Visions of Tomorrow

The boys have a great time talking about their favorite dystopian sci-fi movies. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Hello, movie lovers. It's after midnight, and you're listening to Up All Night Cinema with Wade and Adrian on KNRR, not really radio. And now here are the boys.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

So I needed to clear the air about something that I did last week when I was super Mr. Negative.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

Oh, okay. So let me let me guess. Did you go and watch the new Avatar movie?

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Oh no, absolutely not. I I I wouldn't I wouldn't be caught dead seeing that. The only reason I went to the first one is because I took my brother to see it, because he really wanted to see it. At the time he was not financially stable, and my mom even sent me money, said, Hey, just take him to go see it. And it was such a giant waste of my time. Still to this day, feel very safe in saying that. But I do get really heated when I think about Avatar, and here's the reason why. Because James Cameron is the man.

SPEAKER_04 1:12

He is.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

We all know this. He's he's the man. But especially in later years, he has really focused on special effects. He has. And the Avatar movies, in my opinion, are everything that's wrong with cinema right now. And it completely tied back to what uh that same day you and I had been texting because some study came out that said that Gen Z are the most movie-going public in the history of cinema, which I find to be total and utter bullshit.

SPEAKER_04 1:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

It makes no sense to me because these people only go see the big movies.

SPEAKER_03 1:52

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

That's all they see, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:55

Yeah, and Timothy Chalamet movies.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Well, that's debatable. I I know Marty Supreme is apparently the biggest A24 movie in like opening box office in history, but I'm sure it also costs a pretty penny, and I don't think it's gonna make its money back. But the point is, Avatar makes way too much money. There is nothing to that movie, it's all special effects, and I'm supposed to believe that the people who go see that movie went to see more movies now than I went to when I was their age, and that's bullshit. My generation went to the movies a lot.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

Yeah, that was kind of like the thing to do for us.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

That was the thing to do for us. Now they all wait for streaming. And proof positive was another study where they came out and said the new Superman movie made way more money than the last one, The Man of Steel. But they also said Man of Steel sold double the tickets.

SPEAKER_05 2:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Because more people went to see Man of Steel than saw the new Superman movie. So we're talking about Avatar that day. We're talking about this bullshit study that day. Then we also got the Odyssey trailer for Christopher Nolan's new movie. Yes. Which I will die on this cross and say it was an underwhelming trailer.

SPEAKER_03 3:16

Yeah. And I disagree with you.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

I get it. And I know, but your your big thing every time we talk about it is, oh, but this is practical. Look how cool the practical. And I get it. Because you know me, I would rather have the practical effects. That is really cool. I love that all of that is done for real and not in front of a green screen. I do really appreciate that. But I feel like now, generally, the movie industry is telling me what is cool as opposed to us discovering it for ourselves. Look, it's a new Christopher Nolan movie. It's practical effects. This is going to be the movie of the year, and it probably will be.

SPEAKER_03 3:59

I mean, they're even going as far as saying it's going to be like the movie of the 21st century. Like, I mean, they're really talking it up.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

They're really talking it up. But here's my problem. If it wouldn't be Christopher Nolan directing this movie, the trailer that we got, that movie would flop. That's the shit I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_05 4:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Because, yeah, it's all practical and it's cool and all this, but nothing happens on the trailer. It's just a bunch of guys in period costumes.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

Well, and here's the thing, too. A lot of people still won't know who Christopher Nolan is when they watch that trailer, because that movie doesn't appeal to the masses. It's not a movie, you know, just being an avid history historical person and you know, somewhat reader and knowing about the story and the characters and stuff, I'm extremely excited because, you know, I I I know about that mythology and that story, right? But to the the common person, they have no idea what's going on where they're in that in that trailer. So for that, in that extent, like I I agree with you because you're exactly right. And and I would say the majority of people have no idea what's going on in that trailer. For that absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Yeah, because they don't typically tell you, they don't tell you anything. Like the teaser trailer, there was that teaser trailer, and I think I mentioned it last week, where John Bernthal and Tom Holland are sitting there talking about his father, and you know, he's kind of giving like a oh, they say Odysseus is uh a slave or he's in prison or he's dead, you know, could they kill a man like that? All that shenanigans. And I feel like that was a better start to a trailer than just Odysseus bowing to Agamemnon because, like you said, the casual moviegoer doesn't know what the fuck is going on. No, but yeah, but because it's Christopher Nolan, we're all supposed to just wow, this is amazing. Because it's the same shit we did with Oppenheimer. I sat through Oppenheimer and you sat through it, and it was nowhere near as good as they all tell me still to this day it is.

SPEAKER_03 6:15

I've seen it multiple times and and I really like it. Uh, and for a number of different reasons. Um, you know, I I wouldn't say it's a lot of people consider it Nolan's Magnum opus. I would disagree. I think he has better movies, but I still think it's a great movie. And and so that's where you and I disagree on that one as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Yeah. And we we will talk about that more in depth in the future. But my issue, as I'm saying, is I just feel like we're in this area where movies are declining. You know, cinema as a whole is declining. Uh, we are currently in this state where Warner Brothers is gonna be sold off to either Netflix or potentially Paramount Plus. I think that's done already. No, apparently not. Like uh now the I hear SAG is gonna go on strike if this deal goes forward. Wow. Because they really don't want it to happen. Wow. Well, good for SAG for standing up, and good for SAG for standing up.

SPEAKER_05 7:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

As we've discussed previously, I feel like Netflix of the two buyers would be the better buyer.

SPEAKER_04 7:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

But at the same time, if I had my druthers, this would not be going on at all. Yeah, yeah. But if I had my druthers, um, whoever the fuck, what is that? Discovery? Correct? The current owners, they wouldn't own it either. It would have still been the people before them.

SPEAKER_03 7:49

Because they they bought it as a buy and resell, you know. That's all they cared about for it. They just wanted to make more money, you know, five or ten years later, or however long it's been that they owned it. I don't even think it's been that long.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

It's been between five and ten, I would say. I think you're about I'd say about five years. You're about right on that. And you know, I've been hearing for years, uh, off and on, that Apple is trying to buy Disney. See, now I feel like that would be more monumental than Well, it it would be interesting because Disney actually has parks. Like, how does that work? Yeah, no, yeah. I I you know I I don't know. I mean that's not just HBO Max all of a sudden is getting a rebrand. Like, what's what's Disneyland under Apple look like?

SPEAKER_03 8:35

Yeah, it's it's it that's I think a lot more convoluted. Um I just think for what Disney stands for, you know, for a multitude of reasons, the parks, the experiences, all those things. Because I mean, Disney's worldwide with their parks, it's not just the ones in California or or Orlando, you know. Like they're Epcot. Epcot's still around, isn't it? They have like five parks in Orlando now. Um but yeah, it's it's um, you know, Disney's a a worldwide brand, and and so is Paramount and HBO for that, but not you can't compare the the logo or its notoriety uh on a on a worldwide scale. I mean, it's just no comparison.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Not at all. But I've just been I grow this anger and I try not to show it, but I feel like as everything becomes more streaming, the movie theaters are dying a little bit. They could tell me Gen Z goes to the movies all the time, but I've been to movie theaters on a Friday night when something big opens and it's not that busy.

SPEAKER_04 9:40

Yeah, yeah. It's nowhere near what it was.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

You went today. How how crowded was it?

SPEAKER_03 9:46

It was a pretty decent, but it was a smaller theater here in in in in Austin where Jesse lives. It's a family-owned theater, and it was actually gonna be different. Yeah, it was actually pretty. It reminded me of the Frida, just bigger. They had like eight or nine screens, I think. Oh wow. But you know, their prices for like all their food and dude, I got like a burger and a French fry and a drink, and the burger was great with sweet potato fries for like $14. You know, like I mean, that that is a really good price. It's a dine-in, you know, and and the food was actually really good. Uh so I was I was pleasantly surprised.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

But see, that's that's another problem I have with the movie theaters, is now we have to have bars and food to get these people to go to the fucking movies.

SPEAKER_03 10:38

Yeah, and I I I noticed that today because this one had like a like a full restaurant bar, like uh, you know, watching sports bar inside of the movie theater. Um now I get it if like you're family-owned and and you're using this as like a multi-faceted business, fine. I I get why you would do that.

SPEAKER_05 10:58

But AMC does it too.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

But AMC does it too now with with drinks and and stuff like that. Um, and I don't necessarily uh disagree with that because I enjoy having a beer when I watch a movie at home, so why would it be any different if I go to the movie theater, you know? Um But yeah, I I feel like, you know, I I think it adding all these different elements to the movie going experience now, I think kind of takes with away the nostalgia a little bit, you know? Yeah, I don't know. I I I do I would prefer the more classic experience of like not having a dine-in theater or because my thought today, I was eating that burger today and I had like the crunchy lettuce, and and my fur my initial thought is like, oh man, how loud do I sound for the people next to me? Yeah. Like I do that, but that's just my initial thought because I think about those things when I'm sitting there because and I think like I don't know if it should be in the theater.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Like, I'm really cool with like I've always thought that it'd be really cool to have like a restaurant in the movie theater, but like separate, like not while you're watching the movie.

SPEAKER_05 12:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Like, oh, your movie starts in 45 minutes, you know, you have a burger over here, or even after the movie, you just it's like a one-stop shop.

SPEAKER_03 12:10

And I'm cool with that. I think it could be really distracting too if like, you know, people on either side of you order something in the middle of the movie, and then you got waiters passing in front of you on like a really criminal scene, or like, you know, you're you're really into the movie. But, you know, at the same time, maybe I I could see that two ways. You know, that's maybe that's just us being too anal about about that. Or maybe it's not. Maybe it's it's like we we want the classic experience of uninterrupted movie watching with snacks that you get before the theater and the respect of it's quiet and nobody talks and all this stuff is like you know, you respect the the the experience, right? Exactly. And I think every piece of that, you know, the the food being delivered, the you know, and everything else that goes along with that. Um, you know, I think it could sometimes, you know, hamper that a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

I mean, I've been to theaters where they have the really nice seat, and I love the really nice seats, so don't think I'm knocking the really nice seats.

SPEAKER_03 13:14

The ones I was in today were were reclining and heated. I was I was in heaven.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Jen loves that. The heated seats. Yeah. Like we we go to the cinemark all the time, and she loves that because she could heat her seat, it reclines, they give you enough room, they don't put a lot of chairs in there. So literally to do that, we're putting less seats in the theaters automatically, and we're still not feel filling them because we are. I feel I don't mind that they do beer at the movies. Like I think that's something elementary, you know, they should have always really been allowed to do that. Yeah, like yeah, Pulp Fiction says, you know, they've been letting them do that in Europe for fucking decades. Yeah. And I have no problem with that. My problem is that they're doing all this stuff to get people to come. And essentially, a lot of these conveniences are for people who don't even give a shit about the movie. Like you said, crunchy lettuce on a burger, waiters delivering food during the movie. Some of these reclining seats, I've seen them where they have a plug for your phone charger. Who the fuck needs to be charging their phone during the movie?

SPEAKER_03 14:27

Yeah, it's it's it's all catered to the convenience of the viewer or the experience that they think they want to have, right? To get them to be there and to stay there, right? You know, it it's I think to some extent it's it's fine, but at some point it gets a little to be a little too much, you know?

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Yeah. I agree. To a degree it's getting to be a little too much. And so I feel, and this is why I was so angry last week when we brought up Avatar. I just feel like you know, the streaming is killing the video industry, which I love. I love being able to go somewhere and look at physical media. I love the experience of going and seeing other moviegoers and maybe having conversations with them and the people who work there. I loved all that. And we're losing that for streaming, and streaming just becomes this big tangled mess where it's been HBO Max fucking twice now.

SPEAKER_05 15:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

You know, not like we literally changed the name three different times and went back to something. Then we're getting movies like Avatar, which are these just these big, expensive, I'm gonna say it, pieces of shit. And then, you know, the occasional time we get something like Marty Supreme or one battle after another, the whole actual movie community of people who care, like, oh, this is the movie of the year. You've got to go see this movie. Why don't you want to see this movie? What is wrong with you if you don't want to see this movie? And it it's just weird, like to me. Like when I grew up, it used to be, you know, oh, there's something new coming out on Friday. What is this? There's like three movies. Maybe I'm interested in one of them. I'll just go check that one out. Sometimes there's multiple. And now we get, if we're lucky, we get one really good movie, a season.

SPEAKER_03 16:22

A season, yeah. Yeah. Every three or four months, yeah, I would agree with you.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Because we started we start out the year with Sinners.

SPEAKER_03 16:28

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Banger.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Then we had the summer movies, and I don't know what you would really consider. F one consider. F F1, okay. We'll go with F1. Because I feel like Fantastic Four and Thunderbolts, they were movies, but they weren't like cinema movies, you know, like and then in the fall we had one battle after another. And now we have Marty Supreme.

SPEAKER_03 16:51

Hamnet is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Hamnet is amazing, but it's not like one of the it's not a big one.

