Ken Goes East

 Get ready to go East! This episode has an Asian twist, kicking off with a fresh, hilarious segment in a new 100-part series, 'Better Than Gigli!' where Ken dives into Rotten Tomatoes' infamous list of the 100 worst movies. First up: M. Night Shyamalan’s epic misfire, The Last Airbender (brace yourselves). Then, it’s back to our regular program as we unpack the dazzling vibes of Chungking Express and the soul-stirring Past Lives. So grab your chopsticks, dish up some beef chow mein, and settle in as Ken Goes East! 

Check us out at www.passpiratepay.com

Chapters

• 2:19 The Last Airbender
• 20:19 Chungking Express
• 35:48 Past Lives
• 51:14 Past Lives Review

Transcript

[music]
Hello everybody and welcome to a very special episode of Past Pirate Pay, the movie discussion show.
My name is Ken, I'm your host alongside my co-host Andy.
Hello there. Hello Andy. Today is, as I said, a very special episode.
Oh please explain Ken. We are going to be debuting a brand new segment on the show, which is called Better Than Glee.
Uh-huh. Wherein, I, not you, you're saving yourself from this one.
I am, I'm not doing anything except listening.
Yeah, you're not asking questions.
But I will be watching selections from the 100 worst movies of all time, as selected by Rotten Tomatoes.
And there is a segment that's called Better Than Glee because Glee is the worst movie that I have ever seen.
I saw that movie in the theater in 2003 and I, as I walked out of theater, I said,
"That's the worst movie I've ever seen and in the intervening 21 years, I have not seen anything that has made me change my mind."
Nothing's top that, nothing, nothing.
Wow.
So, uh, we've got the bottom 100 according to Rotten Tomatoes and we're going to see if we can find something
that is in some way better or worse than Glee.
Yeah.
And it's a 100-part series.
And that's right. This is episode one of our 100-part series.
[laughs]
But so because we're doing the Better Than Glee section, instead of our usual trio of themed movies,
we're only doing two themers.
So we, uh, we asked our friend Mark, say, "Hey, Mark, come up with two movies that are in some way connected."
And he just spat out two movies.
So today's, uh, other two selections.
Oh, the Better Than Glee selection is the number 100 movie on the worst 100 movies of all time,
which is "M Night Channel Ones, The Last Airbender."
That's what we're doing.
Uh, and then our other two movies will be "1994's Chungking Express"
and "2023's Past Lives," which is a duo of movies about lost love, uh, starring Asian people, basically.
[laughs]
Yeah.
So, yeah, that's what we're going to be doing.
So, let's jump right into it.
Let's get into the first "Better Than Glee" segment.
All right, so, but first our theme.
All right, so here it is.
Here it is.
Uh, so as I said,
"Geelee is the worst movie that I've ever seen, and the way we're going to be, in addition to our regular
past pirate pay system for this, uh, for this recurring segment, uh, because we are still going to be
ranking them past pirate or pay, or I'm going to be.
We should, yeah.
You know, who knows?
I'm assuming many of them are going to be past, but you never know.
Sometimes critics get things wrong, yeah.
But in addition to that, I've come up with a three-part ranking system.
Uh, we're going to, I'm going to rank these movies on a scale from one to ten in three different
categories, uh-huh.
And those categories are going to be disrespect for the audience's intelligence.
Okay.
Because "Geelee" is, uh, I don't know if you know this, it's about a hit woman whose, uh,
hard is warmed by a person with mental disability.
Oh, and I didn't know that.
Yeah, yeah.
The next category is misuse of resources, both financial and human.
Uh, "Geelee" cost $54 million to make.
Stars Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Al Pacino, and Christopher Walken.
That's, uh, that's quite a cast.
That's right.
That's right.
Uh, so, uh, misspent resources.
Uh, and, uh, they find a category will be unpleasantness of viewing experience.
"Geelee" is the first movie I ever saw that prompted me to write a movie review after it was over.
Oh wow.
And in that review, it started your career.
That's right.
In that review, I said that, "had I walked out of the theater and seen Jennifer Lopez standing
there naked asking me to have sex with her, I would have shoved her down a flight of stairs."
At one point in the theater, in a crowded theater in New York City, the movie took so long
to get over with that I actually shouted out, "Good God" in the middle of the theater because the movie
refused to end.
It was a very, very painful experience.
So, with these three categories, we're gonna be, I'm gonna be scoring each movie I watch on
the scale from one to 10 and, uh, level nine will be the "Geelee" level for all of these things.
So, that's the second and the second.
That's exactly right.
All right.
It seems impossible to me that any movie can ever get a 10 if "Geelee" is only a nine in these categories.
But it's got categories.
Big circle.
So, here we go.
Here we go.
Exactly.
So, "Geelee" is earning a score of 27th, nine times three on our, on our three-part scale.
Okay.
In the course of this 100 series, 100 movie series, we're going to find out if any movie can top a score of 27
and become worse than "Geelee."
All right.
Sounds fair.
All right.
So, let's get right into it.
We're going to 2010 and the director, M. Knight, Shyamalan's "The Last Airbender."
All right.
I should start off by saying that this movie is based on an animated series called "Avatar,
The Last Airbender."
This series is very well regarded.
It has a lot of very serious fans.
Have you ever watched a show?
Never have.
I don't like anime.
Yeah.
I have never seen the show either and I know nothing about it.
Okay.
