Movie Mindset Oscars Preview ‘25

Let's all go to the lobby,

let's all go to the lobby,

let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat,

delicious things to eat,

farming candy beat,

sparkling drinks, such as dandy, chocolate bars and the candy.

So let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat.

Let's all go to the body

to get ourselves a treat.

Hello, Mindset heads and movie buffs and fans of all kinds.

Hessa and I are finally back to kick off or give a preview of season three of Movie Mindset the way we always do with our annual Oscars Preview.

It's that time of year.

It's the Super Bowl for movie fans, Hessa.

And I cannot be happier to to be back talking movies with you.

I am so psyched.

The Oscar bells are ringing.

The children in the streets are singing.

It's Oscar time, and what a time it is to be alive for the Oscars.

Well,

before we kick off our episode, which we're going to give you a preview of the festivities and talk about some of the best pictures nominated this year, but if you are a fan of movie mindset and a fan of the Oscars and a fan of New York City mayoral candidate Zoron Z for Zoran, Zoron Mandani, then please come out this Sunday to a fundraiser party at a club on the Lower East Side where Hesse and I will be doing a live movie mindset Oscars watch party.

So, tickets for that event will be available, will be in the show description on this episode.

I encourage you all in the New York City area to come out and support Movie Mindset and support Zoron for mayor.

It's going to be a blast.

There's going to be an Oscars thing going on, Oscars Watch Party hosted by me and Will, of course,

the city's premier Oscar experts.

There's also like other floors with other stuff going on.

Like there's going to be dancing and like

DJs playing and like a moderated like Q ⁇ A thing with some other Chapo luminaries.

So it's very fun.

And this is an opportunity for New York City to have

a movie mayor, a movie mindset mayor, because his pedigree is that he is the son of filmmaker Mira Nair, who directed Mississippi Masala, starring movie mindset subject Denzel Washington.

So hopefully he will be bringing to Gracie Mansion

the requisite movie-watching skills and knowledge that you'd want from a New York City mayor.

Our current mayor, unfortunately, I don't think he's seen a movie.

I would be surprised if Eric Adams has seen even one movie.

I think, like,

he's seen one movie and it's Rush Hour 3.

And he's like, this is what they're all like.

They're all like this.

All right, so this year, this year, it's it's been a heck of a year for movies, and by a heck of a year for movies, I mean a fairly bad year for movies, yeah.

There hasn't been a lot of a lot of heat on the I mean, we got we got megalopolis, of course, which you know was totally snubbed at the Oscars because of its

you know, because it sucked and was terrible, but

I still haven't seen it.

I feel guilty.

I've been, I've been a very bad current movie watcher because

there's two movies of the best pictures nominations that I haven't seen.

Apologies to I'm Still Here and Nickel Boys, although I've heard very good things about them.

But then there's a glut of not Oscar Noms, but still movies I've heard good things about that I have neglected to take the time to see.

I haven't seen The Apprentice.

I haven't seen A Different Man.

I haven't seen Like La Chimera, but I have seen, we have seen eight of the 10 best picture nominations is not bad.

And again, if you want to watch, you know, if you're mad at us for not seeing all the movies, you watch them yourself, okay?

You get out there and watch the movies.

Yeah, fuck you.

Okay, the best picture.

We have here Amelia Perez, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Nickel Boys, I'm Still Here, The Substance, Dune Part 2, Wicked, Anora, and The Brutalist.

Now, Hesse, we can go through these things.

I've not talked to you yet about, I think, any of these movies.

I think maybe we talked about the substance briefly.

But of these films, there are a couple that I thought were good, two very good movies that I enjoyed watching.

There are a couple that I thought were that I admired some of its, some of their ambition and some of the artistry, but I found kind of flawed and I didn't really enjoy them.

Even though I kind of respected them or respected elements of them or I liked them, but with significant caveats.

and then there are a handful of these movies that I thought were terrible I thought were ass and I'm going to be a pure hater on on on them so period as a of of the best picture nominations where would you like to begin I should we start with the brutalist because I know that that's a movie that you and I have both seen most recently yes I just finished watching it today Okay.

This weekend, in preparation for this episode, I was worried that I wouldn't have enough time to watch The Brutalist.

So I began to prepare in my head a bit in which I would describe the plot to The Brutalist despite not having seen it.

And I would invent a plot based on what I've seen of the movie or what I know of the movie, or I would just invent what I think this movie is about.

And what I had settled on was that I would describe the movie as a story about a man who's driven insane by his attempts to build the most brutal building of all time.

You know what?

That would be a better movie.

In fact, that is basically the movie that Brady Corbett turned in.

So I was not far off the mark on what I had anticipated going into this movie.

And I guess I'd like to begin with the things I did like about

The Brutalist.

And like, I appreciated the Vista Vision filming.

I thought a lot of it looked really good.

And I got to say,

the runtime was not a hurdle.

I thought the length of the movie, I didn't feel the length in the way I did.

It was some pretty good films.

That being said, I cannot say I was a fan of The Brutalist.

Yeah.

It had me in the first act, but it really lost me in the second act.

Absolutely.

I was going to say the first act.

Completely.

I was feeling it in the first act, but

look, I'm just going to say right now, all of the discussions of these movies will be spoiler-heavy, and I'm going to jump right into this with The Brutalist.

The Brutalist has something that happens in the second act of the movie around the three-hour mark that is so ludicrous that it basically takes the entire movie from you know what i'm trying to remember what thing you're talking about i can't remember if anything crazy really oh yeah wait doesn't guy pierce rape adrian brody

yes yeah the daily mon of the movie is that um he he escapes to israel the one country where your boss would never rape you yeah It's it's so crazy because that's that scene comes out of nowhere.

My friend, I was texting my friend when I was watching it

And I was like, this is, this is keynote.

I'm like, we're back, baby, movies.

And he was like, you're in the first half, aren't you?

I was like, yeah.

And he's like, well, just wait until

the crazy thing happens in it.

And I was like watching, like, there's no, there's no way this is happening right now.

Like, what the fuck?

Yeah, the scene we're talking about is when, okay, so like to set it up, Guy Pierce is sort of the very wealthy, wasp-ish patron, Pennsylvania patron of Adrian Brody's

Holocaust surviving Hungarian refugee architect who studied under Bauhaus.

His name is Laszlo Toth.

And he's sort of like, and Guy Pierce sort of discovers him in this country when he's kind of...

living on the skids, doing like kind of odd jobs for his cousin.

He designs

a modernist library for him that Guy Pierce's character initially hates, but then when he's lauded for it in like Time Life magazine, he sort of adopts Adrian Brody and then like helps get his wife and niece like into America from Europe after World War II.

And then around like the three-hour mark of this movie, they're in a marble quarry in Italy, and Guy Pierce is just sort of like looking very angrily at Adrian Brody and then like discovers him down some sort of marble passageway like passed out from drinking and smack and takes it upon himself to just rape him.

Yes.

You just

rape him.

And then like the climax of the movie that, like, in which this movie ejected itself entirely from consideration as a worthwhile movie, is when Felicity Jones, like,

like, Felicity Jones confronts Guy Pierce and his whole family and like hobbles into their dining room on a walker and basically just says, you're a rapist.

You're all evil rapists.

And then they chase her out of the house, house, and that's basically the end of the movie.

Well, no, you didn't see the epilogue?

No, the epilogue, the epilogue makes it clear that, you know, he went on to design many other buildings in which his patrons didn't rape him, and that

they moved to Israel, and that it's the destination, not the journey.

It's the destination, not the journey.

And he also says that he designed the big building in the Brutalist to look like a concentration camp, kind of, because of how traumatized he is.

And he,

like, it's kind of, I don't really know what, what it's trying to say necessarily.

Maybe that, like, Israel is kind of like a concentration camp because of the trauma that Jews experienced.

And it's, it's all very...

heavy-handed and confusing.

And the wrapping up of like, it's not the destination, it's not the journey, it's the destination is, if we said it the other way around, he says, it's not the journey, it's the destination.

It's like,

you know, the final building.

It's not the building of the building, which I guess, you know,

like could mean anything really when you think about it.

Now, like, a lot of the discourse around this movie was hobbled by the question of, is this movie Zionist or not?

And the answer to that question is, yes, it obviously is.

But like, that to me is not really important or it's just not really like an argument that I think is worth having about this movie.

Like, yes, yes, I think the movie does render in credible terms why people of Laszlo Toff's experience or generation would turn to the state of Israel

based on their life experience, or why they would, uh, why Zionism meant something to them, or why, or why a character like his would end up settling in Israel.

Like, I don't think, I don't think the movie, and I think the last line of the movie makes it pretty clear where the director stands in this, but like that, that to me is not a sin to hold against the movie.

What I hold against the movie, like I said, is

a ludicrous second act.

And like I said, what I admire about this movie is kind of the scope of its ambition and a lot of the way it's filmed.

I think it looked really interesting.

But

this to me is kind of damning it with faint praise because this is just kind of like, to me, this is a hallmark of Mickey Mouse Millennial Movie Making by Brady Sorbet.

It's like, it's one thing to make a movie that looks really good and references other good movies.

But to me, ultimately, ultimately, at the end of the day, it felt kind of empty.

And nor was I bowled over by really any of the performances in this movie.

I thought Guy Pierce was good as this kind of like

highly enthusiastic but menacing, like kind of wasp patron of the arts.