SPEAKER_03 16:57

That's dude, it it in terms of uh, you know, what it's gonna make at the box office, probably not. You're right, in terms of big ones.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

But the the this is just why I get so frustrated with things like Avatar. You know, I feel like Avatar, we made three of these now, and James Cameron's over here saying, um, I forget the exact comment, but he was complaining about the people who complain that no good movies come out or come out, but then we have movies that people want to go see, you know, alluding to the fact that he's making movies that people want to go see, which is fair. People want to go see Avatar. But is it any good? No. And then he's over here going, ooh, if I can't get money to make four and five because they're so fucking expensive, then I'll do a press conference and I'll tell everybody what's supposed to happen in four and five. Like, does anyone actually care what the story is, or are they just going to see the visuals?

SPEAKER_03 17:57

I'm sure some people care. I would go to see the visuals because it looks stunning. Um I'm sure. I I I know it looks stunning. I could care less about the story or anything like that. And I hear the villain's really good, but um, yeah, I would go.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

I like yeah, I like the actress.

SPEAKER_03 18:13

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would go to see the the visuals um just because it looks it looks even better than the first two in that in that category.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

So yeah. But so so the these are my frustrations, and this is why I got so heated last week when we started talking about Abby. Well you're you're just as heated this week. Oh, I'm not trying to be. I'm sorry if I am. I was just I was just trying to, you know, I don't know what the what the term is. I just wanted to explain myself a little bit so everyone isn't like, oh, he was crazy last week. Why was he so mad? And it it's it's just not the film industry I grew up in or the film industry I envisioned at this point in my life. I thought film was gonna be this big thing, and I feel like it's kind of dying a slow death at this point.

SPEAKER_03 18:59

And yeah, but there are some very passionate people out there, and hopefully them and us keep it alive long enough for a resurgence, because I do feel I mean, there a lot of the best movies that you know came out this year that are nominated are all were made in film or, you know, with special equipment or lenses for cinema, you know. Now that doesn't necessarily equate to what you're referring to with the streaming and the contention of all that, but you know, uh appreciating the art and uh finding new ways to get this art out there or use old technology to give people a different viewing experience that they're not used to seeing because digital is so common, right? Or film or whatever they use. But when it gets to its final, final production, like you're not seeing it that way. And and even nowadays, some of these big movies like Sinners and you know uh Oppenheimer and uh in one battle after another, there's only like 15 theaters in the country that exist to be able to, or in the you know, that exist to be able to watch it in its native filming, right? In 70 millimeter the way they were filmed, or or whatever, or whatever frame style that they were filmed in. So, you know, but I appreciate when you know you hear about these directors that are so meticulous in the way they approach making their movies. And you see all the well, yeah, he created true 70 millimeter IMAX cameras, new cameras to film the Odyssey in, which is pretty damn cool.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Like that is very cool. And I am excited for that movie.

SPEAKER_03 20:37

Yeah, and um, you know, there's over two million feet of film for the Odyssey. Over two million feet of film for the movie. I'm kind of curious to see how long this movie's gonna actually be. I I don't know. I I s I mean Oppenheimer was what, three hours, right? Close shy. I think just shy. I think the Odyssey probably needs to be at at least that, at least the same, if not more. I'm gonna say I'm gonna say between 315 and 320. That's that's my guess. Three hours and fifteen, three hours and eighteen minutes. That's my guess.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

I I I would guess that's about right, but I'm gonna tell you right now, like, and I know, like I said, like I bitch a lot about the commercial because I do think the commercial is trash. But I'm sure it's gonna look fantastic because like you said, it's all practical. I like a lot of the actors in it. I think it's gonna be a good movie because I know the story. I think it's gonna be great. I was just pissed that the preview wasn't better. But uh, I think if they release that as a four-hour movie, it would probably be better, and I think we'll all still go see it.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And we'll see what what Nolan does. Uh uh, you know, if if Nolan feels like he can fit it in less time, he's gonna do it. But if he doesn't, then he's gonna make a four hour friggin' movie.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

I'm curious. Well, once again, we'll we'll see what the time winds up being, but I'm curious to know. If later down the road we hear that there's a contractual obligation to bring the movie in at a certain length.

SPEAKER_04 22:08

Oh yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

You know what I mean? Because that when it starts getting over three hours, these movie studios start worrying because they can only play the movie so many times a day.

SPEAKER_03 22:17

Well that hasn't seemed to hurt Avatar at all. So it's over three hours long.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

How long is it? Like 310?

SPEAKER_03 22:23

Like yeah, 310, 315.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

Oh man, I can't imagine sitting there watching Sam Worthington for that long talk.

SPEAKER_03 22:32

I just can't. Well, you're you're you're watching uh make believe Sam Worthington. You know, he's blue. I mean, that's a little better, but not much.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

I mean, it's just like, you know, Ferngully the last rainforest clocked an hour 40 roughly, and to to make that story bigger, it's now over seven hours long. That's ridiculous. And we still have two movies to go.

SPEAKER_03 22:58

Well, hey, let's let's get moving though. For for uh why don't you why why don't you why don't you tell the viewers that didn't that that don't know who we are?

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Why don't you why don't you fill them in, Wade? Well, this is Up All Night Cinema. I'm Wade. This is Adrian. Say hello, Adrian. Hello, Adrian. And we sit here and we talk about movies all night. Sometimes I complain. Me more than him.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

Uh uh, well, yeah, we we we can we can say that. At least, well, hey, if these are the first two episodes they turn on, this one and the last one, then they're gonna say, yeah, that that Wade guy, man, all he does is complain all damn episodes.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Oh, what's he know?

SPEAKER_03 23:40

What did did what did James Cameron do to him?

SPEAKER_01 23:43

What did James Cameron do to him?

SPEAKER_03 23:46

Uh no, but I'm I'm glad we prefaced the beginning of it that James Cameron is awesome because James Cameron is awesome.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

The man made Terminator, the man made true lies, you know.

SPEAKER_03 23:59

I mean, yeah. The Abyss, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Oh, I I don't know if I should say this, but I'm gonna say this. So uh we recorded that episode with Brian, my friend Brian.

SPEAKER_05 24:10

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

And he texts me like two days later, he's like, I forgot to bring up the abyss.

SPEAKER_03 24:17

Well, there's there's the plug for Brian.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

There's Brian's plug for the abyss. It's a great movie. The ending's a little wonky, but I enjoy that movie every time. Jen didn't dig it so much. Yeah. So, um what have you been watching lately?

SPEAKER_03 24:33

You want to hear what I've been watching? You want to tell me what's going on?

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Yeah, let's hear what you've been watching first, because uh they've heard enough of me today, I feel like.

SPEAKER_03 24:40

Well, uh today I went and saw Housemaid. Okay. How was it? Yeah. It was pretty good. It wasn't bad. Um I I hear it's based off a really good book. I didn't know that it was based off of a book or a book series.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Jen really likes that author. I don't know how many of the housemaid books she's read. I think she's read at least two of them. I believe there's four in the series.

SPEAKER_03 25:05

Yeah. Um, you know, it's a story about Sidney Sweeney's character that, you know, she's she's living up out of her car and she gets this this job as a housemaid. Surprisingly, she didn't think she was gonna get it because she she has a criminal record for like manslaughter or something like that, you know? And um in Amanda, you know, Siegfried's character is Siefried's character is uh just fricking crazy, and she's so good at playing that role. Just like the crazy nut job, you know, like just um are you gonna watch she's done that before?

SPEAKER_01 25:42

I am gonna watch The Housemaid, but but you know which movie I'm talking about specifically.

SPEAKER_03 25:47

Um with Amanda in it? Yeah, where she's crazy. I mean, I the last thing I saw of hers where I thought she was pretty nuts was that TV show um on Hulu. I forget the name of it, but she plays the real life uh woman that you know funneled, embezzled all that money with the with uh blood and scientific company or something. It's it's phenomenal. I forget the name of it, but she's I think she won like she won an Emmy for that or something, and she was really good in that show.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

Yeah, you'll have to let me know the name of that because I wasn't aware of that show. But um what what I was thinking when I saw the preview for this movie for The Housemaid, not having read the book, when I saw the preview for it, I thought her character was the older version of Chloe. Oh. Like I was like, oh my god, she's playing Chloe again.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that I could see that for sure. That TV show is the dropout. The dropout? I think I did hear about that, but I didn't know what it was about. Like I think it's an odd ad, but yeah, it's a mini-series. Um, yeah, the story of Elizabeth Holmes. Um, it's dude, it's so good. So good. And if if I'm not mistaken, she won like a best actress Emmy for that miniseries or something.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Very nice. So how was uh Sydney Sweeney in the movie?

SPEAKER_03 27:14

Uh not rememberable. I mean, you know, I'll I'll tell you one thing, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. I mean, she she plays a very good, like, I'm here, I'm awkward, I'm gonna mind my own business, you know, uh, for most of the movie. You know, and then things happen between her and the husband, and her clothes come off, and then you realize, oh, this is why they got her in the movie. That's kind of how I feel. That's unfortunate. But yeah, the nudity, the the nudity and the multiple I I would say soft sex scenes, because they're not all that really intense, you know, like you would see in some other movies that are explicit sexual content or explicit nudity. Um, but it didn't really feel like it was necessary for the movie. They could have just, you know, showed them engaging and then cut to the next scene of or or allowed them to interact a little bit, but I think I feel like they do Sydney Sweeney a disservice because that's you know, I feel like she's been typecasted as that, right, already. Yeah. No, people make uh make fun of her for that, and she's not a bad actress. And I think this other movie that she made, Christy, which bombed, right? Chrissy, which bombed at the box office.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Yeah, I heard really bad. Yeah, one of the biggest bombs ever, I was told.

SPEAKER_03 28:34

I hear she's really good in it, but nobody's gonna give two shits about it because she's already typecast it, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah. Um, so I feel like that did a disservice to her to some extent. It's not extremely uh like extreme nudity, but it's enough to where like you see it more than once, and it's like, okay, like that this is, you know, yeah, she's really she's really pretty, but but it's not necessary, you know?

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Yeah. Well, I know um, you know, I I don't know all the reasons behind things, obviously, because I'm not there, but I know uh for a long time uh Kate Winslett would get really good parts because she was willing to do the nudity. And I remember reading an interview with her one time somewhere, I can't remember where, and this was what a decade ago, maybe. I think it was during the reader press, and they asked why she does so much nudity in her movies, and she's like, you know, she said, I don't like to do it necessarily, but it's realistic. She's embraced it. She's embraced it, but she's like, when two people have sex in a movie, and then one of them gets out of bed in the middle of the night for a drink of water and they're fully clothed, she's like, it takes me right out of the movie because I know that's bullshit. You know? So I think right now Sydney Sweeney might be kind of cornering that market. Yeah, could be because there's not a lot of new young actresses who are willing to do that. And there's really not a lot of movies, I feel like, right now that are willing to do that.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

Yeah, and I felt like they definitely made her look younger than she used in this movie. Like, I mean, she's not old to begin with, that's not what I'm saying, but I'm I'm saying like she looks like an early 20s, like, or just barely hitting 20s teenager in this movie, in my opinion. Interesting.

unknown 30:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Well, and that's another thing we don't do so much in movies, and I heard somebody else online complain. She's like, I miss when teenagers used to be in their 30s in movies. Like the Breakfast Club and stuff, you know. All these people were in their 30s, and that was great. Now we cast Teenagers. Hmm.

SPEAKER_03 30:47

Yeah, wasn't a bad movie. Um, I enjoyed it. I liked I liked the twist and the turns, and I enjoyed the story. You know, it's kind of like one of those stories, and uh Jesse's uh wife, uh Kaylin, she had read the book and you know, she was talking about some of the differences from the book, you know, to the movie, but she felt like they carried the story ultimately pretty well in the movie, um, and didn't really miss any like big important pieces or anything like that. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Yeah, I I will I will probably see it with Jen when it comes on streaming. She she loved the book. Uh her her big sticking point why she didn't care to really run out and see it is Sydney Sweeney. She she she particularly has not been impressed with Sydney Sweeney, but all she's seen is um White Lotus.

SPEAKER_02 31:41

Ah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

And she's like, uh, and then she saw the jeans ad, and I think she felt like it was the same attitude. Yeah. And she's like, is she like this in every movie?

SPEAKER_03 31:51

Hmm. You know, she got her big break in euphoria.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Yeah, which we haven't seen, and that's really not on like I understand it's really well acted. It doesn't really catch my attention.

SPEAKER_03 32:03

It doesn't. I tried to get into it and it just wasn't for me.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

Yeah, it like I feel like I'm the wrong audience for that show, and that's fine.

SPEAKER_03 32:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

I don't I don't have to be the audience for everything. Yeah, so um, so yeah, that's Jen's thing. She's like, I'll watch it when it comes on streaming, but she's not excited about Sydney Sweeney. So for for us, uh, we finished before we started this tonight. Um, me and her sat down and watched Ford versus Ferrari.

SPEAKER_03 32:32

Oh, thank God. Thank God. That makes me so happy. Oh man. Did it make you cry?

SPEAKER_01 32:41

I was worried we weren't gonna have enough time. I didn't cry, but I did I did get that that emotions. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:48

Dude, I I didn't get quite that close to the edge, but dude, I was crying happy tears when he was winning the the the uh uh the race before Laman's. You know, when he when when when when Matt Damon, yeah, at Daytona, when Matt Damon opens up the signing, he says 7,000 plus go like hell, and then that music comes on you like duh. It's just like so exhilarating. I was crying there watching the movie.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

You want to know what was the scene that got me the closest to that? Um because there there was one scene in the movie where I really did feel that emotion coming. If they would have pushed it, but if they would have pushed it harder, it probably wouldn't have worked. Was it fake?

