Ep. 816 - Novocaine

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Filmcast, a podcast about movies. I'm David Chen, and you know, we used to get an action movie like Novocaine once every two weeks in theaters, but nowadays... The movie stars a TSA agent and Jason Bateman's trying to release a chemical weapon and it's called Carry On and it's streaming on Netflix. Joining me today is Devinder Hardwar. For the love of God, don't let Jack Quaid be the next Wolverine.

And Jeff Cannata. I'm Jeff Cannata, and I have whatever the opposite of Novocaine is. Everything hurts. Those are vague and oblique references to the fact that today on the podcast, we're going to be discussing Novocaine. Out in theaters right now. You can find more episodes of this podcast at thefilmcast.com. Email us at slashfilmcast at gmail.com. Support the podcast at patreon.com slash film podcast.

Today on the podcast, we got some emails we're going to read at slashfilmcastemail.com. We got some film news to discuss and we got some what we've been watching for you. A lot of stuff to get to. So let's start by reading an email. This one comes in to slashfilmcast.gmail.com from Tyler from Sacramento, longtime listener. Tyler writes in, hope you're not tired about talking about Marvel, but I thought this might be a fun thought experiment.

Let's pretend you have a time machine that allows you to go back to the minute Avengers Endgame ended and assume the role of Kevin Feige. Would you change... What would you change in an effort to prevent the rocky road that Marvel has been on? Recast Kang from the beginning? Destroy Secret Invasion? Start with Doom from the beginning? Stop the universe entirely and just end with Endgame? Let's assume you can't prevent the pandemic.

Oh, that's my answer. Put a secret message in the next movie. But maybe you can account for it with your time travel and knowledge. Discuss your friend from Sacramento, Tyler. Thanks for the email. The only one that could have prevented the pandemic was Kevin Feige. The power of Kevin Feige could have stopped it. would thanos have let the pandemic happen is the question i mean but anyway uh probably uh so yeah if you could go back what were some things you could have done i i mean

It's hard to say specific. You can look at mistakes that they made. And say, like, I wouldn't have done that mistake. But it's like without any deep insider knowledge of why those mistakes happened. It's hard to, like, understand kind of the root causes. There are a lot of external factors, too. Yes, that's right. Screwed everything up. The pandemic is a major. problem for Marvel, not just for the world. But that is a contributing factor to the feeling of missteps that we all have.

Not all the pandemic, right? But it's not an insignificant part. Absolutely. I mean, I think some of the things that I would definitely do are, I would say the number one thing. that in my opinion would have made things significantly better is not have made so many TV shows. I know that sounds like kind of glib, but Kevin Feige and Bob Iger have both admitted...

A, we didn't know how to make TV shows. The team in charge was not skilled at making TV shows. They were skilled at making movies. And the workflow, the processes are very different for TV shows and for movies. And they took their eye off the ball. and the movie suffered, and the TV shows weren't very good. And so that is the number... Would you say erase all the TV shows, Dave? Because I feel like WandaVision is the...

big exception for me. WandaVision and Loki, maybe. I mean, Loki was cool, but WandaVision works as a TV show and would not have worked as a movie. I think that's a great point. That's a great point. I think it uses the medium of television in a really cool way and is a show that I very much enjoyed and very much thought was clever and interesting.

I think that's a big exception to the no TV rule. I think you ended up with this. I would agree with you, Jeff on that. I think you ended up with this situation where like. Honestly, what they were attempting to do was fairly unprecedented.

With Avengers, they did something that had never been really done before, which is like we have this interconnected thing of over a dozen movies that you have to watch them all and then you will understand what happens in the Avengers movie. They wanted to do the same thing with TV. but they didn't know if it would work. And so what ended up happening is you get shows like Falcon and Winter Soldier, where literally the whole journey of...

Anthony Mackie's character in Falcon Winter Soldier is, oh, I'm not sure if I can be Captain America, the one that, like, you know, Chris Evans' character, Sam Rogers, right? Or what's Captain America's name? Steve Rogers. Steve Rogers, yeah. The one that Steve Rogers gave me the shield, and I'm not sure if I can be Captain America. And like, he starts as Captain America, gives up the shield, and then by the end, he gets it back. So it's like, okay, so nothing really happened with like...

The state of Captain America specifically did not change from the beginning to the end. So many modern shows. It's at the Surf Dracula. tweet right yes back in the day if you did a tv show called surf dracula you'd see that full surfing every week in new adventures but in the streaming era the entire first season got to be a long ass flashback to how he got the surfboard

until you finally get to see him surfing the five minutes in the finale. That's from Topher Florence. That's exactly correct. That's exactly it. Brilliant summation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's like multiple shows. But the thing is, you end up in this no man's land where, okay, the show doesn't really...

do much to advance the character, but also you kind of should have seen the show before you watch Captain America Brave New World. You know what I'm saying? Because all the Isaiah Bradley stuff is relevant in it. By the way, Secret Invasion is a complete disaster. So far, I don't think really any shows have referred to the events of Secret Invasion because the way that show left the state of...

America and the world is really dire and no one has acknowledged it yet. It's kind of like how until... the new Captain America movie, no one acknowledged the celestial hand coming out of the Arctic circle or whatever the hell. Anyway. Um, so I think the number one thing is I would have made less shows, made fewer shows. and have the shows that were made be more like events, be more important and actually impact the timeline, the main MCU timeline.

Now, then there's also the issue of Kang, right? So they're in a very terrible place with Kang. Because obviously Jonathan Major's public image is not in the greatest place at this moment. He's back, though. He's back. He's trying to rehabilitate himself. He's trying to happen. But I would say that they actually handled the Kang situation. I have to say, I'm a little bit baffled by how they handled the Kang situation because they essentially...

They could have recast Kang. They've recast, like, Rhodey in the past, but they chose not to do that. And I think instead what they're doing is they're sidelining Kang. The second season of Loki kind of makes it so that you don't really need to pay attention to Kang anymore, basically, without going into plot details. But yes, I certainly would not have cast Jonathan Majors as Kang, knowing that that's how that would have played out.

There were other things that happened in the MCU that were really disastrous, like... Chadwick Boseman sadly passed away and he was supposed to be like a critical part of these next phases of the MCU. And it's like, okay, well, if you knew that, would you have not made Chadwick Boseman Black Panther? I don't think you can say that.

That doesn't make any sense to me. So there's some things that just can't be avoided. But anyway, those are some of the big things that stick out to me about like, you know. how things have gone wrong for Marvel in recent years. Devendra, any thoughts on how you would change things to improve the MCU these days?

A few thoughts. I mean, we, somebody had asked a question, I think it was in the After Dark, like, if you could, right, could you stop all Star Wars stuff after Return of the Jedi, right?

What if that timeline... We interpreted the question to be that. That wasn't the original question, but we ended up talking about it. That was a thought experiment we had. And I thought, no, there was just so much good, even despite the bad movies, despite the missteps. There was so much good that came after that.

that it was worth the, you know, worth the messes, basically. I don't think that's true for Marvel post-Endgame. Like, there have been some good shows. There have been one or two good movies. Like, I think Ms. Marvel was a great show. I think the Marbles was a great film.

But just kind of languished because nobody really wanted that at the time. There's a lot of like stupid fan backlash. If we had just had none of it, honestly, after Endgame and they started thinking and coming back with something a couple of years later. That would have been interesting, but that's not how the Disney machine works. It's the same thing that happened to Star Wars. They can't not produce content. They have to keep producing content.

So you're saying given the choice, like from an artistic standpoint, you would rather nuke... All post-endgame stuff. It never happened rather than have what happened. You don't think the good stuff is worth all the terrible missteps. Not at all. How many shows have we been talking about that was just fucking Moon Knight?

Everything that happened, like all these shows that existed. Secret Invasion. Jeff, did you watch any of that? I did not. It was just not only bad Marvel stuff, but some of the worst television. And like storytelling I've ever seen. And then the response from the director is like, I don't know, maybe sometimes we can make bad stuff. Maybe we should be allowed to make bad stuff. That's not your response. The movies have all been like uniquely terrible in their own respects.

I know you like the mortals, Dave, but the world would have been fine without the mortals. Eternals. Let Chloe Zhao... Make more interesting stuff rather than waste a year of her life on that thing. I think uniformly, yeah. If we could have just reset, snap our fingers and reset post-end game.

and then think come back to it a couple years later and maybe they would have had um the pandemic also to deal with um i think like it would just be a stronger more thoughtful way to re-approach cmc but you can't do that my thing though There was a movie. Before you say the next thing, you're like, imagine if after Endgame there was just no Marvel for five years. The demand would be...