And

I could tell something evil was going to happen with him, but in no way, shape, or form could I have anticipated that he just straight up rapes Adrian Brody.

And like the decision to include that in the movie to be like, to make it that thunderingly literal about what like patrons do to their the artists that they sponsor.

Yeah.

Like I like to think about was the fact that Brady was in the remake of Funny Games, the Michael Hanukkah movie.

And it just seems to me like he's trying a little too hard to like go with that level of like cruelty and violence to make a point.

But like to me, it just it lands like a just a dud.

Like it just, that's when the movie became ridiculous to me.

Yeah, I like I like a lot of his other movies.

I think like a big thing that got me mad, I hate how much he uses like shaky cam and just does like regular medium shots covering like a conversation in a room.

And like

there, you know what there wasn't really that this movie could have used was more shots of a beautiful architecture.

You know, yeah, there's really not many.

And you think, you'd think that a movie called The Brutalist would have more of that, but I guess like budgetarily,

that wasn't feasible.

They do go to the the quarry that's a cool like milieu but like a lot of the like milieus feel very like the rooms that people are talking in they feel very um

i don't know they it's just it wasn't feeling of the period necessarily which is strange because it's filmed on vista vision right yeah and

Yeah, I did think it was beautiful at parts.

There were scenes that definitely got me.

And it's not a bad movie, for sure, but it's at the end of the day, it's a movie about movie making.

And

we see those all the time.

When are we going to get a movie about movie making where someone doesn't get gay raped?

I'm sick of it.

I'm sick of it.

I mean, I don't know.

Is this his commentary on what Hollywood is like?

I mean, like, that's how I would have to kind of interpret it.

Yeah.

Or even financing in general, like

finding financing from an outside person.

Like, all the money is owned by these like maniacs, these rapey maniacs.

And they're all like, I want to honor my mother, and you have to do that instead of what you want to do.

I do like that, like the big, the big brutal project that he's commissioned to do and spends most of the movie trying to create and losing his mind

doing is supposed to be like a tribute to Guy Pierce's mother, and it's supposed to be a combination chapel, theater,

wrestling gymnasium, and library.

And, like, but the chapel is very important.

And, like, you know, this gets to the movie's themes of like how immigrants are treated in America, the immigrant experience in America, like, whether, like, despite no matter how much success you seem to have in America or how embraced you seem to see

for any immigrant, but for, you know, Jewish immigrants and refugees from the Holocaust in particular, the movie makes the case that, like, there's the

his wife, the Felicity Jones character in a letter quotes Goethe in the beginning of the movie: that no one is more enslaved than someone who thinks they're free.

And I think that that is sort of like the point about the immigrant experience in America that this movie is trying to make.

But I did enjoy it, like, so like it's very important to the people of Pennsylvania that their community be respected and that they make this Holocaust surviving architect build them a Christian chapel.

And that's like most of his focus.

But I did like that at the end when it revealed, yeah, that the Christian chapel that I built for all you Keystone brubes out there is actually my take on what Dachau was like or Buchenwald was like for me.

That's like, it's like a fuck you to the guy who's like, I wanted to honor my mother.

I want her name to be visible on it, he said at one point.

And he's like,

in retrospect, that's a scene where he's like, I want her name to be visible on it.

And he's like, okay, sure.

There's like a lot of, it hits a lot of like kind of cliched beats too.

Like he comes to, he comes to the big city.

He goes to Philly and he's like doing heroin with Isaac de Boncole, one of my favorite.

He was good.

I always like seeing Isaac DeBancole in a movie.

Yeah, I was so psyched.

I haven't seen him in something in so long.

And I was like, let's fucking go, dude.

But

it seemed kind of like, you know, throwaway-ish and

not throwaway-ish, but it seemed very...

I don't know.

Is it this movie?

Or is it just like, is the magic gone from new movies?

It makes me shudder to imagine.

Like, It's a problem with all the Oscar names.

They all feel like fake movies almost, a lot of them.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess this is a segue into the other big movie this year that I have to be, I'm compelled to be somewhat of a hater on, or be actually just a full-time hater on, and that is the substance.

Yeah.

Now, and like, essentially, I kind of had the same problem with this movie is that there are elements of things in this movie that I enjoy.

Like, I mean, the body horror and the practical gore effects in this movie are very cool, and it certainly references the canon of other directors that we've discussed at length on Movie Mindset.

But I feel it's like,

again, like, it goes back to your point about, like,

has the magic gone out of movies?

Because, like, it has the surface-level appearance of things that I like in movies, but I...

didn't feel that there was really anything undergirding it.

Like, yeah.

It just, it's like

Caroline Farragut or whatever, like, it just, it, it seemed kind of like a mood board.

Yeah, exactly.

It's like a Pinterest board of, like, here's some things I like in other better movies that I'm going to remind you of in my movie.

But, like, the movie itself is just not nearly as smart or good as it believes itself to be.

And I kind of feel the same way about the Brutalist.

They have their own look, but like, I just don't, like, the thoughts behind them are just not really that impressive to me.

Yeah, the, the substance, especially, I liked it when I first saw it.

I think we've talked about this because of how, like, how much of a bummer it was, like, how fucked up the ending was.

I loved that.

But, like, I saw it again recently and it just pissed me off.

Yeah.

Like, so bad.

It's, it's like, um,

it really feels like a student film where it's, like, you know, just hitting all the requisite beats.

There are things happening that there's no connective tissue whatsoever.

The gross French cookbook.

Yeah.

It's just like excuses to make disgusting-looking frames of a movie.

It's like every shot of painting style movie making.

Well,

again, like, and the substance, like, obviously, like, very much references like David Conenberg and David Lynch and like the body horror of like Stuart Gordon or Brian Junze that you know that we've discussed on this show.

But I think where it goes wrong is that like, I think what those directors have is that like to get to the points of extreme body horror or alienation,

you have to balance it out with things that aren't at that register.

You need some sort of contrast there.

Otherwise, it's all at the same register and it's not really shocking or moving.

And like I found every frame of the substance to just be so gross and hateful that like the cumulative effect of it was greatly diminished in my opinion.

Yeah, like in Malholland Drive when the,

you know, when she does the audition and she does like an amazing job for all the guys and it's like a disturbing kind of audition because the other actors being like kind of rapey, but it's the con the contrast between when she in that movie when she she reads the lines that she's going to read at the audition and she reads it to um

Laura Laura Henning, Laura Hering.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, Laura Herring when they're practicing

when they're practicing it and like Naomi Watts' character, she she gives it as this very like upbeat, soap operatic, uh, like, you know, like the

standard movie audition.

And then in the actual audition scene, like the exact same scene and exact same dialogue is played in a way that's really disturbing and has like overtures of like rape and incest.

But like the thing about that also is that that is in the like context of the movie that they're creating that she's doing that and then when they snap out of it It's kind of like you know, it was a little real because of the lecherous actor that she's reading this scene with.

But the real thing that's happened is that she just did such a good job.

And it's like a triumphant moment of her being like a moment of like, oh, you are not a flash in the pan.

You're not just a pretty face.

You're an incredible actress.

And this is like, in the substance, there's nothing really like that.

It's like, oh, you're just beautiful.

Like, that's it.

And like, I guess it could work, but in the substance, it's viewed as like, you're beautiful, but also like the way we're gonna film this all, it's all very creepy, it's all very like spooky.

There's no happiness, really, that the character can possibly achieve.

Like, it just feels so hollow, and I guess that's kind of the point of the movie: is that like modern society and beauty is like hollow.

And Hollywood is really cruel to women past the age of like 25.

And I never knew that.

She's like, Yeah, I get it.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, however, I mean, like, another major problem I had with the substance is that, like, I don't like it when

genre, like, like, prestige movies throw on, like, a patina of genre over it, in this case, like, grotesque body horror, but then fail to follow the own, like, its own rules or conventions of the, like, genre trope that they're dealing with.

And I'm speaking specifically about how in the movie, like, as Demi Moore gets more and more desiccated, as her younger copy or like double continues to like push the the treatment past the one week window when you're supposed to switch back to your other self and making like the original demi moral body get more and more like disgusting and degraded like they show her like popping like her kneecap back in place or like breaking her toe walking down the stairs she becomes this like emaciated crone right

all that leads to a scene where the crone and margaret qually have have like a big fight in her apartment where they're like throwing each other through plate glass and like

Sharon Stone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in symbol recall.

But like the demi More character is getting just dropkicked around this room and she's springing back up like Bruce Lee in Game of Yes.

Yes.

You know, I was just, wait a second.

Like you just showed me 10 minutes before, like her kneecap just popping out of place when she tries to get out of a recliner.

And now she's going like full-on gonzo like fight mode with her younger duplicate.

And she's just like, you know, just throwing punches and jabs like she's in the ring.

Yeah, it's it's in and like that scene also goes on for so long.

That's the other thing.

When you're doing like a mood board type movie like this, it's like fine to do, but like you've got to keep it moving, I guess.

And like it just keeps lingering.

Like scenes will take so, so long.

And it's like, you know, it just doesn't know when to end a scene because it's like, oh, this scene is so effective.

Why should we end it now?

You know, and the ending, especially, you see that problem.

Even the first time I watched it, when I was like suitably upset by it and thought it might have, thought it was like more effective than I do in retrospect, I was checking my, checking the time like always.