So, if you're a fan of the show and you're listening to this and you're wondering why I'm not talking
more about it, it's because I just don't know anything about it.
I'm only interested in the movie and boy, is this movie something?
Yeah.
It's quite unbelievable.
So, as the number 100 movie out of the 100 worst movies, so this is the best of the worst
on our list.
It has a 4% score on Rotten Tomatoes, 4% and I would be lying if I said I didn't understand
why that was.
This is a Nickelodeon Studios production and it feels like it was a half hour episode
of Nickelodeon Television show from 1991 stretched out into film length.
The production values are terrible even though I looked it up and this movie cost $150 million
to make.
It looks awful.
Somebody's pocketing some money.
Really, really bad.
The acting, many of the main characters are kids and they're all terrible.
You think of child actors as being like wooden and not really able to handle big emotions
and these kids are universally that way.
Spectacularly bad.
Every piece of dialogue in this movie, all the characters ever do is just speak in exposition.
They're just explaining what's happening with the plot as it's going on.
That's the entire dialogue of the whole movie.
The sets look so obviously fake.
Like whenever characters are interacting with background, it just looks like cardboard that
has been constructed one hour before the movie.
This is a bad movie.
This is an ineptly made movie and I'm going to get into right now the theory I have as to
why that is.
Around this time I developed an M. Night Shyamalan theory and I'm very excited to share it
with our audience at this time.
Have you ever seen the village?
The M. Night Shyamalan movie?
When I saw that movie.
I kind of liked it.
I really liked it.
It's one of my favorite M. Night Shyamalan movies.
While I was watching that movie, this is going to contain a mild spoiler for the, or I guess
a pretty big spoiler for the village, but the movie is very old so I'm not too worried about
it.
While I was watching that movie, I was thinking to myself, the dialogue in this movie is
really terrible.
The characters are all speaking in this old timey language, but it seems like it was written
by someone who has no idea how to, old timey people would actually have spoken like.
And then, just asking.
Right.
And then when the reveal, the big M. Night Shyamalan twist comes from the movie, realize that the
film is actually taking place in present day.
So the dialogue makes sense.
And it makes sense.
Yeah.
And I was immediately thinking to myself, wow, he wrote incredibly good bad dialogue.
Like he's really good at intentionally writing bad dialogue.
Yeah.
And then after that, M. Night Shyamalan made a trio of movies.
He made the happening.
Oh.
He made the last airbender and he made after earth.
And those movies are spectacularly bad.
Yeah, they are very, very bad.
But I think M. Night Shyamalan is doing this on purpose.
Yeah.
M. Night Shyamalan went through is going to be a twist later or something.
No, no.
I think M. Night Shyamalan went through what I would like to call his Andy Kaufman period.
The man only wants to fuck with his audience.
And there are clues scattered throughout this with these movies.
In the happening, there is a scene happening.
The plot is people will start killing themselves for no reason.
But it's not just like they pick up a gun and blow their brains out.
Like they come up with ridiculous and elaborate ways to kill them.
They get very creative.
Yeah.
At one point, a guy jumps into a lion habitat at the zoo.
And like slaps a lion in the face.
There's another one where a guy takes a riding lawnmower.
He's riding it and then he gets off of it.
Turns the wheels so that the mower is spinning around in a circle and then just lays down so
that the mower will run over him.
Like this is hilarious stuff.
This is really funny, good stuff.
And then in the last airbender, the ultimate bad guy in the movie is played by Asif Mondvie
who at the time was a daily show correspondent.
I remember.
Something else.
And I don't think he's really done anything other than the last airbender and being on the
daily show since then.
I may have done other little things here and there, but yeah, I certainly can't recall ever
having seen him.
But like why on earth would you pick this guy to be the heavy in your movie unless you
want a signal that you're joking?
It's the only thing that makes sense.
And Asif Mondvie is reading all of his lines as though he was still a daily show correspondent.
He's speaking like this whenever he is making a point in any kind of dialogue.
Like it's crazy.
Why would you make a movie like this unless you're trying to fuck with people?
It's the only thing that makes sense.
This is, it's a Kung Fu movie.
Basically, there's a lot of martial arts going on except the, the movie is called the
last airbender because the main kid is an airbender.
He can move the air with his, by waving his hands around, he like pushes the air out
of people.
Okay.
And the way that the people move them is by like doing Tai Chi basically.
So it's a martial arts movie except while the people are fighting each other, they're just
doing martial arts at the air.
Like people are just doing spin kicks to sh*t in this.
And then this C.E. is doing everything else.
Like somebody will, somebody will do like a, like a crane kick and then a, a, a candle will
shoot fire at their enemy while that's happening.
It's totally ridiculous.
And I guess I'm, I, I'm guessing that this is a really silly version of the thing that is
done in the series.
But boy, it is so silly.
Like the movie starts with a narrator explaining these things about the benders.
And while that's happening, they're showing one of each of the benders doing their little
Tai Chi routine and shooting water at the, at the screen as it's happening.
Like he's coming directly at the camera.
There's some water have flying and some fire flying.
And it's just like, there's no one who could have seen this movie and thought, well, that
looks good.
Really happy about this.
This, this, the, the way that this, this, this, this, this, this land benders are moving
this, there's these rocks around.
That looks really cool.
I'm really happy about that.
It's just, I can't, I can't possibly have happened.
So the only thing that makes sense to me is that M. Night Shyamalan.
I think when, I remember when I saw the village, people were not happy about it.
I think people thought that the twist was stupid.