This is what I was going to suggest as well. Perhaps shocking for me, not as shocking from DaVinci perhaps, but I, you know, John Elway won a super bowl and walked off into the sunset he could have played three four more years he could have come back he And there are examples of that, of the guy or gal who does the thing, goes out on top and actually does it, doesn't feel the pull. to return actually reaches the mountaintop, takes the hat, puts it down in the ring, walks away, right?

Marvel could have... There's no universe where Marvel could have done it. That is impossible. Completely impossible. The premise of the question is if you could have done that. I have the magic wand to make that happen. Endgame? And then Marvel does nothing until Fantastic Four. Fantastic Four. This year, what, how many years later are we?

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. And then it's just like, here we are in the 60s. We're doing a thing. We're doing a new thing. Now, would I have also liked to have... My one caveat to that is the one movie they get to do in between those is Spider-Man. What is it? I can never remember the subtitles of the Spiderman's correctly. The other studio projects are like a whole separate thing, I guess. Homecoming, Far From Home, and No Way Home. No Way Home. I always want No Way Home to be the one...

in space with Tony Stark, but whatever. Cause that makes sense. Like no way home. Like he's in space with Tony Stark. Anyway, I always think no way home is the wrong answer. Anyway, it doesn't matter. What I'm saying is that a one-off thing that unified had all the Spiderman's. amazing that nothing else fantastic four now we're talking like epic but but you're absolutely right davindra the disney money machine cannot

would not abide that. Also, we have the same monkey paw problem with Star Wars, which is no one thinks they'll be bad. In the absence, I, as the time traveler, have the knowledge that they're bad. You can't foresee it. But convince 12-year-old me who only cares about... more Star Wars in his life has been dying because he knows George said it was nine, the original idea, the prequel, he had a thing, they were all in his head and all I want is for George.

George Lucas is going to come out of retirement and direct three prequel Star Wars movies? What could possibly be bad about that? That's the monkey prop prop. And time traveler me ain't going to convince 12-year-old me that that's true. That's the problem. You can't convince everybody that the guy, the dumb guy in Home Alone 2 is going to ruin the country.

You can't convince people of it. It's too improbable. It's the time traveler's dilemma. And I think it would still be the case with Marvel when you go, hey, Endgame, the greatest thing. It's this amazing thing. They pulled off and everybody loved it. It's the biggest. and now stop what are you insane the question though isn't to convince somebody because convincing somebody that's the hard part right it's just like snap your fingers what can you change um

A wonderful one-room play, by the way. Just two people. Go back in time. Stop Star Wars. Somebody should write that. Or stop some pop culture calamity. But Jeff, I think there is one missing a gaping hole in your prediction. An excised hole. I'm always talking about Jeff's gaping holes, for sure. Yeah, gaping holes, especially the excised hole. There was a film that came out in 2019. You may not remember it. Nobody saw it.

It's called X-Men Dark Phoenix. And that was the last official X-Men movie before Deadpool Wolverine and everything. That was a fox thing. So Disney Marvel did not have the power to kill that. But part of this going back in time would be just like going back and strangling that movie in the bathtub. You're just, go away. You put the pillow over Dark Phoenix's head. Or just like. Dark Phoenix.

Sending a ton of money to Fox to get this deal. It is hilarious why Davindra hates this movie so much because no one talks about this. No one gives a shit about this movie. Nobody saw this movie. It does not exist. Why bother killing it? That's the thing.

if this soured millions of people's opinion on Dark Phoenix. No one cares. We are talking about how bad things have essentially soured an entire franchise. And it was the double ringer of... x-men apocalypse which is i recall you guys gave a passing review

And I had to shout from across the world to say fuck no to that movie. He will never forgive us. Yeah, he'll never forgive us. No, no, no. I was in another country, and I had to listen to that podcast. Dark Phoenix wasn't as bad as that. A million voices screamed out in pain. Literally the end of Fox's reign of that whole side of X-Men. People wanted to get off of that franchise and everything. If they could have finagled that deal to make X-Men a part of MCU earlier.

Like even before a lot of this stuff, I think there was some like latent excitement, like make the return of Wolverine, not just a gag for a fucking Deadpool movie, but make it the beginning of how you, you know, intersperse. x-men mythology into this whole thing like i that would that would have been the thing that would have been my thing anyway interesting uh i do think we'll eventually get x-men right eventually i don't know

It's 2025, guys. Are we going to have a democracy in a couple years? I don't know. Here's what I would do if I was Kevin Feige. I would release Blade. But it's exactly the same movie that Wesley Snipes was in. Like no changes. You go to the theater. You're like, I can't wait to see rehearsal. And then you see a blood rave in the opening sequence. And then someone get his head cut off.

That's what I would do. No, I'm just joking. Or a HDR remaster of Blade is what you're saying. That should be the next Blade movie. Just re-release Blade? Yeah, re-release Blade. Remaster it. Re-release Blade, remaster it, or yes, Mahershala Ali literally in the same... Just doing the exact same lines. It's like that Gus Van Zandt psycho, but Blade. Yes, that's right. That is what the MCU needs right now. Okay, anyway.

Thank you for the question, Tyler. That poor movie. Oh, man. Yeah, I know. Super interesting question, Tyler. Really appreciate it. You can always write into us at slashfilmcast at gmail.com. Let's take a break for a sponsor. We'll be back with more film news right after this. This episode of the Filmcast is brought to you by Huel. If you're like me, you don't got time for anything, let alone...

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Filmcast, F-I-L-M-C-A-S-T, and the promo code Filmcast to get 15% off your first order, plus a free gift. All right, guys, before we get to what we've been watching today, we've got to talk about... Coyote versus Acme. So there's some weird stuff going on with Warner Brothers and Looney Tunes these days. Warner Brothers, as you may or may not know, is run by someone who doesn't care about art.

And he has been trying to offload Looney Tunes related material. There was a movie called Looney Tunes The Day the Earth Blew Up, which was out in theaters this last weekend. made around $6 million worldwide, not doing very well. But anyway, this company, Ketchup Entertainment, is kind of in the middle of acquiring a bunch of their Looney Tunes stuff. Bless them.

They acquired this day the earth blew up movie. They also are in the middle of acquiring a legendary shelved film called coyote versus acne. We recently discussed this on the after dark, but they are, I'm reading here from deadline. Gareth West, distributor, financier, Ketchup Entertainment, is negotiating an all rights acquisition in the $50 million range for the animated live action hybrid project, Coyote vs. Acme.

They last year rescued Warner Brothers The Day the Earth Blew Up, a Looney Tunes movie. The pact isn't finalized and there's still a chance it doesn't make, but it's heading in the right direction. Should it get over the line, the film would get a theatrical release in 2026.

The deal would mark a significant and record outlay for Ketchup, whose previously releases have included Michael Keaton's Goodrich, comic book reboot Hellboy the Crooked Man, Ben Affleck thriller Hypnotic, and Michael Franco's Jessica Chastain drama Memory, end quote. By the way, I've seen I think more than half of those films. And I think that makes me about 50% of Ketchup Entertainment's audience for movies. That Hellboy movie did not review well either. Yeah, I saw Hypnotic.

which was actually really fun to watch with my wife. And I think I also watched the Jessica Chastain drama Memory, which she did a great job in, but is not a particularly good film. So anyway. Look, in my opinion, this is good news and bad news. The good news is we will eventually, if this goes through, which it looks like it will,

we will eventually get to see Coyote vs. Acme. The bad news is it's going to have ketchup all over it. The bad news is that it's going to be released by a company that... that thus far has not proven that they can make a box office hit. That's what I mean. They are spending $50 million on it, but hey, if you have the money...

I don't care. As long as I can go to a theater to see it or stream it on my Apple TV, I don't really care if you make money on it. You need a few misses to make a hit, at least. It is funny that Zaslav seems to have the opposite problem of Disney, right? Like Disney is like, we got to make all the stuff. Zaslav's like, what if we don't make the stuff and actually kill what is made? What if we make less? Yeah, you guys are.

ignoring the 4D chess that he's doing, which is, you know, all you got to do is fund the thing. Make the thing. Don't release the thing. Get people talking about the thing. Then years later, profit. Sell it in by a huge loss. Huge loss. If you turn everyone in Hollywood against you, it is possible that one day you can make money off of that attention. We call that 4D chess.

