Geek On Film

S4 E03 - One Battle After Another

• Robbie Holmes • Season 4 • Episode 3

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Welcome to Geek on Film with your host, Robbie Holmes. Welcome to episode three of season four of Geek on Film. This episode is going to be a slightly different format. We're going to do one new film I've seen called Megadoc. It is about the making of Megalopolis. Then we're going to run through a quick four-film rewatch channel where I'm going to take you through a few films I've seen for the first time in a while and give you a little bit of what makes them tick and what I feel today after watching them again. And then we're going to close out with a main review of one battle after another, which is the reason this episode is a little bit late. I have now seen the film twice. So we'll get into it then. Let's start with Megadoc. Megadoc is, according to our friends at IMDB, uh a behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis. It is directed by Mike Figis, who is a longtime director of features and a friend of Francis Ford Coppola's. My review is Three Stars with a Heart. Overall, I would say this is a solid documentary that captured the unique experience of Francis Ford Coppola's process and set. There are some serious standouts in this documentary. Shia LaBeouf is summoned in some way, shape, or form as a chaos demon of Francis Ford Coppola's nightmares. He's very funny. Aubrey Plaza seems like she is 100% thriving in the chaos and directing style of Coppola. If you've seen Megalopolis, uh you are one of the few people. Welcome aboard the Megalopolis train. I am very excited to have gotten to see this movie in a theater, and then I am one of the few people. There's a few of them out there still, but I was able to get a 4K steelbook of this movie before Francis Ford Coppola pulled back to physical media and stopped selling it. So I am lucky enough to have seen this movie twice. Um, not a lot of people get that experience, I feel like. So uh I really wanted to see Megadoc. So my impression of Megadoc is going to be influenced by my love for the marvelous disaster that is Megalopolis. I think there are so many ideas on display in Megalopolis, and there's so much going on in that movie that is so uh ostentatious and is so indulgent, but of a brilliant filmmaker. So some of it really works. This documentary has an amazing amount of access. Uh Mike Figus is friends with uh Francis, and he personally knows an awful lot of the actors. That really changes what this documentary could have been. I think what we see is uh Francis Ford Coppola giving Shaya a chance to be a part of a movie like this, even though Shaya himself says that he is in uh sort of film jail. Nobody he was like uh radioactive at the time the movie was being made. Uh nobody wanted to work with him. And uh what you see is like he had made amends uh with John Voigt, and John Voigt was about to go into rehearsals for Megalopolis, and uh so all of a sudden it's all unfolding, and here we are. Cool thing about the documentary is it shows like three different incarnations of what this film could have been, including a Ryan Gosling version, and like it's just crazy how much footage there is because Francis allows cameras on his sets even during the pre-production process. Megadoc is like three documentary incarnations of what Megalopolis could have been. There's like an echoing effect across time. So much so that you see table reads, you see some actual scenes from each one of the ways the movies would have been done. Um, it's really powerful. Uh, I think one interesting piece of this is that Mike Figis is in the documentary. He's a little bit of a heart of it because he is trying to comment on what he's seeing as a director. He says, you know, the movie opens with him driving up to the first day of work with Francis, and he is got the camera on himself, and he's talking about the fact that like no one, no director really gets to uh see other directors work. And I think we all get a chance to see what it's like to have worked with Francis Ford Coppola, and I think that is worth its weight in gold. I think this is going to be a film that is shown in an awful lot of film schools. I think it is a film for um film aficionados and uh people just appreciate the process of making film. Uh, I think it's going to be a film that's gonna last alongside Megalopolis for a very long time. I think it will inform how some people feel about Megalopolis. It may be a gateway drug to get some folks to watch it. So it's a really, really good doc in that case. Uh, it didn't uh light me my hair on fire, but I do think it's a solid documentary, and I have a lot of affection for everything that that is happening in the megalopolis ecosystem. Uh, you can't watch it. Normally I would tell you you should go see it, but it is not available right now. It's not available for streaming. I would say watch things like just