I remember predicting the twist from the trailer.
Oh, interesting.
It didn't occur to me.
I, I was just totally into it.
And prior to that, signs, I think people were really upset by the twist in signs also.
Oh, I love signs.
I love signs too.
I think it's great.
I think the ending is silly, but the movie on the whole is great.
It's really good.
And I feel the same way about the village of the village.
Yeah, I really don't think that signs really had a twist.
Yeah, okay.
But the ending, a little bit of a, it had an ending, but it didn't like re, you didn't rethink
the way you thought about the movie.
Yeah.
Like, I remember hearing people being upset about those movies.
The, about the ending specifically to those movies.
And, and the prevailing opinions seem to be like, boy, I'm getting sick of this M. Night
Shyamalan shit.
I'm just sick of his, his stick.
Uh-huh.
And I think that he heard those criticisms and he's like, well, I don't fuck you.
I'm going to go off and we're, I'm going to show you how bad it can get.
And he just took this money and he made these fucking unbelievable pieces of shit.
And like, there's no other explanation that makes sense to me because in, since then, he
started making movies that are better again.
Like, I think split was a very good movie.
I thought it was okay.
Uh, I, I thought it was excellent.
I really, I really enjoyed it.
And uh, you see the new one?
I thought, I, I, is not a great movie, but I thought like you can watch his movies and think
that the man obviously knows how to build suspense and create scenes of tension.
And you can't just have, he can't just have forgotten that, right?
Like he wasn't suffering from a head injury for five years while he made these terrible
movies.
Right.
He has to have been doing it on purpose.
So that is what I think those are bad.
Really bad.
Those are three very bad movies.
The happening I think is is actually an excellent comedy.
I think it, if you're, if you go into that movie and just watch it, thinking that you're
going to laugh at it, I think it works really well.
I remember when, when they revealed at the end, they go, it's the air.
The air is the bad guy.
And I'm like, Oh, Jesus, the air.
Yeah, yeah, that movie is running away from like breezy trees.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And Mark Wahlberg is a scientist.
It's just like the whole thing is so stupid.
It was just like, so yeah, that's, that's what I think.
The, the problem I think with this movie is that it doesn't really work that well as
a joke.
The happening I think works well as a joke because the death scenes are funny.
Uh-huh.
The last airbender, it seems like a prank that is only funny to the person playing the
prank.
I as the audience member who is being pranked did not find it to be especially bad.
I know.
If I remember right, uh, he really pissed off the fan base.
Oh, yeah.
People who love the series are, we're up in arms.
This thing exists.
Like, it's, it's very clear from the ending of this movie that he was, it's supposed to
be a series of movies, uh-huh.
But that was just never going to happen.
Yeah.
They claim the series this intellectual property.
They're just like, you can't let this guy anywhere here.
Yeah.
And I think they made another animated series after this movie.
Uh-huh.
And like they redid it again just to like get the Shamanlon taste out of their mouths.
Okay.
Um, but yeah, that's my real problem with this movie.
I just wish that the joke were funnier to anyone other than M night Shaman.
The other, the other very strange thing is a very young dev Patel is in this movie.
Okay.
Uh, and this was before Slumdog.
Yeah.
Actually, I, I don't remember what you're slumgy.
It's probably right around the same time.
Okay.
But I didn't know who Dev Patel was when I saw this movie.
So when I watched it just now for the second time, I was very shocked to see him there.
Okay.
And uh, he had not yet learned to act, uh, is my, is my critique of that one.
He, uh, he, he, he, he's not, he's not the dev Patel.
We've come to know and love this movie because I like Dev Patel.
I think he's a good actor.
Yeah.
This movie, no, it just didn't, uh, it just didn't come together.
Unless he was in on the joke, maybe that could be the, that could be the thing.
Or he was directed to act a certain way.
Uh, yeah, it, it could be, um, poof.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's, that is my thought on, uh, number 100 Rod Tomatoes bottom, bottom movies of all
time.
My thought is this movie is a joke.
It's the only thing that makes sense.
All right.
So are you ready to score them?
Yes.
Let's do it.
All right.
So yeah, let's go to the, uh, let's go to the Geelyometer.
All right.
So for disrespect for the audience's intelligence, I actually think this movie does respect the
audience's intelligence.
Okay.
Uh, well, in, on one level, it's a Nickelodeon movie.
So it is made for kids and so maybe he doesn't respect the kids all that much.
But I think he was hoping that his adult audience would get the joke.
Okay.
So I'm scoring it a three out of 10.
I think it's only a three level disc, disc respect.
Okay.
So the most of resources, as I said, this movie cost $150 million.
That's a lot of money.
I can't for the life of me understand where this money has gone.
So we're giving that a seven, a seven out of 10.
That should be high.
Also, the human resources of Dev Patel and I'm not channel on who are, who are quite
skilled Hollywood people.
They are totally not doing their best work in this case.
It's a shame.
Yeah.
It is a shame.
I'm not saying this is a viewing experience.
That's going to also be a three.
I didn't enjoy this movie, but it was not painful.
Okay.
It was just, I was like, this is, this is silly.
Is what you would expect out of the best of the worst?
Yeah.
It's, yeah, exactly.
If you're telling me that there are only 99 movies worse than this ever made, I would
say that the history of cinema is very rich indeed.
(laughs)
Okay.
But yes, so yeah, it's going to be a three is seven and a three.
We're giving this a 13 on the Glee Amateur.
Well, we're adding them together.
I didn't know that.