SPEAKER_03 33:30

Um was it when his wife shows up to him in the garage when he's not at Lamont's?

SPEAKER_01 33:35

No.

SPEAKER_03 33:36

Okay, you're never gonna believe this. Really? You're not gonna believe it. Um, is it when uh when Henry Ford shits his pants in the car? Actually, yes, it was. Yeah, that's a good scene, man.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

And he's like, I just wish I was here. He's crying. Tracy Letting was here, you know? Exactly. Tracy fucking let's so good. Yeah, yeah, that that one got me. I was like, wow, that's that's pretty good.

SPEAKER_03 34:05

So did my hype of the movie live up to itself?

SPEAKER_01 34:08

Uh so the the first, I would say, like James Mangold is a really good writer-director. For for the most part, I really enjoy his movies. I I feel like there's movies that he's made, like The Wolverine, which do him a disservice because people see that on his resume and go, oh.

SPEAKER_05 34:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

But he he does know how to make a good movie. And while I wasn't, I didn't really dig the first part of the movie, but I was watching it, and at no point was I bored. It wasn't like watching Eddington where I was like checking my watch, or like, Jesus, when am I gonna be into this movie? Like I was watching it and it was a well-told story, and I was liking the characters. I just wasn't really into the movie. I forget exactly when I got into all the racing stuff was great. Oh, it's phenomenal. And I couldn't tell you exactly when I locked into the movie. It may have been that whole sequence when um no, you know, I think I think it's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_03 35:12

Was it when Christian Bale throws the wrench at Matt Damon in the first race sequence?

SPEAKER_01 35:16

It was way later.

SPEAKER_03 35:17

Way later.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

It was way later. I think it actually was when um Matt Damon loses Lamons the first time. And he has to go, yeah, he has to go answer to Henry Ford, and Ford, you know, he's like, hey man.

SPEAKER_03 35:31

Yeah, and he tells him, you know, he basically rips into Henry Ford and says, you know, are you gonna trust me or are you not?

SPEAKER_01 35:38

Yeah, you're gonna fight me every step of the way on this or what, man?

SPEAKER_03 35:41

Yeah. I really like that monologue because like Henry Ford's like, why shouldn't I fire you? And he's like, Well, like basically, you know, like Ferrari's scared shitless of us. Like, we went 218 miles an hour on on the Musan Strait. Like, they we have them right where we want them.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

Well, I like I liked how he he framed it. He's like, Oh, you know, I was thinking the same thing, and then I watched that red folder you're holding bounce like five people before it got in the room with you.

SPEAKER_05 36:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

And you can't win this by a committee. And that whole yeah, that whole speech really, and then he's like, you know what? Go to fucking war, man.

SPEAKER_04 36:18

Yeah, that that whole monologue was so good.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

So I think the first part of the movie kind of set me up for all of that, but that's really when I locked into the movie, and from then on, I was great, and it was a really good time.

SPEAKER_03 36:30

How about those? Uh, how about did you watch either one of those uh Christmas presents?

SPEAKER_01 36:35

No, I I haven't had much time. I watched um my wife's Christmas present. Okay, what was that? She got me the Criterion Complete Lady Snowblood. Oh. So the the first one is um the movie that Kill Bill was heavily inspired from.

SPEAKER_05 36:55

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

And it even has the the song, like the opening title song is the is the song they're playing at the end of volume one, right after she, you know, beats O'Ren in the House of Leaves. And man, was that a beautiful movie. I really want to sit down and watch it again. Like there's there's two movies. There's two movies in that set, and I want to watch the first one again before I watch two. Wow. Because I was so into it. But I have both of them. I'm looking forward to watching Mongol and Shadow. Yeah. So very looking forward to those.

SPEAKER_05 37:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

So are you ready to hear the topic for this week?

SPEAKER_03 37:36

Sure. I'll I'll I'll I'll quickly mention that I watched uh uh Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mutant Mayhem. Oh yeah, tell me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

It's uh it's on Paramount Plus, you said.

SPEAKER_03 37:47

Yeah, it was so good. Um similar, similar artistic style as the Spider-Man movies, just not as crazy and low, like uh, you know, bunch of colors and switching objects and all this. It was much more um I maybe is stationary the right word. It it wasn't as crazy and all over the place as the Spider-Man movies was.

SPEAKER_05 38:10

I get it.

SPEAKER_03 38:10

It was much it was much easier to follow. Um it's brilliantly written. It is so funny. So funny. It it reminded me a lot of Transformers 1. When I went to go watch Transformers 1 in theaters, I wasn't expecting much, and I ended up liking it probably the probably like top two of all the new Transformer movies that have come out since the first one. I mean, it was that it was that good.

SPEAKER_01 38:36

I watched one and two of Transformers and I wasn't impressed with either one.

SPEAKER_03 38:40

Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, Transformers 1 was really good too.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

And then obviously I saw Marty Supreme on uh the day after Christmas, so so I was hoping we could talk about that uh next week because I'm planning on going uh Jen and I are planning on going Saturday to see that.

SPEAKER_03 38:57

Okay, let's do that. Because I'm very curious to hear what you think about Gwyneth Paltrow. So Okay.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

Yeah, it it was just one of those days where we were, you know, I'm off today and I was off Saturday. I'm off today and I will be off on Saturday. And, you know, it was kind of a decision between which day do we do which thing. We wanted to go see Marty Supreme and we wanted to go to Claremont and do our regular shopping and extravaganza out there. And we decided to do Claremont today because on Saturday it's probably gonna be raining. Oh, okay. So uh so that's the only reason we didn't see Marty Supreme today.

SPEAKER_03 39:36

Well, yeah, let's save that one. We'll we'll we'll table it because I I feel like we're gonna spend quite a bit of time on that one once you see it on Saturday.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

So all right, sounds good. So today's topic, I I have a few in the bank. I got like three or four in the bank I'm I'm ready to throw at you. But I I figured this one would be the most fun.

SPEAKER_05 39:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

So we're gonna talk about our top five dystopian sci-fi movies.

SPEAKER_05 40:08

Hmm. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

I know you're a sci-fi guy, I'm a big sci-fi guy. Yes. So I feel like this would be a really good conversation. Hmm. So before I made my list, I I wanted to make sure I knew what I was talking about. Because a lot of times when you hear dystopian, you automatically think post-apocalyptic, and that's not necessarily the same thing. It's it's not.

SPEAKER_03 40:35

There's a lot of movies that can um, you know, be considered like one that we've mentioned in the past, um uh Road Warrior, you know? Like that's dystopian, really. It's it's set in a post-apocalyptic world, but it's not the first movie you think of, but that's a dystopian style future movie where exactly.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

But um, but just because that movie, and that's why you always think that is because you see movies like that and you think, oh, it's a post-apocalyptic world. So when someone says dystopian, you think post-apocalypse. But that's not necessarily true. So I actually have a definition that I got off of Google, so I want to read this so that everyone knows what I'm talking about. Okay, let's hear it. Dystopian sci-fi describes future, often technologically advanced societies that are oppressive, dehumanizing, and disastrous serving as warnings about current trends. So that's a little bit wider of a definition than just post-apocalyptic.

SPEAKER_03 41:40

Yeah, it's much wider, but it's also much more specific because they they label it as like warning about future trends and stuff like that, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

Well, I feel like most sci-fi, by and large, is about warning about things.

SPEAKER_03 41:57

Yeah, there there's always that it might it may be explicit, right? The premise or the the admonition or the you know the context of the movie and what they're trying to tell you, but a lot of the times it's it's sometimes layered very intellectually.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Yeah. Like just for instance, I I doubt this one is gonna come up in our conversation otherwise. Mm-hmm. So I'm gonna throw this at you. Okay. As an example.

SPEAKER_04 42:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

Metropolis.

SPEAKER_04 42:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Metropolis is you know, it's a German silent film from the 1920s.

SPEAKER_03 42:34

Yeah, it's I think it's like late 20s, I think.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

Yeah. It's a silent movie, and it's one of the most influential movies of all time. It's a little dated, and I saw it at the Frida actually a couple of years ago. And it was a good time, but you know, as movies from that era are, you know, they're not always great by current standards.

SPEAKER_05 42:54

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

But um, you know, that's about an oppressive society, you know, the these giant skyscrapers and all the rich people live in the penthouses and never go to the lower levels because the lower levels are where people are working like cogs in the machine.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 43:13

And toward the end of the movie, there's a revolt, and you know, it's it's just about how oppressive it is for the workers who are essentially scratching a living so that the rich people can survive. And I feel like from that movie to today, almost a hundred years, that movie has never stopped being relevant.

SPEAKER_03 43:36

No, and I think that's why it's so powerful. Um, most people won't most people nowadays, I should say, will not be able to sit down and watch that movie because it is a silent film, it's black and white, but I agree with you a hundred percent that it is still completely relevant almost a hundred years later, which is incredibly impressive.

SPEAKER_01 43:57

Yeah. Dur during the pandemic, I I had been talking to a girl, uh, you know, because we're all like locked up in the houses. So I was talking to a girl that I met online, and she was a budding film critic. And I had intended that night to sit down and watch Metropolis. And I told her what it was, and she's like, Oh, that sounds like work. You know, and so for some people it would be.

SPEAKER_05 44:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

But that's kind of what we're talking about. You know, that's what a dystopia is. You know, the workers are below ground, scratching a living where the rich people live high off the hog. You know, that's pretty interesting. Movie. But for my number one movie, I'm gonna go with Escape from New York.

SPEAKER_02 44:45

I'm not surprised.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

You know, I I knew I told Jen today, I'm not gonna give him an option. That one's mine. I'm not gonna wait to see if he says that one. That that's wait. I have another one on my list that I'm saving for last. And if you don't mention it, it's mine. But you could have it if you mention it before.

SPEAKER_05 45:07

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

But Escape from New York is my number one. Uh, for those of you who haven't seen it, it's basically, as Jen said when she saw it, this is suicide squad. Because it's uh, you know, the crime rate got so bad that they built a wall around Manhattan Island and just started throwing all their prisoners in there. You know, maybe they survive, maybe they all die of, you know, get staph infection and die because there's no medicine in there. Maybe they all become members of a gang and kill each other.

SPEAKER_03 45:42

That's what they're hoping for. They just want them away from the general public.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

They're they're gone. Who gives a shit what happens to them? Well, um, the president of the United States gets hijacked and crashed into Manhattan Island and basically kidnapped by Isaac Hayes, who's the big dog in New York City. And so the police force take a like an ex-war hero who is now getting ready to go into New York because he committed crimes against the state. They broker a deal with him and say, hey, if you go in there and you bring him out, we'll give you a pardon. But they don't trust that he's actually going to do the job. So they put two bombs in his neck. And so he only has, I believe it's 22 hours to get the president out before he dies.

SPEAKER_02 46:31

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 46:32

And it's Kurt Russell. It's the first time Kurt Russell was really like, you know, it's it's the first time him and John Carpenter really sat down. Like they had done a movie on Elvis for TV, but it was the first time that they made a really solid movie together.

SPEAKER_05 46:46

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

And man, is Snake Plisken the coolest character in cinema history?

SPEAKER_03 46:52

Snake Plisken is one of the coolest characters in cinema history, absolutely. He's hard to beat. You know, we saw that at the Frida, you and I.

SPEAKER_04 47:02

No, we didn't see Escape from New York, did we? I think we did. Oh man, I feel like I would remember.

SPEAKER_03 47:08

Yeah. Because that was my f that was my first time watching it.

SPEAKER_01 47:12

No, there's no way. I think so, dude.

SPEAKER_03 47:16

I think so.

SPEAKER_01 47:17

Man, the Frida does everything. I yeah, I don't remember those very well then. But I love me Escape from New York. John Carpenter directed it. He co-wrote it with the guy who played Michael Myers in the first Halloween movie most of the time. Oh, cool. And um he did the music for it, and the music score is great. So talented. So talented. And it's just got so many cool things. You know, the while he's looking for the president in New York, he has to deal with cannibals. Uh he has to wrestle that big bear of a guy. You know? Um, the the weird characters he encounters in that movie. They got a great scene where they're driving a car, uh, and you know, they're like, Oh, take Broadway, and the other person's like, No, don't take Broadway, and he's like, No, this will be faster. And he's like, Why? What's wrong with Broadway? And you know, then they start passing heads on a stick, and there's just like a gang of people in the streets ready to rip them apart, you know. That movie has this great tone to it, it's so much fun.

SPEAKER_05 48:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

80s sci-fi movies like that just had something different. Like it's hard to put into words, but they had this oppressive feeling and this tone to them and this darkness, and they were just so good. But that at the heart of that movie, it's really about how we would allow ourselves to do this to people.

SPEAKER_05 48:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:48

That we would block off a whole section of our country, turn it into a maximum security prison, and just throw people away for maybe minor offenses. Like you never really know what most of these people are in for.