watch or letterbox to see where it's going to be streaming when it comes online or when to stream, which is a pretty good uh Twitter handle. Uh okay, we're gonna move on to my re-watch segment. So, first up, all the president's men. Uh, this is a first watch for my wife, and it was a second or third watch for me. Uh, I watched this because I wanted to watch something that Robert Redford was in. Our friends over at Letterboxd have this as the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncover the details of the Watergate scandal that leads to President Richard Nixon's resignation. Uh, I have this as Four Stars with a Heart, which is the same rating I had previously. Uh, fun to rewatch. Uh, the pace is still a bit slow, but the cinematography, acting, and script are sharp and propulsive. Um, this is directed by Alan J. Pokula. Uh, it's part of what they are calling the paranoia trilogy. Uh, the writers of this are actually Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, along with William Goldman. We have an amazing movie here. There's not much else to say about All the President's Men. I will say that there are some really amazing standouts. I think there is some super charismatic performances. Robert Redford's Bob Woodward is a little bit sort of distant and stiff at the beginning of the movie, and he unfolds a little bit as we go along. I think that uh Dustin Hoffman is called Carl Bernstein is sort of a charisma bomb. He you can't take your eyes off of him. He's believable, even if he's a pain in the ass. I think he's really uh pretty astounding in this movie. Uh, there's lots of other people to call out. I would say Jason Robards as Ben Bradley, the editor of the Washington Post, is unbelievable. Um, Hal Hoberk as Deep Throat is a nice little nod to like, hey, this guy's been in everything. It's a great movie. You should see it. If you haven't, it's definitely a blind spot worthy film that if it is not seen by you, you should put it on your list of things to watch. Uh we'll jump over. Next up for me was Magnolia. So with us barreling towards one battle after another, uh, I had wanted to re-watch Magnolia, which is something I had not seen in a very, very long time. So much so that I didn't actually have a rating for it or a review. Uh so uh Magnolia, according to our friends at IMDB, is an epic mosaic of interrelated characters in search of love, forgiveness, and meaning in the San Fernando Valley. Uh, it is written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Uh, my review over on Letterboxd is four and a half stars with a heart. Wow, this is an amazing revisit of a film that is one of the most amazing films of the 2000s, if not of the century. So I think one of the reasons that I revisited this film is that I chose after our friends over at The Big Picture, put it on their top 25 films of the 2000s. The performances you get here are all unbelievable. There's no time for me to explain the this entire story. I will say what you have is the sins of the parents being crashed down upon the next generation. You have amazing performances from Jason Robards as Earl Partridge, and Julianne Moore is Linda Partridge, his wife, I believe his second wife. Tom Cruise is playing Frank TJ Mackey as the son of Earl Partridge. He is a sort of uh pre-manosphere guy who is really excited about telling you how to be the biggest and baddest man you can be. Additional storylines here in this movie include things like we follow Philip Baker Hall, who is Jimmy Gator. Uh, we see his daughter, who is played by Malora Walters, and uh that storyline unfolds where he is a uh the host of a television show that's a game show for kids. We see that the there's a group of children, there's a current storyline. He is sick and dying. There's a previous storyline with uh William H. Macy as Quiz Kid Donnie Smith, who was on that show back in the day, and he has lost all faith in who he is. He jokes at one point that he used to be whiz kid uh Donnie Smith and now he's stupid. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays um the nurse to Earl Partridge. John C. Riley plays a cop who comes across Claudia Gator, uh Malora Walters character. It's it's just an interlocking set of uh mosaics, mosaic's a great term for it. It is like a fractal of stories that happen to overlap in some places. There are minor touch points, but in the end, it is a tone poem for how we are all sort of dealing with the fallout of previous generations' decisions, whether it's our parents or the the people around us. It's uh it's a pretty crazy and amazing movie. I still don't know that I have my head wrapped around it completely, but boy, this time it really knocked my socks off. It blew me away. Um I'm gonna jump over. Next one was uh The Wolf of Wall Street. So I've been really sort of ready to re-watch this movie. I felt like uh I had bought this four-book Steel K. I watched it once after I got that. And uh it is a movie that uh