Oh, yeah.
Well, well.
Okay.
The 27 of Glee.
Gotcha.
So to answer the question, yes.
This movie is better than Glee.
Oh, there it is.
And Ken would it be a past pirate pay?
Yes.
This one is a pass.
Pass?
Yes.
There's going to be any pirate or pays on this list.
I'm very curious.
I can't say I'm excited for this segment because it is going to be torturous for me, I think,
you know, but hilarious.
Yes.
Always hilarious.
Also, we should announce that this is a spin off from Quit Your Day Job Radio.
That is true.
A spin off segment.
Yes.
Our friends had a podcast some 10, something years ago called Quit Your Day Job Radio.
And on that show, I was brought on to review some truly atrocious media.
Yeah, only truly.
They never gave you anything good.
Exactly.
They find the worst of the worst.
Exactly.
And send you out to review it.
Yes.
Exactly.
I did watch the Adam Sandler vehicle Jack and Jill.
That's right.
That's great.
Do you listen to some One Direction?
Yep.
Yeah.
These are the things that happen on that podcast.
So we're reviving that.
Yeah.
I hope that this segment is more fun for you, the audience than it is for me because, you
know, I'm out here in the trenches.
You're watching this garbage for you.
That's right.
You're the brave soldier slogging through the shit.
All right.
So moving on, we're going to get away from the Rotten Tomatoes worst movies of all time
and get into some other movies.
Our first selection of Asian characters losing love is 1994's Chun-King Express.
Yes.
Directed by Wang Kar-Wai.
This movie is about two police officers in Hong Kong.
They're two not very interconnected stories.
They just kind of happen to take place in the same place of cops who are dealing with heart
break.
Their girlfriends have just broken up with them.
And the way they deal with it, they're just dealing with it in different ways.
And that's really it as far as plot goes.
This is a very plot light movie.
Yeah.
So the first story is about cop number 223.
That's basically all he's known to.
And we never see his girlfriend.
He's just been dumped by her.
And he's very, very heartbroken over it.
He's going to these various convenience stores looking for cans of pineapple that are
going to expire at the end of the month.
And he's got it in his head that if she doesn't come back to him by the end of the month,
it's all going to be over with.
So he's going through all of the stores that he can find, trying to find pineapples that
are going to expire on the day that his love may be expiring.
And he's just got all of these cans of pineapple.
You know, at one point he's interacting with a clerk in the clerk.
He's, do you have any pineapple for the 30th?
And he's like, tomorrow's the 30th.
Why would I have expired pineapple on my shelves?
You know, this is just doesn't get it.
But he's such, he's, he's quite a sad sack.
He is just moping about his, about his lost love.
And at some point he winds up in a bar and he's interacting with this woman who's involved
in some nefarious criminal underworld dealings.
She's some sort of drug runner.
She's got some kind of thing going where she's got a bunch of Indian guys and she's going
to put them on a plane to Mule Drugs.
She's wearing some drugs.
And as she's in the airport putting these guys on the plane, she turns back and they're
gone.
And with all the drugs, all the drugs are gone.
And now she's going to be dead.
So she and cop number two 233 233 233, they wind up in the same bar together and this woman,
she's played by an extra same Bridget Lynn.
She's wearing a blonde wig and sunglasses and a trench coat.
And she just looks like the coolest person you've ever seen in the world.
She's filmed very lovingly and she just, she seems effortlessly cool.
So she's sitting in the bar looking super dope and the cop is looking like a blueberry sad
sack and he comes up and he's trying to hit on her.
He's like, do you like pineapple?
You know, he hits the pineapple stuff really hard.
Real quick.
Yeah.
He doesn't really seem like he's got a lot of moves.
He also mentions that he likes jogging when he's sad so that he's going to sweat out all the
water from his body so he can't cry anymore.
So he also asks the woman in the bar if she likes to jog.
Yeah.
So, you know, he's not the smoothest operator.
But it's just such a contrast between his neediness and patheticness and her just effortless
coolness and she just doesn't seem to want to have anything to do with it.
And he is the worst police officer in the world.
It seems like like at one point they show him like tackling some guy and wrestling him to
the ground and he's like, this is the first person I've arrested in months.
And he meets this woman in the bar and all he can think to do is try to hit on her but this
horrible criminal enterprise is going on.
She's worried about being killed by the people who supplied her with the drugs and he is
not aware of any of it.
All he is doing, all he is interested in is trying to get this woman to go out on a date
with him.
Yeah.
Eventually, she winds up killing one of the guys who set her up who was her lover at
the time.
We see him in a different bar where he's got a different woman that he's a white guy but
he's got a different Chinese woman and a blonde wig.
Yeah.
Exactly.
It seems like the same exact kind of wig and so she encounters him in a back alley.
She plugs him.
He's dead.
Yeah.
The whole thing.
We're not really interested in her beyond her being an object of his affection.
So the subplot, the story ends with the month changing and he just eats his expired pineapple
alone in his apartment.
It's just sad.
He just winds up being sad.
And the way we connect to the other story is he winds up at this food counter.
It's called the midnight express.
Not sure why the movie is called chunking express.
Actually, I've seen it several times and I chunking express is not something that's ever
said.
Doesn't mean midnight.
I don't know, actually, but yeah, he's at this.
He's at this lunch counter called the midnight express and the owner of the lunch counter
is constantly trying to pimp out his all of his employees.
So he's like, why don't you ask this woman out for a date?
She's nice.
