was because Christians later sounded a little like Jack Nicholson.
Let's go with all of that. I think Perl's figured it out.
Reach into the still mostly brimming despite all the incorrect entries. Film spotting hat and pick out the winner, Josh.
Our winner is Scott G. From Skokie, Illinois.
Congratulations Scott, email feedback at filmspotting dot net and we will set you up with your very own film Spotting t shirt, tote bag, or trial membership to the Film Spotting Family.
That was the greatest acting I have ever seen. I just don't know how you do it.
Gary.
How do you make yourself so sobeerg and emotional to make everybody cry like that?
It's not that hard, really, I just think about the saddest moment in my life.
I don't know that I've ever been more terrified about a Massacre theater scene in the entire time we've done this.
I agree with you, Adam, and we've sung as part of Massacre Theater in before a live audience, and I didn't feel this unnerved.
What is Sam doing to us? Why why do we allow this? Sam chose this scene, But we have veto power. We should say no.
Don't say that.
Let's just.
Let's just remember Sam's responsible for whatever happens.
That's right, It's Sam's fault. It's always Sam's fault.
I'm not going to ask you if you're ready, because I know you're not, nor am I.
Come on, come on, okay, and action mama, come to mama, baby, come.
On you've been bad, Johnny.
I may have been bad.
I may have kept you chained in that room, but it was for your good. Ah. Don't you remember when I used to singdia oh when you were little? Rock goodbye baaby on the tree top. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall.
Break.
I only dropped you once, No, well maybe twice.
And scene scene I mean your decision to go half James Cagney half Gonzo even though it was a woman.
Yeah, that's brilliant. Did I go as a woman? I don't know. Well, no, you would as a Cagney Gonzo? Is who you? That's correct? If you know what film we just meant?
Acord emailed the movies title and your qualification to feedback at filmspotting dot net. The deadline is Monday, August twenty eighth. We'll select the winner randomly from all the correct entries and announce it in a couple of weeks. But really, the winner was everyone who got to hear that, Josh, And that is our show.
I mean.
If it was ever more appropriate to end the show with a mask or theater, I think it was this.
One in fact we might have ended the show like for good. You're not wrong. Okay.
If you want to find Adam and the show while it still exists, you can do that at Instagram and Facebook, as well as letterbox. He's at film Spotting. I'm at those places as well as Blue Sky. As Larsen on film film Spotting is independently produced and listeners supported. You can support the show by joining the film Spotting Family at film Spotting family dot com. That way, you can listen early at n AD free. You'll also get a weekly newsletter, monthly bonus episodes, and access to the entire
show show archive. For show t shirts another merch go to film spotting dot net slash shop.
In the film Spotting archive, you will not find a review of Zach Kraiger's previous film Barbarian. And that's because I will never watch Zach Craiger's previous film Barbarian and never finished. Make me no, I will not finish it. But it did make our twenty twenty two Scenes of the Year show. I forgot that, Josh, you had funniest moment. I guess that's fitting.
Yeah, right, did you get this far? The measuring tape.
Scene measuring tape. I don't in the tunnel. No, I don't remember. There's a lot tunne.
Oh you did bail early.
It's a good scene. Just go back for that. At least.
I interviewed Josh Brolin way back on episode one eighty five. We also on that show had a No Country for Old Men review and shared our top five Cone Brothers scenes. Wow, that was a packed episode. Back on episode one eighty five, out new this weekend streaming, you can see fixed Adam Devine learns that he's going to be neutered, so he has twenty four hours to quote squeeze in one last Balls to the Wall adventure with the Boys worth noting it's animated and it's about dogs.
Oh okay, hell, I was actually hoping this was an Elon Musk biopic MMM.
With the voices of Idris Elba, Catherine Hahn, Fred Armison, and others. It's on Netflix, Okay. Out wide, Jimmy and Stiggs, an out of Ork filmmaker, goes on a bender, during which he claims to have been abducted by aliens. He recruits an old friend to join him on a hallucinatory, drug fueled battle. I don't know who the director is. I have no actors or actresses here. I think Sam is actually just making these up. It's like Anchorman and I'm just reading.
But you're in.
You want to go see that?
Yeah?
I do, of course, nobody too.
Bob Odenkirk returns as a former assassin who is again forced back into battle, this time while his family is on vacation. Josh, I know you caught up with nobody because you like to do your homework.
Did not, But I can tell you nobody to does certainly exist.
Wichboard is also out. A cursed Witchboard awakens dark forces they always do. Was there a movie called Witchboard in the eighties there was? Is this a remake? Maybe it's from the director of The Mask and a Nightmare on Elm Street Three Dream Warriors.
Yes.
See Sam's telling on himself here, asking if this is a version that previously existed.
When this does not even exist.
In limited release, you can see twenty sixteen's shin Godzilla. It's getting a four K restoration in a re release in theaters. Our friend Isaac Feldberg says the best most thoughtfully made modern Godzilla movie. Okay, very curious now and Spike Lee's highest to Lois. We do hope to talk about that film next week, but we may have to put it off another week. We will have our Pantheon Project conversation about Dog Day Afternoon for its fiftieth anniversary.
Film Spotting is produced by Golden Joe So and Sam van Halgren. Without Sam and Golden Joe, this show wouldn't go. Our production assistant is Sophie Kempinar. Special thanks to everyone at wbeazy Chicago. More information is available at wbez dot org. For film Spotting, I'm Josh.
Larson and I'm Adam Kempinar. Thanks for listening. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore.
The fine.
Film Spotting is listeners supported. Join the film Spotting Family at film spottingfamily dot com and get access to ad free episodes, monthly bonus shows, our weekly newsletter, and, for the first time, all into one place, the entire film Spotting archive going back to two thousand and five. That's a film Spotting Family dot com panically