And I was like, how is there another hour and 20 minutes left in this movie?

What is going on?

I couldn't tell you like anything that happens in the middle of the movie.

It's very like, you know,

scenes that could be in a movie like this, like The Substance, that might work in a full movie with connective tissue.

But instead of like picking and choosing, they just throw it all on the, they throw it all at the wall and see what sticks.

And

it feels very, yeah, like mood board-esque.

And like, I feel this is a symptom of like a number of movies I can point to this year that like, I'm thinking specifically of Long Legs, another movie that was much praised that I found to be deeply stupid and disappointing.

They're competently made and they have

interesting performances or they have an interesting look, but ultimately they just kind of collapse under the weight of the references that they're pulling from other better movies.

And it just, it reminds me of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode about Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, where they keep showing clips of Casablanca.

And they're like, stop reminding me of a better movie in the course of your quite not nearly as good movie.

No, it's like, it's definitely like a phenomenon now.

Long legs specifically, I, it was so

insanely obvious what the twist of Long Legs was, like, from moment one.

And it's played like it's a twist that you're not supposed to know.

And it just feels like a

dumb guy's idea of a smart guy movie, kind of, is what like it, it felt like to me.

Hesse, as soon as Nicholas Cage's character was like made explicit in Long Legs, the movie rushed out the door for me.

It was just hit the exit hard.

But, you know, we've got Nicholas Cage.

Hesse, this has been a really great year for trans representation in a movie.

There's been some wonderful trans characters.

We got Nick Cage and Long Legs.

We got Amelia Perez.

We got Amelia Perez.

And we got The Pope and Conclave.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

I totally forgot about the Conclave.

The Pope and Conclave It's so funny.

Oh, my God.

Should we just talk about Conclave?

Yeah, let's talk about Conclave because,

okay, I'm going to out myself here.

And like, in terms of like this year's Oscar movies,

I'm going firmly with like the middlebrow critical consensus here.

Of the Oscar movies, the two ones that I have actually, I most enjoyed watching just as like a movie experience in the theater was Conclave and a Complete Unknown.

So I'm outing myself myself here as a totally boomer-brained dipshit, but I gotta say, of the Oscar movies, these are the two movies that I thought were like holistically the most successful and most entertaining to watch.

Yeah, I mean, Conclave was,

I was watching it.

I knew about the twist before I watched it.

Okay, I did not know about the twist at all.

Yeah, yeah.

I knew about the twist because

my friend had seen it and was like, this is the stupidest shit I've ever seen.

It's like, it's like deeply, it's so deeply and like intellectually, rigorously transphobic in the, in the twist of it, like in a weird way where it's like,

you know, oh, we're going to have a trans pope, but it's like, no, not really.

It's like,

it's not really a trans pope.

Yeah.

But, you know, it's someone who was born of basically introsex and that like lived lived most of their life as a man, but then was like, had a medical condition where doctors uncovered that he also has a uterus, that he was born with some level of like indeterminate male and female sexual,

secondary sexual characteristics.

And he discovers this after he becomes a priest, and he's like, if I knew, I never would have become a priest.

It would have been the greatest, the gravest sin of all time for me to become.

But because he didn't know, it's fine.

And he can still.

He's like a Catholic Pete Buddha judge where he's just like, if I could have torn that uterus out of me, I would have.

And the Pope is

like, I'm going to pay for you to get a surgery to remove your erroneous uterus.

And

not erroneous.

What's the word I'm thinking of?

Vestigial?

I don't know.

Your uterus.

Yeah, vestigial.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And

we're going to get a surgery to do it.

And he's like, no, it is God's plan for me to be in pain forever because of my uterus because it causes me great pain and medical issues.

And so it's like, it's okay to have a uterus as a man, but only if you don't get it removed and you don't know about it.

I mean, I don't know about you.

I don't want the Pope having a damn uterus.

You know, once a month, they'll be selling indulgences again, if you know what I'm saying.

Yeah, pure shopping.

Exactly.

Exactly.

That being said, like, you know, Conclave along with the complete unknown is like the category of movies that I feel like somewhat embarrassing are my favorite of these Oscar movies because they are the middlebrow Oscar movie.

Their ambitions, their artistic ambitions are not as grand as like the brutalist, the substance, or Anora.

But like because of that, because they take less of a big swing, I think they connect.

I mean,

they get some wood on the ball a little bit better than those other movies.

And like, with Conclave,

how could I not basically enjoy this movie?

It's got, we've got movies with Ray Fienz, John Lithgow, stanley tucci isabel rossellini and it's just like it's just people talking and the vaping cardinal we got we have cardinal tedesco my favorite character of the movie cardinal free cardinal tedesco he was

the new pro if i was in the conclave Despite the fact that Cardinal Tedesco represents the most reactionary right-wing facet of the Catholic Church, look, I'm not Catholic.

There's no skin off my back one way or the other.

I'm voting for the vaping cardinal.

He had swag.

He had swag for days.

There's like a scene where he comes over, like his intro, not his introduction, is him yelling at someone, like, don't touch my cape.

And then

in like the next scene, the first scene where you see him talking, he like,

what's his name?

Ray Fine sits down next to him and he's like looking around.

All the cardinals from everywhere in the world are there.

And he looks at the table of cardinals from Africa and he's like, did you, did we invite them?

Like, are we?

Like, what are you doing, man?

And, like, you know, this is a movie that I think does a good job of, like,

through basically only dialogue, creating a good sense of, like, narrative propulsion, intrigue, and some really good performances.

As they sort of like, the plot of the movie is that, and by the way, amazing.

I mean, we can talk about this year's the most disastrous Oscars PR campaign in movie history.

In terms of Amelia Perez, when we get to that movie, Conclave is going to have the most successful Oscars PR campaign in history.

Because,

mark my words, if the actual Pope Francis dies before Sunday, Conclave is a lock.

And I'm saying all the momentum is behind Conclave right now.

When do the final votes go in?

Aren't they, isn't the last day,

it's like the 21st or something, right?

There's still time for the Pope to die.

There's still time for the Pope.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I mean, it's like, it's a talking in rooms movie about like solving a mystery.

Yeah.

What's like,

what's there not to love about that?

And it did, like, it is very effective.

It's like,

you know what it reminds me of as far as like tenor and Providence, as far as Oscar movies go, is this is so such a random pool, but good night and good luck.

Like,

just people talking in rooms.

Like, well-made enough, really good actors.

Like, you know, middlebrow critical consensus fair.

But like I said,

it's a solid base hit in my opinion yeah yeah totally and um i do think it would be funny i don't understand like the the picks for the oscars this year are such a grab bag of like just what what movies came out this year let's just put them all in

yeah uh but you know like conclave it's like uh You go through like, okay, there's Ray Fienes is basically, he's the reluctant

dean of the College of Cardinals.

And like the old pope dies, and he like sort of represents like, he was very close to the old pope and represents sort of the, him and Stanley Tucci represent kind of the liberal wing of the Catholic Church.

And he is kind of reluctantly put in charge of administering this conclave, which is like, you know, one of the coolest election systems in the world.

I wish voting for president were like you hand in your card and they like.

Yeah, you know, thread it onto a big string and then burn them when there's no killings is reached.

It was was so sick.

This is I would love to vote in the Sistine Chapel and not like the gym of my local public school.

Yeah, it's so incredible.

And like

the like something I loved my autistic brain was just like absolutely in heaven with was seeing like the mix of the

modern technology mixing with that ancient like this process and how they've

which is why Cardinal Tedesco's vaping is such a such a clever invention of the movie yeah it's so cool it's so sick and it's I mean

as for settings I mean this like every pretty much every movie it the colors are very flat and like it's very dark and annoying and kind of

lit like a TV show and not a movie which you could say about pretty much every single movie that's been nominated that I've seen but the uh

yeah it is it is a beautiful setting and the costumes are amazing And just as far as craft goes, there's a lot to admire.

But

also, there's this implicit thing that's going on throughout the movie that's really funny where it's like

they're sequestered

in the Vatican, and they're not allowed to leave until a new pope is

reached.

And they're not allowed to any contact with the outside world of anything that might bias their vote.

Besides Ray Fiennes, who gets

has like, because he's running the conclave, he gets to, you know,

get updates and stuff.

And all the updates Ray Fiennes gets are like, there was another Muslim terrorist attack.

Like every day, it's like 20 more people just died from a Muslim terrorist.

It's some suicide bombing in Rome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The Muslim hordes are literally at the gate of the Vatican in this movie.

And there's been a scene where like, as Ray Fiennes casts his vote, there's just a bomb goes off in St.

Peter's Square and like showers dust into the Sistine chapel.

Yeah.

And

that's a funny moment, too, because the vote he's casting, Ray Fiennes, is a vote for himself to be the Pope because

there's a lot of politics going on and politicking,

which I love.

But at one point, it seems, it's clear that

they think, oh, it's either Ray Fienn or Tedesco.

And Ray Fiennes does not want to be the Pope, but he's like, I guess I have to vote for myself.

Yeah, we got to have reluctant pope over right-wing racist pope.

At this point, John Lithgow, the Simony Pope, who was selling clerical offices, he's out of the picture.

African Pope also been 86th because, you know, he had a child with a woman while he was a priest.

And that's when we get Isabella Rossolini's nun character as the one who sort of blows the whistle on that.

