The Top Five Performances of 2024. Plus: The Amy Adams Hall of Fame and ‘Nightbitch.’

Sean is joined Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney to run through five of their favorite individual performances from the year in acting (1:00) before discussing Marielle Heller’s ‘Nightbitch,’ the story of a stay-at-home mom—played by Amy Adams—who is experiencing the normal stresses of motherhood and life while undergoing a more surreal transformation (43:00). Then, they select which 10 performances they would include if they were tasked with building the Amy Adams Hall of Fame (1:04:00). Finally, Sean is joined by Pablo Larraín to discuss ‘Maria,’ the third film in his recent trilogy about misunderstood and highly successful and famous women (1:54:00). The two discuss Angelina Jolie’s performance at the center of the movie, the unique challenges of portraying something as ineffable as opera singing, and how Larraín decides which moments to home in on when creating these works of historical fiction. Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Rob Mahoney, Joanna Robinson, and Pablo Larraín Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Video Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What's happening? It's Todd McShay and I'm back with a new home and a new show at The Ringer and Spotify. The McShay Show. It's a video and audio podcast coming to you year round with all my NFL draft information, big boards, mock drafts and player movement. Plus, I'll be chatting with some of my best friends in football, including some of your favorite football analysts. During the week, we'll have episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays that'll include discussions about my player rankings, who's rising, who's falling, and who your NFL team should be keeping an eye on. Plus, we'll be reacting each week to the college football playoff polls and giving you previews and picks for each Saturday slate. In addition, I'll have episodes on Saturday nights with my immediate reaction to the full

• 0:44Speaker 00

  day in college football every week. So if you love the college game, the NFL, the draft, or all of it like me, make sure to like, follow, subscribe, and get ready for The McShay Show on The Ringer, Spotify, and wherever you watch or listen to podcasts.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tremfya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tremfya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tremfya, proper training is required. Tremfya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis, serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections, or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tremfya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more, or visit tremfyaradio.com.

• 2:01Sean Fennessey?

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. There's nothing better than having friends who support whatever you're into, like rewatching a director's entire catalog in the lead up to their latest release. And like those friends, State Farm is there to help you feel supported by helping you choose the coverage you need. With so many coverage options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you. So you can check coverage off the list and spend more time debating movie rankings. Go online at statefarm.com or use the easily accessible app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 2:37Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Finacy and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Amy Adams. Later in this episode, I'll have a conversation with Pablo Lorraine. He's the director of Maria, the third installment of his trilogy about influential women in the second half of the 20th century. His previous two movies, Jackie and Spencer, were major showcases for their star actresses. And Maria, which follows the opera legend Maria Callas, is no different. It's a platform for Angelina Jolie. Lorraine is a fascinating filmmaker. It's great to chat with him. Please stick around for our talk. But first, today we're talking about another woman, not quite a diva like Maria Callas.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  I hope not.

• 3:12Sean Fennessey?

  Not even a little bit of a diva. Seemingly a regular old gal, honestly. I'm here with two other regular old gals, Rob Mahoney, Joanna Robinson. Hi, guys. How you doing?

• 3:21Speaker 04

  Hey, Sean.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  This is a podcast for the every woman, I like to think.

• 3:24Sean Fennessey?

  That's how I feel as well. I'm very excited because, you know, I've been wanting to talk about Amy Adams. She has a very complicated reputation here at The Ringer.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  Certainly.

• 3:31Sean Fennessey?

  There are some supporters and some not so supporters. I am a supporter and she has a big new movie out in December called Night Bitch, one of the great titles of 2024 at the movies. And I've been looking forward to this movie quite a bit. And I was thinking about it and I have some mixed feelings about the movie and we'll get into it in our discussion. But I think that her performance in this movie is quite good. And it inspired some thoughts about the best performances I've seen at the movies this year. We're recording this a little bit earlier in December, but you guys see a lot of movies and you have a lot of opinions about movies.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Too many, perhaps.

• 4:02Sean Fennessey?

  Rob, we've been podding up a storm this week.

• 4:04Speaker 03

  It's just been a week for takes.

• 4:05Sean Fennessey?

  Honestly, it's been a lot of fun. And so I thought, let's just talk about our favorite performances. And I hit you guys up late last night. You fucking filled in the gaps beautifully, so I'm really excited about this. Any, any like general thoughts? Good, good movie performance year, bad year? Was it hard to come up with your list?

• 4:20Speaker 03

  I think good performance year, kinda weird movie year.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  I found myself liking a lot of things, not loving a lot of things in terms of the overall movies. Like, this isn't gonna be a year that goes down in history for me, but it's gonna be one with a lot of individual moments and performances that stick with me for a long time.

• 4:35Speaker 04

  I found this exercise very challenging. A lot of, yeah, a lot of these performances are in despite of, you know, in the movie that they're in, not a lot, but some, but also...

• 4:47Sean Fennessey?

  Mine as well, some of mine are like that too.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  But also narrowing it down to five, getting this assignment last night and narrowing down a year to five, was tough, so for my own purposes, I decided to come up with like five categories.

• 5:00Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 5:02Sean Fennessey?

  Love what you're doing.

• 5:03Speaker 04

  So that's, that's how I want it.

• 5:04Sean Fennessey?

  Let's just do it, let's just do the list. Rob, why don't you give us number five?

• 5:07Speaker 03

  Uh, my number five, very simple rule. Uh, if you lick a knife in a movie, you are on my list. Austin Butler for Dune 2. I honestly stole the show in a movie that's very hard to steal the show in. So many heavyweight performances, I think there's lots to recommend about Dune 2 overall. I was mesmerized by all of the black and white action overall in the middle of this movie. And in particular, Austin Butler just being an absolute freak. Like, let, not only let him be a freak in more movies, but he needs to embrace being a freak as often as humanly possible.

• 5:36Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think of The Voice?

• 5:38Speaker 03

  I mean, clearly I'm pro. I'm, I'm into it.

• 5:41Sean Fennessey?

  Are you, did you not appreciate his vocal styling?

• 5:43Speaker 04

  On the spectrum of Austin Butler fans at The Ringer, I am on the lower side personally, but I did like this better than the Elvis voice.

• 5:51Speaker 03

  Well, sure. What if he did the whole press tour in this voice?

• 5:53Speaker 04

  Um, I think Stellan, Stellan Skarsgard would be like, excuse me, that's my voice. Um, Rob, do you remember your immediate review of Dune 2 when the lights came up?

• 6:03Speaker 03

  We did see it together, we saw a screening. What did I say?

• 6:06Speaker 04

  You said, "That was sick, Joe."

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Well, guess what?

• 6:09Sean Fennessey?

  I was right. I fully agree with that. Fully agree with that.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  No, some people don't stand by their opinions here at The Ringer. I maintain the Dune 2 was fucking sick.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  I think about that all the time, Rob Mahoney. That was sick, Joe.

• 6:22Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, okay, Joe, why don't you give us your number five? Because we haven't talked about this movie at all on this show this year.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  Really?

• 6:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 6:27Speaker 04

  Okay. Um, this, the category that I invented for myself is sort of newcomer, up and comer. Uh, so this is Maisie Stella in My Old Ass, uh, a movie title that is fun to say. And a movie I loved that I think really flew under the radar. And I think it was, people don't know, I mean, Maisie Stella has been in show business her entire life. People might know her from her, you know, musical duo act that she had with her sister when she was younger. Uh, she was on Nashville, but this was just like a real leap, uh, in quality and she holds down this entire movie. They kind of mispackaged it as a, as an Aubrey Plaza film or like a two-hander and it's really not.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Aubrey Plaza is kind of barely in this movie and it is Maisie Stella's movie and I thought it was wonderful and she was just really engaging and complicated and at times unlikable, but always root forable and up for anything and does a whole Justin Bieber fantasy sequence. And I just thought it was like a really good sort of announcement of her talents.

• 7:30Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I love that pick a lot. Um, I, I'm a little bit lower on the movie than you are, but, um, I like what it's after. You know, it's a, it's kind of similar to Night Bitch where I'm like, good idea, good performances. You almost got there with me with what you were going for, but I think also being a forty-something year old man, maybe the movie's not like directly targeted at me.

• 7:48Speaker 04

  Was it not?

• 7:48Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like my 21-year-old sister is like, this is the most important movie that's ever been made. So, you know, it's different strokes.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  How does it feel to have like literally one movie that isn't programmed to you?

• 7:57Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it's the first one, actually, in the history of film.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  Guess what, guys? We're about to talk about another one.

• 8:03Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that is true in some respects, but we can come back to that. Uh, okay, my number five is whenever I make these lists, I always like to find one actor who gives two performances in the same year that I really, really like. In this case, two different kinds of performances. I think I stole this one from Rob too, or did I steal it from you too as well, Joe? No, you don't care about this. This person, you hate this person.

• 8:20Speaker 04

  I love this person.

• 8:21Sean Fennessey?

  Lupita Nyong'o, who's an actor who I really love and who had, has had a relatively muted last few years in Hollywood. She was, of course, in Wakanda forever, but has not like exploded as a star in the way that you might have thought after Us and Black Panther and a couple of other films. But she's in two great movies this year. One, A Quiet Place, Day One, where she is the lead figure and is, I thought, fantastic as a woman in hospice at the end of the world.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  Is the, is the cat not the lead figure of A Quiet Place, Day One?

• 8:51Sean Fennessey?

  Um, if this were The House of R, then you could say that, but that's not what this is.

• 8:54Speaker 04

  I had to represent.

• 8:56Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and then her other performances in The Wild Robot, which is a movie that I've now seen three times because I have a small child and my daughter loves this movie. And so I hear her performance and you know what? It's not easy to give a robot performance. Robot acting, putting a character to the robot essence is challenging. And she gives a great vocal performance. I think it's one of the hidden arts of movie making is being able to act in this format. So, uh, I just love her. She has, um, much more color in her performance styles than I would have guessed when I first saw her. And these are two very nice examples of, that are very different. I think she, when she hit the scene, you know, 12 Years a Slave, um, the Marvel films, like something very showy about those kinds of movies, something very loud and kind of brash. Horror movies are also, she's very expressive in us.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  Definitely.

• 9:40Sean Fennessey?

  These are much subtler performances and I really like them a lot.

• 9:43Speaker 04

  She's one of the most beautiful people that has ever existed. And so the fact that she is so talented as a voice performer, because her maskana is also iconic. Um, I'm like, Lupita, I always want to gaze at your face, but also you're very, very good at this.

• 9:58Sean Fennessey?

  She is.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  Save some for the rest of them a little bit, too.

• 10:00Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly.

• 10:02Speaker 03

  Uh, A Quiet Place was the one that I really wanted to anoint on this list. Uh, that's a franchise that I don't really have that much of a connection to. I liked the first one well enough. I was really put off by the second one. Was not planning to see the third movie until the buzz started kind of building that, oh, it was actually quite good.

• 10:16Sean Fennessey?

  You're a Sarnoski head, though. You loved Pig.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  I, I, this is, this is what drew me in. I'm like, okay, wait, you're telling me Sarnoski's involved. You're telling me Lupita's here. You're telling me the cat's here. And like, I, I found myself, not unlike Pig, so moved. By her performance in this movie. Like, again, acting opposite CGI monsters that don't exist, that are even then barely in the movie.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  That's a weird way to talk about Joe Quinn.

• 10:41Sean Fennessey?

  He's quite good in this movie.

• 10:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, he is. He's great. He's great.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  And covered in dust for a lot of the movie, you know, fighting with the elements, fighting with the urban environment. Like, it is a survival movie in a way that I think leads to impressive performances of a kind, but not the sort that usually get actually awarded.

• 10:55Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly what I was thinking when I put them on. You're not going to see these at the Oscars, so it's fun. Some of these names you'll see that we have here will be at the Oscars, but none of those. Okay, Rob, what about number four?

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Number four, from me, David Johnson from Alien Romulus. A performance everyone, I think, was raving about the day this movie came out. In particular, another, like, modulating performance, right? It's not just someone, another person playing a synthetic in an alien movie, which is great. We love those. But the various degradations, the various reprogrammings that go on over the course of the movie. It's a lot that he has to play. And really, it's the defining performance of the movie. So the fact that he was able to pull all that together, an actor who I think we've seen in other things be very promising, but never quite have this kind of spotlight in a movie this big. And so I was, I love to see it.

• 11:40Sean Fennessey?

  Great pick. I really like him. He jumped out in industry right away when I first saw him. I think that's the first time I'd seen him. And you're, this is, I mean, it's paired with the Lupita Wild Robot performance, you know, like, humanizing a machine is a challenge.

• 11:55Speaker 04

  And it's tough, I mean, following the footsteps of Michael Fassbender, doing it in two alien movies and doing it so well.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Not as many pan flutes this time, but to each their own.

• 12:03Speaker 04

  And that's a note I have.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  We're trying to get more flutes involved. But yeah, like, and ultimately, to be a robot, to be a synthetic, and to be the beating heart of a movie like that is just a really impressive feat.

• 12:14Sean Fennessey?

  Like that pick. Really like your next pick, too. This is good for you.

• 12:18Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 12:18Sean Fennessey?

  What's your number four?

• 12:19Speaker 04

  The category is, you really didn't need to go that hard.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  And it's for Emma Corrin in Deadpool and Wolverine. She plays the villain of this film. And this film is a film, I think that you and I agree that we had like a great time watching, but we don't think is very good. And, but I had a great time watching it and she's one of the main reasons why. Cause she's really went for it in her physicality. She does this like really creepy thing where she puts her hand inside people's heads. But there's just like, she's having so much fun. And especially, I know you guys just talked about Nosferatu, a film that she's like pretty wasted in. She has a lot that she can do and she just gave it all to Deadpool and Wolverine for some reason. And I loved it. I thought she was amazing.

• 13:03Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of fascinating. I think part of it is because Emma Corrin is one of the only people whose face we've not seen before in one of, like that, we didn't know that character going into that movie.

• 13:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:12Sean Fennessey?

  And so it feels new and fresh, but brings something really great to it. So, great pick. My number four is Hugh Grant in Heretic.

• 13:20Speaker 04

  This is the one you stole for me.

• 13:22Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, did I?

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, good. Well, I haven't really had much of a chance to talk about the movie too much on the show. So maybe we can do it a little bit here, but a movie that I think is like two thirds perfect. And then one third, I wish it got there. But he is the primal focus of the first two thirds. And it is, I think the culmination of Hugh Grant leaning into his, I'm a piece of shit era. You know, this thing that we all kind of felt right underneath the surface of every Hugh Grant performance that he has in the Paddington time, in the Guy Ritchie collaborations. In Wonka. In Wonka, certainly. Like he's now like, I'm just a little motherfucker. Like I'm just a bastard.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:00Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 14:00Speaker 04

  And I a scamp.

• 14:01Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly.

• 14:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:02Sean Fennessey?

  And in this one in particular, he's a quite evil scamp.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:05Sean Fennessey?

  And quite, um, he's a podcaster, you know, like he is really, his character is, he's not actually a podcaster. But you know, that's sort of like the self-regard, the overwhelming unnecessary amount of information to explain simple things, the certainty about impossible to understand ideas.

• 14:24Sean Fennessey?

  This is what we do, guys. This is who we are.

• 14:26Speaker 03

  That's fair.

• 14:26Sean Fennessey?

  Do I see a little bit of self-reflection in Heretic? But he is just having an absolute blast with this script. And it's really fun. And it's really fun to see him bouncing off of two actors who I think could be really big stars in Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East. I really like both of them a lot. And the energy that they bring. You know, the setup of the film is very much like chamber drama, feels like a stage play in many ways, really only two locations for a long stretch of time, but he makes the absolute most of it. So what did you think of Heretic?

• 14:59Speaker 04

  Oh, I really, I mean, I agree with you. It's not a perfect movie, but I think what's really interesting, I don't know if you saw the bit he did, I think it was on Seth Meyers, where, or maybe Fallon, where they asked him to read a line in his rom-com, guys, his like, fumbling rom-com, guys, and then make the same line menacing. And it was really fun. And he had a great time with it. And I love, in this movie, when he's sort of luring the girls into his home in the first place, he is doing the aw shucks, bumbling Hugh Grant thing. And it's so, and knowing where this is going, it's so fun to see him do this thing that we watched him start his career with, and then transition into the absolute chilling new persona.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  It's a very thin line between the stalking in a horror movie and the stalking in a rom-com.

• 15:46Sean Fennessey?

  But it's almost like an active commentary on how transparently kind of full of shit he was in like nine months, you know what I mean? Where you're like, are you really happy to be in this movie? Like, you're not happy to be in this movie, Hugh Grant. We know who you are, truly.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  I'm gonna preserve my innocence around Four Weddings and the Funeral.

• 16:02Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 16:03Speaker 04

  But the rest, we can toss on the fire, yeah.

• 16:07Sean Fennessey?

  You haven't seen Heretic yet?

• 16:08Speaker 03

  Not yet.

• 16:09Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I think you'll enjoy it.

• 16:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, you will.

• 16:11Sean Fennessey?

  All right, Rob, what's your number three?

• 16:13Speaker 03

  My number three is Joan Chen and Dee Dee.

• 16:15Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 16:16Speaker 03

  Playing the mom in a coming of age story is maybe the most thankless job in Hollywood.

• 16:21Sean Fennessey?

  Unless you win an Oscar.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  Unless you win. Which does happen from time to time, granted. I think Joan Chen is unbelievable in this movie. And the degree to which they let her be the mom who's trying to wrest control of her family in basically a situation in which she's kind of left alone by her husband to do this by herself, or with her mother-in-law in this case, but also be incredibly funny, also undercutting her kid in the process while trying to prop him up. It's such a delicate dance, and this movie hit me very directly in a lot of specific, like, time-oriented ways. This is like my, a movie of my generation. But this performance, I just think, of that particular genre and form, it's hard to ask for much better than what Joan Chen's delivering.

• 17:02Sean Fennessey?

  Great pick. The scene in particular where, you know, DeeDee and his new crew of skater friends are all hanging out around his computer and his mom enters the room and sort of demythologizes DeeDee's world that he has created for these cool older kids is like, punishingly real.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  That's why I haven't seen Heretic. Like, I've seen enough horror movies in the middle of DeeDee.

• 17:23Speaker 04

  It was DeeDee. Yeah, and I think similar to Patricia Arquette, who you just referenced, Joan Chen is someone who we haven't seen for a little while. And it was really nice to see her do what she can do.

• 17:35Sean Fennessey?

  She's great. Number three for you, Joanna.

• 17:38Speaker 04

  Calling this a scene stealer. And it's Yura Borasov from Enora, which we've talked, you and I have talked about. But...

• 17:47Sean Fennessey?

  Which scene?

• 17:49Speaker 04

  All of, I told you, I did an entire passes movie where I was basically just watching him. And we were talking about this, we were talking about the way in which Sean Baker did this like really generous cut of this movie where the camera's just constantly lingering on this character.

• 18:07Sean Fennessey?

  Him watching her.

• 18:07Speaker 04

  Him watching her. And so we're like watching the movie through his eyes in a lot of ways, but he has, not, I mean, he's significantly in the movie, but he doesn't have like a ton of dialogue. And so what he can do magnetically with just the camera on him and the way that Sean Baker knows. That this is what this actor, who is a very popular actor in Russia, can do, was, I think, a revelation, and I would love to see him in everything.

• 18:37Sean Fennessey?

  Awesome performance. Would love to see this nominated. I feel like that would be a fitting thing. And I think Karen Karagulian, as well as the sort of pastor figure, is also really, really fun and funny in this movie and is in a lot of Sean Baker's films as well.

• 18:48Speaker 03

  They're like antique comedy that spins off in the middle of this movie. I think just kind of takes the whole thing away and obviously a new and exciting directions for the plot. But yeah, having semi-qualified muscle be a point of view character is a new one for me, but one that I really loved.

• 19:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's a great twist. Okay, my number three is Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Have either of you seen Heartbreak?