This Deadline article talks about how people have referred to the... First of all, Coyote vs. Acme is about... The basic plot is Wile E. Coyote suing Acme because of... their history of defective products or something along those lines. Hybrid cartoon live action. Yeah, hybrid cartoon live action. Really? Come on. Who Framed Arthur? Will Forte is in the movie. I'm really psyched to see it.

John Cena also in the movie. Anyway, according to people who have seen the movie, like Phil Lord tweeted at the time, is it anti-competitive if one of the biggest movie studios in the world shuns the marketplace in order to use a tax loophole to write off an entire movie so they can... more easily merge with one of the bigger movie studios in the world because it seems anti-competitive. End quote. He's trying to sabotage any merger talks.

that Warner Brothers might be having another company. Will Forte called the decision to kill the movie fucking bullshit. I can't tell you possibly why the decision was made to not release it, but it makes my blood boil, end quote. So he definitely pissed a lot of people off, Jeff. Definitely piss a lot of people off. As I said, this is the new economy where pissing people off is winning. Burning money is how you make money. You'll be tired of all the winning.

Anyway, I'm excited to hopefully one day see Coyote River vs. Acme. That's very exciting. And I don't think it's going to make that much money. Based on how the Looney Tunes movie did this week, I don't think it's going to do that well. But... It's just great that it's going to get released, and that's a win. I think you're counting chickens. This is definitely not a Dundee. I don't think you should position it like it's happening for sure. It is definitely not happening for sure yet.

but I'm hopeful. And I do think this has the potential of being a snakes on the plane situation where the, the very loud people on social media, on the internet are. cheering and the vast majority of the people couldn't care less. And it actually isn't a good $50 million investment. I mean, I think it's hard.

it's hard not to make 50 million dollars back from something these days with all the places that you have to distribute stuff but i don't know i mean i'm not i'm not It seems pretty easy to not make, if you said $5 million, I would agree with you, but like 50, that's a significant chunk of change.

But I agree with you. And also, by the way, there's been talks that Warner Brothers, according to Jeff Snyder, is considering offloading Looney Tunes entirely from the catalog. Well, didn't they already remove all the back Looney Tunes?

cartoons for streaming. Yeah. Yeah. You can't stream them anymore. So it's like there's, there's talks that they're thinking of just like offloading the entire property because that's not really where their focus is these days, which is really a shame. You know, it's really a sign of where we are that this iconic franchise that was for me a critical part of my childhood sure i don't know how my kids will ever learn the effect of a shotgun blast to the face of a duck

But it's a sad place we're in where these iconic franchises are a critical part of our culture are now just kind of kicked around as tax write-offs. I'm bummed about it. That said, you're right, Jeff. Let's be cautiously optimistic about this one. It does seem it's not dead yet. That's where we are on this. It's not dead yet. All right. That's some of the film news that's been going on this week. Let's talk about some of what we've been watching, folks.

This week, I had a chance to go see the movie Ash, directed by Flying Lotus. Have you guys heard about this movie? I need to see it. Are you even dead? Sequel? No, it's not. Alright, so this movie takes place on a space station on a faraway planet. And the idea is Isaac Gonzalez wakes up and everyone around her is dead. Like, all the people around her are dead. Worst case scenario. And it's like, what happened? That's the plot of the movie. And I...

actually kind of enjoyed this movie. Overall, first of all, I bought a 2.10pm ticket to the Boulder Cinemark to watch this movie. And I was the only person there. It was a private screening of Ash that I got. So I don't think this movie is doing very well at the box office. It's a midday screening though. I don't know. Yeah. And.

Here are some cool things about this movie. First of all, I think Isaac Gonzalez does a great job. The lighting is really interesting. It's very stylish. It's all like colored lighting, blues, reds, greens. There's some interesting camera tricks. uh that this movie does like it's just very highly stylized movie and so you've got to kind of be on board with that uh i kind of like it's just like a

really unique looking film that is unlike most films you'll see in theaters this year. So like there's some cool things to recommend it and some cool sci-fi horror ideas and also some great. creature effects in this some great like like in the first five seconds you see someone's face melting you know it's like wow like i i haven't seen a face melt that good since like raiders of the lost ark and so there's some really great like creature effects

Uh, what's bad about the movie is the entire first 60 minutes out of the 90 minute runtime is very, it's, it could have been an email. It's very, very slow. And like the audience is way ahead of. The characters like you kind of know like, OK, I kind of understand where this is going. And it takes a really, really long time to get there. And I think a lot of people won't even will not forgive the movie for how slow it is in the first hour.

And when I read some reviews, like that's one of the primary complaints is like, wow, this is a slog. But the final 30, 40 minutes really does pick up and there's some great material there. So overall, I think this is a recommend. It's just cool looking movie with some gnarly special effects. And I'm a fan. I'm a fan. So anyway. The soundtrack also seems good based on what I've heard. I love Fly Low. So yeah.

Great soundtrack. Great soundtrack. It's banging. It's really like rhythmic and kind of very electronic. Very synthy. Synth. That's good. Synth. So I love the soundtrack as well. But yeah, I had a decent time with it. I would give it a mild recommend, is what I would say. Mild recommend for Ash, especially if you're into sci-fi stuff. Speaking of sci-fi stuff, if you're a hardware... Hit us up with something you want to do this week.

Yeah, briefly, I just want to talk about the end of Severance Season 2. I think we're going to be doing a longer review, hopefully a spoiler review soon. So I'm not going to say too much. Well, let's say the plan this week is to cover Severance Season 2. Season 2 on the After Dark. So if you're a patron at patreon.com slash filmpodcast, subscribe and you will get our conversation about the Severance Season 2 finale. That said, Domingo, your overall thoughts on Season 2.

I thought this was an excellent season of Severance. I remember it feels like a while ago, too. The first season was not that long ago, but it is sort of like a weird... several year gap between seasons and i remember the end of severance season one just feeling like more of a slog i'd say like it kind of got like wrapped up in its own mysteries i think this this season

is a little weirder. It's a little wilder, but I also think it's more focused on the characters, and I think especially the innies. You know, the whole thing about Severance is that this company has developed the ability to split your work personality and your outside work personality. And that idea, it's just so sad.

isn't it like the first season kind of touched on it but the idea that this being that you have chosen to create only exists within the halls of a dead office basically they rarely see they'll never see natural light most likely they have a child's view of the world. They don't know geography. They don't know how things work. All they know is the stuff Lumen tells them. It is a really sad existence. And also, they never sleep.

technically right they never have a chance to rest their only existence is work and i think this season dives more into like what it means for those people to be full people and there are several plot lines usually around like romantic interests but There's several plot lines that really kind of broke my heart in terms of how they handled these characters and how to try to flesh out any thoughts and stuff. So I think this is a really strong season, the finale.

Also goes to places I did not expect. Finale is a lot of fun. I like that the season went a little Twin Peaks-y at times and just allowed itself to be weird without trying to explain every single thing. So yeah, stronger season. Can't wait to see what they do next. I know it's been renewed for season three.

I know there were some issues in the writing room with the season because Bo Willman had to come in like towards the second half to help clean things up. But it's a better show than it was in season one, I think. And I hope they can like wrap this up, even if. I think some of the ideals of season one have been kind of, you know, I don't know, smoothed out a bit. But we'll talk more about that in the longer review. All right. That's Severance season two. Just finished up airing on Apple TV+.

And Devinder was a fan. I was a fan as well. We'll talk more about it in the After Dark. Jeff Kanata. So I was traveling this week. It was my kid's spring break and we went out of town and spent a week vacationing. And that meant we were in one room at a hotel. which means the television is not for mom and dad. So I could go deep on Peppa Pig if you want. That's the only thing that was on this week in my world. That said.

Last week, loyal listeners will recall, Dave Chen mentioned a show and said he would not speak about it for a week. to give me an opportunity to see it before he spoke about it. He said, I'm only going to wait a week, Jeff, and you have to watch adolescence or else I'm just going to talk about it. And that's, you know, that's, you got to do this. So I got back from vacation, very tired, but I said, honey, we have to stay up.

We have to watch adolescence because Dave said, I have to watch this. And if we don't, he's going to just talk about it. The worst thing in the world will happen. It's one of the greatest things ever. Now, I just want to say, Jeff, that when I made that statement... I had not finished the show. And I may have added some more caveats to my statement before I said that. I would like to know why you chose violence.

I think the other basically like the premise the sort of quote unquote gimmick of the show Well, are we going to talk about it? Are we going to, are we going to, we should let people know if we are going to talk about it. Now we are actually going to, but, but the standard Jeff caveat is, I mean, I guess, Jeff, do you think people should watch this?

