Best Picture Power Rankings and Brutal Honesty About ‘The Brutalist’

Sean and Amanda dig into ‘The Brutalist’ (with spoilers!)—the text, the reception, the performances, the score, its awards chances, its lasting presence in the American film canon, and everything in between (1:00). Then, they’re joined by Joanna Robinson to weigh in on the Best Picture race and rank all 10 films nominated for the award based on their current chances to win the race (1:31:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Joanna Robinson 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Brian Curtis from The Ringer, and I want to tell you about The Press Box Podcast. The Press Box is a podcast for anybody who likes news, whether it's about sports, or politics, or pop culture, and wants to understand how that news really gets made. We have new shows every Monday and Thursday. We have long interviews with everyone, from John Krakauer to Joe Buck. Your social media feeds are bursting with information every day. Let us help you sort it out. Join us on The Press Box.

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• 1:26Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Finacy.

• 1:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 1:28Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the big picture conversation show about brutal boys and brutal girls. Today is the day. It's a very important day on the big picture. Certainly will be Best Picture Power Ranking with our friend Joanna Robinson. We'll may talk a little bit about Nosferatu. But most importantly, Amanda is here to talk about the brutalist. Ba na na na.

• 1:55Sean Fennessey?

  We're back. So.

• 1:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I want, I want you to start singing the disco remix.

• 2:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Honestly, it's a great score.

• 2:05Sean Fennessey?

  The world has been waiting, honestly, months to hear you talk about this movie. I've been waiting months. Well, this, this episode, we have a few things on the plate. We're gonna talk about The Brutalist at last. You have seen the film. You're ready to talk about it. You saw Nos Fratu. I'll share some thoughts about that movie. And then Joanna Robinson will join us, as she has throughout this season, to help us rank the Best Picture contenders. And now that we have 10 nominees and we have quite a few scandals emerging, minute by minute.

• 2:34Amanda Dobbins?

  People are going for it.

• 2:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, there is. We are in attack season in the Academy Awards. And so we'll, we'll set the table for where things stand right now. And, and honestly, a fascinating Best Picture race. Probably the most interesting one we've had since we started doing this. And there's a lot of math that can be done, and there's also a lot of emotions that can be parsed. So we'll dig into that with Joe after we have our conversation about these two films. So The Brutalist. I feel like we're working in reverse here because I had a big, long conversation with Adam Namon about the movie at the end of December.

• 3:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, great conversation.

• 3:06Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks. And I, I love that conversation, too. A lot of that conversation, a lot of it was about the text and a lot of it was extratextual.

• 3:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 3:16Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it was about the marketing strategy of the movie and how the movie would be received and what we should, how much of the film should we focus on and how much of the apparatus of selling a movie like this should we focus on?

• 3:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 3:29Sean Fennessey?

  Which I love, and you know, you and I always talk about that stuff, too. But maybe at the expense, a little bit of talking about the movie?

• 3:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I do think it's essential to the discussion of the film, and you guys were right to talk about it because it was such a phenomenon. And how it became such a phenomenon is some, somewhat about the movie. And also somewhat about like the moment in film culture that we are in. And the marketing and A24 and Brady Corby's very specific campaign. And the narratives that he has constructed and given in interviews, which I, I have to be honest, I. Only know about from the conversation that you did with Adam. And I did not listen to either interview that you did afterwards.

• 4:17Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, interesting, okay.

• 4:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Because I, I would like to have a contact, a conversation about the text as much as possible.

• 4:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 4:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And I certainly avoided it beforehand because I was like, I don't want spoilers. And I do also know it was already vibrating on a frequency that annoys me sometimes. And so I was like, I'm, I'm just not going to do it. And I'm going to go and I'm going to see the film and we'll talk about the film. So I'm really excited to do that, but that's, that's what I want to do.

• 4:45Sean Fennessey?

  That's what we're here to do. So I, I ask you.

• 4:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 4:48Sean Fennessey?

  What did you think of the film The Brutalist?

• 4:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it's remarkable. It has been living rent free in my head since I saw it. And I came home, my husband still hasn't seen it. And I was like, can you, can you go see it? When can you see it? I've been like sending him showtimes and like consulting on his calendar to be like, I, because I, and because I want to talk with him about it. And I have been looking forward to this because I want to talk with you about it. I, I, it is, it is an absolute achievement. Does it all work? I really don't know. And I really want to talk with you about that. And I, and I don't mean that in like a bad faith way or that I'm annoyed at, you know, some of the speeches about whatever.