again, the big picture is put back on my radar. So our friends over at IMDB have this as based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, from his rise to a wealthy stockbroker uh living the high life to his fall involving crime, corruption, and the federal government. Uh, it is written by Terence Winter and Jordan Belfort and is directed by Martin Scorsese. I have this as uh four and a half stars with a heart over on Letterboxd, a rewatch based on the big picture and naming this the 11th of 25 best films of the 2000s. It is an astounding film, maximalist filmmaking, that shows a slice of 1990s America that is outside of the norm. Leonardo DiCaprio is as committed as an actor can be, delivering heartfelt monologues alongside truly bullshit infused speeches about why drugs, sex, and money are the way of the world. This revisit is unreal how powerful John Barenthal is in a small role and how steeped in his character Jonah Hill is as a strange, eccentric acolyte of Jordan. I mean, this is the movie that put Margot Robbie on everybody's radar. This is the movie that brought us sort of Scorsese's biggest, most over-the-top film that he's ever made. Um, and it's also yet another film in Scorsese's world where we see things that are outside of legality being portrayed, and it is seemingly super cool and amazing, but in the end, uh these people fall and crash to the ground. And I feel like that is the thing that most people miss about movies like this is there is an amazing roller coaster ride of a film. It is it is like you know, 90% up and then all of a sudden the steep crash all the way down at the end. And we see Jordan Belfort in the end, in a small conference conference room in a hotel giving a speech about what it is to be a salesperson. He's not in a $3,000 suit, he's not, you know, walking in as the king of an empire. He is a guy who's teaching people how to sell using the same reference point he started with at the beginning of his career. Sell me this pen. It's pretty unbelievable. I think uh when we walk away from Scorsese's work, he has made probably, you know, six four to five star, four, four and a half to five star films. It's uh it's truly astounding. All right, uh last one, first time watch for my wife, uh multiple time watch for me, uh, jumped in to see the Big Lebowski. This has been one that I bought the 4K for, it's been sitting on the shelf for a while, and uh I finally got around to watching it. Okay, Big Lebowski, according to IMDB, Jeff, the dude Lebowski, mistaken for a millionaire of the same name, seeks restitution for his ruined rug and enlists his bowling buddies to help get it. Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Cohen. I have this as first rewatch of my 4K Blu-ray with Amy, her first watch. Uh, her review was It Was Dumb and uh I just said the doodabods. Uh four and a half stars with a heart. I think this movie is uh cultural chaos. I think it it infused an awful lot of uh its ideas into pop culture. I think it is the most approachable of the Cohen Brothers movies, maybe. Um, I think that it you know slingshot Jeff Bridges into a stratosphere that he had not been in up to that point, even though he was already a big actor. It's a pretty unreal movie. You have uh Jeff Bridges as the dude, you have uh uh John Goodman as Walter, his bowling buddy and Vietnam vet. You have Steve Buscemi as Donnie, who is uh hanger-on of Walters, but we can get into whether or not that's a thing. Uh Julianne Moore plays Maud Lebowski, who is the daughter of the Big Lebowski, who's played by uh David Huddleston. Uh Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Brent, uh, who is the Big Lebowski's right hand man. Tara Reid plays Bunny Lebowski, who is uh the Big Lebowski's trophy wife. It is a super fun film. If you haven't seen it, I can't even describe uh much beyond uh the rug really does pull the room together. And I will leave you with a question. Is Donnie really there, or is he a fignet of Walter's imagination that is a carry-on of guilt from his loss in Vietnam? Go check it out. Four stars and a heart. Uh, you can see it on HBO Max. Okay, we are here. We are ready for a main review of one battle after another. Lots of people are calling this the modern masterpiece from our friend Paul Thomas Anderson. Over at IMDB, the story is when their evil enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunite to rescue one of their own daughters. It is written by Paul Thomas Anderson based on a novel by Thomas Pynchon, and it is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The second one is just a secondary thumbs up. Yes, this is still amazing. My first review was five stars and a heart. Okay, first watch, and I am vibrating. 