SPEAKER_03 49:01

Yeah, it's true. For all we know, they could have just thrown them in there because they wanted to.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

Yeah, I mean, there there's hints and things like that, but you know, like um Ernest Borgnine plays a character they call Cabby.

SPEAKER_05 49:14

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 49:15

And he talks about how he's been driving a cab in this town for 29 years, whatever it is. But if you if you do the math on that, he was driving a cab in New York City before they put the wall up. So he didn't do shit.

SPEAKER_02 49:29

No. Yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_01 49:30

He just got he just got stuck there.

SPEAKER_02 49:32

Yeah. That's a good flick, man.

SPEAKER_01 49:34

That's a great movie. It's you know, it's just really about the police state that America can become if we're not careful. And and then it's just a badass action movie, man.

SPEAKER_04 49:44

Yeah, it's good.

SPEAKER_01 49:45

What about you? What you got for a first movie?

SPEAKER_03 49:48

Well, you know, I think a lot of the movies that would be on this list I've already talked about in other episodes. So I'm trying to think outside the box. So I think, you know, because obviously like the Blade Runners would be there, but I've talked about them. Of course. Um, the Dunes would probably be there, but I've talked about them. Uh we've talked about The Matrix, you know, we've talked about uh Blue Velvet, which is very dystopian in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

Um I could see that interpretation.

SPEAKER_03 50:16

Yeah, yeah. Um so I think my list is gonna be five. I'm gonna try aim for five that I haven't mentioned, unless I just can't think of anything, and I'll try to uh reiterate uh another one. But the first one I'm gonna go with, and mine'll be in I think I need more time to develop a top five, right? But the first one of course the first one that comes to mind for me is it has to be District 9. Yes. So that's gonna be my first movie. It's a movie from 2009 by uh Neil Blomcomp Blomcomp. I think that's how you pronounce his last name. Um he's done other movies that I actually really enjoy and I own in in 4K, like uh Elysium. Um he's done uh there was another what other big movie has he done? Well, he did Chappie. Oh, Chappie, yeah, that's the other one I'm thinking of, which I really enjoyed as well.

SPEAKER_01 51:12

I really liked Chappie. I didn't think it was perfect, but I thought it was much better than they told me it was.

SPEAKER_03 51:18

Yeah, absolutely. I I thought it was it was really good. And so District Nine is this movie that takes place basically this alienship lands in Johannesburg because this alien, advanced alien race is you know, seeking shelter um from their planet, and um they land in as a lot of science movies or adaptations of what humans do to other humans or other races, uh, we do everything in our power to essentially enslave them and take their technology, right?

SPEAKER_01 51:55

Pretty much, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:56

Yeah, and so as the movie progresses, what ends up happening is essentially um the aliens are kind of pushed into what we would know as like slums or ghettos, right? And they're looked down upon in in society, and uh they've essentially lost all of their humanity, if you want to call it that. Um, you know, this movie touches on a lot of sensitive subjects of you know, xenophobia, greed, uh a number of of different things I would think that they talk about. Um uh segregation, you know, um it really is something. And so the main character uh played by Charlotte Copley, he plays a character called Wickus, who unfortunately, and I don't want to ruin the movie for anybody who's who hasn't seen it, because it's a brilliant movie, in my opinion, one of the best uh sci-fi movies or dystopian movies of the 21st century by far, in my in my opinion. Um and the message is so so real. Uh, but essentially um he has a freak accident and he starts turning into what they call prawns. They call them prawns, the the aliens, right? And so essentially he knows what's gonna happen to him if he's found out to be an alien. He he's gonna die, right? And so he has to hide in in District 9, and um he encounters essentially this family, if I recall, or this uh is a father and son. I don't remember exactly. It's been years since I seen it.

SPEAKER_01 53:30

I believe it's a father and a son, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:32

You know, and and essentially they're kind of running this underground mission to essentially uh restart the ship and escape. And the rest of the movie is kind of Charlotte Copley's character, Wickus or Wycus, I forgot how how they pronounce it, but Wickus Wickus. That the rest of the movie is his kind of um eventual progression into accepting who he has become, but also uh this story of of these people, we thought we call them people or these aliens hustling and suffering and just trying to find a way out and uh and have a second chance at a better life because they thought coming to Earth was the first right move. Yeah. Anything you want anything you want to add to that? I feel like I gave a pretty good uh generalization of the movie without giving any major topics or points away about it.

SPEAKER_01 54:24

I I feel like you did. Um, you know, I know that the guy, Neil Bloomkamp, who wrote and directed the movie, you know, he's South African by birth.

SPEAKER_05 54:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 54:35

And he grew up during apartheid in his country. And this movie is largely a comment on that. You know, what he saw and how it felt, and you know, how these people were treated and exploited. And yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:53

I mean, I always knew he was South African, but I'd never thought of that specifically.

SPEAKER_01 54:58

Yeah. I read him in interviews talking about, you know, I saw a lot of that. And I mean, he probably didn't see a lot of that, but he saw, you know, the racism and uh yeah, he saw enough of it.

SPEAKER_03 55:10

Wow, things that we wouldn't have even we can't even imagine having seen just based on the news, but yeah, it makes a lot of sense now after now that I rethink District 9, I'm like, yeah, that's that that could totally it's a movie of his experiences, really.

SPEAKER_01 55:25

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, uh uh, you know, Wickus is the guy who's in charge of because he works for the government, right?

SPEAKER_05 55:33

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 55:34

He he's the guy who's in charge of, you know, they you know, when they got them, they put them in this area and they built the slum. Yeah. And they basically live like dogs.

SPEAKER_04 55:43

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:44

They uh uh he was he was part of the uh what have they called it?

SPEAKER_01 55:46

The multinational united. Multinational United, yeah. So yeah, the prawns live in this little community basically like dogs. Like it's really disgusting their surroundings and their homes. Yeah, huddled together, you know. Huddled together, and then they show up and they're like, We're gonna relocate you, and it's this whole like the whole beginning of that movie is trying to relocate them. And then towards the end of the movie, you know, when you know, because he basically becomes friends with I forget, like they have all the prawns have human names, like it's like Mark Johnson or something stupid.

SPEAKER_03 56:23

I no, I think it was CJ or Christopher something. I think Johnson is actually the last name, but I think the little one was CJ.

SPEAKER_01 56:30

Yeah, something like that. So but so him and the the main prawn that we deal with kind of become friends, and by the end of the movie, he's like, you know, maybe we just need to give up and go to this new place that you want us to go to. And Wickus is like, you don't want to go there. It's basically a concentration camp. It's worse than where you're at now. Yeah, you know, and they're this is gonna be so much better for you, but now he's like, no, this is the truth. Like, you're gonna die in there.

SPEAKER_03 57:00

He had a change of he had a change of heart because he Yeah. He had a a a physical and a heart transformation, so to say, right?

SPEAKER_01 57:09

Yeah, yeah. Physiological and an emotional change, absolutely. Yeah, I I love that movie. That's a great movie.

SPEAKER_05 57:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:18

That's another bone I have to pick with Avatar is when that movie was up for Best Picture, District 9 was up for Best Picture.

SPEAKER_03 57:26

Really? Really thought about that. That's 2009.

SPEAKER_01 57:30

Yeah. I think that was the first year after they said we can expand to 10 nominees for Best Picture. And so District 9 was always seen as the little guy who managed to sneak in. Oh, that was probably on that list.

SPEAKER_03 57:46

I don't know if I saw a better movie that year.

SPEAKER_05 57:48

I mean District 9.

SPEAKER_03 57:50

District 9 is is, I think it stands, I wouldn't say it stands alone because there's an odd lot of movies like it, but at the same time, it it stands alone in what it uh what it accomplishes in the way it does it.

SPEAKER_01 58:02

Yeah, absolutely. I remember working at Blockbuster when it came out on disc, and I did run to the theater to see it with no money in my bank account. Like I was not financially stable, and I should not have been going to the movies, but there was no way in hell I was missing the movie.

SPEAKER_03 58:18

You were gonna miss it, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 58:19

Yeah. So when that movie came out on DVD, I was telling everybody, this is my favorite movie of the year. And we had this big guy, he used to come in all the time, and he came in, he's like, You told me that movie was good. It was stupid. I was like, it's not stupid. And he's like, It was stupid. I watched five minutes of it, and then I fast forwarded through the whole movie. I was like, Okay, well, that's you were expecting an action movie. Yep. There's very little, like, there is action in that movie, but it's very little.

SPEAKER_03 58:52

And the action that you see is uh the essentially the the pummeling into submission of an of an alien race. That's really the action you're gonna see.

SPEAKER_01 59:01

Yeah. Well, there they have a scene where a robot grabs a missile in midair, and that was on the preview, and I was like, you guys are expecting Transformers, and that's not what this movie is. So I would have voted for that movie for Best Picture easily.

SPEAKER_04 59:16

I would have too.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

So moving along, my second movie is Dark City. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 59:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:26

I love me some Dark City. Do you know Dark City?

SPEAKER_04 59:29

I do, yes.

SPEAKER_01 59:31

Oh man. I took a girl to see that when it came out. Uh she never talked to me again. But I had a great time watching that movie. I have a great time every time I watch that movie.

SPEAKER_03 59:47

Well, I mean, it's the same dude that did the crow, pro yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:51

Same dude who did the crow.

SPEAKER_03 59:52

They iRobot. He's done a few. Uh he's he's done a few.

SPEAKER_01 59:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:57

That's definitely his element. Um, you know, what he's most famous for are those dystopian style movies.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:04

Yeah, I I feel like Dark City was his quote unquote blank check movie.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:12

Because the Crow did so well, you know, New Line Cinema was like, hey, we'll give you some money. What do you want to do?

unknown 1:00:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:19

And this was an idea he'd had since he was young. And, you know, he had a couple of screenwriters, uh, David S. Goyer among them, help him expand it into a screenplay. And it's such a beautiful, unique vision. And I I love the noir elements of that movie and the weird period details of that movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:44

It really does have so many different thematical elements to it when you when you when you look at it, when you start to like pick it apart like that, like um, there's a lot going on in that movie.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:54

There is a lot going on in that movie. So when it was released theatrically, there's a shot that starts from the stars and it slowly pans down to show the city. And Kiefer Sutherland has a voiceover. He plays a psychiatrist in the movie, really weird character. You know, he talks in weird stutters and inflections, like he is crazy in that movie.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:23

But he does a voiceover at the beginning of that movie that basically tells you every twist that is coming in 30 seconds.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:31

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:32

But about 10 years later, because it did become something of a cult movie, they let the director release a director's cut on DVD. And it eliminates the voiceover. So it's just uh a shot of the the stars panning down to the city with no voiceover, just that eerie music, which is another great film score.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:58

And they actually added more aspects of the murder investigation to make it, you know, more of a murder mystery. So so the movie starts with this actor, Rufus, uh, I think his last name is Sewell. Sewell. He's been in a few things. He was in a night's tale, he was on that show, The Man in the High Castle, but he he wakes up in a motel room with no memory of who he is.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:28

Yeah, and a dead body.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:30

And a dead body. And not only is a dead body, it's a dead hooker who's been mutilated, and there's like these weird concentric circles. It's very ritualistic. It's very ritualistic, and apparently he's this serial killer who's been running around killing hookers for like months on end, and has already driven one of the police inspectors to a psychotic break. And now William Hurt is the new character or the new uh detective assigned to the case, and so he's investigating this murder. So he's investigating the murders over here, and Rufus Sewell, who comes to be known as John Murdoch, like that's the name he discovers is his real name. He's trying to figure out who he is and what the fuck is going on. And then he finds out that he's got a wife played by Jennifer Connolly, and you know she's fantastic in the movie. And, you know, if I woke up one morning and found out Jennifer Connolly's my wife, I'm not gonna be mad about that. Don't tell Jen I said that. Don't tell Jen that you would prefer Jen. Don't tell Jen. But but when did this movie come out? 1997, you know, when that happened, I was like, you can't complain about that. But um, but yeah, so he's got an estranged wife, and there are these really weird fucking characters running around chasing him. You know, they're really pale and bizarre, and they well wear really old clothes. The the production design and the set work and the visual effects.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:11

You know, um the cinematography is amazing in Dark City. Oh, it's so good. It's it's done by uh Darius Walsh. I uh I'm probably mispronouncing his name, but I wouldn't know how to pronounce it without looking it up. But um he he's done another one of my favorite movies. He did The Martian.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:28

Yeah, he's done a lot of movies like that. He watched a lot of 90s and early 2000s. He's done a lot of those and they always look great.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:35

Yeah, he has a uh a hefty list of cinematography movies. I think he also did The Crow. Um I'm assuming he's worked with Proyos on other movies, obviously. Um but uh for me, just because The Martian is one of my favorites, um, it's just something I connect. I, you know, uh, and and yeah, Dark City, I love the cinematography, and it makes sense because I I love a lot of the other movies the same guy's done.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:02

Yeah, exactly. I feel like you could take basically any frame of that movie and hang it on your wall as art.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:13

The other movie that it gives me the same vibe that Dark City does is Blade Runner 2049. Because I personally feel like the whole movie is an is an art piece, really. And now that I'm thinking more, I'd like to go and re-watch Dark City because what I visually remember of the movie is exactly uh it have it it having that same like visceral artistic feeling that Blade Runner had over me as well. So I know it's on Tubi, so maybe I'll I'll have to add it to the to the list.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:46