I have watched one episode. That's all I have watched. And it was one of the most difficult things I have ever seen to sit through. I think the show, based on one episode, I think the show is extraordinary. But it was awful. Ten minutes in, I turned to my wife and I said, can we do this? Do we need to shut this off? It was watching my worst nightmare. It was one of the most harrowing, awful, awful, gut wrenching, terrible things I have ever seen.

It's up there with Mass. It's up there with United 93. It's up there with the worst emotionally... trying experiences I have ever seen. One episode. I don't know if I will continue this. My wife said she is up for continuing it. But I think there was no fewer than four times when I said, honey, we can stop watching this. We can turn this off. She's like, no, no, no. Let's keep going. It is my dad. When I was a young kid, my dad had a very extensive VHS.

And by VHS collection, I mean stuff that he recorded off of HBO. He used the long play or whatever that was called back in the day. You could record three movies on one cassette by just... murdering the picture quality. Yes. Sacrificing. It's amazing that you could, yeah, you could like have eight hours of TV on one percent. Incredible. He took magic, man. He took, what, masking tape, I guess it was, you know, along.

the edge wrote the three movies their running times and their rating oh beautiful we had cases and cases of of these movies beautiful one of the movies that he had or i guess it wasn't even a movie technically it's a show or I don't know, event was something I'm sure you guys have heard of called Scared Straight. This is something that he recorded and had on hand.

In case he ever needed to show it to me. Pulling case of emergencies. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It is a documentary going inside a prison. I think in the late 70s or early 80s. That. The full intent is to show how horrible it is to be incarcerated. I luckily never had to watch it. I've never seen it, but I knew of it because it was the threat. It was like. This is the thing that in the case beside Raiders of the Lost Ark and Goonies and, you know.

The Explorers and infinite other amazing movies that I could peer through and watch whenever I had a sick day from school or a special night at home. This magical case of just infinite entertainment. really, I think, sparked my love of movies. Sitting in there as the scary bottle with the skull and bones on it was this thing called Scared Straight. And I think adolescence is the equivalent of that now. In fact, one of the things I said to my wife is, should we show this to our son?

because I don't want to get into it too much. I don't want to overshare, but there have been some instances lately of worrying about... lying from my eight-year-old. And we've had some real difficult parenting stuff lately, which I think Dave knew about. And that's why I was like, why'd you choose violence, man? This was a very difficult experience for me to watch. Yeah. First of all, Jeff.

I'm sorry about that. I didn't know that that would be your reaction. And if I did know, I would have not recommended it in the way I did. Like I said, I also hadn't seen the ending. And then I definitely would have caveated. more things uh if i had seen the ending let's just say what in what way because now i now i'm do i continue with this or not

Well, let's just talk about the premise. I will not even say what happens at the end of the first episode. I'll say the premise is a child has been accused of a horrible crime. That is essentially how the show begins. And every episode of the four-episode limited series is filmed entirely in a single take. Yeah, it's real time. And so at least the first episode feels like...

you are inside what the experience of being arrested as an adolescent is. And more importantly, at least from my perspective, you are also very much inside. what it's like to be the parent of that child, which is truly my worst fear. It transcends anything that could happen to me personally. You know, like drowning. I'm terrified of drowning. I'm terrified of, you know, these horrible ways to die. Give me that before making me go through what this father.

who we are very intimately tied to in the first episode, goes through. It is the most horrific thing I can imagine. And it is hard to watch for me. Not everybody's going to have that reaction, I think, but I did. Well, Jeff, I genuinely apologize. you know if this is not like me being silly or anything like i genuinely apologize if this upset you and i think that like i didn't know that that was your like one of your worst fears i don't know that that's come up before um

I think I was in a situation where I felt like the craft on display in this show is exceptional. I remember hearing you talk about 1917. and how you were such a big fan of that movie and how you were blown away by the idea that that movie was told in one take. This is actually done in one take. 1917 is like digital stitching. This is actually all done. They did every episode multiple times. Yeah, it's theater. It's like a lot of stuff that Jeff would be into.

I am. And also, I know the... Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. Don't... I am... I am of two minds about this because I don't want you to actually feel bad for... recommending this because it is it is extraordinary it is all those things you said it is as i was emotionally wrung out watching it i was also in awe of the craft yeah and it The performance. I mean, the kid. How they cast this kid. He has never acted in anything before. He is believable. Yeah. What he's asked to do is.

Very difficult. Yep. The, the just the pure choreography of this show, the, the logistics, I mean, I have. done a lot of theater as many people are aware of me talking about it at nauseam uh and i've done a lot of theater where you like you don't ever leave the stage like you're on stage that's what this I would imagine is because at no point in this hour plus, uh, does anybody, you know, you're off stage, you're off camera, but the world continues. Then the number of just, you know,

extras that have to be choreographed, entrances and exits, costume changes. It is a piece of theater and it is beautifully executed. I mean, extraordinary. And this is not just... a single location there. The show starts in one place. We get into a vehicle. We move to another place. It's amazing. And, yeah, so I knew you would like all that, and also I knew you would give me a hard time if I told you what it was about. Right? Yeah. And so it put me in a really challenging place where I'm like...

I would love to warn you, Jeff, about like, hey, it's all this stuff. It's all the stuff you love. Plus, it has this really upsetting subject matter. But I also know you don't like to be spoiled on stuff. Well, I appreciate that. And I don't mean to give you a hard time because I. put you in this box. That's not how, but I also do think saying, you know, there's upsetting subject matter is.

not a spoiler. It's like, but that, but that's, that's just in the future. In the future, I will say this may upset you, you know, like, yeah, that's fine. That's, that's fair. Cause I thought a show called adolescence that I have to see. Honey, sit down. We're going to have the feel-good hit of the summer. It's springtime. Adolescence. I'm thinking it's like boyhood. I'm thinking this is a show about just joy and happiness and being young.

style dramedy freedom and youth and flowers and running through them it's gonna be beautiful yeah so you know it just it it it felt like a a wallop that's fair jeff i

could have given you a little bit more warning, but like it would have been vague warning. It would have been like, Hey, you might find this upsetting. Is that, is that fine? You can say it's upsetting. That's fine. I think I will, I can, uh, steal my loins for upsetting in the future again i don't want to overstate your responsibility in this it's completely

fine and appropriate for you to say hey i saw something i loved i hope you should watch it i'm playing it up more for right okay you know okay i'm glad you're not genuinely bad about it although honestly i did say fuck dave number a number of times i'm just gonna say this i'm gonna say this that like um about the show is

when I talked about it on the podcast, I hadn't gotten to the end of it yet. And I got to the end of it and it was, it was really devastating. Like I had to kind of just sit there, you know, I was like sitting there in tears, crying and. uh my wife was like hey do you want to like you know do we want to watch something else we started watching something else on netflix and i was like you know i can't do this like i am so like upset by this uh and

But at the same time, I think it is a towering work of genius. And I cannot recommend it highly enough. But yes, the caveat is it is incredibly upsetting. It deals with... If your worst nightmare is your child being accused of a horrible crime and dealing with that, then this will be very triggering for you.

But hopefully you also understand what Jeff and I have said about the craft on display in the show, that it is like, it's one of the finest technical achievements I've ever seen in my whole life. For that reason alone, I think it's worth paying attention to. So anyway. I think any parent should know what they're getting themselves into because it is, I mean, maybe it's not your personal fear like it is for me.

But I think what it dramatizes is a parent's worst nightmare, right? Is their child is in a level of... danger and bad news that is beyond your capacity to deal with. Like it is outside a parent's. purview at that point. It is now an issue with the government. It is now an issue with law enforcement and that powerlessness. I mean, again, I've only seen the first episode, but what is dramatized in the first episode is a swirling maelstrom of chaos, lack of understanding.

And bad fucking news. And it is hard to handle. And it's done in, again, amazing way. Realistic way. It shows just how deep in shit you can be. Yeah. And what that means and how that is handled. And there's no fucking edit to give you a break. There's no time jump. There's no relief. Like you realize what a relief an edit is. Just like cutting away to something else.

You don't get that in the show because it's all in real time. It's all in one. It is the kind of perfect realization of what that cinematic technique can achieve. Yes, I agree. Because it brings you into the moment-to-moment horror of that experience. Again, no relief. You are... You are the procedure of it, the sort of like the chaos and the chaos and fear.

jutting up against this efficiency and a number of people that have been here a million times, done this a million times. Stay with me. You got to go get through this. But you are so supremely fucked. Like it, it is. I, yeah, I mean, it is, I completely agree with you that it is an extraordinary achievement. It's an extraordinary experience that.