70 millimeter IMAX, visually stunning, smart, prescient, funny, and moving. I think that this is the first five-star film of 2025. This movie opens with like a 20-minute prologue of the actions of the revolutionary group. And we see a montage, we see an opening sequence where uh the leader is perfidia Beverly Hills, played by Tiana Taylor. She is leading a group of rebellious uh rebels into a like migrant detention center near the Mexico border, and uh there's a whole group of amazing humans that are playing these characters. Uh, they are so good. I'm so glad they're all here. Uh, you have amazing that guys and the that gals, uh, including like Wood Harris as Laredo. I'd love to see him pop up, Alana Haym as Mae West. Uh, you have Shayna McHale playing Jungle Pussy, Regina Hall playing DeAndra. Uh, but what you see is oh, and we meet Leonardo DiCaprio's Bob uh at the time called Ghetto Pat. Okay, so Tiana Taylor's Porfidia is leading this group of people into this facility to break out everyone who is being held there. In the process, she comes across a sleeping uh Sean Penn who is playing Colonel Steve, Stephen J. Lockjaw. She takes his hat. There's some cat and mouse play. Um, she is definitely the cat, he is definitely the mouse, but she cannot stop but mess with him. He is enthralled with her, and she plays with him and she takes his cap and she tells him to stand up. Uh, she's not talking about standing up. She makes him uh get an erection, she makes him carry that as he is being walked out. It is very funny, it is very poignant uh that he is being manipulated by her. But in the end, he says that he will see her again, and she tells him no, uh, not if I see you first. And uh that is the beginning of the movie. We go through this entire sequence where we see the French 75 continuously um going through more and more, including getting to a final sequence where Perfidia has had a child, uh, has met with uh Stephen J. Lockjaw again because he caught them uh blowing up a building, and he tells her he's not gonna stop her from blowing things up, but he just she has to meet him. Uh, she comes to his hotel room. There are some definite sexual shenanigans going on there. And uh later, uh, she, after having a child, um, that she is now feeling less than, she is not feeling the electricity of the rebellion. Bob or ghetto Pat is taking care of the child and is really focused on being a dad. And uh the movie continues to go from there. Porfidia ends up getting caught after one of their operations. They go into a bank and she ends up shooting someone and it causes an awful lot of chaos, and they end up in a crazy car chase. It is one of the most like harrowing urban car chases I've seen in a long time. And that has to do a lot with camera choices. I think that's the thing about this movie is people are going to talk about lots and lots of aspects of it, but the movie is like constantly moving forward. It is propulsive in its use of sound, and uh the sound is slightly off-kilter. I thought about it a lot, and I think it really feels a lot like a Dutch angle for your ears. It's like letting you know something is askew and it is off-putting and disconcerting. And I think it's a little bit in what Johnny Greenwood is doing here that is helping us feel disjointed as we are seeing things unfold. Uh, in the end, perfidia gets caught and she eventually turns on the French 75. After she turns on the French 75, she is in witness protection. Uh, we see Stephen J. Lockchaw trying to go and see her, and she has left. Uh, she leaves a note basically saying, like, this ain't for you. And uh she disappears into the wind. And the French 75 rally around uh Ghetto Pat and uh the their daughter, uh, and off they go. Uh they sent them out of the city, uh, out of the area where they were, up eventually into a small town after going to Denver in Colorado. We cut 16 years forward, and now we are in a time period where we have uh Ghetto Pat is now known as Bob, uh, their daughter is known as Willa, and uh everything unfolds from there. Eventually we see multiple storylines unfolding. I I will not spoil this movie. I I've decided that this is a movie that you have to see in a theater. I am telling you all of that takes place in the first 25 minutes of the movie. Um, if any of this resonates with you, you should go see it. Shout outs though. Benito del Toro plays Sensei Sergei St. Carlos. Everything I have heard and listened to about this film is that he and Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio sat down and reworked the segment of the film that is his segment. And boy, is it moving and amazing. It is uh visually stunning. It feels like uh uh it almost feels like a logical wonder. I don't know that it is a wonder. I know there are cuts that are happening here and there, but it is so connected. Everything that is happening in there is you have this like really directly connected movement throughout an environment. And Benito del Toro is sort of in this film, is a secondary father figure. We're seeing him taking care of his people, taking care of all his people, everyone who comes to him, including Willa. And so we have this like interesting