• 5:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 5:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I just, I had a reaction walking out of the movie. I have been thinking about it since. I watched it again on a screener. No one judged me, like I saw it for the first time at the Vista.

• 5:41Sean Fennessey?

  You did your work.

• 5:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, like get off my dick. I did what I was supposed to do. But I, I like, I have, I have questions. I have questions about what you think about it. And that in its way is like the sign of great art, right?

• 5:54Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 5:55Amanda Dobbins?

  So it totally holds up in that sense.

• 5:59Sean Fennessey?

  You, you're, we have a brutal girl.

• 6:00Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but I'm not a brutal girl. And I also think that there are.

• 6:03Sean Fennessey?

  We have not even defined what that means.

• 6:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, I think I invented it. So I'm like, I, like, I, I do honestly think.

• 6:11Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 6:11Amanda Dobbins?

  That maybe I coined.

• 6:13Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 6:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Brutalist boys, like in.

• 6:15Sean Fennessey?

  I don't remember who said it first.

• 6:17Amanda Dobbins?

  But I mean, we did together. And I was like, we have to talk about these guys on the internet, posting about their stuff.

• 6:24Sean Fennessey?

  I have been getting IG DMs from many women who's want, who say, Sean, I want you to know, I stand with you in this movie.

• 6:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and allow me to say to our dear friend, Alex Ross Perry, who I love so much. I have to be honest, there was a line in the women's room at intermission at the Vista.

• 6:42Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, no.

• 6:44Amanda Dobbins?

  There was. I mean, I got there first because I was like, I really need to pee, so.

• 6:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and you saw it like three weeks after release, like it was still, you saw it at the Vista?

• 6:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I did. I think I saw it maybe on like the last week of their run.

• 6:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so let's just do like the arc of the movie's release a little bit because um we started doing the Brutus Boys bit, which is very funny and in the tradition of a lot of the it's so over, we're so back stuff that we do here on the show. And then I saw the movie and I was like, this is not a good movie to have this bit about. Because this is a very complicated movie that, as I said on the last episode, is like very much about pain and whose pain it is, we can discuss and debate. And who has the right to that pain?

• 7:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right.

• 7:22Sean Fennessey?

  But it is a very, very sincere movie. There's nothing smarmy or like um

• 7:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 7:28Sean Fennessey?

  It may be self inflated, but it's not modern. You know, it is trying to be a kind of like straight faced, sincere portrayal of a particular state of mind and it is using deeply traumatic history to convey that feeling. So it's a little weird to be like, we're in a cult together of this film.

• 7:49Amanda Dobbins?

  But, and it has, I guess, since the canisters, you know, rolled their way from Venice to New York to your loving arms and, and, and since, and again, like I I really tried not to engage with this because I do think it would like

• 8:06Sean Fennessey?

  Turn you off.

• 8:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Turn me against the movie, but I have become aware of the narrative that Brady Corbe has been embracing in interviews of like, this is about the challenges of filmmaking and it's about many things, but one of, and it's, and I think the movement has leaned into that, like if I am a, if I'm a cinema guy.

• 8:32Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 8:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I love canisters, I love Vista Vision, I love final cut for directors. By the way, I also like all of those things, um, you know.

• 8:43Sean Fennessey?

  You know what's much more important than all those things, which is something that he's also talked about? Is a hard line on creativity and um

• 8:52Sean Fennessey?

  Artistic boldness, like, forget about the canister, forget about the tech.

• 8:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but here's the thing, like, we all, those of us who live in Los Angeles, all saw the lines out the door at the Vista. I was very stressed out about, like, am I gonna be able to get a seat? Like, do I have to wait an extra 30 minutes in line? There was like a little mini online phenomenon about it. And then I, I think that was external and a little bit about, like, being part of a film culture. Cause like, that's from people who hadn't seen the movie.

• 9:21Sean Fennessey?

  But how is that any different from Marvel or any other kind of movie?

• 9:24Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not, but it's like, in fact, it is very similar to Marvel, and that's cool, but...

• 9:30Sean Fennessey?

  Now, is it not similar to Nancy Meyers?

• 9:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, well, yeah, we're not brutal boy, you know, we're not Nancy Meyers.

• 9:37Sean Fennessey?