Then there's Liberal Pope, played by Stanley Tucci, who's just a little bit too thirsty for the job.

I never want to vote for someone who wants to be pope.

I mean, as they say, and then right-wing pope, Cardinal the Vaping Pope.

But ultimately at the end, they're all surprised by the trans pope who comes out of nowhere and really a Cinderella story for popehood.

The Cardinal of Kabul.

He's ministering to the six Catholics in Afghanistan.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like, come on, man.

Like, go somewhere with more people.

Like, I think they're fine over there yeah come on there's about there's about 80 million Catholics in Rio I mean come on how about a Brazilian pope yeah and um

like a jacked like oiled up Brazilian like

um

no but I love um I mean Lithgow's performance is amazing his perpetually perpetually stunned he's like I've never heard I've never heard of something like this in my life.

What are you talking about?

I never

is that even a crime anymore?

Yeah.

No, Simon's over there.

He's up.

So yeah, like Conclave, you know, like I thought it was basically a good movie and I enjoyed it.

Yeah, me too.

Okay, let's go to the other, the other of the middle-of-the-road boomer-brained movies that I got.

I feel almost embarrassed to admit this, but A Complete Unknown was my favorite of these movies.

Yeah.

You know what, Will?

I have a confession to make.

I still haven't seen it.

I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

I did a worse job than you

preparing.

Look,

this is a continuation of James Mangold's Walk the Line Johnny Cash Extended Cinematic Universe.

Now, I should say say that like I am not Dylan pilled.

Like I am, I respect Bob Dylan, but he's just not one of my guys.

Yes.

Warren Zvon's first solo album washes everything Dylan's ever done in his career.

But that's neither here nor there.

Look, James Mengel, the guy directs good movies, okay?

The kind of good, decent pictures that you'd watch with your whole family.

Like, he makes

well-done movies, good cast, you know.

And

I really enjoyed A Complete Unknown.

I thought Chalame was great as Bob Dylan.

And

I say it's the Johnny Cash extended cinematic universe because

shortly after watching A Complete Unknown, I decided to watch Walk the Line again, which is another just very good movie that I really, really enjoy.

Yeah, it's like a standard,

you know, despite what Walkhard did to it.

Yeah, which is

body is every music

movie ever made.

Yes.

Yes.

But Walk the Line is kind of like the blueprint of the modern, like, you know, of that modern music biopic.

And, you know, there were so many copies of it, like Ray and like,

which also is a good movie, I think.

And Elvis.

Yeah, Elvis.

Well,

they kind of all stopped after Walk Hard came out.

And people were like, I don't know if we should be doing this style of movie anymore.

And then Elvis kind of like restarted the

fervor.

And Elvis, I feel like, is in a different, almost a different category because it's so weird.

Like it's shot

in this insane way.

But yeah, I definitely, I'm no Dylan hyper fan either.

I love Timmy C.

I've seen several scenes from the movie, like the scene where he meets Johnny Cash, and Johnny Cash is like, I'm a cool guy.

What are you Jewish?

That's pretty cool.

I'm drunk.

I'm about to drive.

Drives away.

Was it in Boyd Holbrook?

I thought it was very good as Johnny Cash.

But I say it's the Johnny Cash extended cinematic universe because there's a scene in Walk the Lime where Joaquin Phoenix portraying Johnny Cash is like flying on uppers or something and is like sweating out of every pore in his face and is like geeked up and like excitedly telling his parents,

played by a father played by Robert Patrick, that he's like, I wrote a letter to to that folk singer.

Remember, I wrote that letter to that folk singer on a plane I was telling you about.

He wrote back.

This guy's a genius or whatever.

And like his parents, his parents are like, oh, shut the fuck up.

No one cares about freewheeling Bob Dylan.

And he's like, oh,

I wrote this letter to Bob Dylan on an airplane and he wrote back.

Oh, my God.

He's the greatest artist of my lifetime.

A Complete Unknown then portrays a scene.

It shows in the movie a scene where Boyd Holbrook playing Johnny Cash writes that letter on an airplane to Bob Dylan.

And then, of course, they meet each other.

I'm like, Johnny Cash is like, you're all right, kid.

And then he's like, okay, I am going to use electric guitars at the Newport Folk Festival.

Yeah.

But like, I mean, what the movie is essentially about is like this epochal moment in American popular culture that I, you know, like very important for my parents.

I remember my dad telling me about it, this, the moment where Dylan goes electric at the Newport Folk Festival and like inaugurates like much of what we think of as like the 60s counterculture and like rock and roll music, but does it by like really spinning in the face of like the folk music scene and like people like Pete Seeger and like the community of folk musicians that sort of like he glommed on to and like launched his career off of.

And I think that's there like villain folk singers in the movie too that are like...

No, if anything, I think the movie portrays Bob Dylan as something of a villain.

Oh,

Ed Norton plays Pete Seeger and is like, he's great, and Pete Seeger is like, you know, the kindliest man in human existence.

But like, his whole thing is like, he's like, Bob, like, folk music means something.

It matters.

And like, it matters because it has certain strictures in terms of like a good song can sell itself.

It doesn't need the bells and whistles.

And he's like, you know, and it's also part of a broader left-wing social movement that he hopes will be like building the foundations to create a socialist society in America, like a society and a culture based on solidarity, tradition, and like, you know, a kind of lefty patriotism.

Like the first scene with Pete Seeger is like when he's being convicted of

performing This Land is Your Land as like, you know, being, it's in the McCarthy era and he's being, you know, like harangued for his lefty politics.

Yeah.

And then like, you know, Bob Dylan comes to New York City from Minnesota and then he immediately goes to, meets Pete Seeger in the

sort of hospice care of which Woody Guthrie is currently residing towards the end of his life.

And he blows him away with some song that he wrote for Woody Guthrie.

And he becomes the darling of like that Greenwich Village folk music scene in New York.

Now,

we've talked a lot about like movies that remind you of much better movies.

The movie that bodied a complete unknown is Inside Lewin Davis.

Because I don't know why anyone would make a movie about Bob Dylan after that movie.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's like...

The most that movie is so depressing.

Yeah, it is the one of the most.

There are so many scenes in Inside Lewin Davis that like have that perfect Cohen Brothers quality of capturing in the smallest detail what hell feels like.

Yeah.

And I think of a scene in that movie where he steps in an icy puddle in Chicago and then he cuts to him sitting at a diner counter and he's like taking his soaked sock out of his like sodden shoe and like flexing his toes to try to get some heat back into it.

back into them.

And I was just like, it sends chills up my spine thinking about it.

And also, Lewin Davis is a piece of shit in that movie,

which is like the most beautiful part of the whole thing.

He's just like, you know, kind of a shithead.

And he's like, you know, that's what I think of when I think of like folk music as like

a guy like Lewin Davis.

I don't know if that's like bad.

Well,

I have to give credit to a complete unknown because I think this movie does consciously kind of portray Bob Dylan as something of a shithead and a fuckboy.

And that's what I loved about Chalaman the role.

And I love it, like his relationship to El Fanning and the Monica, the woman who portrays Joan Baez.

He was also in Top Gun Maverick.

And they're both very good.

But I love his relationships to the women in this movie are so funny because he is, even in the 60s, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

In New York City,

it's fuckboys top to bottom.

Yeah.

It's like you have a guy over for the night, you fuck him, and then you wake up in the morning and he's writing songs in your living room and being like,

I don't know.

I'm trying to leave me alone.

I'm trying to write.

I read the next song right here.

Yeah, it's all greasy dick, wiry guys

in Brooklyn.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And if he was alive, he even has the Zuma broccoli haircut.

It's all there.

All the pieces are there.

I definitely got to say, I know I'm going to love it because I love a good music biopic type movie.

Monica Barbaro.

Sorry.

Excuse me.

Portrays no bios.

Saved us from 10 angry comments.

And like I said, the essential tension of the movie for me that is dramatized in the climactic moment when he goes electric at the Newport Folk Music Festival, the question is: what do we want from our popular artists?

What do we want from like our revolutionary musicians?

Do we want art that is created with a sense of sort of solidarity and social responsibility, but that unfortunately does not slap?

Or do we want art that kind of spits in the face of all of that and tells an entire generation essentially, you're all on your own and like changing the world is for suckers, but unfortunately, it does slap.

And, you know, like, the first, like, you know, like the first keyboard, like, riff of Like a Rolling Stone that he opens his second set at the Newport Folk Festival with, the first lines of that song is, how does it feel to be on your own?

Yeah.

And like, and like that, I think ultimately that was Bob Dylan as kind of a chimeric, sort of like, you know, chameleon-like artist who was like, certainly a genius in

reinventing himself over and over again and channeling a kind of a certain spirit of the moment he was in.

But like,

essentially the message that he defined himself with was speaking to like the 60s generation that it was like, you know, had just come out of the civil rights movement and was like really

believed in something.

And they believed that through like collective action and culture that they could change the world for the better.

His message to all of them was basically, you grow up.

You're on your own.

It's like what Kurt Vonnegut said, like all of the best artists in the world in history, like all got together and they tried to art their way into changing the world.

And all of it amounted to a big wet fart or something.

Or dropping a pie.

Yeah.

He has a force of dropping a pie from the top of a stepladder.

Yeah, yeah.