• 19:07Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 19:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you have seen it.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  The other one he stole from me.

• 19:09Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, really?

• 19:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. She's a thief.

• 19:10Sean Fennessey?

  Another, another, another performance I'm rooting for during awards season.

• 19:14Speaker 04

  Hugely.

• 19:15Sean Fennessey?

  This is her reunion with Mike Lee. I believe they last worked together in Secrets and Lies, which is 20 years ago at this point. And she plays a bitter and sad and frustrated woman in her, I guess, late 50s, in, living in a kind of middle-class, lower-middle-class England. And it's a very tightly focused character study of this small family of kind of Caribbean English heritage. And it's very rare to see an actor be so fearlessly angry and, and unkind and utterly emotionally destroyed for the entirety of a film.

• 19:58Sean Fennessey?

  There's like a sustained quality to it that is so powerful.

• 20:01Speaker 04

  You're watching that movie waiting for the turn and then the turn doesn't come.

• 20:05Sean Fennessey?

  He doesn't give it to you.

• 20:06Speaker 04

  And you're just like, oh, but at the same time, she's so horrible. And at the same time, I feel for her so much. And that comes down to the filmmaking, but the performance is, you know.

• 20:17Sean Fennessey?

  It's a, it's a real high wire of how do you keep us engaged in this story while watching? You know, there's particularly, particularly a sequence in the movie where she goes shopping for a couch. She's wandering around a furniture store and she's just absolutely heinous to the woman who's working in the store. And as you're watching the movie, you're like, what the fuck is this woman's problem? And yet she manages Kind of pull you back 20 minutes later and giving like creating empathy for a person who otherwise seems incapable of receiving it.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  Without redeeming her.

• 20:44Sean Fennessey?

  Right, yeah.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:45Sean Fennessey?

  Um, very deep movie, very interesting portrait. Like, this movie famously was rejected from Cannes and Venice, and I think some of the suspicion is, is that this is the first time Mike Lee's worked with an all-black cast. I don't know if that's the reason why, but it's a movie that more people should see when it comes out. So it's a shout out to hard truths. Okay, Rob, number two.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  I mean, if Yurba Borasov is watching Anora the entire movie, it's because we are watching Anora the entire movie. Like, I don't want to get too cute about this. Like, Mikey Madison is one of the performances of the year.

• 21:15Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  It's incredible, it's transformative. It's the kind of performance that probably in the hands of a lesser actor would get very tiring over the runtime of an entire movie. Like, granted, that character's circumstances are interesting, but it's a character that can be kind of difficult and could be kind of grating if pitched like a slightly different way.

• 21:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  And I think the combination of how absolutely relentless she is, how defiant she is, like, the way she fights back over the course of this movie. And of course, the, the kind of first act swept up, like, high-arching feeling of the beginning of this movie, works because she works and works because you are along for the ride with her and believing in the things that she wants to believe in, or at least has like talked herself into believing in. So I did not have a lot of exposure to Mikey Madison before this movie. I am now, I am fully signed up.

• 22:00Speaker 04

  A fan.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Like, take, take me along for the ride, whatever she wants to do.

• 22:03Speaker 04

  Do you watch, do you watch the Scream movies?

• 22:05Speaker 03

  I'm not a big Scream guy.

• 22:07Sean Fennessey?

  So I, I've seen mo-most of what she has done in her career. I watched Better Things.

• 22:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:13Sean Fennessey?

  I've seen the Scream movie.

• 22:15Speaker 03

  I've seen Once Upon a Time.

• 22:16Sean Fennessey?

  In Hollywood. I probably have another movie or two in there that I've seen as well. And it's fair to say that I never would have guessed that she could do this particular kind of a performance, because I think I just wasn't thinking of her as a person who would lead a Sean Baker movie, or really any movie.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 22:29Sean Fennessey?

  She seemed like a very amusing and at times electrifying, like, supporting figure.

• 22:36Sean Fennessey?

  So now, when I think about this movie, I'm like, what is she gonna do next? Like, there's obviously this, like, Pretty Woman-esque narrativizing. I think there's a very, very good chance that she wins Best Actress this year at the Oscars. So now it's like, is she in rom coms? Is she in dark or tourist features? Is she, will she ever be given a chance quite like this? It's an interesting turning point. We've seen this a lot of times where ingenues kind of arrive seemingly out of nowhere. It's happened to Jennifer Lawrence, it happened to Brie Larson. And then like, what they do next is so picked over and then they get sort of like, I'm sure I'm guilty of this as well, just like overly criticized for the decisions that they make or take a paycheck for 10 million dollars to go make a franchise movie. I have heard her in interviews say like, I'm just gonna take a minute and figure out what I want to do.

• 23:21Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm not gonna rush to the next thing, which you never hear from people who are in the middle of an awards race. So I'm very, very curious to see what kind of actor she becomes.

• 23:29Speaker 03

  I think it's part of the reason that conversation is interesting is because, I mean, she's giving a physical performance as a dancer in this movie. There's clear like an athleticism there that could probably translate to a lot of different physical roles. She also has the bantery dialogue style where, again, not to prop one ingenue up while tearing down another, but like, if you put her in the Sydney Sweeney part in Anyone But You, I would think that's probably a movie that like clicks a little bit better. That like has the pacing that you need because she can deliver like comedy in a different way.

• 23:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's.

• 23:58Speaker 04

  Blasphemy at the Ringer.com from Rob Mahoney.

• 24:01Sean Fennessey?

  That's not my favorite Sydney Sweeney movie, for the record.

• 24:04Speaker 04

  What is your favorite Sydney Sweeney movie?

• 24:11Sean Fennessey?

  What was Michael Mohan's movie before Immaculate, the erotic thriller? That one worked pretty well. What was that movie called? The Voyeurs?

• 24:17Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 24:17Sean Fennessey?

  It was called, that was pretty good.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  Take your word for it.

• 24:19Sean Fennessey?

  You've no reason to fire it up on Amazon Prime. Yeah, I mean, the thing is, is that, and that's relevant to what I'm saying about Mikey Madison too, is Anyone But You with Mikey Madison and Glenn Powell would not have made 300 million dollars. So how does she retain her Mikey Madison-ness? And if she wants to be, become a bigger star?

• 24:39Speaker 04

  I think, speaking of Glenn Powell, like a good comp is Daisy Edgar Jones, who is having a really hard time, I think, channeling what she, the lightning in a bottle that was Normal People into what she does next, or similarly.

• 24:49Sean Fennessey?

  Tough year for the Normal People hive.

• 24:52Speaker 04

  But I think that with Mikey, it's so interesting that she's saying that because I was just watching an interview with Jenna Ortega where she was talking about. Like regretting not going to college, but she didn't go to college because she was told, like, you're hot right now, you're a teen, who knows when this is gonna go away. Uh, not too late, Jenna Ortega, you can go to college.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  Seriously, is she like 21? She's not Kwame Brown out there.

• 25:15Speaker 04

  I don't think she said like, I don't think she said like, wrote deepest regret ever, but she was just sort of like, I wanna go, I, this industry moves so fast, like, it can go away at any moment. And so the fact that Mikey Madison is like, I'll wait and see, you know?

• 25:30Sean Fennessey?

  It is very cool. Um, I'd like to go back to college, that would be nice.

• 25:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  What do you wanna study?

• 25:36Speaker 04

  Um. Voyeuristic movies?

• 25:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think a major in erotic thrillers with a minor in Sydney Sweeney is what I'm thinking.

• 25:43Speaker 03

  That sounds like every college student in America right now.

• 25:47Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, okay, where do we go next? Joanna?

• 25:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you're up.

• 25:52Speaker 04

  My number two is, uh, good old fashioned movie star, uh, Denzel Washington in Gladiator 2. Uh, and again, like, it's, you know, uh, uh, maybe an obvious pick, everyone has praised his performance, but in the vein of despite everything that's happening around him, he sometime, somehow holds the center of Gladiator 2. Um, I did not have a great time at that movie. Um, I had a great time with every single thing that he did and having, over on, uh, the Trial by Content podcast that I did, we spent several weeks watching Denzel Washington movies, so I've been sort of studying him for weeks and all the different modes that he has. This is some, like, very different from anything he's ever done.

• 26:34Sean Fennessey?

  I couldn't think of anything, yeah.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  Like studying, like, you, I think you'd have to see him do Shakespeare onstage, which he's done many times to maybe find something similar to this.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  Also on panel shows, like, he'll go on Graham Norton and just like rip through monologues just to show that he can. It's amazing.

• 26:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I, but just that, like, really, that combination of that Shakespearean, um, kind of Stentorian affectation that he has in the film, but also this, like, uh, Wildiness and yeah, yeah.

• 27:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:03Sean Fennessey?

  And sort of like the, obviously the sort of sexual fluidity that is sort of right underneath the surface of the movie too. Like he, there's, I couldn't think of anything that he had done.

• 27:12Speaker 04

  No, you would have to put a bunch of things in the blender. Like you'd have to put some Training Day in the blender with like some glory, actually with some.

• 27:18Sean Fennessey?

  Right. And like the mighty Quinn.

• 27:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:21Sean Fennessey?

  The, some of the goofier stuff he did early in his career.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  I feel like we don't see actors this late in their career do that sort of synthesis.

• 27:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  It's like, once you get to a certain point, it's like, I'm playing the hits, but I'm playing this hit and then that hit and then that hit.

• 27:32Sean Fennessey?

  And he did, I mean.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  He's done plenty of that.

• 27:34Sean Fennessey?

  He does that a lot.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  For sure. But to, to be able to pull things together and create something new out of all of the elements that make a Denzel performance, that's, that's art to me.

• 27:41Speaker 04

  I, I just thought he was incredible in this movie.

• 27:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's so fun. I mean, it completely saves the movie.

• 27:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:46Sean Fennessey?

  Um, he's, he's phenomenal. Great pick. Um, my number two is a real discovery for me, an actor that I don't remember ever seeing before. I didn't watch Servant. Um, and she is one of the stars of the television series Servant.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  She was on Game of Thrones.

• 27:58Sean Fennessey?

  Was she in Game of Thrones?

• 27:59Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 27:59Sean Fennessey?

  You'll have to tell me who she was. I'm talking about Nell Tiger Free, who is the star of The First Omen. Who was she in Game of Thrones?

• 28:04Speaker 04

  She was the original Princess Marcella. Before they replaced her.

• 28:07Sean Fennessey?

  You're gonna have to tell me who that is. Who is Princess Marcella?

• 28:10Speaker 04

  Uh, I think she's the original, unless she's the replacement. Don't fire me, Mallory. But, uh, she's one of the princesses, Marcella. Uh, she's like.

• 28:19Sean Fennessey?

  What, what land did she live in?

• 28:20Speaker 04

  She's one of Cer-, she's Cersei's daughter.

• 28:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. One of, one of the, one of the, the Lannister blondes.

• 28:24Speaker 04

  The royal children. And she gets poisoned and dies gruesomely, but I do think that.

• 28:29Sean Fennessey?

  You're referring to something that I experienced several lifetimes ago.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  It's insane how far I have to reach back to find that poisoning.

• 28:36Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. That was Nell Tiger Free?

• 28:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:38Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, well.

• 28:38Speaker 04

  At least one of them.

• 28:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  Shout out to one of the lives she led.

• 28:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. One of the princesses, Marcella.

• 28:43Sean Fennessey?

  In this film, she plays a nun, a nun who has been selected for a very important job, um, by some powerful forces. And, you know, a lot of it is a. This movie is a testimony to a director with an incredibly strong vision, a vision I've not seen before specifically, especially in a horror movie quite like this, and an actor being on the exact same page and willing to go the lengths that the film needs to sell it. This film, actually very similar to Heretic to Me, where the first two thirds, I'm like, is this my favorite movie of the year? Is this my favorite movie of the decade?

• 29:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:16Sean Fennessey?

  I was so taken with what Arkasha Stevenson was up to in this movie, which is ostensibly a prequel to a 70s horror classic. And honestly, a horror classic that I don't really care about that much. I'm not a big Omen person. It doesn't really mean a whole lot to me, so I wasn't entering it with really any expectations.

• 29:30Speaker 04

  It's not in your toddler canon that we're gonna talk about later?

• 29:33Sean Fennessey?

  Well, perhaps. You know, Damian is not quite a toddler, you know? He's more of a seven-year-old. So he's kind of exited that era, but we'll get there. But Nell Tiger Free is just jaw-droppingly mesmerizing in this movie as a nun who is slowly becoming possessed, I guess, for lack of a better word, by the church and by a higher calling. So I really, really, really like this movie. I'm very excited to see what Stevenson does next and to see what Nell Tiger Free does next. And I'll have to, you know, my wife is a big Game of Thrones fan, so I'm gonna have to be like, we should watch this again, because Princess Marcella is in it. Before she was poisoned.

• 30:06Speaker 03

  No, no, no, the first one.

• 30:08Speaker 04

  The first and/or second one, one of them.

• 30:11Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, let's do number ones. Rob?

• 30:13Speaker 03

  This was pretty easy for me, to be honest with you. My favorite performance in one of my favorite movies of the year, Josh O'Connor in Challengers. Has an actor ever done so much with a smirk and/or a thigh?

• 30:24Speaker 04

  And/or a sweat.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  Whichever one you prefer, like whatever your mode is, he's delivering in this movie, just like a perfect cad, a perfect shitheel, a perfect like dirtbag guy you kind of know. You have known someone like this, if not half this charming and half this. It's like, it really is like an undeniable performance. It's completely irrepressible, no matter what room, no matter how far you try to put him from Zendaya, it doesn't matter, like it just, it clicks.

• 30:50Speaker 04

  I think, um, loving Josh O'Connor in God's Own Country, and then in The Crown, and then seeing him do this

• 30:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  very different mode cements, for me, that he can do anything.

• 31:03Sean Fennessey?

  So versatile, I know. This is an amazing performance. The scene in the alleyway in which he confronts her is like

• 31:08Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh.

• 31:08Sean Fennessey?

  one of my favorite scenes of the year.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  Just the gall of him asking her to be his coach. Uh, it's like, I, I, it's amazing writing. I could watch that movie over and over and over again. I tried to watch it on a flight and they cut out. It's not like, honestly, I mean, mild spoilers for Challengers, I guess, if you haven't seen it. It's not like overt sexuality in Challengers. It's like suggestion and buildup. On this flight, for example, the famous threesome scene that's in the trailer, uh, Zendaya sits down on the bed and then immediately stands up and leaves.

• 31:35Speaker 04

  Really?

• 31:36Sean Fennessey?

  What?

• 31:36Speaker 03

  I don't know. I'm like, what did you need to cut?

• 31:39Sean Fennessey?

  Were you flying like Russia or something? Where were you going?

• 31:41Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't even want to get into it.

• 31:42Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, all right. Uh, that's very unfortunate. Um, perhaps we should present our number ones together. What do you think?

• 31:46Speaker 04

  I think that sounds right.

• 31:47Sean Fennessey?

  So what did you choose?

• 31:48Speaker 04

  Coleman Domingo, the lead of Sing Sing.

• 31:50Sean Fennessey?

  I chose Clarence Macklin, who is technically the supporting character, though I would say the co-lead of Sing Sing.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:56Sean Fennessey?

  Um, we, have we, did we, I guess we talked about it a little bit on an Oscar episode, but not too much this movie.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  No.

• 32:01Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a wonderful movie.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  I loved this movie.

• 32:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you're in the hive.

• 32:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's in my top five of the year.

• 32:06Sean Fennessey?

  Is it?

• 32:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 32:07Sean Fennessey?

  Well, then talk about Coleman.

• 32:08Speaker 04

  Uh, so Sing Sing, you'll talk about Clarence in terms of the fact that in Sing Sing, they used a lot of non-professional actors. So Coleman Domingo is surrounded by a lot of non-professional actors. So he is, uh, holding down the center of this movie. Um, as, as a man who is in prison, as a man who is sort of the leader of a community, and then has a crisis of faith and become, you watch him in, i- inside of a prison film where you're so used to watching people break. This is one of the hardest breaks I've ever, like, had to watch. There's also a lot of business done with a small glimpse of the outside,

• 32:50Speaker 04

  a small window to the outside that, that is something that he reflects on at a number of different stages in this movie that I think about over and over and over again. Coleman Domingo is like, I think, one of our great actors currently working. And I think it's amazing that he did this project, given like, the way that his star has been rising, you know, he's Has, he could do anything and he did this and I think he's just stunning in it. I loved him.

• 33:15Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. The movie doesn't work without him, but it also doesn't work without Macklin and the other actors, who, many of whom were actually incarcerated and participated in the rehabilitation through the arts program. Macklin's story is really centered because Coleman Domingo's character essentially conscript Macklin's character, Divine Eye, to participate in RTA and to become a performer and to find a new pathway through his life by doing this work.

• 33:44Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Macklin is not a professional actor, but he's a fucking good actor.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  He's great.

• 33:47Sean Fennessey?

  And he, the two of them, and the sort of the, the mannered stiffness of Domingo and the sort of actorliness of Domingo up against what feels like, it's kind of stupid to use the word like authentic, but there is a kind of realness, like a texture to the sense of his own life and his own personality, which evolves and they become like this double helix in the movie where they sort of like are swapping places and swapping feelings about the world and swapping futures. That is like such a great piece of storytelling and the, the sequences between them at the end of the movie are so powerful. It's a very, very, very good movie. It is a like Sundance weepy and you know, like inspiring in some ways and the story about the resilience of the human spirit, but like in the best way possible.

• 34:32Speaker 04

  I was ready, I was braced for this to be incredibly like saccharine or clapping itself on the back for having made itself for any of that. And I just found it incredibly authentic and genuine, like earnest, but not too earnest.

• 34:47Sean Fennessey?

  Agreed. Uh, you want to do some supporting? I loved making my, my honorable mentions here.

• 34:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:52Sean Fennessey?

  What, what, what do you got?

• 34:53Speaker 03

  Uh, Stanley Tucci in Conclave.

• 34:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  Uh, I loved both of the leads in Hitman, Glenn Powell and, and Audrey Arhona. Uh, Josh Hutcherson in The Beekeeper.

• 35:01Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible pull. Love this.

• 35:03Speaker 04

  Really good one.

• 35:03Speaker 03

  Just the worst possible son you could have.

• 35:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's literally Hunter Biden and Don Jr. together.

• 35:10Speaker 03

  Legit.

• 35:10Speaker 04

  You've brought up The Beekeeper a number of times. This is like a big movie for you this year?

• 35:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's a fun movie. Amanda just put it on her best movies of the year list.

• 35:15Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 35:16Sean Fennessey?

  Rightly so.

• 35:17Speaker 04

  Love it.

• 35:17Sean Fennessey?

  It was very, very fun.

• 35:19Speaker 03

  Willem Dafoe in Nosferatu, who honestly, we didn't talk about enough on the

• 35:22Sean Fennessey?

  We didn't.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  forthcoming Nosferatu pod.

• 35:24Sean Fennessey?

  He kinda is just doing Willem Dafoe at this point in these movies, where he's like, "There is a beast!"

• 35:28Speaker 03

  But that's exactly what I want all the time.

• 35:30Speaker 04

  That's kinda what he does on Saturday Night as well.

• 35:32Sean Fennessey?

  He's kinda the Nosferatu of Saturday Night, but yeah.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Hunter Schafer in Cuckoo, who I was really impressed by, like, a more restrained kind of scream queen-y, like, anxious performance that I really liked. Dennis Quaid in The Substance, who is eating shrimp like nobody's fucking disgusting.

• 35:47Sean Fennessey?

  Disgusting, yeah.

• 35:48Speaker 03

  Absolutely gross.

• 35:49Sean Fennessey?

  Good pick.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Kirsten Dunst in Civil War, and the Megalon in Megalopolis.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  Tell me it's not important. Tell me it didn't change your life.

• 35:57Sean Fennessey?

  Did either of you guys like Megalopolis?

• 35:59Speaker 03

  What is, what is like?