You know, there's some things I think you and I differ in this way. We've talked about this before. There's some things that I don't necessarily want to put myself through. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's very reasonable, Jeff.

I'm just going to put this out there, Jeff. Based off of your reaction to the first episode, I actually don't think you should finish it. That's kind of how I feel about it. Based on your reaction to the first episode. I appreciate that. I don't think you should finish it. Yeah. Because I was like... Maybe it's all okay. Maybe if we keep watching it, it'll be okay. I will say every episode is very different in feel and in location.

And that itself is extraordinary. Like, it's like, okay, we watched the first episode. I kind of understand like, oh, like, okay, I understand like maybe the show is going to take place around these locations and with these characters. Nope. Nope. Like every episode is like different location, different feel. And I'm like, holy crap. Like they're really there. It almost feels like they're showing off how good they are at doing this. But it's amazing.

I think it's an incredible achievement. Every actor in it is amazing. I feel like it could only have been done... in britain you know like it's like a bunch of people that i just know have all done shakespeare you know like it's just like oh that guy's played othello you know like it's like it's uh it's awesome yeah it's it's awesome but it's also

very difficult so so i would say don't um watch the rest of it jeff uh but if you do watch the rest of it you should expect to be like completely destroyed by the end of it that's how i feel oh boy so um Well, I was completely destroyed by the beginning of it, so that's fun. Because I was not destroyed. I did not have that strong emotional reaction. I thought the first episode was incredible, but I wasn't upset by it. And by the end, I was in shambles.

Right. And so that was me. That was my journey to the show. If you're in shambles by the end of the first episode, like I cannot even imagine. I was in shambles by 10 minutes into the first episode. Wow. I mean, literally 10 minutes in, I turned to my wife and I said, I don't think we can watch this. I don't think we can do this. But we finished the first episode and it's, I mean, it's amazing. It's amazing. It also seems like another great show for Stephen Graham.

by the way, who is... I just talked about him in A Thousand Blows, and he's killing it right now. And also, his co-star from that show is in this... Aaron Doherty, yeah. Yeah, Aaron Doherty's also in... There are only ten actors in Britain, as we've learned, and they all just get recycled in the same... Yeah. Well, Jeff, if I like, I was going to like, I honestly.

Here's how I thought this was going to play out. I thought you'd come on the podcast. You'd say, oh my gosh, David said episode one was amazing. And then I was going to come in and say, Jeff, don't finish the show. Please stop. Please stop. That's how I thought this was going to go. I didn't know episode one would already completely have destroyed.

you and then I'd have to really warn you, definitely don't finish the show, Jeff. If only there were technologies to communicate messages to Jeff in short bursts of text. For emergency scenarios. jeff a podcast for i'm sorry about that so anyway but jeff um uh you know you understood my dilemma i didn't navigate it in the way that i could have no but i tried i tried my best i i was playing up your okay good but also fuck you

That's Adolescence. It's streaming right now on Netflix, all four episodes. Check it out. Let's take a break for a sponsor. We'll be back with more. We'll be watching right after this. Sometimes it's the little things that make us feel close to family. Like the smell of food. Never quite as good as mom's. The sound of joy which takes you back to that family wedding. But remotely, sending money is a way to be there for those you love, no matter the distance. Stay close when you're far apart.

Send money worldwide with the Remitly app. Remitly UK Limited is authorized and regulated by the FCA. All right, guys. In our waning minutes of what we've been watching, I just want to talk about two documentaries I watched. on Netflix. One of them is called, uh, chaos. The Charles Manson murders. This is the new movie directed by Errol Morris, uh, about, uh, the,

killings of Charles Manson's people. And it's based off of a book by Tom O'Neill. And I have to say, Errol Morris is one of my favorite filmmakers of all time. This guy is a hero to me. I've actually interviewed him in person. That was a big day for me. I interviewed him to talk about his book, Believing is Seeing. Great book, in my opinion. I think he's a genius.

I think his stuff is in general a must-watch. I've seen many of his movies in theaters, even though most people don't watch documentaries in theaters. Anyway, big Errol Morse fan. Having said all that, this movie was a disappointment. My understanding is the book that it's based off of goes way more into detail about some of the stuff that's speculated on in the film. The short version of this movie is...

What if Charles Manson was not solely responsible for the Manson murders? That's kind of the fundamental thing is like, what if there were other forces at work that might have precipitated? the Manson murders.

I don't think the movie does a very good job of like explaining that it kind of lays out the conventional understanding we have of the Charles Manson case. And then kind of has like a little bit of like innuendo and speculation of like, maybe this, maybe that. And that's it. It's like 90 minutes long.

It feels like it should have been a miniseries that went much more into this. So this one was a rare disappointment for me in the Errol Morris book. I will say if you know virtually nothing about the Manson murders, this is a decent primer. And for me, I actually am not that familiar with like the Manson murders and how big of an impact that had. And, um, and so like I did learn some things from it, but like, I think most people, if you're familiar with.

uh, what happened there, then you're not going to learn that much from this documentary on Netflix. It did make me want to read the book though. So I wanted to mention that anyway, chaos, the Manson murders. It's a documentary by Earl Morris on Netflix. The other thing I wanted to mention is this is a documentary series that's been on Netflix's top 10 for like weeks, if not months now. It's called American Murder, Gabby Petito.

And it's about the, you may or may not be aware, Gabby Petito was like an aspiring van life vlogger. who bought a van with her boyfriend and they decided to travel around the country and she wanted to make a YouTube channel about van life. And this story caught the attention of the entire country. For a variety of reasons. First of all, this was kind of a digital native person. Van life is a topic that is of great interest in general to people already. She's a pretty...

young white girl. And those cases get a lot of attention in general if they're the person that goes missing, which is what happened with Gabby. And obviously was a content creator. And so it's just this perfect confluence of societal and internet. culture that made it be like this nationally known case. A couple of interesting things about this documentary. Number one, kind of controversial, they used AI to recreate Gabby's voice.

reading her diary entries. And the AI is not that good. It's not particularly convincing. But I think we're going to see more and more of this as time goes on.

Awful. Yeah, and I think it's quite controversial. My understanding, I'm not 100% sure, but my understanding is her estate or her family was okay with this. But I'm not sure about that, so don't quote me on that. But regardless of... of whether they're okay it is uh it is a very new phenomenon that like oh now people who have been murdered like they're going to use technology to bring

their voices back from the dead and it's like i i'm very uncomfortable whenever i see this like whenever i see a dead person reanimated in a movie like rogue one or the uh Ghostbusters, Harold Ramis, you know, like anything like bringing someone back for a commercial. Like I'm, I'm never really okay with this. And it did make me uncomfortable to see it. in the documentary, but also maybe wonder, like, how much are we going to see this in the future?

The other thing, do you guys, how familiar are you guys with the details of the Gabby Petito case? Do you know like anything that happened? Zero. Yeah. Okay. So she's, she's essentially this like, uh, like aspiring van life blogger, blogger who like. bought a van went out with her boyfriend to try to make some content and uh essentially what happened was it became very clear that so so then she vanished right one day she vanishes

Um, but her boyfriend is still alive and shows up like at home and refuses to talk to the police about what happened. And it's extremely suspicious. And one of the things you learn in the documentary, so. like details from real life to come but basically like she was murdered by him and one of the details that came out of uh the news coverage and also this documentary is like her The boyfriend's mom, Brian's mom, was super...

into defending him. She's basically like, no matter what you did, I'm going to defend you all the way to the end. And... It reminded me of, honestly, we just talked about Mickey 17, but it reminded me of Bong Joon-ho's movie Mother. Did you guys ever see that movie? Devendra, I think you might have seen it, right? Yeah, we talked about it. I think we did an episode about it. I think we saw it too.

I remember watching Bong Joon-ho. He did a Q&A for Mother in Boston, I remember, a long time ago. Great movie. And one of the things he said that really stuck with me is like... motherhood is a kind of madness like that's kind of what he that's the thesis of that film by the way it's like motherhood is a kind of madness where like in that movie the mother character is

has this son and she's like, this son can do no wrong. I'm going to defend the son no matter what. It doesn't matter what happens. We're going all the way to the end. And that's essentially what Brian Laundrie's mom was. in real life. And it's chilling to watch and experience. And so anyway, those are just a couple of my takeaways that I wanted to highlight from the American Murder Gabby Petito documentary. on netflix but those are a couple things i've been watching this week uh so real uh real

Real pick-me-ups this week. A lot of murdering going on in the watching this week between Ash Adolescence. Charles Manson. Charles Manson and the Gabby Petita story. And we haven't even gone to the severance yet. Anyway, we'll talk about it later. All right. So that is what we have been watching this week. Let's do a few weekly plugs.