dichotomy of Bob being sort of a burnt out, ex rebellious person who is given up. Uh, and he is drank, he drinks too much, he smokes too much dope, he is sort of a waste. And you have uh sensei Sergio taking care of everybody around him, and uh, it's fantastic. And in my opinion, I would love to see him get nominated for best supporting actor. I think that is probably going to go to Sean Penn from this movie. Uh, I think that Tiana Taylor could go up for best supporting actress, but I also think Willa is in that sort of is she a lead? Is she a supporting because she only appears in the last two hours of the film? Yeah, it's tough. Uh, it's a great film. Uh, I don't want to talk any more about the details. I want you to go see it. And I want you to see it in the biggest, baddest theater you can. But you should see it in a theater, even if that means you have to see it in a local theater, in a digital AMC, in a Regal. I don't care. Go see this movie. It is absolutely worth seeing it. And it's worth seeing it with other people. There is an electricity in the room right now about this movie. I saw it on the first night that it was available in 70 millimeter here in Arizona. I am now lucky enough to live 11 minutes from a 70 millimeter projector, the Harkins Arizona Mills 18. And I was astounded by what I saw and I heard. That movie looks so good. It is not VistaVision, but it is pretty close to what the best performance of this film is going to ever look like. And then I saw it again in IMAX with my wife, and I don't care. It's not seeing it with the full film grain. It is not uh four stories tall, but it's an amazing movie, and you should see it. You should see it in a way that overwhelms your senses. The final 20 minutes of this movie are one of the craziest roller coaster rides I've ever been on. Or like you're swimming through the ocean on the waves. There's so much being incorporated visually and thematically, and I think that that is why I gave this movie five stars. I think this is a movie of its time, I think it is a movie out of time, I think it is a movie of big ideas, I think it is a movie of connective tissue, of themes in ways I have not seen done in a very long time. I love this movie. I will stump for it all year. I think this is going to get nominated for somewhere between 10 and 13 Academy Awards, and I can't wait to see the season that this is a part of. It is now, in my opinion, Paul Thomas Anderson's to lose, Leo's to lose. So good luck to Jeremy Allen White and to everybody else who's coming down that pipeline. Marty Supreme, Timothy Chalamet, it's going to be a rough end of the year. I think uh it seems to me like this is it, but I'm excited to watch all those movies. I'm so glad I've gotten to see this movie twice. I've already pre-ordered the Steelbook. I can't wait to have this film to talk about in the future. It is going to be one of those films that sits on my shelf that I will pull off the shelf and watch multiple times a year. It is also an instant rewatchable. You could plop in and be like, for the next 20 minutes, I know this story is going here, and I can't wait to see that happen. And there are not a lot of movies being made like that today. I think Sinners was the only other movie I would say that for this year, maybe 28 years later. Uh, you should see this movie, go see it in a theater. Pretty pleased with Trigger on Top. Help us stop the dialogue about how much this movie cost and how much it hasn't made. It is it is a big company's money, and sometimes they need to fund art in order to make things that are important. This is an important film. Go see it. Okay, I'm done. I will stop proselytizing. I will say I did see Donnie Darko last night, and I'll be discussing it more in the future because I saw it for the the Real Deal Film Society when we connect up next week. I'm super stoked to talk about that movie. I have a huge amount of affection for it, but I'm glad that I got to see it in a theater in 35mm. Phoenix seems to be a fun place for me to be a film fan and to be a film podcaster. Uh, if you are a person in this area and have connections into the film industry, I look forward to connecting with you. Uh I am hopefully going to see an enemy tonight. I am very, very blessed to be in a position now where I am seeing an awful lot of films. Please rate and review this podcast. You can follow us over on TikTok, on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts. You name it, I've tried to put it there. And if it's not on a podcatcher of your choice, message me. Let me know. Geekonfilm com, geekonfilm.com, Robbie the Geek everywhere else. Uh check me out, talk to me, talk to me about film, letterboxed, any one of these possible places, I am there. Uh thank you for listening. Uh go see this movie. Bye. This has been a Deepon Film Production.

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Robbie Holmes

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