Why don't you ask her out?
She seems nice.
Why?
I'm hoping it's not going to do you any good.
And then we see his newest employee, a woman, a young woman trying to be pimped out on
said one cop, but the cop is not having it.
And then another cop shows up and the woman at the lunch counter becomes infatuated with
him.
Uh-huh.
So the second story is the second cop has his girlfriend has also just broken up with
him.
She was a flight attendant.
And he is also kind of heartbroken, but he's not pathetic like the other guy.
He's just kind of getting on with his life.
And the lunch counter woman, our name is Fay.
She decides she's going to break into his apartment and clean it.
Right.
Well, she has the keys.
Yeah, she gets the keys because she's delivering something at one point he gives her a key
to deliver something.
No, no, no, no, it was the letter, right?
The letter from the ex.
Yes, that's right.
So his ex breaks up with him.
His flight attendant ex breaks up with him with a via a letter and it winds up at the midnight
express tacked onto a bulletin board.
Yeah, she leaves it there and said next time you see him in the show, right?
So he's not concerned about it, but they're all like, oh, we still have that letter for you.
We still have that letter for you.
We've seen it open.
Yeah, everybody at the chastener, everybody at the lunch counter knows what's in the letter.
Yeah.
And the cop who's who the letter is for doesn't care at all.
Yeah.
But he's like, here's the key to my apartment.
If you're in the vicinity, just drop it off there sometime.
That'll be fine.
Uh-huh.
So she just goes into his apartment and just starts hanging out there.
She's cleaning his floors.
She's washing his dishes.
She's eating food while she's there.
She's just kind of hanging out there.
Yeah.
And at some point he comes home and she's there and she's hiding from him.
And he has this thing where he's talking to all the inanimate objects in his apartment
right about his ex-girlfriend.
He's like, oh, Mr. Soap, why are you so sad?
Yeah.
You know, and things like that.
You're losing weight.
Yeah.
The soap is getting worn down.
He's like, you need to eat more.
You're losing weight.
And then she replaces it with a new bar of soap.
And he's like, soap, you're really letting your soap go.
Like, and so, yeah, he is also a terrible police officer.
You would think because he is not noticing that this woman is doing all of these things
to his apartment.
No.
Or he's in his apartment or being replaces.
His sheets are different.
Right.
And he's just continuing to pretend as though the inanimate objects are having a life of their
own like toy story.
Right.
Right.
Like, yeah, his sheets are different sheets, but he's like, oh, you've decided to move on
by becoming a different color.
Like.
But yeah.
So eventually he realizes what's going on that she has been basically stalking him.
And he asks around on a date.
And she is very happy.
And then she does not show up for the date.
She becomes a flight attendant herself.
She leaves Hong Kong and doesn't return for a year.
A year later, he is now the owner of the midnight express.
And she shows up there.
And we're going to see what happens with them.
You know, let's say the movie ends on an up note where it's like maybe these two crazy
kids are going to get together or not.
You just don't know.
But yeah.
So that's the plot.
The plot of these movies of these two stories is very much not important to me at all.
I know you're a very big on plot person.
Yeah.
And as we talked about with the terrifying stuff, I think it was a mood is so much more important
than plot to me.
And the mood in this movie is just so cool.
Like Hong Kong just seems like a place I would really want to go hang out based on this
movie.
And I just really want to hang out with these people.
Like maybe not the sad sack cops, but like like, Fae, the cookie, the Korean manic pixie
dream girl.
Yeah, she's so good.
I think she seems like he's a lot of fun.
The music is hugely important in this in this movie.
Yeah.
It was kind of weird.
I noticed that.
So in like in each place, it has its own signage character.
Yeah.
It's like Peter and the wolf.
Yeah.
So in the first movie, whenever the woman in the blonde wig is in a bar, there's this
Rage song.
It's called the things in life.
And it's a really cool Rage song just and it sets the mood at the bar every time just makes
it seem like a lot of like that.
You're right.
It's like Peter in the wolf.
This is how this is how we're supposed to feel when she's on screen.
And then Korean manic pixie dream girl will be portrayed by California dream and the
mom is in the pop.
So then in the next section, yeah, whenever she's at the lunch counter, she's always listening
to the mom is in the pop is California dream.
Right.
And then when she's in his apartment, she's listening to dreams by the cranberries, but it's a
Korean version.
It's a cover.
Yeah.
Chinese.
Yeah.
And I actually looked it up.
It's the cover is done by the actress who plays Fey herself.
Oh.
Yeah.
So she's actually singing it on the screen, which in 1994 would have been a massive hit.
Yeah.
Exactly.
And I remember the first time I saw this movie, I listened to California dream and dreams
for months afterwards just over.
Oh, yeah.
Like I was like, man.
You see this when it came out?
No, I didn't.
So when this movie came out, it came out the same year as Pulp Fiction.
And my Pulp Fiction came out.
Everybody in the world was like, hey, this Quentin Tarantino guy seems like he's seen a lot
of movies.
What are what he thinks about movies?
And so there was a huge influx of movies that were from foreign countries that came in as
Quentin Tarantino presents.
Oh.
And Chung-Kang Express is one of them.
Oh, this is one of them, huh?
Yeah.
This movie came out.
It was Quentin Tarantino presents Chung-Kang Express.
Everybody should watch this movie because Quentin Tarantino has decided that it's good.
And I happened to agree with it.
Just a little side note.
You know what other movie Quentin Tarantino thought was good?