You know,

that may be true, but like, that's why I mean that Bob Dylan comes across as something of an asshole in this movie and something of a poser and like, and just, and someone who was really kind of like, didn't want, he was, he was dedicated to himself and his art, which is like noble in a lot of respects, but like, but in doing so proved that

he really didn't care about other people or like, you know, politics or like any kind of broader meaning or message.

And like, like I said, I thought the movie did an interesting job of portraying that and like this tension between what we demand of art and the artists we revere.

It's if you combined a complete unknown, the brutalist, and the substance, you would get

blonde by age.

And the beautiful Andrew Dominic film, which I love and which everyone should see if they haven't seen it.

But that's how you do it.

That's how you cook, baby.

All right.

So that is A Complete Unknown.

What's next up on the best picture list?

We could just stick with Timmy.

We could do Dune 2.

Okay, Dune 2.

Again, another movie that I enjoyed watching, but I got to say, I liked the first one more.

There was just, I don't know how you feel like I liked Dune 2.

Put away the pitchforks, but there was just something.

I don't know.

I liked the first one more.

And maybe this is just through the haze of the departure of David Lynch.

But I did re-watch the David Lynch Dune movie.

Yeah.

And for all its flaws, it really blows blows away the villain away movies.

And I'm not saying that they're bad in any way.

I think they're very, very well done.

They're very cool.

But the David Lynch Dune movie is just, it's, it sits down.

Just, it's so much better.

The coolest shit in Dune 2 was

because I love Dune 1, saw it in the theater.

And then when I saw Dune 2 in the theater, I was like, yes, this is sick.

This is awesome.

And then it cut to Gaiety Prime.

And you see Foyd Routha,

Austin Butler's Foyd Routha, and Leah Sado,

and they perform

a scene that is just so much, that makes the rest of the movie look terrible, like, because it's so good.

They're cool.

I thought you were going to hate on that scene.

I always think that was like, that was my favorite part of the movie.

Yeah, because with Austin Butler and Leah Sidou, it's very,

it was,

dare I say it has a, it was kind of sexy.

It was so sexy.

It was very erotic.

And

it was kind of a turn on.

It was amazing.

It was like so sick.

It was like, this is, they are cooking.

And then it cuts back to Zendaya, bless her heart.

And she's like,

I'm so mad about

the world.

I don't know what the fuck she's saying.

I don't have much more to say about Dune 2.

Like I said, I think there was a lot of cool stuff in it.

I don't think the two-part structure.

It's just like,

I don't know.

Maybe I'm being too nitpicky on Dune 2.

It was a fun movie.

I enjoyed it.

I like Dune part 1 and 2.

I'm going to to use this opportunity because you brought up Zendaya to hate on another movie this year that I thought was widely overpraised.

Probably my least favorite movie of the year, or the movie that I thought was like the biggest gap between what people talked about it and what my experience of watching it was.

Challengers.

Oh, Challengers.

Yeah, that's, I had fun with Challengers, but

I did not like Challengers at all.

There were so many annoying parts of it.

And

I definitely can see why you wouldn't like it.

I mean, it's a nothing, it's so forgettable.

It's over.

Like, it was all over.

I did a bit of it.

There wasn't enough sex in it.

And there was nothing about the movie that was sexy.

Yeah.

Other than like, I pretty much hated all three of the main characters.

Josh O'Connor was kind of cool.

I liked him.

But like Face and Zendaya, I couldn't stand them.

I mean, like, not the performances, but their characters were so unpleasant to me that it just.

I was expecting

a fun, sexy movie, but instead when I got a movie, it was about like bloodless, soulless, professional athletes.

Yeah.

And I heard a lot of people saying, oh, the tennis in the movie was the sex.

Okay.

I wanted to see sex in the movie, though.

Yeah, tennis is fine, but like, I, look,

the movie marketed itself as a movie that has a threesome in it, and there was no threesome, okay?

Yeah.

She makes them kiss at one point.

It's very PG-13.

I thought they were going to be like sucking each other off in the steam and the sauna.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, you know, it's like jaws if it never showed the shark even once.

Yeah, like it's like implying that they could have sex, but no, there's no sex, or if there wasn't a shark at all at the end of Jaws.

Like, but the like,

I think the ending was really funny when Zendaya just screams, like, let's go, and then it cuts, it cuts.

If Challengers did not have that Trent Reznor score to it, like, people would not have liked it.

That's what people would have to do.

That score is the best part.

Yeah.

The Trent Reznor, the beautiful.

I was so into the score.

And I think that is what carried me through the movie with any other score other than like the driving techno stylings of Trent Reznor.

And

I think Boy's Noise even did a remix of one of the songs on the soundtrack, which is really sick.

I'm a big fan of Boy's Noise.

But yeah, it was...

Kind of a forgettable movie.

I don't really remember much that happened in it.

Is it me or is Zendaya just being kind of typecast?

Does her acting range just basically encompass Grouch?

Yeah.

Grump and Grouch?

Because she kind of plays the same character in Dune 2.

Yeah, she plays the same character in Dune 2.

A similar character, I think, in Euphoria from what I've seen.

But yeah, let's give her some fun roles where she's like

a fun person.

Maybe she can really just let her freak flag fly in something else.

I guess the other piece of praise I have for Dune 2 is that I guess

I do enjoy the fact that there's a major Hollywood movie nominated for Best Picture that made probably $100 plus million dollars at the box office that is unreservedly pro-terrorism and pro-Hamas.

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And

also my favorite actor of all time, Christopher Walken, is.

There should have been more Walk-in.

I was like,

I love seeing Walken in anything, but like they should have had more of the Patasha Emperor, in my opinion.

Everything needs more walk-in.

It's just a fact of life.

It's just, it's just true.

But yeah, Dune 2,

fun movie.

Don't think it's going to win.

I don't think Dune 2 is going to win.

I mean, but let's be honest, though, this is the year of Timothy.

This is Club Chalam.

We're all in the club now.

This is New York City Boy makes good.

And I got to say, did you see Timothy's Timothy's Timothy's acceptance speech at the SAG Awards, where he's like,

I'm trying to be one of the greats.

I was feeling that because I have long said that more people should talk about movies, like they're sports.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

It was like Michael Jordan.

I'm as inspired by Dale Day-Lewis as I am by Michael Phelps and Michael Jordan.

I'm trying to be one of the greats.

I'm trying to get those rings.

And you know what?

This year,

I think there's a good chance he wins Best Actor.

It reminded me of something Diane Keaton said about Al Pacino one time or maybe not diane keaton someone that dated al pacino for a while they were like he's he's amazing but he's married to acting he can't like you know that's his true love and no no woman can compare to the to to acting for him and i feel like timothy is like that's me baby put me on put me in coach put me in coach i'm ready to act i'm ready to act mvp of of of 2024 yeah and i've seen i've seen all you you fake Timothy heads.

Now you're on the Timothy train.

I was there day one.

I was there ground zero.

You know,

when he gave all those girls chlamydia, I defended him.

I said it was fake,

which I still, it might be.

I don't know.

Well, allegedly, I mean, I've never even heard of this story.

Yeah, it's fake news.

It's from the anti-Timothée media.

They all fake it.

They just don't believe it.

Whatever.

He's killing it.

He's killing it.

MVP of movies this year.

Yes.

We love Timothy.

All right.

Next up on the Oscar list, Anora.

Anora.

Fantastic movie.

I liked Enora quite a bit too.

However, you know, like, this is a movie I liked, but I feel like I have one qualification here, which is that I did feel that the third act was a little too long.

Yeah.

I enjoyed Enora.

I thought Mikey Maddison was great.

However, the cumulative effect of the movie, the last hour and a half or two hours of this movie did sort of just feel like being yelled at by a woman from Brighton Beach, which I know that's what the movie is about.

But it was,

I really like

the middle part of the movie with, okay, the goons in this movie were fantastic.

The goon game was on point.

The goons were fantastic.

And that's what I really appreciated, like Sean Baker, like the kind of like, this is his tribute to like the classic screwball comedy, like conceit.

yeah and i thought it was really i thought it did a really good job of that but i just thought it went on a little too long i thought like the the central joke was strung out a little too long over like the middle to second half of the movie yeah and the um you saying it's like his play on a screwball comedy really locks a lot of stuff into place for me because we've as we've talked about before the main the main defining feature of a screwball comedy is that they stress they're so stressful and they're like thrillers basically yeah And this one really delivers in that sense, where it's stressing you out so bad at all times.

And it feels like

a runaway roller coaster, kind of, which

I love,

but it's, it's, you know, it's very stressful.

It's a stressful movie.

Yeah, it's a, it's a stressful movie.

And I think like it, at some point, it kind of passes the breaking point.

Like I said, like for me, watching it, it felt like being yelled at by a woman, which is, you know, unpleasant experience for anyone.

But that being said, I did mostly really like Honora.

And yeah, Mikey Madison was great.

I thought, like, but the goons were fantastic.

The guy who plays

her fiancé slash aborted husband was very funny.

And I thought he did a really good job capturing that certain kind of like...

insouciance of like that someone of that level of privilege or any man around the age of 20 has if they're just like in a world of like limitless pleasure of just just smoking weed getting laid but essentially really doesn't know anything about himself or the adult world at all and is like in no way prepared for a serious relationship or any kind of relationship is is so like short-sighted and yeah not you know and callow ultimately yeah yeah exactly and when push comes to shove is just like you know a piece of shit like well you know here's like the question of the movie is that like if we're going on the like uh screwball comedy template, like screwball comedies are really many movies of like the golden age of Hollywood are about like no matter what the plot is, essentially they are mechanisms by which a couple is created.