Dark City. Do not watch it on Tubi, my friend. No, let me tell you what within the last six months, Arrow Video has released a brand. And new 4K restoration of that movie. Oh, wow. Nice. That's what you want.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:07

That's what I would want. Yes. That's what you want, man. Yeah, that movie. I mean, the movie doesn't look bad for the time it came out, but with a 4K, with a 4K restoration and them cleaning up, you know, the film as a whole, uh, it would look incredible. Even better than it did in in the late 90s.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:25

Absolutely. It probably looks better than ever. You just want to make sure that they they include the director's cut. I'm sure they do. They usually do. I would assume so. But the direct the director's cut's the way to go. Like I said, they add some extra elements to the murder mystery.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:42

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:42

And they cut out that god-awful voiceover at the beginning that gives away the whole nuts and bolts of the story.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:51

But you being a Matrix fan, you're gonna appreciate the next two tidbits that I give you.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:58

It was the same production designer who did The Matrix that did Dark City. Really? And they used a lot of the same sets. No way. So at the beginning of the movie, like they had to do, I think they had to do a test, like camera tests. I'm not sure all the story with it, but I know that the opening sequence with Trinity kicking the shit out of all those cops, yeah, was was filmed on the same set as the motel room from uh the beginning of Dark City. Oh shoot.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:33

Yeah, that does look eerily similar now that you're mentioning that.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:36

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's the exact same set, and I think they use those sets a couple of times in other places in the movie. Huh. And then, and this is my favorite bit. So, as I was mentioning, John Murdoch is being chased through the city by these other people. It's kind of like, you know, I don't want to go into it because I don't want to ruin it, but they're referred to as the strangers. And they're all pale and they're all bald, and they wear like 1920s gangster clothes. It's awesome. But they have a little kid in the group. You know, there's one that's a little kid, and the little kid is really devious. So I I don't know her name, but the little kid was played by this actress, so she did that, she had to shave her head for that. And then as she starts regrowing her hair, she gets hired to play the little girl in the Oracle's room who's bending the spoon in the Matrix, and she had to shave her head again. Oh shoot. What a trip. Now, where this becomes a dystopian sci-fi movie, uh, for those of you who are wondering, this sounds like a cool movie, hopefully you think that. But it's more of a dark murder mystery, but heavy on new neo noir. It's very heavy on Neo Noir.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:00

But so John Murdoch is running around the city and he's out there for hours and hours and hours. And the city at midnight, everyone goes asleep except for him and the strangers, and they're changing shit, and things are altering, and buildings are changing, people are changing, all this weird shit's going on. He sees it happen a couple of times before he realizes there's no sun. This happens at 12 o'clock every time. And I've been through at least three 12 o'clocks, and it's always night here. Where's the daylight? And that's where it becomes a dystopian sci-fi movie.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:41

And I won't go into too many details past what we already have because it's just an amazing movie that if you haven't seen and you're kind of into those dark comic bookie, because it looks a lot like the original Crow. It's that same visual style. Yeah. It's an amazing movie. I recommend everybody check this out.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:02

Yeah, that's a that's a good choice, man. It's it's honestly why I made this list in the first place. I wanted to talk about Dark City.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:12

Hey, nothing, nothing wrong with that. Uh, I mean, that's that's that makes uh a lot of sense. Yeah, I just wanted to talk about Dark City, man. Man, my second one.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:25

I think I'm gonna have to go with the road. Okay. I almost mentioned the road at the beginning because it's uh it it's very post-apocalyptic, but it's also very dystopian.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:38

Um, I really enjoyed that movie. Um, I think both Vigo and um the the kid are fantastic. Um directed by John Hillcoat. I'm not too familiar with what else he's done.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:53

Um but I know he did Lawless. Oh, I liked Lawless. I liked Lawless too. Yeah, he's done something else.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:02

Lawless was was a good time.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:05

He also did a Western with Guy Pierce, an Australian Western, called Um The Proposition, which is crazy.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:12

Oh, I've seen that. That's an old one. That's like early 2000s. Yeah, yeah. I remember that being really good. Yeah, that was one of his. And that was like a that was a blockbuster under the radar one, the proposition.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:27

I remember seeing previews for that one. I was really excited. I think I'd seen that before I went to Blockbuster, but I think that's why I watched The Road when we got it at a Blockbuster. Like I wanted to see it, but I wasn't like ecstatic, and then I saw his name and I was like, no, I'm watching this tonight.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:42

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, yeah, so going back to the road, I mean, like you briefly mentioned, it's a story about a father and a son that are living in a not even just post-apocalyptic, but it it's like a it's it's an extinction event for all life, you know, uh human and animal and plant, and I mean it's it's a full-on, you know, extinction event. And um I really love how they shot the movie. I think the cinematography is fantastic. Um for me, just Vigo's performance of this empty vessel, but also, you know, still showing up for his kid and you know, being able to, you know, uh keep him alive. And uh it's just the there's not too much you can do with a story like that, I feel, uh, at the same time. And uh and and so I think the movie hinges very, very much on the dynamic of Vigo and um uh the kid who plays his son in the movie. Uh it's uh Cody Smith McPhee. Oh, okay, okay. Um, yeah, I I couldn't remember his name. Uh, but I think they do a really good job. Uh I just remember watching that movie and it kind of sticking with me. And um, I don't know if it's because of how the movie ends, but um it could just be because I have a special place in my heart for Vigo. Yeah. He seems to be coming up on every list week over week.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:14

You know, it's not my fault that Vigo is in all the good shit.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:20

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:21

No, yeah, I I understand though. That movie, like you can't talk too much about the plot because there isn't much of a plot. Yeah. You know, it's it's really a character study about the father and the son, and like you said, they're dynamic. Mm-hmm. And it's very much a mood piece.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:38

That movie is not gonna make you feel good. No. There's very int little interaction uh with other characters, and when they do interact with other characters, it's usually in a uh, you know, in a fight for survival or something similar to that, or a chase or or something going on where they they can't let them get their resources, or you know, it's just a dog-eat dog world at that point. Um but you're right, there's not there's not much to the plot, and it really is a I I think you put it beautifully. I it is a it's a character study of of a a spoken and unspoken dynamic relationship between a father and a son.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:18

Yeah. And you mentioned that it's a dog-eat-dog world, but in some instances it is a human eat human world, also. That is correct.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:26

Yeah. And and and in a lot of post-apocalyptic movies, that is a very critical theme because resources are scarce. Um, so you would assume that that would be one way people survive, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:41

I mean, yeah, if there's no food, you know, you gotta kill something.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:45

You start with the horses, you start you follow up with the dogs, and you pretty much end up with the humans.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:52

Yeah. But yeah, and that's got some great cameos in it, too.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:56

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:56

Mm-hmm. If I remember correctly, Charlie Sterins and Flashbacks and Robert Duvall shows up for a little while. Guy Pierce. Guy Pierce shows up for a little while.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:07

Yep, yep. And and they're not they're not named characters. They're they just play very short but uh prominent B character roles, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:19

I mean roles.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:20

I I'm not 100% sure. I don't think the main characters have a name either. I think in this Yeah, they refer to them as father and son, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:30

And I think or or man and boy or something like that. Um, you know, but at that point too, like, I I don't know if it's all that important. Right. It really isn't. To the story it's not, but I think also maybe because there's this aspect of like anonymity in the world, because like there is hardly anything left. Like, what do names mean when we don't know if we're gonna survive the night? You know? Uh at least that's my like my thought process about it. Like, how irrelevant are names in a in a dire situation like this? Nobody's worried about names or where you're from or how you're doing. Like, everybody's just, you know, they're gonna kill you if they need to survive.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:13

Yeah. I never read the book, but it's a Cormac McCarthy book. I heard it's fantastic. Have you ever read Yeah, I I've heard it's great too. Have you ever read any Cormac McCarthy? I haven't, no. I read one book. Um, I read Blood Meridian. How was it? Fantastic. It is such a sparse, savage story.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:39

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:40

And the road is very similar to that. You know, it's just very simple plot, but huge stakes, you know? Yeah. You know, like nobody's trying to, you know, it's not the walking dead.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:53

No, but I but that's what I appreciate about that's what I appreciate about this movie is that it's just no frills. Like, yeah, it doesn't try to be anything it's not. It's it's it's straightforward and to the point. And it really puts you in the characters' shoes of what it would be like to experience something like this. And I think that's why I appreciate it so much is that there's not a lot of movies that do that, you know, or or lack dialogue on purpose in order for you to be present within the movie with the characters. Yeah. It it feels real for that reason. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And Vigo gives a uh, you know, I feel like every time I talk about movies of his, it's like a career-defining performance, but I really feel like that year, like that was an excellent role for him.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:40

We're gonna have to look, we're gonna have to sit down and look because this is around the same time because okay, so the last Lord of the Rings movie was like what 2001, 2002, 2003, were when the Lord of the Rings movies came out.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:54

And then he had Eastern Promises and History of Violence.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:58

And I think the road was in between those two. It's 2009. Okay. I can't remember exactly. I want to say History of Violence was like 2006.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:10

I think that or 2007, one of those, somewhere around there.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:14

Yeah, Eastern Promises was like two years later, so yeah. And then there was um Appaloosa that he did with Ed Harris. I loved that movie. I need to see that movie again, too.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:26

Yeah. Um, I think I remember you saying that you weren't too much of a fan of it at first, but that you'd like to rewatch it because you think you'd have a a different appreciation for it this time around.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:36

I think, you know, because I like a lot of westerns. I'm a western guy, you know this about me.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:41

Me too.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:43

But I think that movie was a little drier than I was expecting. I I think there's a level when you sit down to watch a Western, you're expecting a lot more danger and a lot more gunplay, and that's not what that movie was. Yeah. So I think when I went down to watch that, I was expecting more of like open range. Mm-hmm. You know, so I don't feel like I gave that movie its its fair strike at the iron. So I would like to do that. But just looking at Vigo's career, I feel like he had this really hot run of movies. Heck yeah, he did.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:20

Yeah, I think uh ult really what I hope you see is uh is the dead don't hurt, the Vigo's newest Western. That's what I really like to see.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:33

Yeah, I would really like to see that too.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:35

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:36

Yeah, I really need to sit down and find that somewhere. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:39

Yeah. So you were referring to his run, right? 2001, Lord of the Rings Fellowship, 2002, The Two Towers, uh, 2003, The Return of the King, 2004, Hidalgo, 2005, History of Violence, yeah. Uh 2006, Captain Alatrice. Don't know what that is. No. Uh 2007, Eastern Promises, 2008, Appalooza, 2008, Good. Um, I don't know what that is. Yeah. Uh The Road is 2009, and then you jump to 2011, which is a dangerous method, which is the movie he did with um with uh Fastbender, if I'm not mistaken, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:21

Uh where he plays Bender and Kieran Knightley, where yeah, they play Zhung and Sigmund Freud.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:27

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:28

I didn't dig that movie so much. Uh me neither. But Cronenberg.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:33

Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, that's a that's a pretty solid run for a good, you know, eight years there.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:39

Yeah. Well, yeah. When did Captain Fantastic come out? I've never seen that, but I know he got nominated for best actor for that.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:47

Uh yeah, uh, that was I think 2008. No, was that 11?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:53

No, it might have been later than that. Yeah, I think it's later than that. Um, Captain Fantastic was 2016.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:03

So that was a few years later, but he still had some other movies in between that. So, like in between, let's see. Uh he had Captain Fantastic in 2016. Um, and you know what? No, he he he had some other movies, uh, On the Road, Everybody Has a Plan, The Two Faces of January, Juja, Um, Far From Men. I don't recognize any of those. But then 2016 he had Captain Fantastic. 2018 he had Green Book, which he was also nominated for, if I'm not mistaken. Um, and then I think you're right. And then from there, I think the only other thing that uh he he had a movie called uh Did You See Crimes of the Future?