What's that?
Joker, too?
Joker fully.
Did you read his review of it?
I did.
Yeah.
Because it felt very similar to what you said.
Yeah.
He is totally on my corner.
Yeah.
This Quentin Tarantino.
Yeah.
You know, he's, I think he must be a fan of the podcast.
He probably is.
He probably heard us.
Yep.
Yep.
And goes, yeah, they're right.
And then went on an interview show and forgot that he heard us.
Yeah, exactly.
Quentin, I know you're listening.
And I'm a big fan of yours, too.
So it's, we have a mutual admiration going on.
I know you're listening.
Yeah.
What did you think of this movie?
I really, I don't know if I liked it very much.
I just got done watching it just a few minutes ago.
I don't know why you had to have the two stories.
The whole time during the second story.
I was waiting for it to somehow circle back and connect and it never did.
You know, and then by the end of it, I was like, oh, this is just a whole nother thing.
Yeah.
And I'm like, wow, why do we need to do that?
I did, I did like the whole mood of it, though, you're right.
Yeah.
I like the whole vibe of it.
I think that the acting was pretty good.
Like, it felt like a romantic comedy.
Yeah.
It felt like a goofy kind of little screw ball romantic comedy.
It wasn't that heavy.
Yep.
And there was a lot, there was some dope and shootings in the first, but even that was kind
of light.
Yeah.
It's not, it never feels like the woman in the blonde wig is, it becomes pretty apparent
that her life is going to be in danger, but like she looks scared for exactly three seconds
just in the, in the movie, right?
And then we're just kind of feeling, all right, well, I'm sure it's going to be fine.
Yeah.
We're just not really thinking about it, right?
And yeah, you're right.
It's a, it's a pretty light movie.
Yeah.
But I didn't love it.
Yeah.
When Mark suggested this movie, I, I thought you were not going to like it at all.
That was my thought.
I just thought that it was too, plot light for your sensibilities.
Yeah.
I mean, but you're right.
Like in a romantic comedy, like you watch those for chemistry, you watch those for comedy.
Yeah.
And I didn't think it was terribly light on plot.
I think both stories had a plot.
Yeah.
And like you have this woman running around trying to save herself.
Yeah.
And then this guy trying to get laid in those paths converging.
Right.
Like that was something, you know?
And the second one where she's infatuated and she's in his apartment and he doesn't know
and the back and forth between that, that was, that was a plot.
That was fun to watch, you know?
So there was definitely, you know, a journey that you took that I could appreciate.
I just, I, I just didn't know why we needed the two stories.
Yeah.
Bobby is less about the characters than it is about the idea, right?
Uh-huh.
He seems like he just wants to be, this is what it looks like when someone is too busy
wallowing over lost love to be able to experience new love.
Uh-huh.
You know, like is that's what both, both the cops should be doing?
Yeah.
Like if, maybe if, if the stupid cop in the first part weren't so pathetically hung up
on his last girlfriend, he would actually be able to do something with blonde, with the
woman in the blonde way.
Yeah.
Even a bit talking about pineapple.
Right.
And maybe if the, if the cop in the second movie had had not been so blind about thinking
about his stupidest girlfriend, he would be able to realize a lot quicker that Fay was
stalking him and be like, Hey, she's actually pretty cool, right?
It just seems like the idea is more important than the people.
The people are just there to illustrate the idea.
Okay.
That's what it seemed like to me.
That's the way I look at it.
That's fine.
Yeah.
It's all I got for this one.
Well, what would be your recommendation?
This would be pass, pirate or pay?
Well, so this one is definitely a pay for me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm probably a pirate.
Okay.
Probably a pirate.
It was, it was not my favorite.
Uh, what was it?
Hong Kong is from Hong Kong.
Yeah.
Cause I thought these were all Korean movies.
No, no.
Yeah.
This one is Hong Kong.
Um, yeah.
I'm, I'm pleasantly surprised actually when, I, I would have, I would have bet you
were a pass on this one before, before we had our conversation.
Well, I am full of surprises.
I like it.
I like it.
All right.
Okay.
Our final movie this episode is 2023's past lives.
Uh, that's directed by Celine Song.
It is the story of two people, Nora and Hay Song.
The movie starts their 12 years old in Seoul, South Korea and they're like in young love.
They're kids, they're 12 year old kids and 12 year old kid love.
But then Nora's parents make the decision that they're going to move to Canada and the
kids are split up.
So yeah, we get a very brief period of their life in Seoul and they go on a date.
They're out of their, they're just two kids very adorably holding hands in a park, playing
around on these, uh, on this little silver statue.
Uh, but then Nora's family moves across the world and they're, they're gone.
And this would be in what like 2001?
Yeah.
2002.
So yeah, the movie takes place in three different timelines and they're all 12 years
apart.
Okay.
So I assume the first one is like 1999 issue.
Okay.
So abruptly after, like as soon as Nora's family arrives in Toronto, uh, we get a graphic
on the screen.
It's his 12 years later.
And now Nora is a young adult and we see her talking to her mom on the phone.
She's now moved to New York City.
And she's looking up people that they used to know in Korea and she's like, Oh, what was
that boy?
Like on, on my space or Facebook or whatever it would have been.
Yeah.
Uh, Hay Song.
Remember I went on that date with him.
I wonder what he's up to.
Nora's father is a filmmaker.
And on the Facebook page of his latest movie, there's a message from Hay Song trying to
find her.
So eventually they reconnect and they just start video chatting.