  We're not genderizing this conversation. I just mean, like, in terms of having a passion for a certain kind of thing, and defining yourself by the culture you like.

• 9:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 9:45Sean Fennessey?

  It can lead to conversations with annoying guys. I won't deny that.

• 9:48Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true. I guess Nancy Meyers does not lead to as many conversations with annoying guys.

• 9:53Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 9:54Amanda Dobbins?

  One of many things.

• 9:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's usually just me.

• 9:56Amanda Dobbins?

  One of many things I really love about her. But anyway, just to the point of, like, brutal boys in the sense that this movie was a phenomenon. Even like before people had seen it, I, I think it, it does crystallize that. But you're right, then you see the movie, and you're like, oh, okay, this is a lot.

• 10:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so let's talk about it, cause I do wanna circle back to some of the directorial intent that you're talking about and the way to market a movie. It reminded me of another movie that we talked about and disagreed about in 2024, that we can go back to. But the movie itself, we're gonna, we're gonna spoil this movie.

• 10:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Horizon Part One?

• 10:30Sean Fennessey?

  That isn't the movie I'm thinking of. I won't even tell you the title, so I'll keep you, keep you on your toes. You know, anyone who hasn't had a chance to see it, we necessarily have to get into the, into the story.

• 10:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Spoilers.

• 10:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 10:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Anyone who tweets at me being like, "You spoiled part of this movie," you're automatic block.

• 10:48Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 10:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Let me just, or tweets, or, you know, blue skies, or Instagrams, or whatever, like, publicly shame. Beers, this is a spoiler one, okay? Listen. Do this, do the siren, Bobby. That's, I've really gotten into the siren as a listener of the big picture, you know? Just been catching up. Really good stuff, Bob. I'm doing fine work here every day, I try. There, I did my own.

• 11:10Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe that should be the new siren, is the siren call.

• 11:14Amanda Dobbins?

  And then me yelling, "I will block you."

• 11:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Spoiler warning.

• 11:22Sean Fennessey?

  Siren 2.0, like the dubstep remix at the end of The Brutalist theme song?

• 11:26Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like, it's a movie podcast. Like, what else do you want us to do?

• 11:29Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not gonna negotiate the spoiler conversation with the public at large.

• 11:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I have sold like vast swaths of my personal life, like for content, on this podcast and other ones. But like, sometimes, we do have to talk about the films.

• 11:40Sean Fennessey?

  And we are about to right now. Now, one thing that we did that's different from usual episodes, I usually put the outline together and then you add notes to the outline. This time around, I shared you what I had with Adam, but you did your version of the outline. So I think you should take us through the story a little bit. Do you even want to describe the plot of The Brutalist in any way? Is that useful for those listening at home? It is something I try to do and I find myself fumbling through almost every episode.

• 12:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, of The Brutalist or of all?

• 12:06Sean Fennessey?

  Just any film.

• 12:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I didn't write it down. Normally, you write a summary.

• 12:09Sean Fennessey?

  In the film trap, there's a dad. That dad has a daughter. And then that daughter and the dad go to a show.

• 12:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, so there's the plot recap, which is Lazlo Toss, Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivor, American immigrant. He comes to stay with his cousin, winds up sticking up with this family outside of Philadelphia, which I knew that it was gonna be set in Philadelphia, but that was...

• 12:35Sean Fennessey?

  It is a Philadelphia movie, and what Philadelphia means to America.

• 12:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. We don't need that this next week. We just don't.

• 12:43Sean Fennessey?

  Well, the brutal boys, they can watch the Super Bowl and then, you know?

• 12:47Amanda Dobbins?

  So, and is commissioned to do a, like a reading room, a library, and then gets swept up into the world of this family and this industrialist. I was gonna say Martin Van Buren, Harrison Van Buren, but the conflation is intentional. And then Harrison Van Buren commissions him to build a community center in Doylestown. And then the construction of the community center and toss a simulation or lack thereof into America proceeds, along with the arrival of his wife and niece, all from Europe.

• 13:31Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, shit unravels, I would say. Or does it? I mean, it does, but there is a very memorable ending that we don't need to get to quite yet. The ending contains a lot of narrative revelations that I think it's an interesting choice, an memorable choice, but we should talk about that and how it tells you what you know and when you know it.

• 13:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 14:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so that's the.

• 14:03Sean Fennessey?

  Very, very good.