So Hesse, let me ask you, is a couple created by the end of Enora?

And it's sort of like strangely, it's sort of ambiguous ending.

I don't think so.

And I think that...

No, I don't think.

Yeah, I don't think so either.

Yeah, and I think that's part of what

got people so mad about it, too, because people were, there was a lot of people being like sean baker made a movie just to torture a woman and it's like well i mean have you heard of any other movies yeah that's what that's called movies what are you talking about that's every single movie like what i don't understand what do you want like do you want no like they're like i i saw a lot of people being about like of course he has to make a movie about a sex worker where like her life gets up and is complicated it's just like what what did you want a movie with no uh intention or plot whatsoever A sex worker who's like a girlfriend.

Sex is fine.

Nothing happens.

Which, if you like that, there's a TV show called The Girlfriend Experience that I would highly recommend.

And it's starring Riley KO.

And I would highly, highly recommend that season one on Starz, I believe.

So that can be good if you make something like that.

But this is, it's just a different type of movie.

I mean, like...

Sean Baker also, of course, made Tangerine, which is amazing.

It's so good.

I mean, like, all of his movies are really like, I mean, the thread that connects all of them is his treatment of how that sex and money are like inexorably linked in like in capitalist society.

Yes.

That, like, all sex is about money.

All relationships are about money.

And it's like, he has a, like, it, it's treated both lightly and seriously in his movies.

And I think there's a real tension there.

And I think that's another thing people are sort of mad about.

Or, I don't know, like, they can't really decide whether this is a movie is like a celebration of sex work or like a searing indictment of it.

Yeah.

And I think like that

the idea of a movie having to choose between celebrating something or indicting it is like so ridiculous on its face.

And like, I don't understand how you can watch this movie and think, oh, Sean Baker has no empathy for this woman whatsoever.

I do understand how you could think that about the substance, but

like, which, and not, and even, like, there's nothing inherently wrong with that either like the substance is directed by a woman

who has no empathy for the main thing.

But it's one of the most hateful movies towards women I think I've ever seen.

Yeah, yeah.

And

you know, it's all about context and it's all about like what you're looking for in a movie.

If you don't want to be stressed out and you want everything to work out great for a sex worker, don't watch a movie about it.

You know, I mean, like, you can watch.

And like, it's stressful, but it's not like anything truly horrible happens in the movie either yeah yeah like i mean the scene where they tie her up is very funny it's it's what it's really funny yeah

and like yeah you can watch like the girlfriend experience or like working girls uh the lizzie borden movies another one where it's just sex workers you know going to work basically and just like doing shit and hanging out and those are amazing movies and you know we can have it both ways we can have all all types of movies you you know, absolutely.

And, you know, this year, Oscar has

shown its light upon many different kinds of movies.

Yes.

Unfortunately, none of them are

really great.

I mean, like,

there's no movie of this year that is anywhere close to like Zone of Interest or even Oppenheimer, which I thought was a very good, great movie.

And I thought the Zone of Interest was like truly a great work of art.

Yeah.

Well, we can talk

next about

one of the two musicals that got nominated on Wicket.

All right.

Which I thought was really good.

I loved it.

I know you weren't the biggest fan of it.

I hated it.

I hated every second of it.

It was like portrait.

Yeah.

Again, like, the thing that really pissed me off about it the most was like the look of it and how

I mean, outside the songs, the look, the dialogue, and the performances, I thought Wicked was pretty good.

Look, Cynthia Eviro and Ariana Grande, they both got some pipes on them.

They really sing these songs.

And if you're a fan of the musical Wicked, I'm sure this was a great adaptation, but I cannot remember a single song from it.

You don't remember Define Gravity?

You don't remember

nothing stuck.

And every frame of the movie looked atrocious.

Yeah, it's very,

you know, CGI heavy.

The costumes were awful.

It's just like,

the humor of everything in it was just,

I found it unbearably grating.

Yeah, I think I probably have a special love for it because I love the musical.

I listen to the soundtrack of the musical all the time as a kid, which is surprise.

I've actually been on like a classic musical tip recently.

Oh, what have you been watching?

Oklahoma and Westside Story.

I watched those back-to-back.

Those are like two of the greatest masterpieces of American film, in my opinion.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

The songs and those, I mean, I guess maybe it's like the songs from those musicals were probably so ingrained in my head that, like,

just the defining gravity and popular just didn't penetrate my brain.

I don't remember any of the lyrics or melodies because right now, dear kindly judge, your honor, my parents should be rough with all their marijuana.

They won't give me a puff.

And the first thing that's

like The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends is just banger.

Just straight fire.

It's pure heat.

Those movies are pure heat.

Yeah.

I think one thing we can take from this batch of Oscar movies is that the musical is back, baby.

And they're bringing it back, how effective it is.

I think Wicked is up for debate.

All my friends loved Wicked because of how gay they are.

What a shock.

Yeah.

What a shock.

But I enjoyed it.

I like, oh, go ahead.

You know, like, we said, like, this year's movies were, they were big on themes, sort of gay and trans themes and characters.

What did, I hadn't, I knew nothing about the musical Wicked outside the general concept that it's like, you know, a revisionist take on the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz.

Yeah.

What did you make?

I was sort of like taken aback that like a good chunk of the plot of Wicked concerns like an extended civil rights analogy as it relates to talking animals.

Yeah, animal genocide.

It's the main plot point of the wicked

of the musical, musical, basically, is that the talking animals are like second-class citizens.

They're treated.

They're being oppressed by Jeff Goldblum.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, a career-worst performance for Jeff Goldblum.

Well, have you seen Thor

Ragnarok?

Yeah, I have.

I know Jeff Goldblum just plays Jeff Goldblum anymore.

It doesn't really do characters anymore.

He was sleepwalking initially.

Michelle Yeo, I'm sorry.

like, again, not a good role for her.

Not a good role for her.

Yeah, it's very, like,

you know, just giving everyone their flowers, like,

just giving jobs to the people that focus groups say that everyone would like.

But yeah, like, the, like, musical itself has, like, a crazy plot where it's like the Wicked Witch is basically, like, on Team Animals,

and she's green because her mom drank with her, her in the womb.

And yeah, Glinda has to basically be like

she becomes like a comprador.

She becomes like a collaborationist with Oz, the great and powerful.

Yeah, she's like Mon Mothma and Andor, basically.

I think it's a great musical.

I love the songs.

My favorite song

for Good was not in part one, but hopefully we will see it in part two.

Yeah, another three hours.

Can't

um

but i was also really surprised by how well they adapted like because the musical is like all singing and i was like how are they gonna turn this into a movie like what are the scenes gonna be you know

and they kind of did it very

i think they did it well they just like structurally they did it well but like visually it ended up being like you know chase cgi chase scenes and like bad ci action again this is just me being like old man Menneker here.

And I think like watching much better movies has poisoned my appreciation of these movies.

But like when I was watching Oklahoma and the original West Side Story, just the vivid technicolor and depth in every frame of those movies are just like, they're singing as much as the music does.

And like Wicked was incredibly colorful, but it was all just like

flat slop.

It was just, it was just like this, it looked like like everything looked like a screensaver.

There was just no depth.

And like, the colors are very bright, but they were like, once again, everything was just at the same level of brightness and there was no depth or field of vision.

And it was just like, it made everything just like slide off my brain like, you know, grease or something.

Yeah, it, it made me, it, it did make me like yearn for the days of like, uh,

you know, like Kiss Me Kate to bring up another classic, classic musical.

Like, there's a part in Kiss Me Kate where they do a number and it cuts to an ethereal plane, kind of, that is like a dream sequence in Oklahoma that looks like, you know, like

a dolly painting or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We got to bring back map paintings for sure.

Oh, my God, yes.

Because they just look, they just look better than whatever they're using right now.

Like, probably not, um,

I don't know, probably not green screen.

I don't know if they're using green screen or LEDs.

Green face is more like it.

Yeah.

Or LEDs.

Yeah, green face.

A.

But yeah, this is a crazy movie.

The marketing has been insane because of Ariana Grande.

I got to say, the flying monkeys look like complete ass.

Yeah, they really, really poor.

You know, but like, at the end of the day, it's for kids.

And I'm like, you know, maybe not Oscar best picture material, but it's.

There's a category for that.

It's called best animated feature.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'll say it here.

I'll say it again.

Cartoons are for children.

Yes.

Period.

I'm just kidding.

I'm just kidding.

Real movie mindset heads know how to read between the lines of

inflammatory statements I make on this program.

Yes.

Should we.

Let's get to the crown jewel of this Oscar season and

the last music.

First, I should say I've heard Nickel Boys is amazing.

I've heard it still.

Yeah,

I have heard Nickel Boys and I'm Still Here are both very good movies.

So apologies to both of them.

And

guys.

I will definitely,

I will watch those.

But the Pis de Resistance.

Yeah.

Amelia Perez.

Amelia Perez.

Amelia Perez.

Now, I should, like, you know, we have to comment on the, like, the, the outside the text of the movie that this, this was going into Oscar seasons.

This had all the momentum.

Yeah.