• 36:00Sean Fennessey?

  What is like? Tell me.

• 36:02Speaker 03

  I, I had a great time watching it.

• 36:04Speaker 04

  Did you?

• 36:04Speaker 03

  I would recommend that people see it, and I will never be watching it again.

• 36:08Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  That's how I feel.

• 36:09Speaker 04

  It was quite the experience.

• 36:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 36:10Speaker 04

  I'm glad we saw it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 36:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:13Sean Fennessey?

  Got it.

• 36:15Sean Fennessey?

  What are, what are your also rans, your honorable mentions?

• 36:18Speaker 04

  Um, I've got Boyd Holbrook in A Complete Unknown as Johnny Cash.

• 36:24Sean Fennessey?

  So technically, this movie will not be out yet when we're doing, when this episode's coming out, but I texted Chris after I saw the movie. Chris, the, the largest holder, shareholder of Boyd Holbrook's stock. No, that's you?

• 36:35Speaker 04

  No, we, we share.

• 36:36Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, you share.

• 36:37Speaker 03

  It's code or shit.

• 36:38Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. And I just said, "Huge winners of A Complete Unknown, Boyd Holbrook," and then I stopped sending messages.

• 36:46Speaker 03

  That's it?

• 36:46Sean Fennessey?

  But that's not actually how I feel, but for his purposes, he was like

• 36:50Speaker 04

  I saw this movie, I saw this movie, it was me, and then it was Mallory Rubin, and then it was Chris Ryan, and then his lovely wife Phoebe, and every time Boyd Holbrook came on screen, Mallory elbowed both of us with like, extreme enthusiasm. He's great, and especially like since we, Bucky and Phoenix so famously played Johnny Cash for James Mangold, it's like a lot to have to live up to. I thought he was wonderful.

• 37:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very different Cash.

• 37:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Carol Kane in Between Two Temples, um, which is getting Oscar buzz now all of a sudden

• 37:21Sean Fennessey?

  New York Film Critics Circle Supporting Actress winner.

• 37:23Speaker 04

  It's starting, and I, I feel like

• 37:25Sean Fennessey?

  That would be cool.

• 37:26Speaker 04

  It could go.

• 37:26Sean Fennessey?

  That would be cool. I love this movie. Yeah, I talked to the filmmaker and Jason Schwartzman on the pod.

• 37:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. To be more in The Substance, again, sometimes you just have to state the obvious. Um, Fred Heckinger in, uh, Heckinger, I always mispronounce his name, in both Gladiator 2 and Thelma.

• 37:43Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:43Speaker 04

  I love this kid. I love him.

• 37:45Sean Fennessey?

  He's, he's also a scamp. I watched him in a Q and A after Gladiator 2 with, it was Connie Nielsen and Paul Meskell being very restrained and professional, Denzel Washington trying to say as few words as possible. And Fred Heckinger just being like, this was fucking crazy, dude. I was out there with Ridley Scott, Denzel Washington. We were hanging out. I got a monkey on my shoulder. He was great.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  I also, I really liked him in Thelma too. Um, Nick Holt in Nosferatu, despite, uh, Sean's feelings about that.

• 38:15Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean?

• 38:16Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 38:17Sean Fennessey?

  I like him. He's good. He's a cock. He's, he's the earth cock.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  He is what he is.

• 38:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 04

  That's, okay.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  We all have roles to play in life.

• 38:24Sean Fennessey?

  We do.

• 38:25Speaker 04

  Uh, Gabriel Bell in Saturday Night. Saturday Night, not a film that I loved, but I really loved his performance as Lorne Michaels at the center of it. Um, Alii Cravajo from Mean Girls, famously Moana, but Renee Rapp is really the person who like walked out of Mean Girls with, but Alii was fantastic.

• 38:43Sean Fennessey?

  She's great.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  In that film and her song, I thought was like the best part of that film.

• 38:47Sean Fennessey?

  Did you see Moana 2?

• 38:49Speaker 04

  I have not seen Moana 2. Did it change your life?

• 38:51Speaker 03

  I mean, it will. Once, once it hits Disney+, it'll be changing your life, I'm sure.

• 38:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it'll change the way I spend my time. Uh, yeah, the, the soundtrack's going super hard in the house. So Alice was on board.

• 39:00Speaker 04

  So Alii is, is the star of the show in your house. Got it. Dev Patel, Monkey Man.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  That's our guy.

• 39:06Speaker 04

  Dev Patel.

• 39:07Sean Fennessey?

  I like that he tried.

• 39:08Speaker 04

  True. I don't think the, it's a good movie.

• 39:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 39:11Speaker 04

  I think that his performance is good in it.

• 39:13Sean Fennessey?

  He is good.

• 39:14Speaker 04

  Um, and I like that he nearly broke his whole entire body trying to make that movie.

• 39:18Sean Fennessey?

  You know what he's giving me is Warren Beatty right now, where he's like, I can do it myself.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:23Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and I, I'm not sure if that is how it will continue to go, but you know, classically handsome guy, has tried, has accomplished a lot at a young age. Um, is often around good projects. And then at a certain point early in his career is like, let me take control. We'll see how it works out. Monkey Man.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  Not great.

• 39:42Sean Fennessey?

  Wasn't quite what I wanted it to be.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, a lot of promise and then it was sort of whelming. And then Aaron Taylor Johnson.

• 39:49Speaker 03

  I came a hair from putting him on my team. This was such a good part.

• 39:53Speaker 04

  What's funny is, uh, we're gonna talk about Amy Adams. I literally watched, I was literally watching Nocturnal Animals this morning.

• 40:00Speaker 03

  That's a vibe.

• 40:01Speaker 04

  And it was a bad idea, but, but in watching it, I was reminded, because he's kinda doing McConaughey in that too. I was reminded of how good he is in his McConaughey impression in Fall Guy. He's wonderful in that movie.

• 40:15Sean Fennessey?

  We were admiring his, uh, arch hamminess on the Nosferatu conversation as well.

• 40:21Speaker 03

  His mutton chops.

• 40:22Speaker 04

  I mean, the mutton chops are great. Do you feel like they used him the way they should have in Nosferatu?

• 40:26Speaker 03

  I mean, I feel like he's selectively deployed, uh, because, you know, he's really the ultimate wife guy in that movie.

• 40:32Speaker 04

  I guess, I just like, Aaron Taylor Johnson can do so much in a way that, again, to repeat with Lepita, someone that handsome should not be able to do.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  With that many abs, should not also have that many roles.

• 40:46Sean Fennessey?

  What was a big revelation to me about him in Nosferatu is that he's a short guy.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, Nick Holt is also.

• 40:51Sean Fennessey?

  Is he quite tall?

• 40:51Speaker 04

  Extremely tall.

• 40:52Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so maybe that's what it was. Maybe he's just average height. But Nick, Nick Holt is towering over him and there are a lot of shots of them in the frame where we've got an entire Holt head over Aaron Taylor Johnson. Uh, I like him quite a bit and like I, I found Bullet Train almost unwatchable, but I loved him in it.

• 41:08Speaker 04

  He's so good. He's so good in that movie.

• 41:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so, okay, those are good picks. I'll give you some supporting picks that I enjoyed as well. I think all of, I think my idea here was only supporting characters, maybe with one exception. Um, Sergio Castellito in Conclave, who is the Italian cardinal who vapes.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  He's great.

• 41:24Sean Fennessey?

  That's my guy. Uh, I love that guy. That's when we, when I remake Conclave in 20 years, C R will be playing that role. Uh, Jesse Plemons in Civil War, one of the most electrifying movie scenes of the year. Further confirmation, he can do anything and be quite scary. Landry being scary is just so fascinating. This is where we are in our culture.

• 41:41Speaker 04

  You're just talking about him in Breaking Bad.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, perfect psycho in that.

• 41:44Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. Of course, Todd was terrifying, but in a different way.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  The glasses game isn't as strong.

• 41:49Sean Fennessey?

  No, no, no. I should have worn those red ones for this conversation. Dan Stevens times three.

• 41:54Speaker 03

  Let's fucking go.

• 41:55Sean Fennessey?

  Dan Stevens, Godzilla, X Kong, The New Empire. He's playing, I think, an Australian monster dentist. I believe that's what his role is.

• 42:04Speaker 04

  You would have to tell me because despite my love for Dan Stevens, I did not see Godzilla.

• 42:08Sean Fennessey?

  This is a bridge you couldn't follow. Ridiculous film. He is introduced in the movie swinging on a giant crane, removing a tooth from King Kong's mouth.

• 42:17Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 42:18Sean Fennessey?

  So, super cool there.

• 42:19Speaker 04

  Did you see Godzilla?

• 42:20Speaker 03

  I did not. I've only seen the original, or I guess the prequel.

• 42:24Sean Fennessey?

  He's having a ball. He's having an absolute ball. He's also having a ball in Abigail, where he's basically, like, in a Michael Mann movie? That hap- like, that happens to have vampires in it?

• 42:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:36Sean Fennessey?

  Did you see Abigail?

• 42:36Speaker 03

  There's a perfect world where it is the Michael Mann movie and we think it's the Michael Mann movie and we show up and it's the vampire.

• 42:41Sean Fennessey?

  That would have been so amazing.

• 42:42Speaker 03

  We didn't get that.

• 42:44Sean Fennessey?

  I enjoyed him. And Cuckoo, you mentioned Hunter Schafer. He's also having so much fun as an evil German doctor in Cuckoo, like, an absolute riot.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  This is what Dan Stevens should be doing at all times. And it often makes the choice to do that.

• 42:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 42:57Speaker 04

  And then sometimes makes The Beauty and the Beast.

• 42:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  But he should be doing this.

• 43:01Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:01Speaker 03

  He's mostly a nasty little freak and I respect it.

• 43:04Sean Fennessey?

  We stan our nasty little freaks.

• 43:06Speaker 04

  Nasty little freaks is correct for Dan Stevens. Cuck is incorrect for Nicholas Holt.

• 43:11Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we'll see.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  The casting directors of America think differently.

• 43:14Sean Fennessey?

  Speaking of nasty little freaks, I also have Jeremy Strong from The Apprentice. A movie that I'm kind of mixed on, even though the two performances in the middle of it I think are awesome. Jeremy Strong in particular as Roy Cohn, one of the singular freaks of the 20th century.

• 43:27Speaker 03

  Certainly.

• 43:28Sean Fennessey?

  Vicky Crepes in The Dead Don't Hurt, which is a movie that I like quite a bit. That was a little bit underplayed. She's technically the star, but she doesn't quite get the same billing that her co-star gets. I just wanted to give that movie a shout out. I have another Aubrey Plaza movie that I want to give some love to, Megalopolis, Wow Platinum.

• 43:47Speaker 04

  She's amazing.

• 43:47Sean Fennessey?

  Movie's kind of a car crash, but she's so fun.

• 43:50Speaker 03

  You simply have to say Wow Platinum as much as humanly possible.

• 43:54Sean Fennessey?

  And then my last one is another, both physical and vocal performance, though we never see this actor's face. It's Kevin Durant, who's also in Abigail. In Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, he plays Proximus Caesar, who is the big bad of this movie. Another movie that I was very mixed on, I had high hopes for and didn't love, but I love what he did. And as we know, as Andy Serkis fans, if you can elevate the mocap performance style, it's something to give a shout to. That's a lot of performances. I'm sure we left some stuff out. I don't know. I don't really care at this point.

• 44:23Speaker 04

  Uh, no, I think we got it. I think we did it all.

• 44:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 44:25Speaker 04

  I don't think there's anyone yelling at this podcast right now about anything we missed.

• 44:28Sean Fennessey?

  The big picture? No, people would never yell at that. Um, let's talk about Night Bitch. So I, you know, we're, this episode's coming out a couple of weeks after the movie is released. I don't think this movie's gonna burn up the box office.

• 44:39Speaker 04

  Nope.

• 44:40Speaker 03

  What makes you think that?

• 44:41Sean Fennessey?

  Well, two reasons. One, it's about a middle-aged woman.

• 44:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:46Sean Fennessey?

  Two, uh, it's being presented as a kind of genre movie and it is ultimately not really that. It is a bit of a bait and switch, wrong footing, and I think it has been that for a long period of time. When we first heard about the movie, I hadn't read the Rachel Yoder novel, but my, I thought it was gonna be like a Universal Classics monster movie with a mom.

• 45:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:06Sean Fennessey?

  And that's not at all what this movie is. Um, it stars Amy Adams and Scoot McNary. Uh, and it's, it's a movie essentially about a, a woman coping and managing her life in the face of living almost entirely with a two-year-old. And it's complicated because, as I said, I really love Amy Adams and I'm in the exact same phase of my life that this character is in. Obviously, I'm not a woman. My wife did watch this movie and I can share her thoughts about it as we go through it.

• 45:37Speaker 04

  I wanna hear them.

• 45:37Sean Fennessey?

  Um, but I'll, I'll, I'll start with you, Joanna. What'd you think of Night Bitch?

• 45:41Speaker 04

  I think I'm a lot higher on it than you guys are and that is okay. Um, I love Marielle Heller, uh, in general as a filmmaker. Um, I don't think she's, her Mr. Rogers movie was okay, but everything else she's made has been, I think, a masterpiece. I don't have kids. You have kids. I'm glad you're here to represent, uh, the parents on this, on this podcast. But, uh, some of the people that I feel closest to in my life, I have watched them go through, go through motherhood is like a weird way to put it, but like especially early motherhood. Um, and the alienation of it. Um, and the loneliness of it and the way in which you feel like your entire life is

• 46:24Speaker 04

  uh been taken from you in a way, even though there's so much joy and all the other things that come with it. So I really recognize this as something I have tried my best to understand happening for women I feel very close to in my life. And I love to see this, a film that made me think of immediately was Tully, the Charlie's Theron movie. And that's a similar, like, both of these movies were really educational for me in terms of like, as much as I can try to understand someone explaining it to me, having the experience of sitting in a dark theater and being put immediately in this POV, that's what film can do, that's what fiction

• 47:04Speaker 04

  can do. And I just, I love that this film exists. I do agree that like, some of the, you know, either marketing or, you know, someone about you said with my old ass, like, I don't think you necessarily need some of the genre stuff that's in here to sell the story that you're selling, but I-

• 47:21Sean Fennessey?

  I might argue you don't need them at all.

• 47:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:23Sean Fennessey?

  And that ultimately is like the, the signature flaw of the movie for me.

• 47:28Speaker 04

  I just think that like, the idea of like, I feel like a literal monster is something that's interesting and worth exploring.

• 47:36Sean Fennessey?

  It is like, well, what did you think, Rob? Cause I think we should dig into that concept.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  Right. I, I do think as an interesting perspective and thing to say about motherhood. I just think it has the one thing to say, and it wants to say it over and over and over in a way that felt, because of all those weird genre trimmings, like a little hamfisted. In the end, based on the total concoction of what it was, I felt like Amy Adams is going for it. And this movie is like, almost scared to go for it to the extent that she is. It felt, it felt like really pulled back, where I want more of the titular night bitch, or none of the titular night bitch. I want this movie to be like, a little smarter or much, much dumber. And I, I feel like we ended up in a weird middle ground with it.

• 48:15Sean Fennessey?

  So I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who's a director, and we both have children that are three years old. And I think we were both having maybe a particularly challenging week with our kid. And-

• 48:30Sean Fennessey?

  We often talk about movies and I was like, what are the, there are no movies about this. There are no movies about the, certainly this movie is tightly focused on motherhood, but just the experience of parenting through what is typically a fairly traumatic era of a young person's life because invariably, especially with kids in certain kind of households, this is an artistic household in this movie, there's an encouragement of like expression and being open with your feelings and also like a, like a level of intelligence that is bred because of the way that the child is fortunate enough to be raised in, where they can communicate really well and they're sophisticated in some ways, but they have no ability to modulate their feelings. And I think me and my friend were both going through this period where it's

• 49:15Sean Fennessey?

  like, this is really, really hard. And I was like, how is, why is, why are there no movies about this? Like it's for millions of people, they go through this and people, there are a billion movies about falling in love and fewer, but still a lot of movies about falling out of love and breaking up. And there are movies about being parents, there are lots of movies about being parents, there are lots of movies about other people's parents and people dying, all of these like essential life experiences. I've not seen a lot of movies about what it's like to have a two or three year old in your house all, all day long. And like a week later, I saw Night Bitch and I was like, this is the movie. This is exact, and so the thing that I've been kind of toggling with through this is with the understanding that like, I can't really relate to the motherhood aspect and

• 49:59Sean Fennessey?

  some of the, that alienation that you're describing. It gets it so much of this so right. The profound repetition.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, the monotony montage at the beginning, like that stuff always.

• 50:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's just, and it's so right. They're just like, you're hitting the same prepackaged breakfast in the pan every morning. Like she's just nails that stuff. Meryl Heller has two young kids. Like she is clearly pulling from some personal experience to kind of visualize and literalize these ideas. And as I'm watching the movie and I'm kind of toggling as a huge genre fan with like her inability, I think, to really execute on the genre ideas, but the stunning way that she accurately represents some of the things I saw my wife go through, some friends go through over the years. But wondering like whether or not that makes for a good movie. And maybe that's one of the reasons why there are just not a lot of movies about this. I think some of it is because people try to like memory hole this period. Because then your kid turns four and five and six and you're like, this is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me.

• 50:53Sean Fennessey?

  Because everything is like fun. But this tight corridor of two to three and a half, where everything is so challenging all the time. I think people are like, get me out of here a little bit.

• 51:03Speaker 04

  On the one hand, yeah, but on the other hand, I think because for decades, this was considered a woman's struggle.

• 51:09Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:09Speaker 04

  That people were uninterested in it.

• 51:11Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great point.

• 51:12Speaker 04

  And I think, you know, increasingly, hopefully parenting feels like a joint group project. And there's, I think this movie, I mean, were you telling me that you thought the characterization of Scoot's character was like cartoonish to you?

• 51:29Sean Fennessey?

  He's got one thing to do and it's like, talk down to Amy Adams at every single turn of this movie and be passive aggressive. Until he's finally confronted with the, it felt like a character that was being preached at the entire movie to me.

• 51:41Speaker 04

  What's so funny to me, Rob, and is that when I watched this, I was like, I actually think this movie is being very nice to this archetype.

• 51:48Sean Fennessey?

  Really?

• 51:48Speaker 04

  I think I have seen in my life way worse versions of this. And so I was like, I actually think she's being kind of gentle.

• 51:56Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, no, I think the character is being gentle.

• 51:57Speaker 04

  No, no, no, like.

• 51:58Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think the overall treatment of the movie?

• 51:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, because like, and I, and I like that about you, that you're like, this is the worst. And I'm like, this is actually kind of medium. And that's like, kind of what's the worst about it is that he's like, he's not a villain. He's just clueless or can't possibly quite understand. Or they've made decisions about who gets to leave the house and make money and along a gender line that it's usually drawn in our particular culture. And I, I don't know, I thought that was really interesting. I was like, I feel like Mari Heller was like, let's, let's tone it down a little around Scoot's character.

• 52:35Sean Fennessey?

  I think that might be because she is a working mother and so is her partner. Um, Yorin Takone, who's also in the arts. Um, I, I think you're both right. I think that there are some aspects of the way that that character is characterized. And you can, you can imagine the level of self identification, guilt, pain, trauma, sadness, um, that I felt watching that character. Some of it I think is a little bit broad. Some of it I think is frankly more generous than like, maybe I have even been in my own life. Um, so. It was like a challenging movie to talk to my wife about because What did she think? I am a person that like has the job where I go into work every day and I'm out many nights and I travel for work and she doesn't do that. She still has her career. She hasn't given up her career

• 53:20Sean Fennessey?

  the way that the Amy Adams character has.

• 53:24Sean Fennessey?

  But there's a very vitriolic fight that they have that leads to a real fissure in their relationship kind of in the second half of the movie. We haven't had that fight, but I think it was close enough to fights that we've had where she was just like, this is tough, man. This is tough to be in this experience with these people. And I think this, I think the movie lets that intensity off the hook a little bit at the end. And it gives it a little bit of like a rounded edge.