Weekly plugs is part of the show each week where we plug something else we've been making. I want to throw a shout out to Decoding TV, the podcast I do with Patrick Klepek and a few other guests. We've covered Severance recently. We're also covering The White Lotus right now.

Wild stuff. You guys caught up with White Lotus? Not quite. Wild stuff going on in the White Lotus this season. It's going to take a while for me to really catch up on the season of White Lotus. Oh yeah, because you were not a huge fan, right? I was not a huge fan. If I hear... Things are picking up. I'll give it a shot at some point. I would say things are picking up, but there's not much new in terms of what the show has to say so far compared to previous seasons.

I think it's definitely something you just got to vibe with or not. But White Lotus Season 3, anyway, we're covering it all. Decoding TV, check it out wherever podcasts can be downloaded or on YouTube at youtube.com slash at decoding TV. Here's a question for you guys as we get into the review. We're talking about a movie called Novocaine today, so I thought I'd choose a dentist-themed joke. What is the dentist's favorite kind of dinosaur? What is the dentist's favorite kind?

of Dinosaur. Divinder Hardware, your weekly plug. You know, we're having second thoughts about this whole bit thing. My weekly plug is the Engadget podcast. Check out the Engadget podcast. We just talked about Google's Pixel 9a, which is a $500 phone that... looks like it's everything you want in the phone and that probably should have been the iphone 16e check it out jeff canada your weekly plug

The new episode of DLC, my video game podcast, just hit. We had guest Jesse Norris from Xbox Era. And we talk about some big, big games. Assassin's Creed Shadows, which is phenomenal. Absolutely love it. We talked about a game called Atomfall, which is really interesting. And first, Berserker Kazan, which Jesse Norris, who is no slouch when it comes to the video games.

called it the most difficult game he's ever played. So he also loved it. Really interesting stuff. Plus the future game show, a new video game union, lots of really interesting stuff. on the new episode of DLC, which is episode 592. You can find it at dlcpod.com. Of course, I want to throw a shout out to our Patreon at patreon.com slash film podcast where you can sign up for ad-free episodes, exclusive After Darks.

and occasional early access to episodes. Again, this week we'll be chatting about the season finale of Severance. We never want anyone to donate to our Patreon if it in any way causes a financial hardship. You can always support us for free by leaving a star rating for us on Apple Podcasts.

or leaving a review for us wherever you get your podcasts or sharing the podcast at youtube.com slash at the film cast pod. We really appreciate anyone who spreads the word about the film cast. It really does help to keep us going. Let's get to our review of Nova King. Hi. Yeah, no, I couldn't feel it at all. Holy shit. Can you feel this? I'm just a regular guy, but I don't feel pain. Let's move! Oh my God, what am I doing?

Be careful, dude. You can still die. I won't stop until I get her back. I had a week to quit drinking. You quit drinking? No, no. I just mean it would be. The answer to my earlier question, a Flossiraptor. A Flossiraptor. Oh, my. Oh, my. Flossiraptor. Think about it. Think about it. Okay.

Welcome to the Filmcast Review of Novocaine. I'm going to read the plot summary from the internet. When the girl of his dreams gets kidnapped, a man turns his inability to feel pain into an unexpected advantage as he fights a bunch of thugs to get her back. End quote. The Vinter Hard War, I think your thoughts and my thoughts about Jack Quaid are pretty similar in the sense that we find him mildly irritating, but also talented to some degree.

And I have to say, I have been a fan of his willingness to... basically make himself look bad you know like we saw him in companion and scream and he has this kind of like dopey nice guy persona but he's really willing to push the limits of that And I think this movie is another instance of that in some aspects. I am really curious, given your feelings about Jack Quaid's whatever-ness, literally, what did you think about Novocate?

I think it's perfectly fine. This is a really great concept for an action movie. And this is a low budget, really small stakes kind of film. And I think it does some really cool stuff here. So I had a lot of fun with it. But yes, I'm also, I think I'm just tired of seeing Jack White because he is doing the same thing over and over again. And I have to say, this movie sets up the premises. He's a guy who can't feel pain.

He's had to live his life with certain compromises because of that. Like, you know, he's being afraid to eat solid food. We could talk about this in spoilers. But I feel like if that is how you've had to approach life because you are afraid you cannot feel the dangers of pain, I think he would not be as equipped to be an action hero. You know? It's the power of love, Devendra. It's the power of love, but he would be...

He would not be a fit action guy is the thing. This is wild. This is the movie where Jack Wade clearly worked out a lot because his whole facial structure looks different than it does on the boys. He looks like... He is ripped. You see him in promo photos for this thing. He's like ripped in that leather jacket. He's trying to be a cool action guy. I'm like, the very premise of your movie is that you're afraid of doing things and living life.

Because he can't feel pain. You can never work out. He only eats protein shakes, Davindra. He only eats protein shakes. You can never work out. You can never actually do something that stresses your body. Because you would never be fit for this anyway. Otherwise. Perfectly, perfectly fun, fine movie. I think Amber Midthunder is a lot of fun in this. Poor Jacob Batalon, who I think is just forever going to be in this role. He is going to be the nice guy best friend.

And it's a shame because I think he is a lot of fun in this movie. He plays the guy in the chair in the Spider-Man films and he's basically the guy in the chair in this movie as well. It's like he's the same character. It's the same character. It's the same character. Except he has a motorcycle now. It's literally like if he said, I just got off the phone with Peter Parker. Give me a second. I would believe it.

Yeah, for sure. I made the Wolverine joke because I was like, huh. It's sort of like he had the bad Wolverine powers, right? He can't feel pain. It's like inverse Wolverine, right? But he's vulnerable. but he can't right wolverine can feel pain but he's invulnerable technically um just just kind of a funny thing i am genuinely worried that jack wade is like on whatever short list to be the next wolverine

Listen, he's a perfectly nice guy. Wolverine's a special character. Don't make Jack Wink Wolverine, for the love of God. He's not going to be Wolverine. Jeff Kanata, your thoughts on Novocaine? Well, Dave, I guess you could say my thoughts on Novocaine are best summed up in the form of a limerick. Oh, let's hear it, Jeff. It was so hard to overcome when he forcibly broke his own thumb. The movie is fine but it crosses a line. This Novocaine don't make me numb.

I guess you're saying it's not effective? Is that what you're trying to say? That one's a puzzler. Yeah, that's a puzzler. I don't like watching a person do what he does to himself in this movie. Uh-huh. Like, you're supposed to think it's super cool. Yeah. It's not cool. It's disturbing. It's not. None of it is. I don't know. I agree with DaVinci. This movie's fine.

It's hard to come up with real criticisms of it, but it also, I'm not going to come out with a huge recommend. Like, it's not awesome. It's fine. There's some fun stuff that happens. It does feel like... Some people got in a room and went, what are all the things that you could do if you didn't feel pain? Let's just riff on them and then let's put them all in the movie. Let's just contrive moments where he has to do all those things.

And none of them were fun. I mean, they're all just sort of like icky. It's just icky. It's like the problem is. As Devendra so astutely pointed out, he ain't Wolverine, right? He's not healing from this stuff. He's not okay. His body is incapable of telling him how wrong that is. Yeah, yeah. Pain is a communication device because we were dumb apes that were evolving and just doing stupid shit.

The body went, you know what? To keep you alive, I'm going to have to give you a real strong no on some of that stuff. And so we developed this nervous system that said, hey, don't do that. That is bad for you. You're going to avoid that because I'm going to make it so uncomfortable for you that you don't want to do that. This poor sap. Doesn't have that communication. And so he puts his body through truly terrible things for our entertainment, I guess. And I don't.

I don't know if that's entertaining to me. It's like, he's not, there's a moment very, at the very beginning of the movie where he explains what he has. And someone says to him, well, that's like, you're a superhero. And I'm like, No, it's not. It's not like you're a superhero. You know? It is like, yes, you do need to protect yourself because you're incapable of knowing what's too far.