SPEAKER_05 1:21:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:52

Yeah. Okay. Just making sure. He had another movie called Falling, 13 Lives. Uh, Eureka. Oh, 13 Lives, yes. 13 Lives was the one about the true story about the rescue. I've seen that about the uh about the the kids or the minors or something like that. Yeah, that that that was that was pretty good. It definitely not one of his best movies, but it was it was okay. But then I'd say since Captain Fantastic or Green Book, um, The Dead Don't Hurt is probably his best movie, which is the Western that came out two years ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:27

I mean, Crimes of the Future was pretty cool. That was a Cronenberg movie I saw at The Frida.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:33

That was that was bizarre. It wasn't it wasn't one of Cronenberg's best movies, but I appreciate he was trying to get back to that um sci-fi body horror genre that he basically helped create. But yeah, he was Vigo was good good in that. Everybody was good in that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So for my third movie, uh funny that we were just speaking about Mr. Cronenberg and the dangerous method and crimes of the future. Crimes of the Future actually would count as a dystopian sci-fi movie as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:09

Absolutely. Yeah, you can definitely count that one.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:12

But I'm gonna talk about Videodrome.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:15

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:17

You've you've brought it up before. It's one I haven't seen. It is such a great movie. It doesn't seem like it takes place in a dystopian future. Mm-hmm. Because it mostly takes place in the time period that it was filmed, which was 1984, 1986. Gotcha. Somewhere in there.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:40

But it's relevant.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:41

Oh, it's very relevant, let me tell you. So um, do you remember when we were kids? Some people had those giant fucking satellite dishes in their backyard. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So most people didn't have cable yet, but some people had that. And the satellite dishes, you know, gave them so much more channels because they were able to pick up signals from all around the world.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:08

Why?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:09

But not that anybody wanted to watch those from around the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:13

Like, I don't understand what the big draw was, but I remember like the most popular show was the Swedish version of Baywatch, which was literally just American Baywatch, but dubbed. I didn't get it. I don't understand. But everyone had these satellite dishes. So the the movie is about James Woods. He runs a really shitty satellite cable station. And he he just puts vile shows on the air. You know, he gets a lot of flack for you know the the violence and sensuality that he promotes on his station. And he's always looking for new shit. And at some point, one of his pirates, like he actually employs a pirate to find like these weird shows, and he finds one called Video Drome. And Video Drome is pretty much this very realistic looking show where somebody gets tied to a wall and they whip them to death. And he thinks it's amazing. And he can't wait to have this show. And so a lot of the plot is actually him trying to find the show, but Video Drome is not what it what he thinks it is. As he says later in the movie, Video Drome has a philosophy.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:45

And it's really about David Cronenberg will say this. He says this on the criterion commentary that I have. He says that that movie was about how television fucks you.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:00

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:01

So it's about how you know TV is just trying to mess with you. Like video drum is real. It's not fake. It's real people really getting hurt. And the more he watches it, the more James Wood starts to experience physiological changes to his own body.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:19

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:20

And I see it pop up on sci-fi lists all the time. And they make the point. I've seen it made a couple of different times on a couple of different lists where they say that Videodrome the movie is about the war for our souls fought through the TV scape that we apparently lost.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:44

It's very existential and philosophical, then.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:48

It's very existential, it's very f philosophical, and that's where David Cronenberg lives. That's his best shit.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:55

Sounds like a movie I'd like.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:57

Yeah, his movies get labeled as body horror, as I mentioned with Crimes of the Future. And he's very conscious of the body in his movies, but most of his movies, especially the science fiction ones like Videodrome and Scanners and Crimes of the Future, they're all about how society is changing for not the better.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:21

And how it will long-term affect us as people. Do you remember Tower Records?

SPEAKER_04 1:27:33

I do. Man, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:37

But I was at Tower Records looking at the new video releases, and they had the brand new video drome criterion release. Ooh. It's shaped like a video cassette. Like the box is shaped like a video cassette. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:54

That's pretty neat.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:55

Yeah. I was like, this sounds interesting, and I bought it, and that's when I became a David Cronenberg fan. Was right there. Video drum changed my life as a moviegoer.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:04

Really? It's so it's that important then? It's it's an important movie for me, yeah. I'll have to watch it. I I I mean, you kind of sold me on I like anything that challenges me to think differently about things. And as you were talking about the movie, I couldn't help but think of you know social media being our modern day TV, you know, escape to take humans over.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:28

It's it's very similar to that. I feel like if David Cronenberg was the age now that he was when he made Videodrome, it would be social media. It would be social media he'd be talking about now. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:43

Yeah, it's it's a great movie. It's one of the few movies I could stand to watch James Woods in because he's supposed to be pretty sleazy and gross.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:52

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:53

But man, uh Deborah Harry, the lead singer of Blondie, is in the movie. She's got a pretty prominent role and she's really good.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:02

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:03

But yeah, the the special effects in that movie, like they have a couple special effects. There's one where you could tell that his body is fake.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:11

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:12

You know, it still looks great, but you you know what it is. But they have another scene where he's watching video drome on his TV at home, like he has it recorded to tapes, and he has it in his VCR, and the tape starts to pulsate and move, and he puts it in the player, and then when the programming ends, the TV goes to white noise, which we don't have happen anymore, really. But no at the time, you know, channel three was white noise, and so the TV starts to bulge and the screen starts to come out, and then there are lips, and he's actually kissing the TV, and the TV looks like it's swallowing him. Oh, wow. I still like I'm I'm sure somebody is gonna look at well, it's pretty obvious this, but I don't know how they do that, and I think it looked amazing. I would not recommend taking that movie, why on any kind of mind altering substances? Yeah. Uh it doesn't sound like a movie you'd want to watch doing that. Because I I feel like watching that movie by itself is a mind-altering substance. And anything further would probably fuck you up a little bit. And probably has.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:29

But Cronenberg has those aspects to some of his movies. He's very Oh, absolutely. He's very uh what's the word I'm experimental is, I think, a good word for Cronenberg. And he's not willing. He's not unwilling to take risks in his films, and that's what he's come to be known for, these off-the-wall ideas. But uh, in some way or another, a lot of his films have very strong underlying tones that can be relayed to uh the current state of of the human existence, right? Or the human experience in various ways, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:04

I always think of his movies as very cerebral and very intellectual.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:10

I think cerebral is a really good word.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:12

W when I watch uh a David Lynch movie, because he's really like right now, I feel like David Lynch, even before he had passed away, he was very much the film school god.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:25

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:27

Because he was the one that they all looked up to.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:30

Yeah, I don't know if anybody can ever replace David Lynch. I mean, uh uh he's one of those guys that will go down in cinema history as you know, top five, easy, top three, maybe even. Uh he yeah, as as greatest directors of all time, yeah, and storytellers. I mean, it's just it's unprecedented, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:52

Yeah, that's definitely an argument to be made for top three to five directors of all time. But his movies, like Blue Velvet, they're very emotion-driven, like they're weird, but his all come from an emotional point of view, and I feel like Cronenberg's come from a more intellectual point of view.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:13

Yeah.

unknown 1:32:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:14

And so I like that about Cronenberg. Like that connects me a little bit more to him than I think.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:19

And I've liked the Cronenberg movies I've I've seen. Um, I'll be honest with you, when we were watching Blue Velvet at The Frida, I hated a lot of aspects of that movie, I think, because of the emotional draw that they take.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:32

Um, because it's all like very dreamlike his movies.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:36

Yes, but it also is very um visually uh visceral, I think. And that that triggers your emotions in a certain way that other movies do not do. And by the end of the movie experience, you're like, wow, like that movie did something to me. As much as it was like you always say, fucking weird or off the wall, like that movie did something to me that not many other movies can ever do.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:06

And and that is something that David Lynch and David Cronenberg share.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:11

Absolutely. Because they can do that. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:13

And they both come, like we just said, they both come from like different angles because Cronenberg, I feel like, comes from more of an intellectual standpoint, and Lynch came from more of an emotion. Yeah. And they they both can really fuck you up if you let them.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:31

Yeah, Cronenberg definitely likes to use much more, like you said, intellectual or as I said, existential topics for his movies. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:40

Yeah. Yeah. So Vid Video Drome would be my number three.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:44

I'll have to watch that because I haven't seen it. It sounds uh like something I'd really like, but it it'd be one of those I probably have to really take my time with.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:53

It's a short movie, too. It's only like 89 minutes. Oh wow, okay. Yeah. It's not very long, but it will it will have a lasting impact on you, I promise. So what about you? What's your number three? You got one?

SPEAKER_03 1:34:09

I do. My number three is Minority Report.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:12

Yes, that's on my list.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:14

Yeah. Uh I don't even know where to start with this movie, honestly. Uh it's it's a movie by Steven Spielberg. Um, did you know that Minority Report was supposed to be a sequel to Total Recall?

SPEAKER_01 1:34:26

Yeah, originally, because it's it's also like Total Recall and like Blade Runner, it's a short story by Philip K. Dick.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:34

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:36

So I know it was originally developed as a sequel for that.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:39

Yeah, and um I guess the production company um, you know, went bankrupt and then they switched it to a standalone movie. Um yeah, Carol Co. Yeah. Um, but yeah, Minority Port. So essentially, Minority Port is a movie about this technology set in the future that is able to predict crime, right? The pre-crime. If is that what they call it, if I remember right, the pre-crime?

SPEAKER_01 1:35:04

It's the pre-crime division, and it's only supposed to be 50 years from today.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:09

Yeah, I think it's 54 or 56 or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:14

Yeah, 30 years now.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:16

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, and you know, with AI as a prediction tool or uh I could see this being a real thing. And and in the movie, you know, they preface that like pre-crime division and the technology has been so successful that it's practically eliminated a whole slew of different, you know, murders and types of crimes, right? Um mostly violent crimes. They they sp specify violent crimes. They specify violent, but they also specify that some passionate crimes get through, and then police have a very limited time to respond to these uh uh crimes of passion as we know them today, right? And uh Tom Cruise uh plays this character that joined the pre-crime division because his son was kidnapped or murdered or never found, if if I'm if I remember correctly. It's been a long time since I've seen Minority Port.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:14

Yeah, the kid disappeared at a public pool. That's right. Yes, that's right. And we don't know what happened to him. But yeah, he he leads the pre-crime division, but his his reasoning behind that was, you know, maybe if this had been there. It could have saved his son.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:32

It could have saved my son. Or at least found his son, you know, in some way or another, or led them to the person who had him or whatever.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:40

Um ultimately, um, Tom Cruise's character, Anderton, uh, I think that was his last name. Um he ends up being selected as someone who is going to commit a crime. So essentially he goes on the run. One of the most intense sequences for me was when he goes to the doctor, uh, the geneticist, and you know, he gets all this information about like the the pre-birth and the exposure to um the damage that then they like they hide the information or something. Uh that scene was wild to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:20

So for a little bit more context, because we you didn't bring up you didn't bring up the precogs, but this uh system, this infallible system basically revolves around these three psychics who are basically hooked into the system and are just like living fish in a in a bowl that uh predict these murders before they happen. And when he uh Tom Cruise goes to this geneticist because she is one of the two people, besides Tom Cruise's mentor, who invented the system, and she's the one who tells him about the minority report because they have these because I just watched this movie with Jen like last year, so I'm a little more fresh.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:10

Yeah, you are, most definitely.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:12

But the whenever the pre-cogs see the crime happening, they record it. It's recorded from their brain, and occasionally they have these things called echoes where they remember the crime again because it's so violent and visceral for them. But sometimes those echoes are actually a minority report, that's right, which is an alternate future that may happen.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:39

That's right. And the doctor's played by uh Lois Smith.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:43

Oh, she's so fucking good in that. She's in the movie for like five minutes and she steals the movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:48

That's why I'm saying that that scene for me is one of the most memorable scenes where he's she's explaining all this genetic backdrop to, you know, like you met mentioned, the precogs and uh the trauma that happens and the you know the the the hidden information and all this stuff. Um that scene's captivating for me with with her as the the geneticist.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:12

And I love how she plays, and I know it's written that way, but I love how she plays that scene. Like she's psychic herself.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:20

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:22

You know, because she's been off the grid and basically a hermit for like a decade. Yeah, nobody talks to her, she just like does her thing in this little garden. And but she knows everything. So she's not surprised when Tom Cruise shows up at her door.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:40

No. And you know, then you know, Tom Cruise's character, he he gets his eyes replaced.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:46

Oh, that scene.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:47

That that's why oh man.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:50

Peter Stormare was so fucking good in that scene.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:54

Yeah, but ultimately he does that so that he can be able to go to where the precogs are and and and and kidnap um what was her name? I think in the movie it was Agatha, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:40:04

Yeah, played by Samantha, Samantha Um Morton.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:08

Yeah, that's right. Oh, she's she's great too. Yeah, and so I mean, ultimately, um he's trying to find out information from Agatha related to uh the murder, right? The murder that he's supposed to commit, if I'm not mistaken, or something about that like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:26

And um essentially a murder mystery, really.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:29

Yeah, and and and there's a lot of uh I I like this movie because it's very, very much like a neo-noir detective type, you know, cat and mouse type of chase movie as well. Um I I I I really enjoyed it. It's a thrill ride. Um very action-packed. Ultimately, um, you know, they end up predicting that uh the other guy wants to kill Tom Cruise's character, um, and and it essentially becomes a showdown between uh the two gentlemen. I forgot the other uh what's it?