• 14:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you so much. Then there is just like the basic, like visual recap and all of the very memorable set pieces, like starting with the coming out of the ship into to the Statue of Liberty upside down, which has become the poster. And it's not actually the first scene of the movie, which is notable, put a pin in that, but like as a banger and the door opens and ba, ba, ba, ba. And then you see this shot that like you've been sort of primed to be waiting for. I mean, that is just like A plus.

• 14:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 14:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Like.

• 14:33Sean Fennessey?

  If you like going to the movies.

• 14:35Amanda Dobbins?

  What a way to open a movie.

• 14:36Sean Fennessey?

  This is a way to open a movie.

• 14:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, and then trying to think of like other, like other memorable shots or moments. A lot of archival footage is used. There is the building of the reading room, which, you know, this is a movie about architecture. So that is like a incredible architectural set piece. There is the, the march up the hill to the commission, I guess you could call it. There's every very weird sex scene, which I do want to talk about.

• 15:08Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 15:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and I guess, including most importantly, and I think that sex scene is, is a euphemism big time, but the Carrera set piece. And then what happens in Carrera and, and then the epilogue. Am I missing anything else? Oh, I guess like the final, I mean, the dinner party scene at the end, but that's less, that's more narratively weird than visually remarkable, in my opinion.

• 15:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think this isn't necessarily visually remarkable, but.

• 15:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 15:37Sean Fennessey?

  One of the centerpiece scenes is the conversation, the cocktail shared between Lazlo and Harrison, which is sort of like them.

• 15:47Sean Fennessey?

  Confirming their affair.

• 15:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 15:48Sean Fennessey?

  In a lot of ways.

• 15:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:50Sean Fennessey?

  You know, making, making certain that they will come together to make something.

• 15:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 15:54Sean Fennessey?

  Um, which is, I find to be one of the most intoxicating, somewhat ridiculous and wonderful movie scenes in recent history.

• 16:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Like the, the, just the cock, they're sharing a cocktail. I mean, that's it.

• 16:04Sean Fennessey?

  He shares his story and then he shares his philosophy.

• 16:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And, yeah, that is the centerpiece of the movie. I, I was just thinking more in terms of like actual, like visual. And, and that appropriately is, they're seated. But, um, character wise, yeah, that's the banger. That's the real.

• 16:20Sean Fennessey?

  I love that sequence.

• 16:21Amanda Dobbins?

  That's when it jumps out. And then ideas, what is this movie about? Okay.

• 16:26Sean Fennessey?

  Can you try to set aside what you think or have heard Brady Corbait talk about?

• 16:30Amanda Dobbins?

  No, yeah, of course, because I haven't heard that much.

• 16:32Sean Fennessey?

  That is what I tried to do.

• 16:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I haven't heard that much.

• 16:34Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, but it is about art and the pursuit of art and really, I guess, the pursuit of, of anything great and what comes in your way. Um, and how often that is in fact, America, American, American capitalism. It is about capitalism. It is about, uh, immigration and assimilation. It's about, I'm, I'm so sorry to say it. It is about trauma, you know?

• 17:07Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 17:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, and, and loss and.

• 17:11Sean Fennessey?

  That's something I want to zero in on, on one of your key questions about this movie.

• 17:15Amanda Dobbins?

  And it is about, what else is it about? I mean.

• 17:21Sean Fennessey?

  I think what's, I think an, an important part of it that is easy to understand even without listening to interviews with the filmmakers, is what artists need to make what they make. Painters just need a canvas and some paint. Architects.

• 17:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 17:37Sean Fennessey?

  Need a lot. They need a lot of money, raw materials, labor. They need patrons. And honestly, painters need patrons and filmmakers need patrons. And the movie is about this tenuous relationship, not just between those two characters, but then what happens when something goes out into the world after it has been funded? And who controls its story?

• 17:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 17:58Sean Fennessey?

  Which is critical to the end of the movie.

• 18:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 18:01Sean Fennessey?

  So, you know, I have had the fortune of seeing the movie three times. So I've been able to think about this movie a lot. And I have evolved the way that I think about it a lot. The first time I watched it, I was just like, damn, I just love a big movie.

• 18:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:13Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, it wasn't that unsophisticated, but it's not, it's hard to not get swept up in the, the achievement of just, even just the physical production of the movie.