And people were like, like, it had won best foreign film at the Golden Globes.

This was like, there was a good chance that everyone was talking about Amelia Perez is the one that's going to be the big winner at the Oscars this year.

Then the star of the movie, Carla Sophia Gascon's old tweets resurfaced.

And from there, it has been, I feel now, like, this is kind of like a collective effort to make sure that no movie produced by Netflix ever is credited for anything ever again, which I gotta say, I kind of support.

But like, so maybe you'll disagree with me, but like, I was talking to Catherine about this, and like, people were a little too happy to take down carla sophia gascon yeah and the thing is here's what i'll say yes her tweets are very racist and offensive but the thing you have to understand here is that she's european okay exactly she is an old european

person from the lgbt community like so she thinks there's too many africans in spain or at least is willing to ask the question yeah yeah it's it's like uh you know it reminds me of like uh stefano gabbana like dolce Gabbana, those guys.

Yeah.

Carl Lagerfeld or something.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just like an old, queeny, like,

LGBT European affectation.

I'm not saying it's good, but I'm saying that I'm not surprised.

But like, come on.

Yeah.

Kevin Spacey won an Oscar, right?

Like, there are

people with way worse opinions and beliefs.

Mel Gibson won a shitload of Oscars, right?

Yeah.

I guess this is before people, this is before Twitter, before people knew what he thought and believed.

So I guess it's a little bit different but yeah this is the social media era now so we're exposed to the you know the rough edges of people that we want to be you know movie stars yeah and i think that her opinion probably uh hopefully has changed since then i think what

um

yeah

i mean like the fact that netflix didn't immediately take away her like just get delete her entire social media history and send her to like woke re-education camp is yeah a real bag fumble on their part.

That being said, all of this would be in service of a movie that I'm not exaggerating when I say is probably one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Oh my God.

See, I kind of liked it.

Wow.

Okay.

Well,

state your case for this movie being anything other than

the word I would use to describe it is punishing.

Yeah, okay.

Well,

I think that it's really funny at some points.

Really?

wow

i mean i guess i mean i guess it's funny to talk about in retrospect but like it did not did not elicit a chuckle out of me watching it i'll say that yeah i think the scene where they do like a candlelight vigil for all the missing children of the world was really funny i mean it was funny and how tasteless it was yeah yeah yeah

crass and offensive it was

i guess look not to be mr mr woke here or anything this movie's gotten dinged for a lot of things and like,

I'm sure you can talk about the trans representation that this movie features.

But like, if I had to pinpoint one thing this movie was really offensive, it was this depiction of Mexico, which I found to be schlocky, cloying, and condescending in the extreme.

And the way this movie takes like real-life narco-atrocities of like all those like...

mass-murdered students and like mass graves of just disappeared people.

I found this movie's rubbernecking

made me very queasy in the way this movie invoked like the real life narco-violence and atrocity of Mexico in a way that I found was just like completely tasteless.

Oh, so tasteless.

And like

the other thing, like the way it works in the plot of the story is ridiculous because it's, you know, Amelia Perez used to be.

She's responsible for all of these fucking disappearances and murders.

And when she discovers that there are missing people, her response is like, oh my God, no one told me.

Like, it's like, okay, come on.

Well, that's what I mean about, like,

this movie is very much about a trans character and like, you know, someone transitioning from male to female and living their life, like, living their life as a woman is like, you know, like, this is what the movie is about.

But, like, I found it a little difficult to take because the movie seemed to imply that through the process of transitioning, you can go from being one of the most evil people in Mexico to one of the best.

Yeah, yeah.

It's it's really like, it's, it's really crazy.

Um, I also love the uh

scene, the sequence where uh Zoe Seldana is trying to find a doctor to do sexual reassignment surgery on um Amelia Perez

and is goes to uh Thailand first.

And there's like a dance number with all the doctors and they're like, This is the famous from Penis Nuva German.

Hello, very nice to meet you.

I'd like to know about sex change operations

to vagina

yeah yeah yeah yeah and

that is a song that that that did stuck in my head yeah and she is like uh zoe saldana is like this isn't the this isn't the place we should go probably um

for unclear reasons i guess yeah that place that place like a pretty state-of-the-art facility.

And I was like, oh, then why she want to...

She found a nice doctor in Tel Aviv, though.

Yeah,

that was really funny.

The doctor from Tel Aviv, who's like, I don't even know if

I agree with trans people existing.

And she's like, this guy's perfect.

This guy's perfect.

He's like, you can't change.

When you're

like, and it's...

kind of like, is he talking about you can't become trans or you can't stop being a mob boss?

It's like very confusing.

What you certainly can't stop being is guilty for the many atrocities, murders, and kidnappings that you've done before you transition to the gender identity that

you feel is appropriate.

Yeah, yeah.

It's structured like an opera.

They kill Amelia Perez at the end.

She explodes.

She gets dead named and then just blown up in a car.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's a long movie.

Oh, it felt about 10 hours long.

Yeah, yeah.

But I did like it.

I did like it.

Why?

It was.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I was going into this movie.

I was expecting something tasteless, offensive, but just sort of ludicrous, but fun.

The biggest sin this movie has perpetrated is that it is mind-numbingly boring, in my opinion.

Yeah, there are some parts that crap.

The quote-unquote songs in it are like dirges.

They are awful.

I liked the one where Selena Gomez was singing.

The one where she does karaoke with Edgar Ramirez, that was like the one scene in the movie that had some life in it to me.

The rest of it felt like I was having dirt shoveled on me.

Yeah, and the funny, the other funny thing, the Edgar Ramirez, that character is so clearly like

it's like the gayest man you've ever seen in your life.

It's like, yeah, this is the love interest of of

Selena Gomez.

But yeah, Amelia Perez,

it really does feel like it comes from the same kind of gay European mind that caused Carlos Sophia Gascon to say all those things.

Like it's like one degree more woke than that

in a lot of ways.

It's like that.

It's like that kind of mind, but like liberalized almost in like, oh, orgs, that's what to do.

Like, we need to do orgs.

We need to have an NGO.

And, like, it's unclear in the movie whether Amelia Perez's NGO actually does help anyone.

Yeah.

It seems mostly she just like gets pussy out of it.

Yeah.

I liked when

she was like the guy, the guy, the girl was leaving her office, and the girl was like, I brought a gun just in case he was here.

And Amelia Perez is like, oh, and holds up a gun as well.

And I'll say this.

I thought Carlos Sophia Gascon was good.

I thought she she was like maybe the only good performance in this piece of shit.

Yeah, yeah.

I gotta say, Zoe Seldana

is not doing it for me.

Not doing it for me.

Man.

Yeah, it was not

super great.

You know, I think that the, like, the when it really starts to, like, it goes off the rails when they start looking for kids.

And it almost comes back on the rails when Amelia Perez and

Selena Gomez are like living together.

And Selena Gomez has no idea this is her husband that

is now trans.

Also a pretty fucked up thing to do to your ex-wife and kids.

Yeah, yeah.

Like she's still evil.

Can I tell you my favorite scene of the movie though?

Yeah.

My favorite scene of the movie, the one scene that did actually make me laugh, was at the very end of the movie where Selena Gomez and Edgar Mirez have kidnapped Emilia Perez, like cut her fingers off, and they're trying to ransom her to get their ill-gotten drug money back.

And basically, like they're in a hail of gunfire, Amelia Perez starts telling Selena Gomez details of their prior relationship that only her husband would know.

Yeah.

He's like, he's like, you know, I deflowered you while I was dating your sister.

You know, like details about their wedding, very specific things.

And like, she does this like three or four times.

And each time, Selena Gomez is like, Wait a second, though.

Uh, who are you, though?

Yeah, she's like, How would you know this?

Wait, hold on, slow down, start again.

Who are you, and how would you know this?

And it's just like, use your fucking brain, like,

yeah,

I think she also calls, they have a fight, and she calls Carlos Figas going Shrek at one point.

That was really crazy, and the marital drama is kind of like, that's the part I was liking about it.

I wish they did less kidnapped kids, less Mexico stuff.

Definitely, like, should have left the Mexico stuff

on the cutting room floor.

Oh, so, like, 90% of the movie then?

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I did love,

you know, I think it was fine trans by.

I don't think it was super transphobic.

No, I mean, like, no, that was the one part of the movie I didn't find Defensive versus.

Yeah, yeah, truly.

And Carlos V.

Gascon is great when she is in man face as the drug leader.

I saw some people take offense to that, and I was like, wait a second, like, this is just the character here.

This is part of the plot of the movie.

Like, they didn't de-transition this woman to

play the character at the beginning of the movie.

Yeah.

She read the script.

She knew that was going to be in it.

She took the role.

Shows up on set.

They're like, you're back to being a man now.

Yeah.

Put on this facial hair.

Put on the beard, bitch.

Put on the beard, bitch.

Put on the beard, Faggot.

But yeah,

I don't think it's a great movie for sure.

It's definitely, I wouldn't watch it again.

If anyone, I don't know which of these I would watch again.

I hated every choice.

That's my reason.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Our one disagreement, this Oscar.

Yeah,

our disagreement.

Our strong disagreement.

But, you know, we love movies and movies are life.

So just watch them.

Yeah, you got to watch them.

You got to watch them.

You got to watch them.

Always got to be watching movies.

All right.

Let's do our predictions here.

So

who do you think will win best picture and who do you think should win best picture?