Yep. Now this movie is not working on that level, right? It's working on just the silly fun. Like you got to just like, let that go and have fun with the fact that, Oh, he can get stabbed and chopped and all that stuff. And he doesn't, it doesn't feel pain, but it's like, yes, but.

your body there's moments where he like can't walk he's like tries to walk he's like oh that's weird my leg don't work it's like yeah because there's horrible things that happened to it you know like it just feels like we're watching a man enter into a terrible future life state. He's like, he's going to be handicapped, you know, beyond all reasonable expectation.

For a girl that just does not appreciate that. And I don't know. It wants to be a kind of charming rom-com, and it kind of accomplishes it. And it wants to be a badass action movie, and it kind of accomplishes it. But overall, like this wasn't a home run for me. It's fine. It's fine. Like the action sequences, there's a few that are okay. It's nothing to write home about. Nothing super memorable. I mean, it's memorable in that.

He does horrible things to himself, but I didn't find joy in that in the way that I think the movie wanted me to. I'll start by saying that I am generally uncomfortable. with movies using disorders or disabilities and like making that into like a superpower. I generally find that to be an uncomfortable thing. I think M. Night Shyamalan would have a word with you. I was going to say, M. Night Shyamalan has done it frequently over the course of several years. It's most of his work.

And because I think that it feels like it's one of the only ways that at least people in America can consume stories about differently abled people. And I don't... I don't like that that's the case. So I just want people to know I have that concern in general. And it is kind of like in the back of my mind when I watch movies like this. Having said all that.

I had a blast with this movie. I think that I enjoyed this movie more than either of you. And there's a couple of reasons for that. First of all, I think that the way Jeff described something as being negative, he's like, people got into a room and they riffed on like, what could a person do if they didn't have pain? And then they went in and did all those things. I actually think there's some real legitimate ingenuity.

on a script level that made that happen. They're like, oh, here's a thing that this, here's a sort of way this guy experiences a world that's different. How could we use that in action scenes? in ways that are novel and the movie then does proceed to do that multiple times like in different it doesn't just do the same thing over and over again it has there's like different takes on it and the movie needs to contrive all these

weird setups to make that happen. And I think it does a really great job at that. So like, I actually appreciated that. I also think that this movie has no action for the first, I'm going to say 30 minutes. And it's like 90-minute run time. Just a rom-com.

yeah it's just a rom-com and i think that's like it's great that the movie's like hey we're going to spend some time developing the relationship between these characters and it's like movies don't generally take that time anymore it's got hey we have to we have to grab people's attention we have to have an action scene the first five minutes or else like the person's not going to pay the viewer is not going to pay attention or care um this movie's like no we're gonna like

Movies like Die Hard, they're great because we spent time developing these characters before the action kicked off. And yes, this movie is much more silly than Die Hard, but it had that kind of ethos of... hey, we're going to make you care about these characters before we do some really, really silly things with them. It also is similar to Die Hard in the sense that it really embraces the fact that this is a regular Joe in an extraordinary situation.

yeah yeah yeah yeah so so i like that it kind of followed that that template and uh so i actually really really enjoyed this movie and uh was grateful to be able to watch it and in a theater and i just think it's a great time so i liked it more than either of you uh would recommend it if you're into like a solid funny action movie uh and yeah it gets the David Chen seal of approval. Let's get to spoilers for Novocaine starting right now.

I thought up an ending for my book. It makes no damn sense. It compels me, though. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. When I buy a new book, I always read the last page first. That way, in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. You can't handle the truth! Incon... I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. Alright, we're in spoilers for Novocaine right now. Guys, I also gotta say, I really enjoyed the reveal that Amber Midthunder's character was...

One of the bad guys. One surprise in that movie for me. It was cool, but it makes you feel like, oh man, just stop, dude. Stop doing that stuff to yourself. Poor guy. But the movie had its cake and ate it too, right? Because basically... That's the problem. I think. Well, because essentially like Amber Mithender's character, she is in on the heist, but then by the end, she's like, actually, I really care about this guy.

And that convinces him, hey, it was all worth it in the end. But you think that's a problem, Jeff? It makes no damn sense, as our thing would say. Because here's what I needed the movie to do. Here's what I needed the movie to do that it did not do. I needed to, when she, when we get the big reveal that she's one of the bad guys, I needed to have a moment where I went.

Oh, she was trying to get the key from or the code from him. Right. The movie never does that. It totally cheats. And that sucks because. It needed to have embedded her actually trying to manipulate him into giving us the code without us clocking that, but only able to then retroactively realize that she was... That's what a, an excellent script would have done where that reveal would have been like, Oh, that's why she did that weird thing that I didn't realize at the time was weird.

You're right. It doesn't quite go there, Jeff, but I do think the idea is that they used the threat against her to get Jack Quaid to open the safe. But her brother says, we were supposed to believe that she... She came on to him, asked him out on a date, all those things for one reason. And yet she never at any point even attempts to bring it up. She never brings up work. Like, okay.

I will grant you, I will suspend my disbelief that at some point she actually falls for him and then doesn't want to just manipulate him. But we have to see, we have to retroactively have seen. No, no, no. But I'm saying during the robbery, they threaten her life and they say, if you don't open the safe, we're going to hurt this woman. I understand that. That's plan B. That's plan B.

That's true. That's true. But I'm saying it's not like it was completely unrelated to. No, no, no. But you can still go back and see, oh, I guess there was a purpose for her to seduce him is what I'm saying. Well. Okay, so, but that was, we are explicitly told that that

They only had to do that because she failed at mission A, which she never attempts. We never see her attempt at mission A. I agree with you about that. I agree with you about that. The one thing, I mean, the sort of like red flag with her is the shots with the pepper sauce. like oh that's a fun like rom-com gag that bartender would be in jail if they actually did that you can kill a person by doing that actually

I'm sorry. That is the most unrealistic thing. It is the most unrealistic thing. I mean, there's a bunch of dumb shit that's like, dude, there's no universe where he's going to tattoo the address on his hand just because he can't. You want to have that tattooed on your hand forever? Well, he's in exigent circumstances, Jeff.

I mean, that's the thing. You really have to believe this guy is willing to blow up his life after spending one night with Amber Midthunder. The guy who's too afraid to eat solid food. He's ready to blow up his life. there's no reason he should be doing any of this he does have that call with the police like you meet that one person you can do anything to save them after a certain point you're not you're not like you can't shoot you're not trained to fight all these dudes like

at least work with the police. I'm just imagining you guys. I'm imagining you guys reviewing Die Hard back in the day. Why is John? John McClane is a cop. He is a cop. With, I think, military service. He's experienced. Okay, fair enough. He's built for that shit. And there's no one else that can do anything. He's literally on the phone with the other cops. Yes. Going, I gotta do this, dude. You're not doing shit. These other...

Cops are like, stand down, bro. We got this. And he's like, no, no, no. My love is too strong. Yeah. Okay. Die Hard is a rock solid script. I think actually addresses a lot of these things and gives us a character who would be functional in that scenario. This guy is a bank teller or a bank manager who is too afraid to eat solid food. Yeah. Agreed. You guys bring up some good points. John McClane is...

John McClane is trapped in that situation. This dude has to steal a police car to pursue them. It makes no fucking sense. Doesn't make any sense. I'm sorry. I have been making the Wolverine jokes, though, because at one point he does do. The Wolverine. Kill somebody with a bone. He also gets claws. He gets the claws, but literally bone claw. He bone clawed somebody with an actual piece of bone.

I mean, there's a lot of depraved stuff that he does to people in this movie. And I'm like, man, that bank teller's got issues. I don't think I'm capable, no matter how much pain I don't feel, I don't think I'm capable of slashing someone's eyes out with glass. I don't think I can do that. I'm sorry. He really escalated his whole experience pretty quickly. I don't know. I also... All that tattoo scene was just a lot. It was a lot. Well, okay. First of all, guys...

I really think you guys are underselling how fun this movie is because there is this moment where he's like, hey, you guys know our friend Sam or whatever? How would you think his last name is pronounced? I mean, that is a brilliant thing. Jeff, I thought you would appreciate that. That's a thing Jeff Canata would say. It's like, how would you think his last name is pronounced? It's your last name, Mr. Burns. Gets it immediately and is like, oh, really? Do we ever get the payoff?

what his last name actually is? Yeah, his last name is Clark. So it's like, oh, there's no reason you wouldn't know how Clark is pronounced. So that's why I'm going to kill you now. Also the guy who literally rigs his house with like... Booby truck. Booby traps. Not just booby traps, but just like medieval booby traps. Looney Tunes traps. Like Looney Tunes level traps. Imagine that guy getting up to go to the use of bathroom at night and making one false move. You're done. You're done, buddy.