• 53:51Speaker 03

  The big speech that he delivers at the end of this movie is like cringey. Like I think it's genuinely like undercut so much like that big conflict in the kitchen to me. There's some truth in there in the gray area, in the like, why didn't you convince me to have to fight for my own life? Kind of mess that any, any family, any couple, any pairing of people can get into. Where we get by the end of it for not a lot of discernible nudge beyond that point.

• 54:21Speaker 03

  I get, how spoilerary are we being with this discussion, I guess?

• 54:26Sean Fennessey?

  If you don't want to hear any of the plot details of Night Witch, which is not, not the plodiest movie of all time. It's mostly a woman and a two-year-old hanging out for long stretches, but go ahead, fire away.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  There's this big speech he gives about like, I am in awe of you. That I understand why there are women and mothers in the world who want that character to say that thing in that moment. I get it, but seeing it on screen after this movie, I was just like, why are we doing that? Like, why is that the endpoint for this?

• 54:52Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's because I, and I'm curious what you think, but I think because it's so relentlessly straightforward about the challenges of the experience at certain times when you're raising a kid, that it felt like a, an odd, it's like she spit the bit at the end of, at the end of the fight a little bit.

• 55:09Speaker 04

  Um, oh, that, yeah. I think you guys are saying slightly different things and I think I more agree with you. That, that Amy Adams' character.

• 55:15Speaker 03

  Just selling me right out.

• 55:18Sean Fennessey?

  It's good, it's good to disagree about something like this, though.

• 55:20Speaker 04

  And I also think there's something more complicated going on here than, because she's an artist as well. And so I think we watch so many movies about men and their arts and, you know. We can talk about the-

• 55:35Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean?

• 55:35Speaker 04

  Should we talk about-

• 55:36Sean Fennessey?

  What's wrong with that?

• 55:36Speaker 04

  Should we talk about the brutalists for like three hours?

• 55:38Sean Fennessey?

  Why not?

• 55:39Speaker 04

  You know, and often in those movies, those artists are praised for being massive geniuses and like-

• 55:44Sean Fennessey?

  Can I tell you something?

• 55:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:45Sean Fennessey?

  Rob gave me an amazing idea on the last recording we did, which is that I should make the brutalist episode of this show the same length as the film.

• 55:53Speaker 04

  With the blessed 15 minute intermission?

• 55:56Sean Fennessey?

  Well, perhaps. I think it will just be me singing the score in that 15 minutes. But you're right that we bend over backwards to praise these great men.

• 56:04Speaker 04

  There are so many stories about men feeling disconnected from their art and reconnecting with their art. And these are like award winning, the most important movies of the year, blah, blah. And this is about a woman who is a mother and also an artist. And it's about her reconnecting with her art. And I also love the way that her struggle is triangulated via these two groups. She's got these, the moms at the, at the library-

• 56:28Sean Fennessey?

  At both babies.

• 56:29Speaker 04

  Who she initially sneers at and then finds common cause with. They are her pack in a sense, and she finds things to connect with them about. Whereas before she was like sort of sneeringly their intellectual superior, she believed. And then she's got her friends at what I will call the kale salad dinner scene. And that was, that was hard for me to watch because as much as I've tried to understand friends who have gone through this, I am sure I have been the shitty person at the kale salad dinner.

• 57:00Sean Fennessey?

  I doubt it.

• 57:00Speaker 04

  You know, and like-

• 57:01Sean Fennessey?

  I doubt you are even close to any of those people in that sequence.

• 57:04Speaker 04

  But like unintentionally, it's so easy to just sort of like not know what you're bumbling into. And so, yes, at the end of this movie where people literally turn into dogs, there is some fantasy elements of I can have it all. I can be an artist, I can be a mom, I can have my husband come and tell-

• 57:22Sean Fennessey?

  I can be a dog.

• 57:23Speaker 04

  Tell me I'm in awe of me. I can have my old friends come and see that I'm amazing. I can have my new mom friends feel seen by my art. There's a lot of like, you know, fantasy at the end of this, but like-

• 57:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It tightens the boat quite a bit on top of the present at the end.

• 57:38Speaker 03

  She grabbed a piece of meat off of another person's table and gnawed it on her way out of the kale salad dinner. Or maybe didn't, I don't know. But then all of those people showed up at her, her art gallery in which there are a bunch of bones from animals that she, the human woman, may have just murdered.

• 57:54Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you're getting into the genre aspect of it, which is the stuff that just doesn't work.

• 57:57Speaker 04

  But, but.

• 57:57Sean Fennessey?

  As a metaphor, it's an amazing device. It's a good metaphor. In the movie.

• 58:00Speaker 04

  Question about The Brutalist. The Brutalist ends with.

• 58:05Sean Fennessey?

  This is way too soon, way too soon. I have not seen this.

• 58:07Speaker 04

  Cut this, cut this. Cut that, cut that. I will say, I will say, I'll say it more vaguely, okay? I will say, we're talking about The Brutalist, The Brutalist has a very similar end point, I would say.

• 58:19Sean Fennessey?

  There is a big metaphorical device in that film as well.

• 58:23Speaker 04

  And a laurel, giving laurels to the artist in that as well.

• 58:28Sean Fennessey?

  Without question, I.

• 58:29Speaker 04

  I'm not saying this is.

• 58:30Sean Fennessey?

  We could argue which is more clever, or more effective.

• 58:33Speaker 04

  The Brutalist is better at it. I'm not, I'm not saying this is as elevated as The Brutalist is. I'm not trying to put them on the exact same level, but I think we often dismiss women's versions of stories that we celebrate men's versions of stories.

• 58:49Sean Fennessey?

  It's fair. I think that that ultimate point is 100% right. I just think that

• 58:58Sean Fennessey?

  there's simultaneously too much and not enough going on in this movie. That there is like a tight psychological focus that is carried by and I would genuinely say a brave performance by Amy Adams, who is willing to be frankly haggard by the standards of a movie star and not in the like Nicole Kidman wears a prosthetic nose way. Where just like Amy Adams just gained like some weight and wore no makeup and let her hair get a little bit stringy and unbrushed the way that you might be if you are raising a toddler and stuck in the house all day. She hasn't showered, you know, you can tell.

• 59:33Speaker 04

  Because you literally don't have time for a shower.

• 59:35Sean Fennessey?

  That's, it's like one of those things where if you don't have kids, you don't realize that you're like, you can't go anywhere. You can't go to the bathroom. Like you just can't go to the bathroom because you can't leave them alone because they're two and they could walk into the street. It's a very obvious, simple thing and every parent is like, that's listening is like, absolutely. And everybody who doesn't have kids is like, I didn't really think that I will never be free for three years, but it is true. And so I think that all of that stuff is so. Genuinely deep and honest. And the other stuff is movie making device work. Like, I feel like that scene at the end happens in part because they're like, we gotta end this movie. What we can't, this, this can't be an ongoing portrait of a woman experiencing this phase of her life.

• 1:00:16Sean Fennessey?

  If this were 1986, you might have like a, um, a series of films that would be tracking a woman at the state. You could, you could imagine Chantal Ackerman doing a series of films about a woman at various stages of motherhood.

• 1:00:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:29Sean Fennessey?

  But this is like a Fox Searchlight movie with a big movie star. And so they're like, how are we gonna wrap this thing up? How about an art show? Um, so I don't know. I didn't love that and I didn't love the, the, the animal murdering dog aspect to it, but, uh, I don't know.

• 1:00:44Speaker 04

  Pretty, oh, yeah.

• 1:00:45Speaker 03

  I will say, the actual footage of the night bitch, or night bitches, if you prefer, depending on what you think of the other moms at Book Babies, running through the streets. Majestic, absolutely majestic dog footage in this movie.

• 1:00:58Speaker 04

  How much of your discomfort with this movie is because of, you're a dog guy?

• 1:01:02Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I, I wish there were more dog.

• 1:01:04Speaker 04

  Okay. But there's like some tough dog stuff.

• 1:01:07Speaker 03

  There's some tough dog stuff, but look, there's also a lot of, uh, there's, there's a cat who has a tough time. There's a lot of rodents and perhaps possums who meet unfortunate ends. Uh, there's also like, it is a Fox movie with a movie star. It's also like a movie with like a bunch of big pussing wounds in it.

• 1:01:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Speaker 03

  Um.

• 1:01:24Speaker 04

  You're not, you're not a puss guy?

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  Uh, only in the substance, like once a year.

• 1:01:28Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 1:01:29Speaker 03

  One, one pussing back wound a year.

• 1:01:31Sean Fennessey?

  What about Nosferatu's exposed spaces?

• 1:01:35Speaker 03

  That's just who he is, though.

• 1:01:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:01:36Speaker 03

  That's not a state thing.

• 1:01:37Sean Fennessey?

  This is, this is who Amy Adams is in this film.

• 1:01:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:40Sean Fennessey?

  Um, what else can we say?

• 1:01:42Speaker 04

  I mean, I don't, I will, I will say, as a genre, body horror is not my favorite. So there are, I'm not gonna lie to you, there are moments in this film that I was having, struggling through, but I just, I don't know. I just like, I love that. Amy Adams exec produced this. I saw it at the Mulvalley Film Festival where she came and talked about it beforehand and talked about how much it meant for her to be able to tell this story as a mom and Mari Heller as a mom, to be able to tell this story, a story that they feel is really underrepresented. And I really agree with it. Is it 100% successful in every regard? No, I'm not, I'm not gonna lie to you. I think that there are things that are, feel shaggy. Not to put it in unattention. I really regret it. I regret it.

• 1:02:19Speaker 03

  It needs a good.

• 1:02:20Speaker 04

  As it was coming out, I regretted it. Um, but, but I'm just really glad it exists.

• 1:02:26Sean Fennessey?

  I think the response we needed there was woof.

• 1:02:27Speaker 04

  Woof. Yeah.

• 1:02:30Sean Fennessey?

  One other thing I'd just like to say very quickly about this movie is that this child is too nice. That this is a fairly well behaved two-year-old boy. And that's just not how it is.

• 1:02:38Speaker 03

  It wants, that, that kid wants two things. To sleep in his parents' bed and to eat hash browns every morning. That's it. That's really it.

• 1:02:45Speaker 04

  I mean, and paint on the walls.

• 1:02:48Sean Fennessey?

  He, he, he does a few things that you're like, this would be very stressful.

• 1:02:51Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:02:51Sean Fennessey?

  Parents have been there before, but like, his demeanor is very kind.

• 1:02:56Speaker 04

  Wait, can I?

• 1:02:57Sean Fennessey?

  And that's not, that's just not how it is all the time. It's just not.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  If you were in a parallel situation, Sean, would you encourage your daughter to sleep in a dog bed?

• 1:03:05Sean Fennessey?

  No, my, my daughter sleeps in a real bed and it's wonderful and I don't want anything to change about that. So, um, but like, that's a real, obviously sleep is a real struggle in general for all parents. And the movie goes out of its way to be like, this is hard. The fight that she has with him about their sleep, like, I was like, this is journalism. Like what they're doing here is so sincere and accurate.

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  The shot of him on the couch playing Playstation, talking about nitro boosters, I'm like, oh no.

• 1:03:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that didn't, you knew that wasn't gonna go in a good direction.

• 1:03:30Speaker 04

  What is it, what is a dog bed if not like just a beanbag with a rim?

• 1:03:34Speaker 03

  It looks pretty comfortable.

• 1:03:36Speaker 04

  I think that's fine. I think it's fine to let your, your kid sleep in a, a dog bed. In case you were curious about our tips. I want to go back to your, so your, your wife said it was like tough to watch some of my stuff, but how did she feel sort of overall in terms of the depiction of motherhood?

• 1:03:50Sean Fennessey?

  So she watched it on Monday. Monday night, what did I go do? I'm sure I was out seeing a film. She has access to the PGA screener portal, so she's been powering through award season as well.

• 1:04:00Speaker 03

  So you were trying to give her the most authentic experience by being out of the house while she has to watch this movie?

• 1:04:05Speaker 04

  He said, "Don't worry, later in the week I will babysit my own child."

• 1:04:07Sean Fennessey?

  What did I do? I mean, I did, I, I did that plenty over the last few days. Um, I, I had a dinner. I had a dinner with, with a friend, actually a rare non-screening night for me. Um, so she fired up. It was her choice. I did, I, I, actually when I saw the film, I was like, Caution. Yeah. This might not be the best experience. Sure. You might not have a lot of fun. Perhaps you should try Sing Sing. She said, we talked about it afterwards, but she texted me when she started watching and she said, "I started Night Bitch and I'm depressed about how sweet this kid is." And then she wrote, "This movie is so rough, lol, I'm turning it off." She did eventually finish it and I think she found some merit and meaning in the movie. It's hard not to. It's very, it's a well-made movie, even if you don't necessarily love where it goes.

• 1:04:51Sean Fennessey?

  But I think it's hard. And I think for some parents will watch the movie and feel that swell of identification and power. And some will watch it and be like, "I got enough of this at home. I'm good." Yeah. You know, "I got enough of that alienation and that evacuation of my own humanity at home" "that I don't really want to spend more time in the off-hours engaging in it." But I bet it's like, if you have a 10-year-old, it's probably a good movie. Cause you're like, "I remember that." And then we're out of there. But in a distant way. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not-so-great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that: bullspend.

• 1:05:35Sean Fennessey?

  Instead, why not invest in what looks good to your CFO? LinkedIn Ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. Reach the right buyers with LinkedIn Ads. You can target by company, industry, job title and more. So cut the bullspend, advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. That's LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. Terms and conditions apply. Let's talk about Amy Adams. So, you know what? We just have not done very many halls of fame for actresses on the show. And so, I'm endeavoring to change that as much as possible. And you brought Rob, the speaker for the every woman. This is what I'm here for. To tell you about motherhood, to speak for the every woman.

• 1:06:20Sean Fennessey?

  As I said, my two, well, what I wanted was a prestige TV kind of semi-reunion on this pod. But we're also, we're representing femininity, you know? It's just, also, Amanda does not like Mario Heller's movies. So this is probably a relief for her to not have to participate in this. I love to help Amanda out. Amy Adams, is she good? And if so, why? Come on, come on. I'm a big fan.

• 1:06:40Speaker 03

  The way she is talked about at the Ringer dot com.

• 1:06:43Speaker 04

  Disrespectful.

• 1:06:43Speaker 03

  Incredibly disrespectful.

• 1:06:45Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, I agree. I have tried to defend her over the years.

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  I think her, some of the projects she's been in more recently have not always been as successful. I've not always hit for me. I, I think that bitch among them. But overall, in terms of the body of work, incredible supporting work. I think some of the, for me, like, one of the defining lead performances of the last 20 or 25 years or so. Like, I think she has some real home run stuff. And to talk about her as if she's just like strikes and gutters, that's just not the reality of the situation. She's often, if she's in a bad movie, or one that doesn't quite work for you, still one of the best parts of it. So I'm, I, I'm here for Amy Adams. I think she has pretty incredible range. I know we're gonna talk through the entirety of it, but, uh, I love the variety of what she can put on screen.

• 1:07:26Speaker 04

  I think it's interesting. So I agree in terms of variety, but I think, I was really considering this, because I do love Amy Adams. I do not want to knock her in any way. I will say, I don't think she can do everything.

• 1:07:35Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:07:35Speaker 04

  She's not one of those actresses who can do everything. But the wide swing between the two things that she does really well is so stark that you can kind of convince yourself she can do anything. So that's sort of like wide-eyed, innocent, bubbly thing that she does so well, and she did a lot more early in her career. And then, um, the, the hardened grief, um, or trauma that she's done in a number of projects. And then somewhere in the middle there is this sort of like sex kitten through the lens of the bubbly innocent thing. And so that's just like, it's really only like three notes that I can triangulate on her performances. But they are so, again, so different.

• 1:08:18Speaker 04

  And she, she modulates the, the timbre of her voice. When she does that, she lowers the register of her voice for certain performances. Or pitches it higher for certain performances in a way that is just like, she's not a chameleon at all. She's always Amy Adams. In fact, and this is one of my, this is one of the most, I don't know, it's very interesting to me. She dyed her head, her, her hair red early in her career. She says it changed her career because it changed the kind of roles that she was being offered. She was like a strawberry blonde. And, and so she's famous for being this red, like, this redhead. And it's just not who she is. It's a performance in and of itself. And I just love that.

• 1:09:02Speaker 04

  All, and she's not a celebrity. She's someone that does not like to put her business out there. And so all of her is, what we're getting is just this manufactured Amy Adams thing. And I think that's fascinating.

• 1:09:15Sean Fennessey?

  It is really interesting. I think one of the reasons why she's come under fire here, so to speak, though not by me, is because she had a very, like, incredibly successful 15-year window in a window when a lot of actresses do, which is roughly 25 to 45. And she was in franchise films. She was in lots and lots of prestige films. She's worked with some of the most celebrated directors of her time. She basically was one of those performers where you were like, she's never bad. You know, she was like John C. Reilly, where you're like, thank God they're there, you know? And that, and she, six Oscar nominations in like a 12-year window. She's just a very reliable performer until she wasn't. And she's in this very intense five-year rut now, which I think Night Bitch kind of pulls

• 1:10:00Sean Fennessey?

  her out of, to be honest, because I think she's very good in this film. And even though I know you like it more, I still, I'm still ultimately pro the movie. But she's made some tough choices and she got caught up in some really bad franchise stuff on the DC side that like sucked out a couple of years of her career. And she's 50 now, which is crazy to think of because she has always seemed, like you say, the girl from Junebug, you know, the upbeat, innocent seeming young woman. And she's not. And she's now entered the phase of a career that Hollywood is often very hard on because they have really nothing for you to do between 50 and 65 until you're grandma. And so it'll be interesting to see how she navigates it because she does have this reputation as like, God, we gotta get this person an Oscar.

• 1:10:43Sean Fennessey?

  Like, we keep like dangling it in front of her face and we're not giving it to her. And so she's taken on parts that it seems like she's going for it for some reason, even though the projects are bad. And then, you know, she's like, she's in the J.D. Vance movie, you know? And that's like- For some people unrecoverable and it puts a real

• 1:11:01Speaker 04

  We can't.

• 1:11:01Sean Fennessey?

  Caspaller on this conversation.

• 1:11:03Speaker 04

  We can't, we can't. I mean, we have to throw Glenn Close on the fire if we're gonna do that. Are we doing that to Glenn Close?

• 1:11:08Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I've been doing it for years as somebody who's been making jokes about the wife. Yes, and I think Glenn Close is weirdly like an echo of what could happen to Amy Adams. Glenn Close is still a great actress and occasionally is in movies I like, but not often. So, anyway.

• 1:11:23Speaker 04

  I think.

• 1:11:23Sean Fennessey?

  It's a kind of unkind way to present it because a lot of times if you're like, if you're Bradley Cooper and you're 50, you're like, you're just getting started, buddy. Good luck to you. You're gonna win 10 Oscars. And now with someone like Amy Adams, you don't see, we don't see her in the same light collectively.

• 1:11:35Speaker 04

  Right. It's, it's sort of why I wanted to bring up the fact that she produced Night Bitch because she was, you know, if you look at some of the films she's done the last couple of years, Dear Evan Hansen, or The Woman in the Window, Hillbilly Elegy you mentioned. A lot of them genuinely do make sense on the page of like, this is a very popular bestseller, or this is a huge smash musical, or this, that, and the other thing. It's not like, it's not like I don't get why she said yes to some of these things. Who says no to playing Lois Lane, even if you're playing it for Black Snider?

• 1:12:04Sean Fennessey?

  Well, when she was cast, I was like, that's genius.