Okay, will win.

I'm going to say wicked.

I think it just had so much like juice behind it going into the season.

I think it, you know, it has all the buzz kind of, not the buzz buzz, like Oscar buzz, but it has like, you know, I feel like they're trying so hard to make the Oscars more relevant.

And like, I, my feeling is that they keep giving like Academy voting status to like younger people to try and do this.

And I think that we're going to see that coming out with Wicked winning or.

you know, a complete unknown, maybe, just because of the Timothy, the Timothy Juice.

But those

are my contentions.

I think those two are going to be neck and neck.

What about you?

All right.

I think my dark horse is, I'm putting my marker down now because of its brilliant marketing campaign of having the actual Pope die.

Conclave is winning best picture.

Yeah.

That's the dark horse.

Conclave is winning best picture.

And like, in the field of like no real, there is no strong frontrunner here.

There's no Oppenheimer.

I think Conclave is it's got the momentum.

It's it's got the momentum going from all the other previous awards leading up to the big show.

I think Conclave surprises people and Conclave wins.

I think, you know, as I said, I don't really care who should win any of these movies.

I'm complete unknown.

Like I said, that was probably my,

shamedly, probably my favorite movie of this year's Best Picture nominations.

And I think, like, best actor is Timothy's to win, for sure.

And best actress, I think it's got to be,

I mean, it's got to be Cynthony Arrivo, I think, but I think it should be Mikey Madison.

Let me see here.

All right.

Best actor.

I think Timothy's going to win it.

Basically, as long as anyone other than Adrian Brody, I do not want to see Adrian Brody win best actor again, because if they give him best actor for playing two different Holocaust survivors, I think that

that's a little annoying to me.

Yeah.

That's a little played out.

You get one Oscar for doing a Holocaust movie, not two.

One Oscar.

Can't just keep going back to that well.

Don't be surprised, though.

Ray Fine's winning best actor.

He has never won an Oscar.

And I think this could be.

Oh, you know, Timothy, like I said, he won MVP this year.

I don't know if he's winning best actor.

I think he probably will, but don't be surprised if Ray Fiennes snatches it from him at the end.

It's sort of like a culmination of

how many great movies he's been in, how good an actor he's been for as long as he has.

I think, don't be surprised if Ray Fiennes doesn't

surprise people and wins best actor.

I could see that, honestly.

I I could totally see that.

Best actress.

I would like to see Mikey Madison win it.

I could definitely see Cynthia Riva winning it.

But then again, I wouldn't be surprised if Demi Moore wins that as another one of these career sort of recognition perspective.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sort of like, you know, for

how many great movies she's been in.

And so, and sort of like the Academy acknowledging the thematic elements of the substance, which is basically about like Demi Moore has been disrespected by Hollywood, and they're going to be like,

no, she hasn't.

But best actress can do yeah yeah yeah um I did I did recently watch an Indecent Proposal with Demi Moore in it and she was amazing in that she was amazing in that yeah that's a crazy movie

but yeah she's she is a good actress in that in that wild movie um she does a really great performance and as far as supporting best i don't know supporting best sporting actress zoe seldanya uh felicity jones monica barbara ariana grande and isabella rosellini I could see Zoe Seldania winning it, but you know what?

I think they're going to give it to Isabella Rossellini again.

At least one of these, either Ray Fienes, Demi Moore, or Isabella Rossellini will get the career capstone Oscar as a recognition of how much they deserve it and how good they've been over the breadth of their career.

You'll see if it happens for one of them, then that means the other two probably won't happen.

But

I would like to see Isabella Rossellini win, but I think probably

Zoe Seldana will win.

Or maybe not Ariana Grande.

She's not going to win.

Yeah.

I don't know.

She might.

I think she might.

But I think actor in a supporting role, it's got to be Jeremy Strong for The Apprentice.

I think

they just love

a guy playing Roy Cohn.

I think they're going to love that.

I haven't seen The Apprentice, but...

I think a guy portraying a different rapist is going to win best supporting actor, and that's Guy Pierce.

Okay, yeah.

I could see that.

I could see that but you know what he ran afoul of spacey recently you know another little bad oscar pr thing he waded into the fact that kevin spacey accosted him on the set of la confidential many times and then kevin spacey released that video saying grow up guy grow up grow up we were playing around um

i that doesn't surprise me at all he's so hot in la confidential and kevin space

he's hot

i've long been i want to see guy pierce win because i've been a long time guy pierce head I love Guy Pierce in pretty much everything.

I think he's a great actor.

And I did like him in the Brutalist a lot.

I thought he was very frightening and menacing.

Yeah, yeah.

And annoying, too.

He plays an annoying kind of character.

And last one, Best Director.

We've got

Coralai Farragut, The Substance, James Mangold, Sean Baker, Jacques Odiard, and Brady Corbett.

I think Brady is probably going to win it, but I would like to see James Mangold win it.

I wouldn't mind Sean Baker winning either.

Yeah, I would love if Sean Baker won.

I think I wouldn't mind if Brady won.

I think they're going to give it to Jacques Audiard.

No way.

No way.

My immortal luck is in Amelia Perez.

Like, maybe Zoe Salvano wins, but there is no way they are giving Jacques Odiard best director.

Well, we'll see.

We'll see.

I think it would be very funny if they did.

If they were like, well,

sorry that your actress is

sorry that your tranny misbehaved.

Here's a war.

Well,

I said, we will find out on Sunday night.

We will find out on Sunday night, and you will find out with us if you buy a ticket to the Zoran for Mayor fundraiser.

Yes, yes.

I love watching the Oscars.

I'd be doing it at home, but it's going to be very fun to do it with you in front of a live audience.

It'll be so fun.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that does it for the Oscars this year, but has a

like usually Oscar season is when we begin to gear up to do movie mindset season three.

And I'm wondering, like, I know we've talked a little bit about it before, but can we give people just a little preview of what we're thinking of being on deck for this year's season of Movie Mindset?

Yes, absolutely.

Because

you've already programmed two pairings that I think are very interesting, and I'm very looking forward to.

Yes, yes.

Which pairings are the, I have a list of all of my.

Okay.

The red shoes and perfect blue.

The red-blue pairing about how colors drive actresses insane.

Yes, absolutely.

That's a beautiful.

I think that's going to be a really cool one.

And I was also really looking forward to

your pairing of

trans issues and trans characters in 90s cinema, which would be Neil Jordan's The Crying Game and David Cronenberg's M Butterfly, two really,

really powerful movies that are like

the crying game like is very much not talked about anymore.

And if it is, it's usually talked about in the context of how offensive it is.

But, like, I think it's time for a re-examination of that movie.

Yeah, one of my favorite movies of all time, truly.

It's a masterpiece.

Um, and M Butterfly is also amazing, like, one of the most

probably the most slept on David Conenberg movie that's also incredibly gut-wrenching and powerful.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm getting chills just thinking about these two beautiful films.

And another thing we discussed is doing a one-movie episode.

Should we reveal

finally casino will be tackled?

Finally.

And we're going to dedicate the whole episode because there's so much there.

There's so much to talk about.

And we just need, you know, we need the Chapo final say on Casino.

One of the best movies ever made.

And, you know,

given his passing, I was also considering doing a single episode on Inland Empire, which is another movie that I know that you're

hugely fascinated by.

And I think that that might be as well.

As far as some of the the direct one of the directors two of the directors that I'd like to feature on this season I've been promising Noah Cohen a Sam Peck and Paul episode so I would like Noah Cohen to be our guest for a Sam Peck and Paul episode in which I'd like to do bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid that's a beautiful pairing and then I think I'd like to get Andrew Hudson back on to do Fritz Lang to do

to do M, I think, and like M and Metropolis or like M, and then I think one of his film noirs from like his Hollywood days, like Scarlet Street or The Girl in the Window.

And

another one that I wanted to do was Point Blank.

Oh, a Lee Marvin episode or just like Point Blank and paired with another.

I think

we can discuss it.

We can discuss it.

I think

Point Blank is so weird and singular that maybe another weird single movie.

Maybe like maybe one of the Johnny Toe Hong Kong movies.

Yes.

Triumph Election or something.

Exactly.

What's the

not election?

What's the name of the one I'm thinking of?

Exiled?

Exile.

Yeah.

Yeah, exiled.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

All right.

I think

that's enough of a taste of Movie Mindset Season 3.

We will fill out the rest of the gaps before it launches.

But just be on the lookout for Movie Mindset Season 3 coming soon.

Yes.

And then be on the lookout for Hessa and I live at the Zillron for Mayor Fundraiser on Sunday night.

What's the name of the club again?

It's a club on the Lower East Side.

Club 101, I think.

It's called.

Club 101.

Hessa and I will be in the basement of Club 101 watching the Oscars, and we will see how our predictions hold out.

And

open bars, we'll be having a grand old time, tipping it back, partying, and loving the movies.

Yes.

And listening to Seeking Carpenter.

And hopefully having a movie mayor for New York City.

Yes.

The movie Mayor will happen.

It will happen in our lifetimes, folks, if we have anything to say about it.

All right.

Hessa, once again, it's always a joy to talk to you about movies, and I'm looking forward to this upcoming season of Movie Mindset with you.

It's always a pleasure.

All right.

We will see you at the fundraiser and then also at the movies.

Yep.

Bye.

Bye.