Yeah.
And they video chat for a little while and initially, you know, it's a little tentative and awkward.
It's like, Oh, we used to, we used to be so cute together and then whatever.
But they, they pretty quickly like really reconnect with each other.
And it just, it seems like, you know, these people are old friends and they just pick
it right back up again.
And we see time passing through kind of montagey thing of them video chatting more and more
and more and more.
But eventually they're on entirely different continents.
They're really far away.
The time difference is immense.
And Nora decides that she's come all this way.
She moved from, from, from Korea.
Now she moved to New York from Canada and she really just needs to focus on being in New
York.
So she tells Hay Song, I, I can't do this anymore.
We got to stop chatting for a little while.
Pretty quickly after that.
It's 12 years later again.
Yeah.
And we find out that Hay Song is going to take a visit to New York.
Nora is now married.
She met at American at a writer's retreat on Long Island.
They live together in New York.
She's married to him.
They're, they seem to be very happy.
And Hay Song is coming to take a visit to New York.
Basically we, we realize that the reason he's coming is because he is still in love with
Nora and they want to reconnect.
And then the final, basically half of the movie is the two of them reconnecting in New York
and then the two of them with Nora's husband having a very awkward encounter together.
And yeah, that's the, and we just realize what's going to happen with, with these people.
Are they meant to be together or are they not?
Right?
So again, yeah.
That's basically the entire plot of the movie.
So the movie opens with a scene from the third section where Nora and Hay Song are in
the bar and Nora's husband is sitting on the other side of her.
And there's a conversation happening away from them at the bar for people we don't see.
They're like, what's going on with those people?
I think that the woman is married to the white guy and the Asian guy is her brother.
Like, no, no, no, no.
I think that they're on vacation and he's there translator.
Like, they're in a bar at four o'clock in the afternoon.
What does that make sense?
But then later on when we see the scene, we realize that like it's these two very old acquaintances
and they're having a conversation.
And the reason why it looks like they're not really talking to the white dude is because
Hay Song speaks almost no English.
So they're having to have this conversation in Korean.
And he's just, and her husband, Arthur is just sitting there at the bar listening to his
wife talk to this handsome Korean man in Korean having no idea what's going on.
And it's very awkward.
But yeah, so I want to do something that we haven't done before.
I want to read a quote, a pretty extended quote from the movie.
Okay.
Because I think it's, it does a really good job of illustrating what the movie is going for.
Okay.
So pretty, pretty soon after Nora meets her soon to be husband, this is in the second
timeline or a little after the second timeline, I guess.
She has a conversation with him and she says this says there's a word.
In Korean, in-yan, it means providence or fate, but it's specifically about relationships
between people.
I think it comes from Buddhism and reincarnation.
And it's in-yan if two strangers even walk by each other in the street and their clothes
accidentally brush because it means there must have been something between them in their
past lives.
If two people get married, they say it's because there have been 8,000 layers of in-yan
over 8,000 lifetimes.
And their husbands like, do you really believe that?
And she basically says, no, it's pretty much something that Koreans say just to get laid.
But this idea of in-yan and past lives is basically the entire theme of the movie.
And it uses past lives in two different senses.
Like past lives in the Buddha sense where she and her husband are talking about like they
have this in-yan.
They're married now.
They must have these, do they have the 8,000 lifetimes that passed between them beforehand
and now that they're in this lifetime, they're meant to be together?
Or are she and his son?
Do they have what's with their in-yan?
How many past lives have they gone through?
And at one point, he's like, what if this is just one of our past lives?
And in the future, we're going to be married.
And this is one of the 8,000 times before that.
And we're just constantly talking about that.
And in the other sense, we all have past lives within our lives, right?
Like her past life is when she was a kid in Korea.
And that's when she knew Hey Song.
And he never left that life.
So he is still fixated on her.
But she doesn't spend a whole lot of time thinking about him because that was a previous
life.
And that's like, that's really real to me, right?
Because I'm thinking about myself.
And I moved here from New York.
I moved here to Vegas 19 years ago.
And New York just seems like another lifetime for me ago.
You know what I mean?
Like, if I were to encounter somebody that I knew when I was 21 years old living in New York,
it's like, I'm in a totally different person now.
I would have no idea how to relate to those people.
You know what I mean?
Like I think the movie is getting at that two senses of past lives.
And it just does it in like a really beautiful and poetic way.
This movie is really deliberately paced.
Like there's a lot of really slow tracking shots of just people walking around having conversations.
It reminded me there are a bunch of shots when Hey Song first gets to New York.
There are a bunch of shots of the two of them where they're a very small part of the frame
walking through New York.
And most of the frame is just taken up with an image of New York, like bridges in the background
or buildings or the river or anything.
And it just looks really great.
It reminded me of like the very best Woody Allen movies.
You know, I was going to say that.
Yeah.
That was my first thought when I watched this movie.
It was like, man, this movie reminds me of Manhattan or Annie Hall or just like these
fantastic Woody Allen movies.
And I think I think Celine Song's sense of pace is is masterful.
You know, like she doesn't rush anything.
The movie jumps pretty quickly between timelines.
But while you're in a scene, every scene takes its time and is allowed to play out in these
great ways, there's a scene after Nora and Hey Song meet up for the first time in New York.
She goes home and she's talking to her husband and he starts talking to her about how great
a story it would be if she and Hey Song got together.
And it's like their life and their marriage together is so boring because their marriage
was like done out of convenience.