• 1:12:06Speaker 04

  But, but I think her moving into sort of her producer era, which seems to be true for a lot of her upcoming projects as well, is an attempt similar to the way that like, you know, the women in the Big Little Lies universe, like Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon are trying to sort of like carve out a path for themselves that Hollywood says doesn't exist. One of my favorite Amy Adams performances in the last decade is Sharp Objects, a TV show that not enough people talk about, but I think it's maybe my, we're not gonna talk about it when we read the movies.

• 1:12:41Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's a question of should we be including things like that because frankly, it will be an interesting challenge to get to 10 here.

• 1:12:48Speaker 04

  I.

• 1:12:49Speaker 03

  Look, I will make a strong case for the episode of Buffy She Appears in. If that's what you would like me to do.

• 1:12:54Sean Fennessey?

  I have not seen that, so I can't weigh in.

• 1:12:55Speaker 03

  It's wonderful. She's a witch bigot, basically.

• 1:12:57Sean Fennessey?

  A witch bigot, anti-witch bigot.

• 1:12:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:59Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 1:13:00Speaker 04

  It's true, it's tough.

• 1:13:01Speaker 03

  Unforgivable.

• 1:13:01Speaker 04

  But I mean, like, Sharp Objects is, is a, I think, a really good example of something that, you know, it was 2018, it was a few years ago, but like, a, a role you can find for yourself. If you're, if you're Amy Adams and you have the pull and the ability to create projects that are of interest to you, Night Bitch being one of them, um, I think that's potentially very exciting.

• 1:13:21Sean Fennessey?

  Nicole Kidman is a very good model. Obviously, Amy Adams isn't as glamorous as Nicole Kidman, but Nicole Kidman has had this fascinating balance between super commercial, kind of almost schlocky stuff.

• 1:13:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:33Sean Fennessey?

  And working with serious filmmakers and making this serious bid to work with more female filmmakers and, you know, the, like, you could see a similar arc over the next 10 years for her, but you gotta pick good stuff and you gotta work all the time, too. That's the other thing is you gotta, you gotta, like, make the projects happen. So we'll see what she does. Let's, let's talk about her films. Let's start picking our 10.

• 1:13:52Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:13:53Sean Fennessey?

  Um, she's got a long filmography. Took her quite a while to really establish herself as something beyond a supporting actor.

• 1:14:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:02Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I dropped it gorgeous, I believe, is the first part she's ever been in. She's in a fairly small role in that movie, which is a pretty fun movie.

• 1:14:08Speaker 04

  She's great in it.

• 1:14:09Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I don't know if that feels quite, like...

• 1:14:12Speaker 03

  Probably not media enough apart.

• 1:14:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I'm usually interested in the breakout, but the breakout takes a long time for her.

• 1:14:17Speaker 04

  Is the question, and I know, I just always have this question when you do this segment, is it the best movie or is it the best Amy Adams performance inside of a movie?

• 1:14:27Sean Fennessey?

  The answer is yes.

• 1:14:28Speaker 04

  Okay, great.

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  Uh, and also the most important and also the highest grossing and also the awards bid.

• 1:14:34Speaker 04

  I think we should consider Drop Dead Gorgeous, but not firmly put it on.

• 1:14:38Sean Fennessey?

  That sounds like a yellow to me. 2000 Psycho Beach Party. Funny movie. Haven't seen this in a long time. It's kind of a satire of beach blanket bingo style films.

• 1:14:48Speaker 03

  That's literally the name I've written down, especially like a bingo.

• 1:14:52Speaker 04

  You watched, did you watch all of these movies, Rob?

• 1:14:54Sean Fennessey?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 1:14:55Speaker 04

  How many Amy Adams movies do you think you watched?

• 1:14:57Speaker 03

  I'm not at liberty to say, but I did watch Hillbilly Elegy. For science.

• 1:15:01Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you. I watched it on the day of the election when it was released.

• 1:15:05Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:15:06Sean Fennessey?

  Not four years ago, not this year. I don't think Psycho Beach Party is in, even though this is blonde era Amy Adams. Many of these movies are blonde era Amy Adams. Cruel Intentions 2, from 2000.

• 1:15:17Speaker 03

  I was shocked to learn that this is actually a prequel and that Amy Adams is playing Catherine.

• 1:15:22Speaker 04

  The Sarah Michelle Geller.

• 1:15:23Speaker 03

  She's playing Sarah Michelle Geller in this movie.

• 1:15:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Did you watch it?

• 1:15:26Speaker 03

  I watched clips. Let's just say it doesn't work.

• 1:15:28Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. So Cruel Intentions 2 is red as well.

• 1:15:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:32Sean Fennessey?

  The Slaughter Rule, haven't seen it. Don't know what this is.

• 1:15:35Speaker 03

  Also another very small part.

• 1:15:36Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Red. 2002 Pumpkin, I remember this Christina Ricci vehicle quite well.

• 1:15:42Speaker 04

  I don't think there's enough for her here.

• 1:15:43Sean Fennessey?

  I agree with you. I would say the same is true for Serving Sarah.

• 1:15:47Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:15:47Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a real time capsule comedy of my college years.

• 1:15:50Speaker 03

  It does introduce a certain Amy Adams archetype that she tried, which is hot mess Amy Adams for a while.

• 1:15:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:15:56Speaker 03

  Again, doesn't really work. Pretty small part. Don't see it for this.

• 1:15:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's a group of actresses at this time, what I'll call the American Pie class. Tara Reid, Mina Suvari, Shannon Elizabeth, Alison Hannigan.

• 1:16:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:10Sean Fennessey?

  There's a whole, Rebecca Gayheart is in this conversation. There's a whole bunch of actresses and they all kind of had to choose. They had to say, I'm a bombshell or I'm the girl next door. And it was very bifurcated at that time. And she kind of doesn't choose.

• 1:16:24Speaker 04

  She says, why not both?

• 1:16:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And I think that's one of the reasons why she has persisted. She's also just a better, I mean Tara Reid is not, is not, is no Amy Adams.

• 1:16:31Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:16:32Speaker 04

  Well, Rebecca Gayheart catching strays.

• 1:16:34Sean Fennessey?

  I like her work to this day.

• 1:16:36Speaker 04

  No rest for the doxie, my girl.

• 1:16:38Sean Fennessey?

  Only one of Amy Adams and Rebecca Gayheart are in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I'll have you know.

• 1:16:42Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 1:16:43Sean Fennessey?

  2002 Catch Me If You Can.

• 1:16:45Speaker 04

  This is a yes.

• 1:16:46Sean Fennessey?

  I think this is green as well.

• 1:16:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:47Sean Fennessey?

  Now, this is a very, very small part, but she is

• 1:16:50Speaker 04

  She's so good.

• 1:16:51Sean Fennessey?

  unmistakable in this movie.

• 1:16:51Speaker 03

  Brenda.

• 1:16:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, Brenda.

• 1:16:53Speaker 04

  The braces.

• 1:16:53Sean Fennessey?

  Who pops off the screen.

• 1:16:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:55Speaker 03

  Show me a better performance in braces, honestly.

• 1:16:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:57Sean Fennessey?

  Is this the only time she and Leo have worked together?

• 1:17:00Speaker 04

  I think so.

• 1:17:00Sean Fennessey?

  Cause they got something cooking between them. I would like to see them again.

• 1:17:03Speaker 04

  It was, it was, she's phenomenal in this movie.

• 1:17:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:06Speaker 04

  A movie that I love.

• 1:17:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:17:07Speaker 04

  And she's wonderful in it.

• 1:17:08Sean Fennessey?

  I do too. I think this is our first green. 2004, The Last Run. Can't say I have seen it.

• 1:17:12Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 1:17:13Sean Fennessey?

  2005, The Wedding Date. Haven't seen it.

• 1:17:15Speaker 04

  I have. She plays a shitty sister, a, a like, um, thoughtless, hot girl.

• 1:17:21Sean Fennessey?

  She's, she's done that many times before. She's trying to pull herself out of supporting bitch, basically. Like, that's a part she keeps getting cast, and I guess because of her presentation. Um, 2005, The Wedding Date. Haven't seen. Standing Still, haven't seen. I assume these are red.

• 1:17:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:39Sean Fennessey?

  And then we get Junebug in 2005.

• 1:17:41Speaker 03

  This is as auto-green as it gets.

• 1:17:42Sean Fennessey?

  Auto-green, major breakthrough is Ashley, the sweet, innocent. Uh, I guess is she the sis- the sister-in-law of M. Beth David's character who comes to stay

• 1:17:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, Alessandra Villas.

• 1:17:55Sean Fennessey?

  with her husband's family in the, in the South.

• 1:17:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:57Sean Fennessey?

  Tennessee? I can't recall which state they're in. Um, this is-

• 1:18:01Speaker 04

  Married to, uh, Ryan from the OC.

• 1:18:05Sean Fennessey?

  Good pull. In the film.

• 1:18:06Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Um.

• 1:18:07Speaker 04

  Pregnant.

• 1:18:09Sean Fennessey?

  She's amazing in the film.

• 1:18:09Speaker 04

  Charming.

• 1:18:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Interesting that she's so known for being, I think she waited a little later in life to actually have children, but portrayed a expecting mother. This is kinda, Night Bitch closes the loop.

• 1:18:19Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:18:19Sean Fennessey?

  On the Amy Adams arc. Hadn't thought about that. Uh, I really like this movie quite a bit, and I think she's magnificent in it. Very funny and very sweet. 2006, Talladega Nights, The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. I just completely forgotten she was in this movie. It's a classic comedy. I'm not sure if it really represents her at her best.

• 1:18:35Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:18:36Speaker 04

  Here's, here's the thing. Sometimes- I kind of disagree that Amy Adams is great and everything because sometimes she's just there.

• 1:18:43Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:44Speaker 04

  And I'll get to like one of those films that I rewatch and I was like, she is just aggressively there.

• 1:18:48Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:18:48Speaker 04

  And they had nothing for her.

• 1:18:49Sean Fennessey?

  This sounds like a Bill Simmons critique. This is kind of one of his takes. He's like, what does she do?

• 1:18:53Speaker 04

  No, she does things, but not in every movie.

• 1:18:56Speaker 03

  She's not always given things to do.

• 1:18:57Sean Fennessey?

  That was also a Bill Simmons-ism. She does things.

• 1:18:59Speaker 03

  She does. She did the things.

• 1:19:02Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, okay. Talladega Nights we'll say is red. She plays the character of gorgeous woman in Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny. Fun movie, not going in the Hall of Fame, of course. 2006 is the X. Remind me which movie this is.

• 1:19:15Speaker 03

  I cannot.

• 1:19:16Sean Fennessey?

  What is this? Because after this movie, things, business really picks up.

• 1:19:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:21Sean Fennessey?

  The Amy Adams in, oh, of course, I remember this now. This is the Zach Braff, Amanda Peet, Jason Bateman comedy.

• 1:19:28Speaker 04

  Of course you remember it.

• 1:19:29Sean Fennessey?

  I saw this movie in movie theaters.

• 1:19:31Speaker 04

  That movie doesn't exist. I'm afraid to tell you.

• 1:19:33Sean Fennessey?

  When his lawyer wife, Sophia, becomes pregnant, chronic underachiever Tom must take a job at his father-in-law's advertising firm. Tom has to adjust to the demands of a very high-power job, and he finds himself in an increasingly hostile office rivalry with Chip, Sophia's paraplegic former lover. Those are words. Okay. Uh, the X is not going in.

• 1:19:55Speaker 04

  So you say things pop off after this, which is true. It's because she gets nominated for Junebug, like this is all within the same year. Talladega Nights, Tenacious D, The X is all, and she's nominated for Junebug, you know, for the 2006 Oscars, uh, loses to Rachel Weisz in The Constant Gardener and, uh...

• 1:20:12Sean Fennessey?

  Reasonable loss.

• 1:20:13Speaker 04

  It is a reasonable loss. Um, but like that, that was like her major, because she won and wore it Sundance, when it premiered at Sundance, and then she got the Oscar nom, and people are like, who is this girl?

• 1:20:24Sean Fennessey?

  So was the, did the, do you think these jobs, she got these jobs after the nom? She probably got it all before.

• 1:20:28Speaker 04

  I think she did these before, and then Enchanted is what she did after.

• 1:20:33Sean Fennessey?

  So let's talk about Enchanted. I'd never seen it until a couple of weeks ago. Even though it was a hugely successful movie. You know, I was, um, 25 years old when this movie was released.

• 1:20:41Speaker 04

  And not going to see Disney Princess movies?

• 1:20:42Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't go to see Enchanted.

• 1:20:43Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:20:44Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I did watch it with my daughter, who was utterly mesmerized.

• 1:20:48Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:20:49Sean Fennessey?

  And now is in a canon of her own. I like this movie. It is indisputably in the Hall of Fame.

• 1:20:56Speaker 03

  No question.

• 1:20:56Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:20:57Sean Fennessey?

  It's one of her biggest hits. It is entirely built on her charm.

• 1:21:00Speaker 04

  Yes. And you can see how they saw her in Junebug and built this for her.

• 1:21:05Speaker 03

  The naivety engine of Amy Adams is like in full effect.

• 1:21:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:09Speaker 03

  But also Marsden almost steals it.

• 1:21:11Speaker 04

  It's Marsden. It's kind of Marsden's movie.

• 1:21:13Speaker 03

  He's really, really good.

• 1:21:14Speaker 04

  Marsden's so good in this movie.

• 1:21:16Speaker 03

  The question is, as we're zooming out on like the ripple effects of these things. If we look at the state of live action Disney movies, and I'm like, kind of bummed that this is the way it went. Like, she's the first live action Disney princess in a lot of ways. Not from harnessed IP, but like, if you look at the reason a live action Beauty and the Beast movie exists, you could probably trace it back.

• 1:21:34Sean Fennessey?

  It's an interesting point. I think that, uh, obviously it's quite depressing that this was an original movie that is almost like an active satire of all of the Disney movies that came before it. And, um, you know, the sort of like, what if a Disney princess was made manifest in our world is the whole concept of the movie. But they don't do original live action movies like this anymore over there. So that's a real shame.

• 1:21:55Speaker 04

  I think the original sin for a live action Disney is, uh, Alice in Wonderland, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. That's where it all went real, real bad for everything.

• 1:22:03Sean Fennessey?

  We're on the, we're on the precipice of Mufasa, Cole and the Lion King, which is.

• 1:22:08Speaker 04

  Your most anticipated movie of the year?

• 1:22:11Sean Fennessey?

  We're talking about it soon. We'll talk about it on the pod. Yeah. I invited Van to that pod. Are you okay with that?

• 1:22:16Speaker 04

  That's perfect.

• 1:22:16Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. 2008 Charlie Wilson's War.

• 1:22:20Speaker 04

  This is the one that I rewa- I like Charlie Wilson's War. I rewatched it and I was like, Amy Adams sure is in this here, in this movie. They don't do anything with her.

• 1:22:27Sean Fennessey?

  What? What is her part? I've seen this movie like 10 times.

• 1:22:30Speaker 04

  She plays his assistant.

• 1:22:32Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:22:33Speaker 04

  Charlie Wilson's, so he's got a bunch of hot girls in his office and she is the hot girl who is, played by an Oscar nominated actress.

• 1:22:41Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I remember Emily Blunt being very alluring in this film.

• 1:22:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, she sure is.

• 1:22:46Sean Fennessey?

  Salute to her. There's a sequence on a veranda of some kind that I recall. Yeah.

• 1:22:49Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:22:50Sean Fennessey?

  Quality, quality work.

• 1:22:51Speaker 04

  This is, this is great, a great Philip Seymour Hoffman, uh, vehicle, but Amy Adams.

• 1:22:56Sean Fennessey?

  Never sick at sea, I've heard.

• 1:22:58Speaker 04

  But like. Amy Adams, uh, there's a part where they, you know, are visiting a war zone essentially, and she has this, you know, a moment with some, and I was like, oh, is this, is this why you put Amy Adams in this role? Turns out, no, there's no reason for them to have swung up with, uh, with that particular part.

• 1:23:16Speaker 03

  Not so much.

• 1:23:17Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, thank you for reminding me. So that's gonna be, that's gonna be a red on Charlie Wilson's war.

• 1:23:20Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:23:21Sean Fennessey?

  No, it's a fine film.

• 1:23:22Speaker 04

  A fun movie.

• 1:23:22Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, speaking of Emily Blunt, I believe she's in this film as well, is she not? Sunshine Cleaning, which was a Sundance breakout and was very well reviewed at the time, and I think was one of those movies that had like a $10 million acquisition price, and then nobody went in and saw.

• 1:23:37Speaker 03

  No, not so much.

• 1:23:38Speaker 04

  Oh, I saw it.

• 1:23:38Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think?

• 1:23:39Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 1:23:40Sean Fennessey?

  Is this, is this, this is yellow.

• 1:23:42Speaker 03

  It's a yellow. Are you, are you arguing green, or do you think yellow?

• 1:23:44Speaker 04

  No, yellow's fine.

• 1:23:45Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:23:46Speaker 04

  But I love this movie.

• 1:23:47Sean Fennessey?

  This is a movie about two women, do they own or work at a cleaning company?

• 1:23:51Speaker 03

  They start one.

• 1:23:52Sean Fennessey?

  They start one.

• 1:23:52Speaker 04

  They're sisters, yeah. And Emily Blunt's like the fuck up sister.

• 1:23:57Sean Fennessey?

  Right, right, right. This is so archetypal Sundance.

• 1:23:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:00Sean Fennessey?

  Um, but, but I remember liking it at the time, too. I've definitely not revisited it in 15 years. We'll yellow that. Miss Pettigrew lives for a day.

• 1:24:07Speaker 03

  Green, green, green.

• 1:24:08Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:24:09Speaker 04

  So green.

• 1:24:09Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:24:10Speaker 04

  So green.

• 1:24:11Sean Fennessey?

  Go to bat, go for it.

• 1:24:12Speaker 03

  Uh, maybe as charming as she's ever been in a movie.

• 1:24:15Speaker 04

  Had you seen this movie before?

• 1:24:16Speaker 03

  I hadn't.

• 1:24:16Speaker 04

  It's so good.

• 1:24:17Speaker 03

  This was a new one for me. I almost pitched it the other day for our World War II pod, because it's like low key Nazis in the background kind of movie. Um, this, for one, may have been the moment, the singular moment in time that Lee Pace imprinted on a generation of, of interested parties.

• 1:24:32Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:24:33Speaker 03

  Uh, but Amy Adams is so good, and just like a bolt of energy through this entire movie. It's mostly a two-hander with her and Frances McDormand. They're both great in their own ways, but she's asked to be the live wire, and she's asked to be the sort of like, uh, incorrigible flirt throughout this entire movie, and she's so, so good at it.

• 1:24:50Speaker 04

  She's so good. She plays, her character's name is Delicia LaFosse. And she is a film ingenue.

• 1:24:57Speaker 03

  Yes, a wannabe film ingenue.

• 1:24:59Speaker 04

  A wannabe film ingenue, and, and a nightclub singer, and, um, has sort of betrayed her true love and like her true self for fame.

• 1:25:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:10Speaker 04

  And so she's just coming across this like bubbly confection of a girl, and Frances McDormand is here to teach you the true meaning of Christmas, and by true meaning of Christmas, I mean.

• 1:25:17Sean Fennessey?

  Sort of the anti bubbly confection.

• 1:25:19Speaker 03

  Which of the three boys you should choose.

• 1:25:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, but just sort of, she's just, yeah, bubbly, and, but she's so good in this.

• 1:25:25Sean Fennessey?

  I gotta say, we're further along in the Hall of Fame than I would have thought at this stage of her career.

• 1:25:29Speaker 03

  We've got options.

• 1:25:30Sean Fennessey?

  So that's encouraging. 2008 Doubt.

• 1:25:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:33Sean Fennessey?

  Is it, though?

• 1:25:34Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:25:35Sean Fennessey?

  Well.

• 1:25:35Speaker 04

  I'm not sure.

• 1:25:36Sean Fennessey?

  I took.

• 1:25:36Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:25:37Sean Fennessey?

  To Joanna's point about what does she do?