Also, like, the odds that you would – by the way, we see – what's his name? You know, Spider-Man's best friend who is – demonstrably much shorter than everybody else in the scene. And yet the thing is perfectly positioned for his head. And we get the joke of like, oh, I guess he really likes Home Alone. I'm like, you know what?

That joke does not excuse the amount of suspension of disbelief that I have to get into that this is how the guy would defend his house. Come on. That's not how he would defend his house. You would not create a freaking ball mace thing. That's just so inefficient and dumb. Imagine having friends over, like you invite a couple of friends over for the game. Guys, watch out for mace trap.

Arrow trap. I don't understand. Hallway smash trap. Jeff, how do you think he would defend his house then? If not for, because I think the crossbow is a reasonable thing. You do? Sure, sure. I don't know. ADT security system? How about that? Easily purchasable? You mean people that call the cops? Is that what you're, this criminal would get ADT security system? How about literally, literally any, anything that was made.

after, I don't know, 1200 AD. Well, he doesn't want to alert other people, right? Maybe he's a bit of a Luddite. Yeah, he's not into new tech. He's an old tech guy. Yeah. So it has to be all pulleys and strings. Yeah, whenever there's a gunshot, the neighbors will hear about it. So he just wants this guy to suffer and die in silence, you know? Yeah.

He's got that one place that you can't stand that'll hoist you upside down. That one spot. Don't stand in the one spot. Just ridiculous, dude. Come on. I did think that was a very fun scene where he tries to convince the guy to actually torture him. That's just like classic slapstick. you know, humor of like, these two characters are in completely different dynamics, you know? I think it's funny, but like, he also will never get those fingernails back.

That's not insignificant. Just because you can't feel me. Fingernails grow back, but still. I don't know, dude. I mean, look it up because I don't think they do. I'm pretty sure they do. I don't know. There's a lot of things he won't get back. I'd be more worried about blood loss to the point where it's like, oh, yeah, head chopped off. What was the final thing? Where it's like, oh, that would be bad. You can't actually. Anybody that is going to torture you. Mm-hmm.

It's very likely that there's things that are never going to be the same with you. Not just because you don't feel pain. Absolutely. Absolutely. I had a hard time.

having fun with it because i just kept thinking like these are terrible decisions you know terrible life decisions every this movie should have multiple sequels and everyone he should have further and further like long term issues based on what happens in every single movie I gotta say I did appreciate though that you know like a blow to the head didn't

he didn't shrug it off, right? Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not just that it's painful. It literally does something to you, right? It's not something, maybe he didn't feel pain, but I did appreciate that the movie showed him, you know. woozy and he would get hit and he wouldn't feel pain but you know like that's not the only issue when you get struck to the face you know it's yeah i did appreciate that about it

I thought the movie had a really weird ending because it wanted to acknowledge the role of the legal system. But also, I don't believe that's actually how that would have played out. You got off, you're fine. It's all good. You got off, you're fine. You're a character witness. Thank you.

But I did like, yeah, you're a white banker, so they're not going to do anything to you. You're good. You're a lady friend. She seems a little less white, so she's going to be in jail for a while. Just keep her in. But yeah, and then I guess he's completely healed after a year. So everything's fine. But yeah, but then yeah, Amber Midthunder's character ends up in jail for a little bit. So it's like, okay, so they wanted to acknowledge like a little bit of reality.

but not necessarily like full reality. Cause usually what happens at the end of these movies is like the guy and the girl like walk off into the sunset and you know, everything's fine. But in this one, they're like, actually there were some. minor legal consequences. It's a weird kind of note to end on. Half measures. Also, RIP Matt Walsh's character. Always fun to see him in something.

Oh, man. He was great. He had a couple of one-liners. I'm not recalling at the moment, but they were excellent. He knew what movie he was in. Rye, one-liners. I was going to say Ray Nicholson, who plays Simon in the movie, did a great job. as the kind of psycho brother in this movie. You know, I thought he did a good job. Also, Jack Nicholson's son.

By the way. You can tell every time he smiles. The Smile 2 poster was literally just him doing the Jack Torrance smile. He's getting a lot just based on his genetics at this point. A Quaid and a Nicholson in this movie? Yeah. No problems on Hollywood folks. No problems. No problems. So I want to know what you guys thought was the worst. injury sustained or one you would least want. Yeah. I think it was, uh, one of the first ones, like the first action scene with the Santa.

Is when he, the gun lands in the boiling hot oil. 100% agree. Yeah. Yeah. It's bad. Kentucky Fried Hand? No thank you. The movie set the bar. It's like, hey, we're going to start here. And then literally nothing else is going to be that bad, in my opinion. Right? Well, I love how people keep commenting on it in the rest of the movie. Oh, and he's like, oh, yeah, it's eczema. It's really flared up. That was very funny. But the movie did such a good job of like showing...

how awful that would be because it like first of all like the way like the camera movement like goes over the gun and it's like oh it's just boiling in this oil and then he like reaches in and you see like his skin is just like sloughing off his hand afterwards it's like as soon as that gun fell into

Well, I knew that was where we were headed. And he held on to it for so long afterwards. It's like, you got to run that thing underwater, man. You got to put some ice on that. You can't tell. You can't tell at all. Yeah. Terrified of biting his own tongue off, but fry a hand. Let's do it. Let's go there. I also think like the arrow through the leg and then he shoves the arrow through both legs to kill the guy. Yeah.

I think you're right, Jeff. There's something about that's a horrifying way to kill someone. It's pretty bad. Even if you could feel no pain, you'd probably be really upset by that. Oh, my God. That's really upsetting. You got through your whole life as a normal human being. You fall in love and now you're stabbing people through the head with an arrow? Come on!

I think the setup to this movie is actually really good in terms of how it establishes their relationship, but also him as a person like, nobody told me, people said I would not be alive past 25. And like, you have a lot of sympathy for this character. I guess it just, you know, cashes all that in for everything he does after, you know? Yeah.

I thought it was cool seeing his house in the morning and he has all these tennis balls on everything to prevent him from getting injured. There's some cool world-building stuff there. But anyway. The other thing that I found... disturbing that i couldn't i couldn't think about too long because i would get too weirded out is when his head is trapped under the tire oh yeah yeah oh man

That is so disturbing to me. And I don't know why, I don't think I've ever seen that in a movie before, but it feels like just a total no brainer of, you know, the, the hydraulic lift, like crushing someone. Yeah. Yep.

Well, Jeff, we're really like two for two this week in terms of recommending things that trigger Jeff Kanata specifically. This is a trigger week for me for sure. There's a lot of body horror in this movie, more than I expected. Because this movie is directed by the guys who did Steakland 2, which I... I've never seen, but they've done a lot of horror in the past from what I've seen. I got to say, I think, you know, I have never liked Jack Quaid's character.

in The Boys. I thought he's kind of an annoying presence to me. But I really appreciate that he's taking chances these days. He's making this movie. Novocaine Companion is a movie he was in recently as well. I don't understand your guys' distaste for him. I like him. I'm just saying too much of him. First of all, I just said I liked him in both of those movies. Also, he was in...

the most recent Scream movie, right? Yes. Two Screams ago? Whatever the Scream movie he was in, he was good in. And I actually think... These movies deserve better. None of the movies I just mentioned, other than Scream, did particularly well. I think they actually deserve better at the box office. People should check these out because they're cool movies. Companions, excellent. Yes, for sure.

All right, folks. Well, at the end of the day, it is really impressive that Dan Burke and Robert Olson made a movie. And it's a movie that I liked a lot more than Devinder and Jeff, which is actually kind of rare in general on the podcast, I have to say. Yeah. But when you come to think about that this movie is all about just revolting circumstances, it does track, right? Yeah, it tracks. Yeah, for sure, for sure.

All right. Anyway, that's going to bring us to the end of this week's episode of the Filmcast. You can find more episodes of this podcast at thefilmcast.com. Email us at slashfilmcastgmail.com. Support the show at patreon.com slash filmpodcast. Our theme song comes from Tim McEwen from The Middie. Our spoiler bumper and weekly plugs music comes from Noah Ross, who also edited this episode with videos. This is provided by John Barry and Kurt Mega next week on the podcast.

It's going to be Death of a Unicorn. Death of a Unicorn. This movie was at South by Southwest. Now it's going to be in theaters. We're going to talk about it here on the Filmcast. Should be a fun time. Until then, we'll see you later. Goodbye.