Like she got married to him earlier.
She says they got married earlier than they normally would have because she wanted to get
a green card because he's an American citizen.
So their life is just so boring when you compare it to this story, this love story that could
be told of her reconnecting with her childhood sweetheart that they only see each other.
They only interacted every 12 years apart.
And it's like, this is the most romantic story and our and reality sucks compared to that.
She's just like, but you're forgetting the fact that like I actually love you and I don't
love him.
It's just like sometimes reality is a lot less interesting than the story book version,
but at the same time it has the advantage of being real.
And I just thought it was so beautiful.
Yeah, I just I don't know.
I just love it.
I just I was so I this movie I just watched before before we started recording.
I watched I finished watching it about an hour before we started recording.
And you had not seen it?
No, no, I had seen it.
I had seen it once before.
Yeah, I thought you had.
Yeah.
I was watching it and I'm just I just it's just one of those movies that it just kind of like
washes over me and and I just I feel like I'm 100% on board with what the director was trying
to do.
And it just worked everything she was trying to do just worked on me.
And it just yeah, I just I really love it.
Spoiler warning spoilers ahead skip to the next chapter or minute marker 51 11 to hear
the verdict.
You have been warned.
So the scene in the bar that we see a glimpse of at the very beginning with the three of them
when it happens the second time when we're actually able to see what's going on with them.
Yeah, we see this connection that Nora and Hay sang have and we're and the camera just
keeps cutting back every once in a while to her husband and he's looking worried annoyed
like this guy with my wife and we've already had the conversation about what a great story
he thinks it would be if she left him for the other guy.
And so it seems like there's a question is this is like what's going to happen between these
two, but the movie ends where it's just like she walks him out and puts him in an Uber.
They have a little hug.
He gets in the Uber goes away and she walks back and her husband standing right outside
their apartment and you know they hug and and she starts crying.
But at the same time, you know, she's crying in her husband's arms and it seems to me
like she's kind of thinking about the things that he was talking about is like man life is
weird.
Reality is boring, but wonderful and the story book, the story book would be wonderful, but
ridiculous.
And it just kind of gets to her and just she and she just starts crying and yeah, I don't
know.
I think it's so well done.
It's the end it just such a great ending to this story because the movie is not really
doing big things.
It's just doing small things and it's doing the small things really well.
And I think the two, I guess the three lead performances are all just fantastic.
I think Tau U who plays Hay Song in particular is so good.
And I've never seen him before.
I think his characters English is bad because I'm guessing the actor probably doesn't speak
much English because Nora is played by Gretelie who is Korean American actress.
So she her English is perfect, but his English is not there.
So almost all of his scenes are in Korean, but his face is so expressive.
The scene where she tells him in the middle period that she never wants to talk or she doesn't
want to talk to him again for a while.
Like he's just there on the verge of tears and like doesn't know what to do with himself.
And his face is just so perfect in that scene.
I just I just kind of love it.
Yeah, I don't know.
What did you think?
I couldn't disagree more.
Yeah, I did not like this movie.
Wow.
I think all the things that you loved about it, I didn't see.
I thought the acting was deadpan throughout most of it.
Wow.
I didn't think the acting was it was very just deadpan like there was no emotion.
I saw very little subtle glimpses of emotion.
Oh, wow.
And the only time I really saw was at the end when she started crying in his arms.
The scene where they first meet up in New York and she gives him like a really long affectionate
hug and he has no idea that this is coming.
Like you can tell he's not expecting it.
So he's not even hugging her back at first.
It's like I just thought their faces were doing so much work there.
I thought it was great.
Oh, I didn't.
Wow.
I didn't see it.
That's wow.
I'm like this is a love story without any love or it's like a Woody Allen movie with
no love or joy.
Oh, wow.
And I just I didn't see any of that.
I saw that they were trying for it.
I thought the dialogue was bad.
I thought that when they were talking to each other, do you have a girlfriend?
Oh, I had a girlfriend.
And they're just these deadpan lines.
I think the dialogue is so good.
And one thing I really one thing you mentioned that I really hate about Oscar bait movies is
long shots of nothing.
Long shots of a wall or wind blowing and it's always it always bugs me.
It never makes sense.
There was no long shots of nothing.
There was long shots of a bunch of stuff.
You mentioned it long tracking shots, but it's the people in the shots.
Oh, yeah, but there were also like, but the characters are in the shots that are that
they're tracking.
Like some of those fine, but like you could tell they were just there was just like it
was really slow paced.
It was really slow paced.
And maybe that was deliberate and that's fine.
I just found it insanely boring.
Oh, I thought that movie was insanely boring.
And like I get that she was talking about like, you know, that girl that's not me anymore.
Yeah.
And that was the whole past lives thing.
I'm like, okay, I did not like it.
I didn't like it.
Wow.
Yeah, I mean, I understand not liking it.
That's understandable, but like not thinking that the acting is good or that the dialogue is
good.
That's really bananas to me.
I think this is one of the best written movies I've seen in a long, long time.
Oh, not me.
As it felt like to me, it was written by a middle schooler.
I it's unbelievable, unbelievable.
Wow.
All right.
That's, yeah.
All right.
You are full of surprises.
All right.
Yeah.
So for past lives, is it a past pirate or pay?
This is a huge, huge pay for me.
This is like, I can honestly say this is one of my favorite movies of this last decade.
I love this movie.
Yeah.
And it's a hard past for me.
Wow.
Wow.
All right.
So there it is.
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