SPEAKER_01 1:41:03

Let's not ruin that because that's kind of don't ruin that because that's the that's the movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:08

No, I I'm just letting them know like that's that's that's the movie. I'm not gonna give anything else away, but if you haven't seen Minority Report, uh in my opinion, it's one of Spielberg's best movies. I I would agree with that. It's it's a great sci-fi movie, man. Yeah. Definitely one of the best sci-fu sci-fi movies of the 21st century, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:29

I know why why that movie feels so relevant to the dystopian aspect of it. Um, because they made a big deal about how during the pre-production of that movie, they had a lot of discussions with people in the technology field, a lot of journalists, uh, people who are in unique positions to see where media and security aspects are going. And that's why he gets his eyes changed in the movie, because the way advertising, you know, that they have this really cool gig where they scan people's eyes as identification. So you walk into a federal building and these eye scanners clock you. You know, they know exactly who you are and what your security clearance is. Yeah, but at the same time, yeah. Sorry, and yeah, he wouldn't be able to get in. But at the same time, he goes to the gap and they're like, Hey, are you here to buy another pair of Levies? You know, like that's and we're not far from that now, I feel like. No. So, yeah, that that's a really cool movie, man. Yeah, that that was on my list. I was hoping you were gonna bring it up, so I didn't include it on my top five, though.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:46

You would have had to, though, if I didn't.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:48

No. No? You were gonna leave it off? Uh at at worst, or not at worst, but at best, that was gonna be an honorable mention. Okay. Now, my number four, though, is a movie that we have briefly mentioned on this show. Okay, okay. Briefly mentioned. Okay. Um, because you had told me, I forget which episode it was, but you'd said I'm surprised you didn't include this movie.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:14

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:14

And I said it's one of probably my letterbox top four movies, if I was to have a letterbox.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:22

But uh Gattaca.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:25

Gattaca is such a beautiful, brilliant movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:30

Oh man. I don't even know where to start with Gattaca.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:34

Where where I want to start is when you watch that movie, it doesn't seem like a dystopia.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:41

No, it doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:43

Because it's, you know, everything's beautiful, it's very futuristic, you know, everything's as it should be. What makes it a dystopia is the main character's plight. Yeah. And they don't say, well, so the plight of the movie is people now are basically genetically engineered. You could go in, I want my son to be six foot two. I want him to be like this, I want him to have this hair color, these eye colors. You know, they they have it down to a science, they could predict these things.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:19

But the issue is that Ethan Hawke was a godchild. He was born the old-fashioned way.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:26

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:27

And they don't say that it was a financial reason, but I assume that it was a financial reason. So maybe, you know, it it probably seems like a costly process. So I imagine not everyone could afford to do this. And so we have Ethan Hawk, who is, you know, he's got a bad heart. So right at birth, they tell him this kid's gonna be 33 years old and die from heart failure. But he wants to go to space. So he finds a guy, Jude Law, who has everything that Ethan Hawk wants, but he got in a car accident and he has no use of his legs anymore. So they make a deal, and Ethan Hawk assumes his identity and has to pass himself off at Gattaca Aerospace until he can go to go to space and see the stars. And, you know, they show a couple of times, you know, people who are less fortunate and not born with the genetic advantages, and those people are janitors, you know. Um, so Ethan Hawk is uh he's killing it though. He's proven proven them wrong. Like even though all his co-workers are genetically enhanced, he's he's a perfect employee in every way, where even some of them are not.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:45

And he's really close to attaining his goal when somebody gets murdered and they find one of his hairs, and the hair gets marked as belonging to an invalid, which is, you know, not one of the chosen few.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:59

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:00

And yeah, that's a fantastic movie. You know, it's all about, you know, how far do we allow science into the bedroom, essentially.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:10

Yeah. And not just that, like a big emphasis of that movie is what you've been referring to, or what they consider like um, or what I've read about it, you know, when I've looked up the movie, it's like um, you know, uh in a general term, it's discrimination of people's genetics or their backgrounds, right? And even though it's it's illegal, right? Yeah, they're still doing it.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:34

Oh, absolutely. Well, they have the scene because, you know, a lot of the movie, uh, I think about the first third of the movie, maybe, maybe the first quarter, is told in like a flashback where Ethan Hawk is telling where he came from and how he got where he's going. And um, when he goes to Gattaca, they give him the first time, they give him a medical examination, they take some of his blood, and it says valid, and it shows Jude Law's profile, and the doctor says, Okay, well, you're hired, and he's like, Well, what about the interview? And he's like, That was the interview. They they don't care who you are, you just have to fit into either the valid or the invalid category. You just have to be a valid member of society. Even the term invalid is disgusting.

SPEAKER_05 1:47:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:26

But they they have a a great sequence in the movie uh where I won't say sequence, they have this great aspect of the movie where the two detectives who come in, and I forget the younger one's name, but he's the boss. So the two detectives who come in to investigate the murder that takes place in Gattaca, the younger one is the boss, and Alan Arkin plays the older one who you can assume is probably invalid himself.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:57

But he was grandfathered in.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:59

It's a reasonable assumption to make.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:02

Yeah. And he's taking orders from this young kid who's a valid because he's better than Alan Arkin on all his years of experience. And you know, it's it's not really delved into, but it's kind of there, and I love that little aspect of the movie. But yeah, that's a that's a movie I I cry every time I watch it.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:22

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:22

And yeah, it's a beautiful movie, man. Uh originally, um, I know this from a director's commentary, the writer-director Andrew Nickel, who also wrote the screenplay for the Truman Show. Ooh, okay. But he said that originally at the end of the movie, before the end credits, he wanted to list a bunch of famous people throughout history who had disabilities.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:50

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:51

So, like, I believe Albert Einstein was dyslexic.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:55

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:56

So the point he was trying to make was we wouldn't have had Albert Einstein under this system.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:03

Yeah. I mean, that's a very important uh theoretical piece, you know, to to to that you can use to take a movie like this and apply it to a real world setting. Uh, because like you mentioned, the definition of uh of a dystopian, you know, future or or something like that would be how it relates to a warning of the future. It's like, yeah, we we would lose a lot of brilliant minds, I would say, because of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:28

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and it it just also like if you really think about it too, like you could take it one step further because the movie is about, you know, you're either valid or invalid. Usually when we think of discrimination, we think uh discrimination between the sexes first, or maybe not first, but one of them is you know, were you male or female? Or then they or nationalities and race or religion.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:56

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:57

These are all things that people get to Discriminated by. And this movie just says, you know, you're either valid or you're invalid. And it just kind of illustrates how if you pull back a little bit, how many great thinkers and heroes and just people in general did we lose between now and 600 years ago because we discriminated by race, religion, gender.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:27

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and even if you look at just some of history, you know, um there have been these brilliant minds that were uh essentially, you know, almost or burned at the stake in some cases, you know. Just look at No, that's the one I was gonna mention. It's like they thought he was freaking crazy because he posed this philosophy or this uh this new model of what the solar system looked like. And they they thought it was blasphemous, really. Absolutely, yeah. Um, because everybody believed that you know the earth was the center of the universe.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:05

Yeah, because we we had we we could think this high, and as long as you could think within that bubble, you were okay, you were valid. You're okay, you're valid, but once you go outside that bubble, you're invalid.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:18

Yeah. And I think it poses a real question of like order and disorder, right? Creating an acceptance of what is valid and invalid creates a a certain standard of order that people fall in line with. And anytime you fall out of line, you're immediately labeled as invalid.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:36

Yeah, absolutely. Or you're thinking of all the mental health people who've had bad mental health throughout history, like they immediately became invalid.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:44

Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:46

Terrible. But it's it's a great movie.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:49

Agreed.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:50

If you let it, it'll make you think it'll hit you in the heart. There's a little great romance in that movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:56

Mm-hmm. Between Ethan Hawk and Uma Thurman's character.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:00

Who who were having their own romance off-screen at the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:04

Yeah, well, I mean, they they have a kid from it.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:07

At least one. I'm not sure if do they have two? I was gonna say, I'm not sure. I think Maya is just the famous one of the two. I don't know what Ethan Hawk's son is doing, but I'm pretty sure he had a son, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. But yeah, great, great fucking movie, man. I recommend everybody stop what you're doing right now, unless you're driving. Then maybe go home first. I would even just stop driving. Pull over to the side of the freeway, look up Gattaca and watch it on your phone.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:38

Yeah, because it's free on Tubi, so you can just download Tubi on your phone. So pull over, stop driving, and just watch Gattaca on Tubi right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:47

I wonder how many people think that we're sponsored by Tubi. Hey, hey, Tubi, if you're listening. Hey, we could use some of that sponsorship money.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:57

Yeah. Uh Up All Night Cinema is uh freely, freely accepting uh sponsorships.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:05

Donations and sponsorships. But in all fairness, I mean Tubi itself is a free platform, so I don't know if they have enough money to be sponsoring us. I I feel like they just might as well get the free uh kickbacks from us now.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:20

You know, they have so much ads that that's where they're making their money.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:24

Well, yeah, you have to. And I get it, and I don't begrudge them. I don't mind their ads so much. I I get more mad when I see if I was to see an ad on Amazon Prime because I already pay fucking too much money for Amazon Prime and then I have to deal with the ads too.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:38

Yeah, yeah. That's a whole nother conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:41

That's a whole nother conversation.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:43

Yeah. So do you have a fourth movie? I do have a fourth, yes. Um all right. What you got? I'm gonna go with uh Ex Machina.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:53

Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:56

This is one of the best movies I've seen in the last, you know, 10 years, I'd say. Um came out in 2014 or something like that. Um essentially it's a story that takes place where this really bright and upcoming uh computer programmer or tech guy gets invited um to his uh CEO's house to participate in uh testing um a humanoid robot through the Turing test. Now, for those of you who don't know what the Turing test is or uh what they've called the imitation game, uh back in like the 40s or 50s, I think. Uh essentially it's a uh uh a test to determine if whether uh you can identify like a machine as having uh as a machine separate from like having like in intellect, right? Uh if I understand the Turing test correctly, uh that's I'm sure it's mu I could probably explain it uh probably in in better detail than that. But essentially it's a machine or it's a test that determines if the person taking the test can can identify whether it is real or not real, if if I put it in simpler terms, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:55:19

Yeah, like uh essentially programming versus real intelligence.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:25

Correct, correct.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:26

Yeah, um, and so uh Domal Gleason's character goes to this amazing futuristic house um uh on a private island. On a private island, and the CEO is Oscar Isaac, who's mad and fantastic in this movie. Oh, he's so fucking good. I'm about to tear up this dance floor, bro. That's that's like the best scene in the movie. Um and uh the robot is played by Alicia Vicander, who is phenomenal in this movie.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:01

Laura Croft.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:03

Laura Croft. She's most recently done a movie we both watched uh The Assessment, where she plays a very similar role.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:11

I I didn't get to watch the assessment yet, but that's how I'm you didn't you didn't watch it? Oh man. No, I wanted to. What was what is it on? Because I do want to see that movie really bad. I saw a preview when it was coming out. I thought it was on Prime. Oh man, if it's on Prime, I'm gonna have to I'm gonna watch that before the movies you sent me because I really want to see that. But then I forget about it. It's on Hulu. It's on Hulu because I forget about it because you know what?

SPEAKER_03 1:56:36

Dude, go away.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:37

There's just so much, but I really wanted to see that. But now that you brought it up again, I need to watch that immediately.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:43

I considered putting the assessment on this list uh it just because it was one of the most recent ones that I can think of uh that reminded me of a a really strong dystopian future where everything is controlled on the personal life of like the future of having children and stuff like that. Uh yeah, it's it's it's really fantastic. But let's go back to Ex Machina. So essentially, you know, the main character uh starts the the Turing test day over day and day over day, and he essentially develops uh he falls in love with the robot, with the humanoid robot, right? And uh in a nutshell, and he fails the Turing test. Yeah. Or you could say that the Turing test is successful because at some point his emotions get in the way of being able to tell the difference.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:35

Well, I I would say that, you know, I don't want to give the the movie away because I think everyone should watch it again. Like, that's the problem with doing this list, is because so much of the movies are like toward the end, you know, like where they lead. But I would say she passes the Turing test.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:56

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:57

Because the Turing test is supposed to be if Domnal Gleason could decide if she's computer or more intelligent on her own. And really, Oscar Isaac has put all this in motion because he's essentially using this guy to play chess with her.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:18

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:19

And she absolutely fucking wins that game of chess.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:23

Yep, that's the uh uh that's a great analogy to use a game of chess. I think that's uh I think that's a really good way to put it. Um Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:32

I thought about the last time I watched that movie, I was like, this really feels like a game of chess.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:37

Yeah. And you know, uh, the reason I chose it as a dystopian future is because it's a very science fiction futuristic movie, but not only that, I think it's very pertinent to what we see just starting now with robots and humanoid robots and things like that, and and and really bending the ability to tell what's real and what's not real anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:00

Um I I feel like that movie is set now. Like right now is how that that movie feels. Like it was only 10 years ago, but I feel like between that movie and today was like throwing a rock.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:16

Yeah, I feel it feels like I just watched it yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:20

Yeah, but it it feels like you know what what I mean is like it's we're living in the future of that movie, and it wasn't that big of a distance. It's not like Blade Runner, which came out 40 years ago.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:34

Yeah, yeah. No, I I I get what you're saying. Um the movie's directed by one of our favorite directors, Alex Garland. Yeah. Um, we can put a a a little plug for devs in there, because that's definitely if we made a TV show for this list, that would be on there.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:51

Devs is so fucking good.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:53

That was such a good show, man. I'm so glad I watched that on your on your recommendation.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:58

Did you catch? I don't know if you caught this, but the lead actress on that show, she is the same actress who played the mute fourth member in Ex Machina.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:13

That's a good point. Yeah, that is a really good point.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:17

Uh I forg I forget his house assistant's name, but she doesn't say a word in the whole thing.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:22

No. Um I actually noticed it backwards because I watched Ex Machina before I watched Devs.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:29

Yeah. Well, I I didn't notice at all because same, you know, I'd seen Ex Machina in the theater when it came out, and I knew he was making devs at the time, so when it came on, I was excited for it. But I didn't realize it was the same girl.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:42

I mean, her character was a little annoying on devs, but I also understood it.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:47

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:48

Like she she was going through some shit.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:51

Yeah. I mean, and there hey, there's some other Alex Garland movies that we could throw on this list potentially.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:58

Annihilation for sure.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:00

Mm-hmm. That was the one I was thinking of.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:02

So that's one of my favorite weird sci-fi movies.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:05

That's a great movie.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:07

Yeah. Yeah. That's a masterpiece to me.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:10

Yeah. What's your uh what's your number five?