• 1:25:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:39Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not sure that she's really given enough to do.

• 1:25:42Speaker 04

  This is Viola?

• 1:25:42Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, Viola Davis has one scene and she had all of this crushing it.

• 1:25:44Speaker 04

  This is Viola, Meryl and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

• 1:25:47Sean Fennessey?

  And then Amy Adams, in that order.

• 1:25:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:50Speaker 03

  I don't disagree. I think her role in that movie structurally is really important. Right? Like, if it is just the point-counterpoint of investigating Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl, I think that works. You need someone to be like, looking to sweep shit under the rug at first opportunity. And this is her playing like, naivety mode yet again, but as a nun. I think she, she just fills a role that the movie needs really well and pitches it at a really, really high level, relative to what that role can be.

• 1:26:18Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's generous. I'm gonna yellow it. I have the same reservations that Joanna has where the-

• 1:26:22Speaker 04

  You have such doubts?

• 1:26:27Sean Fennessey?

  Night at the Museum, Battle of the Smithsonian, which I think is the second of the Night at the Museum movies?

• 1:26:32Speaker 04

  I'm not gonna green this, but I just need to tell you, she's actually great in this movie.

• 1:26:35Sean Fennessey?

  She's good?

• 1:26:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, she's really good.

• 1:26:36Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't seen this movie.

• 1:26:37Speaker 04

  She plays Emilio Erhart with a lot of moxie.

• 1:26:39Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:26:39Speaker 04

  And it's just quite fun. I've, but, full disclosure, I watched all of the Night at the Museum movies on a plane, on a really long plane ride. Had a great time.

• 1:26:47Speaker 03

  Did they make the Ringer's plane movie list? I didn't even see.

• 1:26:49Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think they did.

• 1:26:49Speaker 04

  Um, but I put it on my long list.

• 1:26:51Speaker 03

  You did. Good for you.

• 1:26:53Sean Fennessey?

  I'm gonna Reddit with no disrespect to you or Emilio Erhart.

• 1:26:56Speaker 04

  I just wanted to mark that, that she did more with this than she needed to.

• 1:27:00Sean Fennessey?

  So this movie just came up in a conversation we were having the other day on the pod. Julie and Julia.

• 1:27:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:05Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a, I would say, complicatedly remembered Nora Ephron film that is one part historical drama and one part coming-of-age dramedy, smashed together. Um, I believe you were referring to the Julia Child aspect as being the good half.

• 1:27:23Speaker 03

  I think that's universally accepted.

• 1:27:25Speaker 04

  There is literally online a cut of this movie that is just the Julia part.

• 1:27:29Sean Fennessey?

  The child cut?

• 1:27:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. Because Julie Powell, with love and respect to her- Uh, is an intolerable character. Um, and I hate that part of the movie.

• 1:27:39Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so that means red?

• 1:27:41Speaker 04

  I would read this.

• 1:27:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, her part doesn't work.

• 1:27:43Speaker 04

  Doesn't work at all.

• 1:27:44Sean Fennessey?

  Is it Adrian Grenier?

• 1:27:45Speaker 03

  She's the Jack Black of this movie.

• 1:27:46Speaker 04

  It's Messina, isn't it?

• 1:27:47Sean Fennessey?

  Is it Messina? Is the partner Messina? Okay, what movie am I thinking of? The Intern?

• 1:27:51Speaker 04

  Devil Wears Prada.

• 1:27:51Sean Fennessey?

  Devil Wears Prada, thank you. Yeah, I tend to get those confused.

• 1:27:55Speaker 04

  Your Merrells.

• 1:27:55Sean Fennessey?

  My Merrell movies, yeah.

• 1:27:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:57Sean Fennessey?

  2009 Moonlight Serenade. What is this movie?

• 1:28:02Speaker 03

  Are we sure it exists?

• 1:28:02Speaker 04

  I'm not sure it exists.

• 1:28:05Sean Fennessey?

  I'm gonna look up the description. I love to read the description. Well, that's not, that's the Glenn Miller song, Moonlight Serenade. That's not what we're referring to. Moonlight Serenade is a 2009 musical romance film directed by Giancarlo Tiarco that stars Amy Adams as Chloe. A piano player discovers that the girl at the coat check of a jazz club is a talented singer. She persuades him to form a musical act together. What is this movie?

• 1:28:33Speaker 04

  Who's the him?

• 1:28:35Sean Fennessey?

  Alec Newman?

• 1:28:36Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 1:28:37Sean Fennessey?

  What hap- what? Was this movie made like 1999 and then released 10 years later?

• 1:28:41Speaker 04

  I have no idea.

• 1:28:43Sean Fennessey?

  Terribly confusing, released by Magnolia. That's red, that's not going in.

• 1:28:47Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:28:47Sean Fennessey?

  2010 leap year.

• 1:28:49Speaker 03

  It was all there on the page. Like, Amy Adams, Matthew Goode, Irish countryside.

• 1:28:55Sean Fennessey?

  Attempting to go to that Hugh Grant place.

• 1:28:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:58Speaker 03

  Attempting.

• 1:28:59Speaker 04

  My-

• 1:29:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, and yet.

• 1:29:01Speaker 04

  My friend calls this movie, Amy Adams is gonna fuck a stranger. We have for years called this movie that. Um, yeah, it's a, it's a no-go.

• 1:29:12Sean Fennessey?

  Leap year is definitively red. I know there are some people who really like it as a piece of cheese, but that's all that it is, is a piece of cheese. Another one of these very weird movies that I've never seen. This is a direct-to-video movie from 2010 called Love and Trust that stars, excuse me, Love and Distrust.

• 1:29:27Speaker 04

  Get it right.

• 1:29:28Sean Fennessey?

  That stars, listen to this cast. Are you ready? Robert Pattinson, after Twilight, Amy Adams, Sam Worthington, after Avatar, Robert Downey Jr., and James Franco in the peak of his Franco Rogan-ness.

• 1:29:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:44Sean Fennessey?

  No one-

• 1:29:45Speaker 04

  And a post-Iron Man Downey.

• 1:29:46Speaker 03

  Now I feel bad for not watching this movie.

• 1:29:48Sean Fennessey?

  This is, is an anthological movie with, uh, directed segments by six different filmmakers, including Lorraine Brocko.

• 1:29:56Speaker 03

  This is that era. Lot of anthologies going around.

• 1:29:58Sean Fennessey?

  What the fuck is this movie?

• 1:29:59Speaker 04

  Which, which is her segment and what happens in it?

• 1:30:02Sean Fennessey?

  Let's find out. Amy Adams plays Charlotte Brown in Penny's. Charlotte Brown is a waitress and young, single mother who will do anything for her daughter Jenny. And when it come, and push comes to show, she does. With a menacing figure on the other end of the phone and a time limit of two hours, she must raise enough money to ensure that she sees the smiling face of her child again. We have that movie. It's called Phone Booth, starring Colin Farrell.

• 1:30:27Speaker 04

  Is this, is this in the like Paris Hauteux era? Like-

• 1:30:30Speaker 03

  That's what I'm thinking.

• 1:30:31Sean Fennessey?

  Very much, yeah. Yeah. Uh, okay. So that movie is out, Love and Distrust. 2010, The Fighter.

• 1:30:36Speaker 04

  It's gotta be green, right?

• 1:30:37Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's gotta go in. Now, she's Oscar nominated for this port- uh, portrayal.

• 1:30:41Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:30:42Sean Fennessey?

  I think this was like a big eye-opener for people because she'd never done anything like this. Um, I-

• 1:30:47Speaker 04

  Scrappy.

• 1:30:48Sean Fennessey?

  Would, when you go back and look at it, do you think this is a great performance? It's a little cartoonish to me.

• 1:30:52Speaker 03

  It's a good performance.

• 1:30:53Speaker 04

  It's an accent performance.

• 1:30:54Speaker 03

  It is an accent performance.

• 1:30:56Speaker 04

  But in terms of, I was trying to analyze the case of why Amy Adams doesn't have an Oscar. And I'm not agreeing with Bill that she doesn't do anything.

• 1:31:06Sean Fennessey?

  No, she does things. We know that.

• 1:31:07Speaker 04

  She does do things.

• 1:31:08Speaker 03

  I mean, she wails on the sisters.

• 1:31:10Speaker 04

  That's what I'm saying. This is the one, I think this is the closest she got, but Melissa Leo unfortunately staged a tremendous campaign that year.

• 1:31:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:18Speaker 04

  But, um, an infamous campaign that year. But this is the closest she got to having a reel that you could play at the Oscars where you're like, I get it. Because usually her performances, even like the bubbly, flirty ones, but those are the ones that are not usually getting nominated, are pretty understated. That's sort of her vibe. And so you don't have something for the reel. Whereas in this one, when she punches the shit out of a woman for calling her a skank on her porch, play it on the reel for the Oscars.

• 1:31:46Sean Fennessey?

  Isn't it Conan O'Brien's sister who she punches, I think? Yeah, Conan O'Brien's sister, famously one of the sisters in this movie.

• 1:31:51Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:31:51Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think she and Wahlberg have genuine heat too between them. I think they're very good together. I think the movie is- Okay, um, it's a very, very traditional sports movie in a way that I find kind of bland, but anyway.

• 1:32:02Speaker 03

  It's also more of a Bale movie than an Amy Adams movie, for sure.

• 1:32:05Sean Fennessey?

  Totally, totally.

• 1:32:06Speaker 03

  It worries me, like, this is a pretty good era for her overall, but it is a bit of a wives and girlfriends era of roles.

• 1:32:13Sean Fennessey?

  We're, we're going through some of those right now. Um, The Muppets? Which is the James Bobin-directed, Jason Segel-authored Muppets reimagining in which she plays a girlfriend named Mary.

• 1:32:26Speaker 04

  And you get why? Because like, why not get Amy Adams from Enchanted to do the Muppets movie? We're bringing the Muppets back, or bringing it back? This movie doesn't matter in the grand scheme of Muppetry.

• 1:32:39Speaker 03

  Anything with a Muppet in it matters.

• 1:32:41Speaker 04

  I mean, has an Oscar win, it has, Muppets matter so much. This movie doesn't.

• 1:32:45Sean Fennessey?

  It might be outside the top 10 all-time Muppets movies, though, which is like maybe an episode I should be doing, honestly.

• 1:32:50Speaker 03

  Well, One Christmas Carol, we know it.

• 1:32:51Speaker 04

  It does.

• 1:32:52Speaker 03

  The people are saying it.

• 1:32:53Sean Fennessey?

  I.

• 1:32:54Speaker 04

  I'm with you.

• 1:32:54Sean Fennessey?

  No, I like.

• 1:32:55Speaker 04

  Original Muppet movie, Muppet Take Manhattan, The Great Muppet Caper, all better.

• 1:33:00Sean Fennessey?

  For me, are all above.

• 1:33:01Speaker 04

  All better than Carol.

• 1:33:01Speaker 03

  I didn't even hear Muppet Treasure Island, so this is fucked.

• 1:33:04Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, this is like really the very narrow space of, of age difference between us is like.

• 1:33:09Speaker 04

  Sean and I are the same age, and so.

• 1:33:11Sean Fennessey?

  I feel betrayed in this moment. I think Muppet Christmas Carol and Treasure Island and In Space and all those movies are all fun and good.

• 1:33:18Speaker 04

  Fine.

• 1:33:18Sean Fennessey?

  This movie is okay. Um, and I, I really love Segel and I, Segel, after forgetting Sarah Marshall and the Dracula musical, I was like, this will be the best film ever made.

• 1:33:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:27Sean Fennessey?

  This guy who gets puppets like this guy, and he.

• 1:33:30Speaker 04

  He's gonna bring them back, and then he didn't. But Burt McKenzie did win an Oscar, so there's always that.

• 1:33:35Sean Fennessey?

  That's true, that's a good point.

• 1:33:36Speaker 03

  It's also tough from an Amy Adams perspective, like, her literal role in the movie is that she gets forgotten. So how could we possibly put it?

• 1:33:42Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, we're reading The Muppets. What about On the Road? Have you seen this?

• 1:33:46Speaker 04

  I have.

• 1:33:47Sean Fennessey?

  This is the Walter Salas adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel.

• 1:33:51Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:33:51Sean Fennessey?

  Which I remember being a lot better than I was told it was going to be. Am I crazy?

• 1:33:56Speaker 04

  It, it is, it just doesn't have anything for Amy Adams.

• 1:33:59Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't, no.

• 1:34:01Speaker 04

  But it is better than, uh...

• 1:34:03Sean Fennessey?

  I just Googled "on the road" like a fucking idiot. Like, of course, I'm not gonna get the movie on the road.

• 1:34:06Speaker 04

  It's a novel. My surname is a song.

• 1:34:09Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, yeah, I remember there being like some, like, amazing sequences with Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart in this movie. That's all, like, that's what my memory is.

• 1:34:16Speaker 04

  But there's nothing for Amy Adams here.

• 1:34:17Sean Fennessey?

  But nothing for Amy Adams. Okay, so that's red for Amy Adams on "On the Road." 2012, "The Master." Have you guys heard of "The Master"?

• 1:34:23Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, briefly.

• 1:34:24Speaker 04

  Have you heard the good word?

• 1:34:25Speaker 03

  Vanishingly.

• 1:34:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, if you're interested in "The Brutalist," I would watch "The Master" first, think about "The Master" and how maybe these things are correlated to each other. Um, she plays Peggy Dodd. She, it is a, it is a wife part.

• 1:34:36Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:34:36Sean Fennessey?

  Um, but I would say she's doing significantly more with it and is showing us a version of Amy Adams that I like to see.

• 1:34:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:34:43Sean Fennessey?

  Um, a woman in control, at times overwhelmingly in control. Uh, and a woman with a defined point of view about how the world should work amidst men.

• 1:34:51Speaker 03

  Would you like to expand on this at all?

• 1:34:54Sean Fennessey?

  Um, no.

• 1:34:54Speaker 04

  Are you gonna minor in this?

• 1:34:55Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:34:56Speaker 04

  A woman who can just sit in the side of a frame and like...

• 1:35:00Sean Fennessey?

  Control a sequel.

• 1:35:01Speaker 04

  Have ownership of it.

• 1:35:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:02Speaker 04

  Um, I do, because I do like to play what if on, on the Oscars, right? We, we talked about "Doubt," which she gets nominated for. Penelope Cruz wins for Vicky Christina Barcelona. Uh, we talked about, of course, Melissa Leo winning for "The Fighter." Um, the "Master" year, she lost to Anne Hathaway in "Le Miserable."

• 1:35:19Sean Fennessey?

  I will not be taking an Academy Award away from my beloved Anne Hathaway.

• 1:35:22Speaker 04

  I also will not take it.

• 1:35:23Speaker 03

  Also, she's cooking in that movie.

• 1:35:24Speaker 04

  She's wonderful in "Le Miserable." I would never. This is tough. I, I didn't find, other than Melissa Leo, which I'm just...

• 1:35:30Sean Fennessey?

  Right, did she deserve to win anywhere else?

• 1:35:32Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:35:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's an interesting question that maybe we can get into. I mean, the, the thing is that she's not nominated for a movie that's coming very soon that she should have won for, in my opinion, but we'll get there.

• 1:35:41Speaker 04

  Oh, spoiler, were we misled by Chris Ryan? Chris prepared us to have to fight for that movie.

• 1:35:46Sean Fennessey?

  We'll find out. Definitely not. No, that's just an, it's an order of magnitude in terms of importance to those folks. Um, "The Master" is green. Trouble with the Curve.

• 1:35:55Speaker 04

  Straight up a terrible movie that I watched for the first time for this podcast.

• 1:35:59Sean Fennessey?

  Directed by Robert Lorenz, who is Clint Eastwood's longtime producing partner, stepping behind the camera in Clint's stead, more or less, to make a baseball movie? Is it Ryan Phillippe? Who's the, who's the male lead?

• 1:36:11Speaker 04

  Oh, no, it's Justin Timberlake.

• 1:36:13Speaker 03

  He, he rolls up in a convertible, listening to "The Walkman."

• 1:36:16Speaker 04

  It is so bad.

• 1:36:20Sean Fennessey?

  That's red. Man of Steel, I think, is an absolute fucking abomination. And I'm sorry to say-

• 1:36:26Speaker 04

  I hate that movie.

• 1:36:26Sean Fennessey?

  I will not allow it in the Hall of Fame.

• 1:36:28Speaker 03

  I was gonna maybe argue yellow just based off of like, career importance?

• 1:36:33Sean Fennessey?

  In that it helped to torpedo her career, you know?

• 1:36:36Speaker 03

  I mean, if you're telling the story of Amy Adams's career, The DC Project is part of it.

• 1:36:40Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 1:36:40Speaker 04

  I think we should yellow it and come back to it.

• 1:36:42Sean Fennessey?

  Alright, we'll yellow it and come back to it, but I will not be letting it in, I'm sorry to say.

• 1:36:45Speaker 04

  That's great.

• 1:36:45Sean Fennessey?

  2013, Her, kind of a weird nothing part.

• 1:36:49Speaker 04

  Again, this is, there are a number of great films that have nothing for Amy Adams in it. Bill's not right, but-

• 1:36:56Sean Fennessey?

  But not wrong?

• 1:36:56Speaker 04

  But not wrong.

• 1:36:57Speaker 03

  Hear me out. Like, Joaquin Phoenix interacts with very few actual humans in this movie. One of them is Amy Adams.

• 1:37:05Sean Fennessey?

  You know, the movies, one of the points of the movie is obviously like, simultaneously open to the idea of falling in love with something that is not human form, but also like, hey, have you noticed that there's like, a really cool, normal woman who lives next door to you? Who's interested in you, and she represents that? And I think that that's often her role in a lot of movies. Is like, Amy Adams is quite beautiful and striking, but she's like, she's regular.

• 1:37:29Speaker 04

  Achievable?

• 1:37:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes. I wasn't gonna say it, but you said it.

• 1:37:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, a woman said it, it's okay.

• 1:37:34Sean Fennessey?

  The "I can lock that down" of famous female actresses. Not that I can, but that's what I think the movie is trying to show you.

• 1:37:42Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:37:43Sean Fennessey?

  So Her, I think, is red, even though it is an excellent movie, in my opinion.

• 1:37:49Sean Fennessey?

  Now, American Hustle is a movie I really don't like, but I would say is automatically green for her.

• 1:37:54Speaker 03

  Automatically?

• 1:37:56Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, you're upset about the Her situation?

• 1:37:59Speaker 03

  This movie barely exists. Like, if you ask someone on the street, who had seen this movie when it came out, to try to recount literally any details of the plot of American Hustle-

• 1:38:08Sean Fennessey?

  It kinda doesn't matter. She's cooking in this movie.

• 1:38:10Speaker 03

  She's fine?

• 1:38:11Speaker 04

  I will say, I will say that I'm sorry we didn't record it. Rob and I had a like, a really fun time trying to remember the plot of American Hustle.

• 1:38:18Sean Fennessey?

  Anything at all.

• 1:38:19Speaker 04

  I was like, Jennifer Lawrence definitely starts a fire in an electric oven.

• 1:38:25Speaker 04

  This was the year that Cate Blanchett won for Blue Jasmine.

• 1:38:28Sean Fennessey?

  So that's like, that's a pointless win.

• 1:38:31Speaker 04

  She already had.

• 1:38:31Sean Fennessey?

  She already had an Oscar.

• 1:38:32Speaker 04

  This is where.

• 1:38:33Sean Fennessey?

  Blue Jasmine is fine.

• 1:38:34Speaker 04

  This is where I would put it. I would definitely put it for that film you alluded to that she should have been nominated for and won.

• 1:38:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:39Speaker 04

  But I would definitely say Kate does not need her Blue Jasmine Oscar, and I would give it.

• 1:38:44Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, look at this roster of people that year in 14. It's Cate Blanchett wins, Amy Adams, Sandra Bullock in Gravity, which is fine, but she's in the spacesuit the whole time. Judi Dench in Philomena, which is a complete Harvey Weinstein concoction.

• 1:38:58Speaker 04

  Boondoggle, yeah.

• 1:38:58Sean Fennessey?

  And Meryl Streep in August, Osage County, which is like, it's, again, okay, and like, kind of ruined source material, in my opinion, so.

• 1:39:08Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, it's very silly.

• 1:39:10Speaker 04

  I agree.

• 1:39:10Speaker 03

  I think you might have to be right, because this is also one of the most financially successful, like, non-franchise movies she's ever been in. Like, it was a smash hit.

• 1:39:19Speaker 04

  David O. Russell really was running a con on everyone for a while, I have to say.

• 1:39:23Sean Fennessey?

  It was the most nominated movie of that year. It had 10 Oscar nominations, one each in all four acting categories.

• 1:39:29Speaker 03

  And she is doing like, the part within a part within a part thing, layering lots of accents in. Like, I respect the overall bit of that, that character. I just, I really am not fond of this movie.

• 1:39:41Sean Fennessey?

  Well.

• 1:39:41Speaker 03

  But I think, I think it has to at least get yellow, not green.

• 1:39:43Sean Fennessey?

  Out of respect for Man of Steel, we'll yellow this as well, but I'm almost certain we're gonna come back to grading it.

• 1:39:48Speaker 03

  I think we may.

• 1:39:49Sean Fennessey?

  I think also if you're nominated for an Academy Award for a movie, it's kind, in most cases, it has to be a green. 2014 Lullaby, don't know what this is.

• 1:39:58Speaker 04

  Nor do I.

• 1:39:59Sean Fennessey?

  How can that be? What is, what is Lullaby? This is the most I've ever had to Google a series of films.

• 1:40:04Speaker 03

  It's like a tiny little indie, I think.

• 1:40:06Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I guess that's fascinating that she's been doing that in that time.

• 1:40:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she's got a very small part in this movie directed by Andrew Levitas, which I think it's saying it's like a TV movie?

• 1:40:17Speaker 04

  It feels like a favor.

• 1:40:19Sean Fennessey?

  Does feel like a favor. So the lullaby is out. Let's talk about Big Eyes briefly.

• 1:40:24Speaker 04

  Guys, I watched, I watched it for the first time for this. I don't understand the appeal of this film or her performance in it.

• 1:40:33Sean Fennessey?

  Was there a lot of appeal? Like, is this a movie that's super highly regarded?

• 1:40:37Speaker 04

  She was nominated for Golden Globe at the very least.

• 1:40:40Sean Fennessey?

  It was relatively well reviewed.

• 1:40:41Speaker 04

  It was, it was a thing.

• 1:40:42Sean Fennessey?

  It was, it was, thank God Tim Burton has put the toys away to make a real person's movie again. And it is a movie about an artist, and it's a movie about someone who's been alienated from an artistic community that is very much in keeping with like the Edward Scissorhands style film that Burton was quite famous for. Um, I don't know, let me, seventy-two percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

• 1:41:04Speaker 04

  It's not even a good Christoph Waltz performance.

• 1:41:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's just a little cartoony at times. I, I think we have to yellow it out of respect for its, its awards affectations.

• 1:41:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's tough.

• 1:41:16Speaker 04

  Okay, you can yellow it, but I, I refuse to let Big Eyes into this.

• 1:41:20Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, we're running out of titles, guys, and we don't have a ton of locks left, so let's keep going through it. Um, 2016 Batman versus Superman: Dawn of Justice, that is a red.

• 1:41:28Speaker 04

  If Man of Steel is not getting in, nothing else can.

• 1:41:32Sean Fennessey?

  That is the reddest red you can be. I fucking hate those movies. Uh, 2016 Arrival. Uh, let's look at the 2017 Academy Awards. Do you have that pulled up already?

• 1:41:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:41Sean Fennessey?

  Who, who was nominated in Best Actress that year?

• 1:41:43Speaker 04

  It was, so Emma Stone won for La La Land.

• 1:41:46Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, good win.

• 1:41:47Speaker 04

  Isabelle Huppert, uh, in L, yeah. Ruth Negga in Loving, Natalie Portman in Jackie. And here's, here's the kicker.

• 1:41:56Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, no.

• 1:41:56Speaker 04

  Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins.

• 1:41:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, an absolute joke.

• 1:42:00Speaker 04

  An absolute calamity.

• 1:42:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:04Speaker 04

  How did this happen?

• 1:42:05Sean Fennessey?

  I honestly don't know.

• 1:42:06Speaker 04

  Again, I wouldn't, I wouldn't take an Oscar for Emma Stone, though if I had to take her Oscar and she could get it, you know, a little later on, uh, which she does, then I'd give it to, Amy Adams should have been nominated and won for Arrival. End of story. Why did Ciara tell us we were gonna have to fight you for Arrival?

• 1:42:23Sean Fennessey?

  Because Amanda and Chris are obsessed with Arrival and think it is like a five-star all-time classic.

• 1:42:28Speaker 03

  They're correct.

• 1:42:28Sean Fennessey?

  In the conversation with like 2001 or whatever. And I'm like, it isn't that. It's a very, very, very good movie that I like a lot and I liked a lot when it came out. But I just don't have the same level of adoration for it. But in the context of Amy Adams's career, it might be the best movie she's made.

• 1:42:42Speaker 04

  It's the number one. It's so clearly the number one.

• 1:42:44Sean Fennessey?

  So I have no issue whatsoever with automatically greening it. That's a pretty competitive Oscars Best Actress.

• 1:42:49Speaker 03

  Not bad.

• 1:42:50Sean Fennessey?

  Group of performances there.

• 1:42:52Speaker 03

  Still, she should have gotten in there. She's acting opposite a fucking window.

• 1:42:55Sean Fennessey?

  I know, I know. She's great in that movie.

• 1:42:57Speaker 04

  Again, a weird way to talk about Jeremy Renner, but okay. But um,

• 1:43:02Speaker 04

  I think that Meryl nomination is just so embarrassing.

• 1:43:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's a joke. It's not good.

• 1:43:06Speaker 04

  I hope Meryl's embarrassed.

• 1:43:07Sean Fennessey?

  I think part of it is that this would have been six nominations in nine years for her. And I think people were a little like, ah, her again.

• 1:43:13Speaker 04

  Well, it's also the genre bias.

• 1:43:15Sean Fennessey?

  You're right.

• 1:43:15Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 1:43:16Sean Fennessey?

  Science fiction movie, absolutely. But now we look back, we're gonna look back on that movie and be like, this is kind of where it starts for Denis because of the direction he's taken in his career. Like, Sicario is the breakthrough, but this is really the one that shows us who he wants to be.

• 1:43:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:43:30Sean Fennessey?

  So.

• 1:43:30Speaker 03

  I think you're gonna look back on that movie in 15 years and be like, you know what? Maybe it was 2001.

• 1:43:35Speaker 04

  No, I mean, if 2001 is a five, then I would put this as like a 4.8, a 4.9. Like, it's, I don't think it's like quite, I don't think, but maybe in 10 years I'll make it a five. But I would say not right now, I wouldn't make it a five.

• 1:43:47Speaker 03

  I think it's one of the best movies of the last decade. I think this is one of the best performances of the last decade. And it is 80% her and an octopus behind a piece of glass. Like, that's crazy.

• 1:43:56Sean Fennessey?

  But how good was that octopus?

• 1:43:57Speaker 03

  The octopus was great. If you want to do Octopus Hall of Fame, I'm here for it. But like, it is a hugely emotionally powerful movie because of her.

• 1:44:04Speaker 04

  Inkblot Hall of Fame. I'd show up.

• 1:44:07Sean Fennessey?

  We have seven greens and one, two, three, four, five yellows right now.

• 1:44:12Speaker 04

  We're gonna make it.

• 1:44:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm not worried about it.

• 1:44:14Sean Fennessey?

  We're definitely gonna make it. 2016 Nocturnal Animals.

• 1:44:16Speaker 03

  I would love to hear the Joe take about this movie.

• 1:44:18Speaker 04

  Oh, well, the problem is this. I love Tom Ford.

• 1:44:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:44:22Speaker 04

  And I love Jake Gyllenhaal in sicko mode. Um, this movie is bad.

• 1:44:31Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:44:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, this movie is bad.

• 1:44:35Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's pretty, I think it's pretty bad, too.

• 1:44:37Speaker 03

  Bad.

• 1:44:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:44:39Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's very entertaining because you're like, look at all of these incredibly skilled actors debasing themselves in this trash. And it's a kind of knowing trash.

• 1:44:48Speaker 04

  Shannon got nominated for this movie.

• 1:44:50Sean Fennessey?

  Right, so.

• 1:44:50Speaker 03

  Aaron Taylor Johnson is sometimes justice.

• 1:44:52Speaker 04

  Aaron Taylor Johnson.

• 1:44:52Sean Fennessey?

  One of the golden globes.

• 1:44:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:54Sean Fennessey?

  So it was a big deal at the time. It was Ford, you know, famous clothing designer coming off of A Single Man. Which is a very good movie.

• 1:45:00Speaker 04

  I love A Single Man.

• 1:45:02Sean Fennessey?

  And he's like, I'm gonna dig my teeth into like, basically a Daniel Steele novel. On steroids. And she's okay. She's basically miscast.

• 1:45:12Speaker 04

  She's basically just reading the whole movie. She's reading and taking off her glasses and rubbing the bridge of her nose.

• 1:45:19Speaker 03

  I don't wanna run through her importance in this entire movie, but like, her reading is pretty critical to the whole exercise of what we're doing here.

• 1:45:25Sean Fennessey?

  That's true. That is fair.

• 1:45:27Speaker 03

  I really respect how fucking mean this movie is. And.

• 1:45:31Speaker 04

  If you're talking about Jake, I might say yes.

• 1:45:33Speaker 03

  I think Jake's great in it. And like, I just really, I really respect that it sinks its teeth in, that it doesn't pull punches, that I, it terrifies me. I think about this movie all the time.

• 1:45:43Speaker 04

  Do you?

• 1:45:44Speaker 03

  I cannot drive down a dark county road without thinking of this.

• 1:45:47Speaker 04

  It's a Texas thing.

• 1:45:49Sean Fennessey?

  This is a thing. Y'all have been on enough farm to market roads to know.

• 1:45:52Speaker 03

  With the y'all.

• 1:45:53Sean Fennessey?

  Y'all, come on.

• 1:45:54Speaker 04

  We did. We did. It's a Texas thing. Okay. This is also, and I just wanna represent my pal Mallory Rubin here, just a critical debut for the Aaron Taylor Johnson six pack in this film.

• 1:46:05Sean Fennessey?

  I believe there's a long sequence in which he's taking a shit in this movie.

• 1:46:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's just naked on, he doesn't have a shirt on, he's just naked on a toilet.

• 1:46:11Sean Fennessey?

  So green. Very cool. It's a yellow that's gonna be a red.

• 1:46:14Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:46:15Sean Fennessey?

  2017 Justice League should be in jail. That's red. 2018 Vice.

• 1:46:21Speaker 04

  Are you gonna go back on what you just said about Oscar nominations should automatically?

• 1:46:25Sean Fennessey?

  I am going to break my rule and say that this movie is not going in her hole.

• 1:46:28Speaker 03

  Get it out of here.

• 1:46:30Sean Fennessey?

  She plays Dick Cheney's wife and honestly, not even that well.

• 1:46:35Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:46:36Sean Fennessey?

  So I don't know Lynn Cheney, like I.

• 1:46:39Speaker 04

  The fact that she was.

• 1:46:39Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of an odd nomination.

• 1:46:41Speaker 04

  I feel like she was nominated because they were like, sorry, we fucked up with the rival.

• 1:46:43Sean Fennessey?

  It does. It is a bit of a makeup call.

• 1:46:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:46Speaker 04

  By the way, just in case you care, Regina King won for Ed Field Street Could Talk that year, so even if she were great in that movie, I would not take Regina King's Oscar.

• 1:46:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I'm a, I am a fan of Adam McKay's movies and I spoke to him on the show for this movie. I think this movie is an interesting, like, experiment and ultimately only half successful.

• 1:47:10Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't have the same like political confusion where I was like, why are we creating empathy for Dick Cheney? That wasn't really my concern. It's just like, it's a movie that kind of can't decide on the tone that it wants to take. And I think it's an interesting representation of the way that McKay has kind of twisted himself in knots as an artist to try to figure out like how serious he wants to be versus how much fun he wants to have.

• 1:47:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:30Sean Fennessey?

  And like Sam Rockwell is just having like way too much fun in this movie about something that isn't that funny to me. So I, it's just kind of a mess.

• 1:47:36Speaker 04

  It's a really tough, like, here are some things that happened movie.

• 1:47:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:39Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? And that's just like, it didn't have, I guess clarity is, I thought it didn't have anything to say. You're saying it was maybe trying to say too many things at once, I suppose, but like, either way, it doesn't work. I watched this movie resentfully.

• 1:47:53Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:47:54Speaker 04

  Because I knew it was gonna be in the awards conversation and I had a bad time with it.

• 1:47:58Speaker 03

  We haven't really talked about her like Bale thing. Like she's in, opposite him in a bunch of different movies. I mean, not, not usually as a charged couple necessarily, but-

• 1:48:08Sean Fennessey?

  She's also opposite Batman a few times, too.

• 1:48:09Speaker 03

  Also opposite Batman a few times. Like, mostly just like yelling at Christian Bale across various movie properties. And I think she does that well, but this is-

• 1:48:15Speaker 04

  She does it really well in The Fighter. She's-

• 1:48:17Speaker 03

  Very well in The Fighter.

• 1:48:18Speaker 04

  The best.

• 1:48:18Speaker 03

  To her greatest possible effect.

• 1:48:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:20Sean Fennessey?

  And in American Hustle. She's a great, they're, they're great together.

• 1:48:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:25Speaker 03

  There are things that happen in that movie, that's for sure.

• 1:48:27Sean Fennessey?

  Um, it's so funny. I, I really don't like David O. Russell, but so I, it feels odd to be defending that movie. But you know what? Sometimes these are the positions we put ourselves in. I'm gonna deliver to you guys a quintet of films that are coming in the immediate aftermath of her Academy Award nomination for Vice that are, I would argue, catastrophic.

• 1:48:44Speaker 04

  And again, 2018 Vice and Sharp Objects. I just needed to like, put it in-

• 1:48:49Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe that's what she got her Oscar nomination for, was her performance in Sharp Objects. Hillbilly Elegy in 2020.

• 1:48:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:55Sean Fennessey?

  Zack Snyder's Justice League, which was released during COVID and we recorded a four hour podcast watch along. The Woman in the Window, a adaptation of a bestseller that was relentlessly worked over and reshoot and mangled. Dear Evan Hansen, which is just nightmare fuel for me as a movie. And 2022's Disenchanted, which is a sequel to the beloved classic Enchanted that is a perfectly fine sequel, but nobody-

• 1:49:19Speaker 04

  No, it's so bad.

• 1:49:20Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so bad.

• 1:49:21Speaker 04

  Disenchanted was so bad that I could not even bring myself to consider the Hocus Pocus sequel, because I was just like, if they did that with Disenchanted, I'm uninterested in what they did with Hocus Pocus.

• 1:49:31Speaker 03

  They did do one thing, which is they rectified the fact that in the original, they casted Nina Minzell and then didn't let her sing in a musical, which is a choice that you can make as a filmmaker.

• 1:49:40Speaker 04

  One could do that.

• 1:49:41Speaker 03

  One could do that. They rectified that, but it doesn't work at all.

• 1:49:44Speaker 04

  Would you put Night Bitch in-

• 1:49:47Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's what I wanted to say. So I think all five of those movies are automatically read without conversation. The movies are not good, and I would argue that her performance, particularly in The Woman in the Window, which is a movie that on paper, Chris described a movie yesterday as Fincher methadone, which I loved. What movie was he referring to? I can't even remember. Maybe it was Red Rooms? Red Rooms, thanks, Jack, which was just an awesome CR turn of phrase. And this movie could have been that as well, and is just so deeply not that. And part of it is because she's not able to give you the performance that you need in the movie, among many other problems.

• 1:50:20Speaker 04

  That movie was, that book was so popular and for why, so.

• 1:50:25Sean Fennessey?

  And it was at the same, roughly the same period as The Girl on the Train, which is another mangled literary adaptation-

• 1:50:31Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:50:32Sean Fennessey?

  -starring an Academy Award nominated actress who I almost always like, that the movie didn't work at all. Anyhow, they're all red. Night Bitch, I just think it's one of her best performances. So it should be in the conversation. The movie, you know, we may end up having a bunch of movies, and maybe we don't even like that much, but they go into her Hall of Fame. So to answer your question earlier about what is this exercise, it's kind of everything, you know?

• 1:50:53Speaker 04

  How many greens do we have?

• 1:50:55Sean Fennessey?

  Let's do the math. We're gonna yellow Night Bitch for the sake of conversation, Jack. And then that's gonna mean that we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 yellows, and 2, 4, 6, 7 greens. So what we need to do is green 3 of the yellows.

• 1:51:12Speaker 04

  And we're gonna green American Hustle.

• 1:51:15Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I'll read the yellows. I'll read the greens. Catch Me If You Can, June Bug, Enchanted, Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, The Fighter, The Master, and Arrival. As you know, I love to rattle off the names of films on this podcast. The yellows are Drop Dead Gorgeous, which is not going in, so we can red that.

• 1:51:31Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:51:32Sean Fennessey?

  You think it should be?

• 1:51:33Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:51:33Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. 2008 Doubt? I'm not sold on Doubt.

• 1:51:37Speaker 03

  No?

• 1:51:38Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not. 2013 Man of Steel. I'm not sold on Man of Steel.

• 1:51:42Speaker 03

  I can't even put my heart in it.

• 1:51:44Sean Fennessey?

  American Hustle is definitely gonna be green. We're, out of respect for you, Rob, we yell at it, but if it were just Joanna and I sitting here, it would have been an auto green.

• 1:51:52Speaker 03

  Well, then you better green Nocturnal Animals. That's all I have to say about it.

• 1:51:55Sean Fennessey?

  I would be willing to give you that.

• 1:51:56Speaker 04

  I agree.

• 1:51:57Sean Fennessey?

  So that takes us to 9.

• 1:51:59Speaker 04

  For you and the state of Texas.

• 1:52:01Speaker 03

  I'm so moved.

• 1:52:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:52:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:52:03Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:52:03Sean Fennessey?

  Now we have one more to go. And I kinda, sorta, think it's Night Bitch.

• 1:52:07Speaker 04

  I think it's Night Bitch.

• 1:52:08Speaker 03

  We're going Night Bitch over Doubt?

• 1:52:10Speaker 04

  Yes. She's just...

• 1:52:12Speaker 03

  I really thought you both were gonna come crawling back to me on Doubt.

• 1:52:17Sean Fennessey?

  There is no movie without her in Night Bitch. In Doubt, it's like, that could have been Anne Hathaway, it would have been fine.

• 1:52:23Speaker 03

  She does go absolutely feral on a meatloaf. And like, again, she's, the commitment of the performance is unquestionable. It does all hang on her. She's looking straight down the barrel of the lens, delivering a lot of Night Bitch.

• 1:52:35Speaker 04

  And again, unlike the, in the like, sort of representative of her career, this idea of the producer era, I'm gonna, fine, I'll do it myself, Amy Adams.

• 1:52:46Speaker 03

  Her Thanos era.

• 1:52:48Speaker 04

  She's in her Thanos era. Where's that bring us back to her, back to Night Bitch?

• 1:52:52Sean Fennessey?

  So, right now...

• 1:52:55Sean Fennessey?

  On Variety's prediction of best actresses.

• 1:52:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:52:59Sean Fennessey?

  Where do you think Amy Adams sits for her performance in Night Bitch? And it's out of the top 20.