SPEAKER_01 2:01:14

So, number five, I was of two minds. There's one movie I really want to talk about, but I'm gonna save it for my honorable mention. Okay. Because you didn't mention this other movie as part of your top four. Oh, okay. And it has to be brought up.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:33

Uh I mean, there's I don't know, ones I think of off the top of my head.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:38

Well, you still got one more to go, so don't don't don't ruin it, but yeah, but you're gonna yeah, you have to name it now. Like I'm gonna steal this one. You ready? So I'm gonna go with Robocop. Robocop, come on, that is the ultimate dystopian future. It is. For those like it has to be talked about. For those of you who have not seen Robocop, it is about a futuristic version of Detroit where a major corporation runs the police force.

SPEAKER_05 2:02:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:20

Like right there, that's dystopia. Like, if fucking Apple took over your local community's police force, that's what is happening in Detroit of the future in this movie. And then the main character, Peter Buckaroo Bonsai Weller, he uh, you know, he just starts at this new precinct run by Omni Consumer Products, and he gets fucking murdered on his first day. Brutally.

SPEAKER_05 2:02:56

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:57

Brutally murdered on his first day. And um, you know, what what do they do? They don't, you know, give his body to his family and allow them to bury him. No, they hook him up into all these components and turn him into Robocop and send him back to work.

SPEAKER_05 2:03:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:14

Like, even in death, this guy is forced to go back to work. I can't imagine a more dystopian future than that.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:23

That's true.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:24

But Rob Robocop's one of my favorites. Like, I love that movie so much.

SPEAKER_03 2:03:29

Yeah. Um, I I was not thinking of Robocop just because I think you mentioned it on another one of your lists.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:36

So it wasn't really I I didn't put it on another list, but I I I believe in the music episode we may have talked about it a little bit because it's got such a great score.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:49

So I've never had it on one of my lists, but I think you know it may have come up in conversation because of the score. Yeah, that makes sense. But man, Robocop, oof, such a great movie. And then um uh Red Foreman from that 70s show is the villain.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:08

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:09

Oh, he's so good.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:11

Man, do you have any other honorable mentions that you want to throw out there?

SPEAKER_01 2:04:16

I have one. There's one that I mean, I got a list of movies for sure. Uh-huh. But there's one I really wanted to mention. And if uh you would have brought up Rogocop, I would have um used this one, but I really wanted to talk, and I've mentioned this briefly in passing previously also, but uh Catherine Bigelow's Strange Days.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:38

Yes, you have mentioned it.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:40

Um, so uh Strange Days is uh Ray Fines and Angela Bassett.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:46

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:47

It takes place in the future, New Year's Eve 1999. So Y2K. I think this movie came out in like '95, so it was a very near future. But it was it was pretty bleak between when this movie came out and when the future of the movie was supposed to be. But um the whole plot of the movie was that Ray Fines was an ex-cop and now he's a essentially a drug dealer. So um they have this device that people could wear under a wig that connects to your cerebral cortex and it will record what you see.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:29

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:30

And he sells the video of that to people, and there's really two plot lines going on that are actually the same plot line, but they don't really connect till the end of the movie. But he comes into possession of a tape of two LAPD cops killing a rapper, and so that's going on on one side, and then also he's also receiving tapes of women he knows from their vantage point being raped and murdered, and both of those stories wind up connecting, but it it was a very near future movie, and watching it a couple years ago, it just struck me because I'm sure like the police violence in that movie was a direct response to the Rodney King beatings, yeah. But it just struck me so much because I feel like that's still relevant. And also going back to the top of the show, James Cameron wrote the fucking screenplay for this movie. Wow. So there you go, full circle.

SPEAKER_05 2:06:46

I'm out.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:49

Oh man. So yeah, stran Strange Days would have been one that uh I would have liked to talk about also, and I guess I just did, but You did, yeah. It it just didn't quite make the top five. You you looking for uh number five?

SPEAKER_03 2:07:05

I have it. Um honorable mentions that I thought of were um 12 monkeys.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:13

That one was on my list. Um Brazil, the 80s movie.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:19

That yeah, Terry Gillam again, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:22

The the Friday I didn't get to go see it because they only did it one time.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:27

Really?

SPEAKER_01 2:07:28

Like this past month, uh the month of December when we are recording this. Uh-huh, the Frida hosted a Terry Gillam Christmas. Whoa. And they they did a double feature of Brazil and 12 monkeys. Wow. That would have been awesome. That would have been awesome. I just uh you know, I I wasn't able to go. So my fifth movie.

SPEAKER_05 2:07:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:55

Are you ready? I'm so ready. I'm sure you've seen it.

SPEAKER_03 2:07:59

Um it's gonna be Snowpiercer.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:03

Yeah, yeah. I s I saw that at the Lemmley and Claremont.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:13

Man, such a great movie.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:15

So Snowpiercer is set in this post-apocalyptic world where everybody lives on this massive train that's just essentially it never stops, right? Yeah. And it's set up through these um caste systems from you know, poorest to richest, the wealthy being at the front of the cars, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Um, and essentially, without giving too much away, the plot centers around uh what they call in the movie the the tallies, right? Who set up a uh a revolt to move forward to the front of the train car by car. Yeah. And um as they as they get moving through the car, they you know, they kind of start discovering these really like eerie and dark secrets about who created the train and all these different things. Um the director um is the same director from Parasite and uh Bong Jong Ho, right? Yes, sir. Um, and Mickey 17. Um which I think uh if we're talking about futures and dystopian weird uh things, you could easily throw Mickey 17 into this conversation just on the premise of the movie alone.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:35

Um but I I just need to sit down and watch that too.

SPEAKER_03 2:09:39

Yeah. Um you know, and in this movie, this train is massive. It's like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cars. It's it's it's in terms of a train, it's it's essentially infinite, right? It's it's the last standing, if you want to call it the uh a living being for humanity, right, in this post-apocalyptic world. Um this movie caters a lot to what the director likes to use as themes in his movie with social injustice and you know you know class system, politics, the human condition of survival, um, class warfare, you know, all these things. Um this movie specifically is centered around a post-apocalyptic world after climate change has devastated everything, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:10:29

Well, it was it was um they tried to fix it.

SPEAKER_03 2:10:32

That's right. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:34

And they they fucked up and turned the world into an ice cube.

SPEAKER_03 2:10:37

And I yeah. They essentially uh restarted an ice age, right? To some degree. Yeah. But I love uh I love Snowpiercer. It stars uh Chris Evans and I think one of his better movies.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:54

Oh, easily. That monologue at the end of the movie he gives.

SPEAKER_03 2:10:58

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:59

Haunting as fuck.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:01

Yeah, it it might be his best acting, his best individual individual acting piece that he's done. I believe so, yeah. I would say that. Yeah. Um anything, do you remember anything specifically that like stands out to you about that movie or any any any specific scenes outside of the mo monologue? Because I think for me too, the monologue is uh it it haunting was a perfect word to use for that. Uh, but it kind of just stays with you. Um, you know.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:31

You know, there's there's a lot in that movie to really there is. It's a lot to unpack. It's a lot to unpack. Um, you know, they have a really great supporting cast. Um, I forget because the the Korean actor in the movie, I don't want to say his name because I want to butcher it, but he's been in a bunch of Bom Jon Ho movies. Yeah. He's he's really great. And I forget where the actress she was in something. I Can't remember who she is. I'd have to look that up again. But she was really good. And then it's got um Octavia Spencer, um, John Hurt in one of his last performances. Jamie Bell is really good in it. Uh Allison Pill from Scott Pilgrim vs. the world, she's got a little part in it. Uh Tilda Swinton plays the mayor.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:26

And she's fucking great. Like when she's makeup they did. When's she not good, though? I mean, yeah, it's if you see Tilda Swinton's name on it, it's more notable. She did a bad job, really. But um, yeah, that's a great movie. I I I can't think of a specific thing that I would want to shine a light on, except it is one of my favorite Harvey Weinstein stories.

SPEAKER_05 2:12:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:56

If I may recount that really quickly, you know. Um, you know, I say favorite, but it really is just an illustration of how awful he is, but I love it because he lost, but he still kind of won in the end, but then he lost again in the end. But so, you know, Bong Jan Ho came over to do this movie, and Harvey Weinstein produced it. It was the Weinstein company that released it, and they didn't like his cut of the movie because it was too political. You know, in true Harvey Weinstein fashion, he wanted it to be more of an action film.

SPEAKER_04 2:13:33

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:34

So they re-edited the movie and cut out all the character pieces, especially that monologue at the end of the movie that we were just talking about.

SPEAKER_05 2:13:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:45

And Bong Jon Ho's like, no, fuck you. I have a final cut on this movie. It's my movie. We're releasing it this way. And what they finally agreed to do, and I don't know which one was which, but they played the movie for a test audience in a theater in LA, and they played the movie for a test audience in New York. And one of those was the Weinstein cut of the movie, and the other one was Bang Jon Ho's cut of the movie. And whichever one tested better with the audience was the version they were going to release. And of course, the Weinstein version was a convoluted action movie that didn't have a lot of context, so it got horrible fucking notices, and Bang Jon Ho's got the better grades. So they released it, but they instead of releasing it big like they were supposed to, they did a platform release and it really didn't play much, it didn't make a whole lot of money. It essentially was a flop.

SPEAKER_03 2:14:46

Yeah. To me, I always I've always seen Snowpiercer as kind of like a uh uh having this cult following that kind of it absolutely does catapulted uh him into the realm of then he went on and what did Parasite and you know then these other movies. Because he had he had movies that he had already done, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:15:07

Um but uh but Memories of Murder is basically Zodiac, but with the South a South Korean serial killer.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:15

Correct. And um, you know, Snowpiercer in a very small but performative way put him on the map.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:23

Yeah, it definitely, you know, because of Snowpiercer, not Snowpiercer, but because of Memories of Murder and because of the host, which was a big Korean version of Godzilla, you know, those really caught people like us. That caught our attention, but Snowpiercer really broadened that even further. And you're right, it did it did create this cult following and is often seen as one of the the best science fiction movies of the 21st century, if not ever.

SPEAKER_04 2:15:57

Yeah, yeah. It it it's really uh highly regarded by a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:05

Very and rightfully so.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:08

So so really, even though the movie didn't make money because the Weinsteins screwed it, it still did get the last laugh.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:17

It did, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:18

So good for Bong John Ho. So that's why it's it's my favorite Weinstein story because he he lost both times. Yeah, he didn't he didn't get his way, and then even when he tried to screw the movie, he still wasn't able to.

SPEAKER_03 2:16:33

Yeah, and you know, um I commend him because uh Bong Jong-ho because he hasn't changed. No. He still is stick to his roots of what he wants to tell to tell movies about, and that's art, you know? He isn't gonna change for anybody either. You want him you want to fund his movies or you don't, but he's gonna tell the stories he wants to tell, and that's very evident in Parasite, and it's very evident in Mickey 17. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:02

He's a great filmmaker.

SPEAKER_03 2:17:04

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:17:06

I I love me some Bongjon Ho. Mm-hmm. All right, Wade, so it's about that time.

SPEAKER_03 2:17:12

Yeah, it's getting late. Um, let's go ahead and uh recap our five dystopian movies for our audience.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:23

Okay, did you want to go first or second?

SPEAKER_03 2:17:26

I can go first, yeah. I can go first. Um so I had District 9, The Road, Minority Report, X Machina, and Snowpiercer.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:38

And my five were Escape from New York, Dark City, Videodrome, Gattaca, and Robocop with a very honorable mention for Strange Days.

SPEAKER_03 2:17:53

Yes. That's ten or eleven movies that I feel can hold you over for a very long time.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:02

Oh yeah. If you're not depressed by the end of this this movie list.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:08

Oh man, that is so true.

SPEAKER_03 2:18:13

Um now if you if you were to select one movie from your list that they should go and watch tonight, which one would it be?

SPEAKER_01 2:18:20

That's a toss-up, I feel like, between I mean, honestly, like I feel like everyone should watch Gattaca, but tonight it's late. Gotta go with Dark City, man.

SPEAKER_03 2:18:34

Gotta go with Dark City. Yeah. Dark City. Uh I'm gonna have to watch that again. But I I like you said, I don't I feel like I just need to go and buy the 4K arrow version and then watch it. I feel like anything else would be a disservice to that movie now that now that you told me that it had a 4K version.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:52

Once we are done here, I'm gonna go on Amazon and I'm gonna find you the link.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:59

Send me the link. Yeah, send me the link.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:01

Yeah, absolutely I will.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:19:04

And so, Wade, I mean, it's it's uh I think it's that time, and so we are up all night cinema. I am Adrian. Say goodnight, Wade. Long live the new flesh. And in the famous words of one of my favorite movies that I left off this list because I've already talked about it way, way too many times. Interlinked. You're not even close to baseline.