• 1:53:04Speaker 04

  Oh, based on um, the uh, the, the response to the screening I went to, I would say, and this is Clayton Davis putting this together, right? Uh, Clayton, where would Clayton put her? Uh, in the, in the tens?

• 1:53:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I was thinking teens. I'm gonna say 14. She does not appear in the top 20. Not appear? That's tough.

• 1:53:23Speaker 04

  Well, is that because the movie's not out yet?

• 1:53:25Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so, because there's plenty of movies like Baby Girl that are not out yet, and The Room Next Door. I mean, this is just a look at the top 10. Right now, Cynthia Revo is in the first position, which is not accurate. Angelina Jolie is number two. Mikey Madison is number three. Marion Jean-Baptiste is four. Carla Sofia Gascón is five. And then the next five are Nicole Kidman in Baby Girl, Fernanda Torres in I'm Still Here, which I just saw. I'll talk about that later on the show. Tilda Swinton, The Room Next Door, Saoirse Ronan for The Outrun, and Demi Moore for The Substance. Now-

• 1:53:55Speaker 04

  With love and respect to, to Variety and Clayton, sometimes those lists are-

• 1:54:00Sean Fennessey?

  A little wonky?

• 1:54:01Speaker 04

  A little wonky.

• 1:54:02Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think she's getting nominated, but I wouldn't be shocked if she got nominated.

• 1:54:07Speaker 04

  I would certainly not be shocked if she got nominated for the Globes.

• 1:54:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, with this going to comedy.

• 1:54:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:54:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:13Speaker 04

  This would go into comedy and she would get nominated for the Globes.

• 1:54:15Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we're gonna be talking about that very soon.

• 1:54:16Speaker 04

  We are, but uh, and if, if that Globes nomination starts a different conversation, that's the thing that the Globes can do because of your double actor nominations. Someone starts being in the conversation who wasn't in the conversation before.

• 1:54:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, well, this is turning into an epic episode of this uh, of this show. And, and it's because I put more on your plates than I needed to. I, I think, I think I'm, so it's between Doubt, Big Eyes, and Night Bitch.

• 1:54:43Speaker 04

  It's not Big Eyes.

• 1:54:44Sean Fennessey?

  I, I think it's, I think it's Night Bitch.

• 1:54:46Speaker 03

  Look, you were both so charitable with nocturnal animals that I'm willing to, I'm willing to play ball here.

• 1:54:52Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, then here is the Amy Adams Hall of Fame. It's Catch Me If You Can, Junebug, Enchanted, Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day,

• 1:54:58Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 1:54:58Speaker 04

  Rules.

• 1:54:59Sean Fennessey?

  The Fighter, The Master, American Hustle, Arrival, Nocturnal Animals, and Night Bitch.

• 1:55:05Speaker 04

  I would ask you to show that to Bill and ask him, would you not say that Amy Adams has done something?

• 1:55:12Speaker 03

  That's a body of work, right there.

• 1:55:13Speaker 04

  That's an incredible body of work.

• 1:55:14Sean Fennessey?

  There's no doubt about it. She does things.

• 1:55:16Speaker 04

  She does do things.

• 1:55:17Sean Fennessey?

  You guys have done great things on this podcast.

• 1:55:18Speaker 04

  Thanks, Sean. Thanks for having us.

• 1:55:20Sean Fennessey?

  Really enjoy podding with you as always. Let's go now to my conversation with Pablo Lorraine.

• 1:55:38Sean Fennessey?

  This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail-biting thriller? Snacks arriving with Prime. What pairs with the big game on Prime Video? That new couch arriving with Prime. Whatever feeling you're after, Prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime.

• 1:56:02Speaker 05

  Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot designed to keep you connected. Powered by Verizon's 5G network. And no contract holding you back. Plans start at $25 a month. Or get the premium Visible Plus Pro Plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code HACK. Make the switch at visible.com. Terms apply. See visible.com for details.

• 1:56:33Sean Fennessey?

  Very happy to have Pablo Lorraine here to talk about Maria and his work. Pablo, I know you've obviously been working on this accidental trilogy of films, but I'm curious about your relationship to Maria Callas. Is this someone that you have been interested in for a very long time? How did, how did she become the, the, the final piece of the trilogy puzzle?

• 1:56:51Speaker 06

  Oh, well, I, I think it's, um... I'm I'm an opera fan. I I grew up going to the opera with with my with my mom mostly as I grew up. And that there was always this kind of mystical, you know, figure, Maria Callas and her voice and her life, her work, her impact in culture, her impact in society, her impact in in music. He probably changed the history of opera forever. Um, and and from some odd reason, um, that I don't completely understand, there are very few movies um about opera, uh, given that there's so much in common. Um, so I I thought to to try to do it, try to to find an angle uh where where we could

• 1:57:37Speaker 06

  almost make an opera and shoot it uh and make a movie that feels operatic, um, not in the dramatic way, but in the in the real operatic meaning. Um, and bring those two elements together and try to understand uh a little bit more about about her figure and how and why uh it became so, so relevant for the history of music and and particularly for the second half of the last century.

• 1:58:02Sean Fennessey?

  Can you talk about what that meant to you to make a film feel operatic, you know, like what what decisions you make to render that?

• 1:58:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, I I say that there's a distinction because it's often that people that, you know, people could describe or a critic, a review could describe a movie as being operatic, meaning that it has a lot of ideas and and is by rock in in its intentions. Uh, I'm I'm I'm using that that term because I I think that what we're doing here is a movie that is an opera, but in in in movement, in motion. It's a it's a moving proscenium, it's a moving stage that we are capturing with our camera, capturing with our point of view. Um, and it's a movie about about a singer um that has become uh the sum of the tragedies that she played on stage for so many years.

• 1:58:55Speaker 06

  And and all those characters are are somehow um inhabiting her simultaneously, um, up to the point that this is also a tragedy. Um, but at the same time, it's a celebration of a life and work. So it's all combined, and I think um we want to be in her perception of reality, and that's how we can let the music get in and the opera get into the story.

• 1:59:24Sean Fennessey?

  So unlike Jackie and Princess Diana, Callas is an artist. And so capturing an artist at work is complicated. And obviously, you've got an actor who's got to portray someone who's extremely one of the most famous people of the 20th century and who is an incredible performer. So what do you do? How do you make that feel viable, real, accessible, textural with the actor and with the sort of moving proscenium that you're describing?

• 1:59:52Speaker 06

  Well, I don't think I have a very clear answer to that. It's a good question. I think that probably, obviously, the actress, the actress is very, very important. Obviously, it defines, they carry the movie on their shoulders. But I'm fascinated by them, by each of them. And as you well said, this is the story of a artist. And I think that I was very lucky because I am very into music. I really love music and I think I likely probably know more about music than cinema, I think.

• 2:00:34Speaker 06

  So there was an opportunity to express myself with something that I truly, truly love and to film the life of someone that I admired for many, many years. So it was a little bit less of a research, you know? And like in the case of Jackie and Spencer with Princess Diana, it was more a movie that I have in my bloodstream since many, many years. So it was a little bit easier for me to recreate it. But I guess the biggest challenge is to understand or try to understand her ghosts, you know, what's going inside of her, why she's so mysterious, why there's nothing

• 2:01:16Speaker 06

  that you could really do to completely understand her and why music can really explain something or express something about her that is completely undescribable with words. You can use music and moving images, I think. And that is just a very interesting advice, you know? It's a good thing to have that. It's just wonderful materials to work with.

• 2:01:42Sean Fennessey?

  Angelina Jolie, of course, is also world famous, incredibly glamorous person like the person she's portraying, and so I like that self reflexive quality. Is that something that you had all talked about when you talked about doing the part with her, that she could connect to this character in any particular way, given her experiences?

• 2:01:58Speaker 06

  Well, I don't think you need to talk to her about it. It's so late, it's... But again, look, we're just talking about, I think, there's something incredible that I've read a lot of biographies about her, you know, seen documentaries, all of her interviews on the internet, and read and studied a number of, number of things over the years, and made this movie, and I'm not entirely sure who she was. And I think that's something that also happened with Angelina, I think, maybe because she's so well-known, has been in the spotlight for so many years, a lot of people might assume that they really know

• 2:02:40Speaker 06

  her. And I don't think that's real. Once you really wonder what people might think about Angelina, that it's likely to be very far from who she is, you know? And not that I do know, by the way, but I think that that is sort of the enigma that they carry. That combination of enigma and magnetism that could find in someone like Angelina, you could also find her in Maria. So I thought it was, it was a good match. It was, it was something that Angelina could do to carry that, that weight of something that at some points you get to understand and know and feel because she's somehow sharing with you,

• 2:03:24Speaker 06

  but then when she doesn't want it, you could be completely disconnected. And that is a beautiful exercise where the audience becomes very active, I think.

• 2:03:32Sean Fennessey?

  You make this bold choice to, very early on in the film, show... You know, a performance of Ave Maria and to show Angelina in close up. I was wondering if you could talk about why you wanted to start there.

• 2:03:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was it was something that I've been thinking for years, even before we had a script and I I mentioned to Angelina, just denied everyone involved. This is how we're starting.

• 2:03:56Speaker 06

  I wanted to defeat, not just for the audience, but also for us. The ghost, this idea of, oh, it's Angelina. So well, no, she's not an opera singer. She's gonna play an opera singer. She's gonna sing. When is she gonna sing? How is she gonna sing? What is she gonna sing? Why is she singing and all that? It's gonna be successful. It will be feel believable. It's gonna be what? A karaoke session? What is this? So I was like, OK, let's just, you know, train really hard, especially her. And and do an excellent and magnificent job. And let's just let me shoot, film you in a close up. You will be looking at the camera on a tight shot. Your face gonna be on a very large screen.

• 2:04:40Speaker 06

  And we will see you singing and people will, yeah, would look at your lips, would look at your face, would look at your eyes. I see how it's going. And and we're gonna defeat the problem in the first minute of the movie.

• 2:04:53Speaker 06

  And I think we do. I think she succeeds on that. And I think she becomes callous. And I think we drop quickly Angelina out of the the equation. She's the she's the actress. She's she's the character that she's representing. It was bold, but I felt it was necessary. And also, I think it's very important for the movie because, and this is probably the most important thing of everything. It's that it's it's it's analogy, you know, it's like a prayer. It's like, it's she's singing Ave Maria that come from Motello, from from operas, Verdi, Gattuso.

• 2:05:30Speaker 06

  And she's praying and asking for help, for protection, for for some sort of spiritual

• 2:05:40Speaker 06

  connection to something that's bigger than her at the beginning of the film with such a beautiful melody. It's a very moving melody. And as we're singing, we go and kind of see fragments of her life to introduce the character to everybody.

• 2:05:58Speaker 06

  So I think it works in multiple layers, but I really love that we did it and I love how it works in the film.

• 2:06:02Sean Fennessey?

  I wanted to ask you about the structure in relationship to Jackie and Spencer as well. You know, none of the three films are standard biopics in any way. And they all are these kind of, these memorable figures captured at a very important, critical stage of their life. But this one is the most expansive in terms of how much of the figure's life that you show, whether it through flashback or them talking to this character that Cody Smith-McPhee plays.

• 2:06:32Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I'm curious like what the conversations were like with you and Stephen Knight and why the decision to kind of capture so much of her life, but also not do your kind of standard cradle to grave approach to that story.

• 2:06:41Speaker 06

  Well, first of all, I think biopics are a cultural fantasy. I don't think you could actually call a movie or anything a biopic. I don't think you can actually capture anyone up to the point that you go out to the world and say, look, this is who this person was with responsibility. And the only way to do that, it's probably with the person itself, herself. And, but however, I think this, yeah, it's true. This movie, it's, this movie shows the very last week of her life. And it's the moment where she decides to conduct her life by herself and for herself.

• 2:07:24Speaker 06

  And in that exercise, we thought it was important to look back at how did she get there? Why, why and how? And so the fragments, I think it's, it is a movie about perception and we try to inhabit her reality with, with perception and with her own memory. And, and kind of, you know, in a, in a, in an angle, in a perspective that I would, would like to call it a poetic memory, we can, we could travel with her through the music to different moments and, and, and different fragments of certain ideas that can be more

• 2:08:08Speaker 06

  abstract, some of them, some of them are more concrete and more specific, but they're all building a character that is celebrating her own tragedy. And, and I think that's where, where we would try to, to lay our energy, especially when having such a beautiful, you know, out of this world music that she sang for us.

• 2:08:32Sean Fennessey?

  I love this intersection of Onassis and Kennedy and the fact that you have this sort of expanded Pablo Lorrain cinematic universe happening now too, and the fact that these tendrils of history are all starting to touch each other in a way. Like, is that something that is appealing to you about telling these kinds of stories?

• 2:08:50Speaker 06

  Well, I'm related to the multiverse of these people, but I will say that it's a generation, you know, and I think there's more people involved that if you keep digging, you will get to a number of people of that generation that happen to be in certain cities like, you know, or certain countries, mostly in Europe, England, I would say New York, where people related to certain families, royal families, powerful families, wealthy

• 2:09:24Speaker 06

  people, obviously artists, they all got together and sort of somehow reorganized culture and society into certain, such an element of socialité, you know, and that happened in between the 50s and the 90s, I would say, where all these people knew each other, where they interact with each other in a world that, you know, that wasn't very responsible. You know, they were just living the life, taking care of the family, of their business, and interacting with each other. And there's, you know, a number of people who were close

• 2:10:07Speaker 06

  to each other, and this is just one of the other cases, one of them. And that's something very interesting, I think.

• 2:10:15Sean Fennessey?

  Do you feel like that's impossible now because of the way that famous people, well-known people are expected to live?

• 2:10:22Speaker 06

  I think it's very different. I think, I think, I think that world is over. I think that that idea of... Style, fashion, certain cultural connections to art, cinema, theatre, literature, with an idea of a grandiose kind of glamour and it's gone. I don't think that, and if it ever comes back, it'll come back in a different form. But that combination of people, art, culture, money, politics, I don't think it'll ever be back again.

• 2:11:04Speaker 06

  And I think it's just interesting because we look back at them towards mostly fashion and culture in many, you know, in many ways nowadays. And I was interested in these three women that somehow were able to be who they were, no matter in, you know, to which family they were related to, which man, which fortune, with whatever. And they were, they were able to stand by themselves and live a huge, you know, footprint in culture throughout their own identity and like inner strengths, which is just beautiful and fascinating.

• 2:11:48Sean Fennessey?

  I like that you also show in this film the sort of, almost like touchability of Callas, just dining at a café and being someone you could just see in the world and walk up to and speak to. And even though she has this kind of defiant presence, that she still was a person living in the world, not somebody who was just locked away all the time too. That also feels like out of time in some ways.

• 2:12:12Speaker 06

  It's an era where certain people like to be connected with their fans in a physical connection. Nowadays, everything happens through a screen. You know, Callas was singing, they were on the street, they were on theatres. There are a number of things that are happening, you know, very...

• 2:12:39Speaker 06

  Where there's a lot of human interaction. Nowadays, you know, the people that has, you know, the people listens to Spotify podcast and they go to Instagram and see the people that they admire and the interactions. And we have influencers and whatever's going on today. But I think it's a more abstract kind of communication. It's different. And I think back then, everything happened more face to face. But at the same time, there was media. There were paparazzis. There were, you know, probably Maria Callas and also Jackie Kennedy. And for sure, Diana Spencer, Princess Diana was likely to be the most photographed woman of the 20th century.

• 2:13:21Speaker 06

  So there were also media icons, but they were more tangible. And I think that's a big difference.

• 2:13:28Sean Fennessey?

  I really love what you and Ed Lackman have been up to on the last two films. I so admired El Conde as well and was wondering if you could just talk to me about how you guys came together and maybe like what was the same and what was different about working on that film and this film?

• 2:13:45Speaker 06

  Of course, Eddie Sammister, I wanted to work with him for many, many years. And we had the opportunity to work first in El Conde and then now. The very different movies. El Conde is a black and white kind of Gothic expression. It's the kind of photography and cinema. And this is more like a movie that we wanted to look, make it look like it was shot in the seventies. Eddie is someone that works throughout color. It's very unusual. I think most photographers work throughout lighting texture and lighting color temperature. I think Ed is someone that is very determined to work throughout color and to light in

• 2:14:29Speaker 06

  a movie like this, to light in the way that they used to light. Um, the, the film sets in, in, in the period. Um, it's someone that, you know, is fascinating, has an incredible, rather good stories to tell and, and has um, a, a gorgeous sense of the aesthetics and, and how to, um, how to truly look for the characters and their emotions. She's, she's trying to capture uh, that emotion and the, and the, and the truth of the soul that we are picturing uh, with, with her lighting. So he's part of the overall process, as it should be. Um, I, I think that is very important on a movie set.

• 2:15:10Speaker 06

  Some people could be surprised that maybe it's not, that it should be like that, but I don't think you should take that for granted. It happens often, there's people that are just caring about their own duty, their own craft, and they're not necessarily connecting with, with, with what everyone else is doing. And I think it, it, it's, it's, it's in the center of that idea and I really appreciate that.

• 2:15:31Sean Fennessey?

  When you say he works through color, does that mean the costumes and the production design or is there something else?

• 2:15:36Speaker 06

  Well, because it, it's, it's, it's, I don't want to bore anyone, but, but it's, um, we, we shouldn't film, so when you shoot and film, you could probably um, combine certain colors that would have a very like live colors that as you're lighting, that would, since, since because of that combination, it would create a different color result once it's shot and filmed. Because the film would react differently to those color combinations. So it's really beautiful and weird because your, your honor said you're seeing something that is lit in a way, um, you see it through the camera and then when you, when, after you shot it, it's processed

• 2:16:21Speaker 06

  and you go and see it and it looks different. He's messing, you know, with the negative. He's seeing the reality through what a negative can do. Been doing it for fifty years, so he knows what he's doing. But, uh, um, it's just very interesting how he can create a world where the colors are only created through a film, a cinematic process. And that's, that's what I mean by it, if it makes any sense.

• 2:16:53Sean Fennessey?

  It does. It's incredible results. Um, Pablo, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen? Have you seen anything that you've liked recently?

• 2:17:04Speaker 06

  Well, I, I haven't seen much because, um, I am doing what I'm doing. I'm traveling a lot and, um, but from this year, I really, really love Anora. I think Sean's movie, it's beautiful. Uh, I thought it was a very moving. I think Mickey, um, does a beautiful work. I've been, I know Sean for many, many years. And I love when someone is just like stays on the track of what, of what, what they do. Um, and then eventually gets, they get a lot of recognition, but I'm sure Sean's gonna keep doing what he does, you know? And he's been doing this for, for many years in many movies.

• 2:17:47Speaker 06

  And, and now he made a movie that, that is not only very beautiful, but it's, uh, it's also, uh, getting a lot of recognition by a lot of people who won the pound, Doran Khan. And, and I think it's gonna gotta have a beautiful award season. And I, I'm very happy for him. I think it's a beautiful, beautiful movie. If you guys have not seen it, please go on and, and see that movie. Hopefully you could find it on a, on a, on a big screen because it's, it's very beautiful and it's a cool, interesting, funny, crazily funny film, very moving and very well made. So that's also my two cents.

• 2:18:23Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great recommendation. Pablo, thank you so much. I'm such a dermaire. Thanks for doing the show.

• 2:18:27Speaker 06

  Thank you. Thank you for, for the invitation. Have a good one.

• 2:18:29Sean Fennessey?

  You too.

• 2:18:38Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to Joanna and Rob. Thanks to Pablo Lorraine. Thanks to Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Thanks to our producer Bobby Wagner as well. Later this week, we're digging into the most underseen and underappreciated movies of 2024. We'll see you then.

• 2:18:59Speaker 07

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Coca-Cola. For the big, for the small, the short, and the tall. Peacemakers, risk-takers. For the optimists, pessimists. For long-distance love. For introverts and extroverts. The thinkers and the doers. For old friends and new. Coca-Cola. For everyone. Pick up some Coca-Cola at a store near you.