• 18:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, absolutely. I, I mean, the other thing that it is about and that the epilogue makes very clear is that, I mean, it's about the Holocaust and it's about the Holocaust survivors. And it sort of literalizes that in a way that is notable and that has made me pause when thinking about some of the other themes, like the, you know, I mean.

• 18:44Sean Fennessey?

  I felt nervous about this the first time I saw it. And now I think I have a handle on the way that the film sees it, or at least a way to interpret it. And I don't think it's as squishy as I did before.

• 18:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 18:54Sean Fennessey?

  Even if it's, even if it's ambiguous, I don't think it's squishy.

• 18:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I'm not, I'm not even talking about like the Zionism claims, which we don't like really need to, I, you know, we don't, we don't have to go there. But like the basic equation of if this is about what an artist needs to make what they are making, then ultimately what Toth is making is like a memorial to his imprisonment, like imprisonment in a concentration camp. I think equating pretty much any other form of art to that. And it's like, I, I don't know if I would go, always go there. I don't know if I would do it.

• 19:33Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if that is specifically what his intention, though.

• 19:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 19:38Sean Fennessey?

  The movie does not confirm that. It only has another character communicate that idea.

• 19:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 19:43Sean Fennessey?

  And so I think you can also be skeptical about the artist's intention. Now, one of the tricky things about this movie and trying to talk about it is Brady has talked a lot about what the movie's about.

• 19:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 19:54Sean Fennessey?

  Some filmmakers don't do that. You know, like, I, I've interviewed Paul Thomas Anderson a couple of times. He never fucking talks about what the movie means. He never explains it. And he did explain it when he was younger. And as filmmakers get older, they realize leaving some things unexplored leaves a lot for people like us and fans. So I think it's hard not to plant that onto it. But the one thing that I would just like pull back a little bit from in terms of how you're defining it. And I think everything you said is right is when you think about the artist and you think about what Laszlo Toth encounters. It ultimately becomes a much bigger metaphor, not just about artists trying to make something great, but about anybody coming to America or anybody in America.

• 20:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 20:32Sean Fennessey?

  Trying to find a way towards success, personal salvation, the realization of some feeling that they have. And that they've been told that they can have. And that it breaks. It doesn't, it doesn't work. It's a lie, right?

• 20:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:45Sean Fennessey?

  And then the secondary aspect of that is if America is not what it says it is, do we have to go somewhere else? Which is where I think some of the Zionism.

• 20:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, of course.

• 20:56Sean Fennessey?

  And post Holocaust.

• 20:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 20:59Sean Fennessey?

  Search for refuge comes into discussion, which is sort of like, was it a necessary but evil function of the failure of America or the lie of America? Which is like, these are very complicated and thorny issues that are being debated today, today in our world. And so the movie to me, on the, not just on the surface, but even under the surface, is about everything that you said. But it's really more about the intersection of all of those things and how they hit each other. Like, it's not just like assimilation is here and the immigrant experience is here. And the life of an architect is here. And the relationship between the artist and capital is here. It's like they, they hit, they hit each other. They all touch each other. And so even though the movie, a lot of people have said is very messy, especially in the second half.

• 21:44Sean Fennessey?

  And I really want to talk to you about that. It's trying to be messy. It's trying to make, it's trying to discomfort you with what happens when the collision occurs rather than.

• 21:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 21:54Sean Fennessey?

  The like perfect execution occurs.

• 21:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 21:56Sean Fennessey?

  So I, I think I'm even warmer on it now than I was the first time around, you know?

• 22:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I am.

• 22:03Amanda Dobbins?

  As I said, I try not to listen to any of the extra textual stuff. But I like, I have seen Brady Corby's other movies. And this like stew of, you know, historical tragedies, like mixed together with alarming frequency.

• 22:24Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm. This is his move.

• 22:25Amanda Dobbins?

  In order to produce like a story about, you know, trauma and how everyone has let a main character down.

• 22:34Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:34Amanda Dobbins?

  And how that wrecks someone is like, you're right. It, that happens every time. And every single time I have bristled a little at just the like, the almost like supermarket sweep nature of,

• 22:49Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:49Amanda Dobbins?

  of historical tragedy.

• 22:51Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Of like putting it, putting it in a blender.

• 22:54Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's well put.

• 22:55Amanda Dobbins?

  That it's like intentional and that the movie knows what it's doing. But I don't know if it always gels for me. And sometimes I think, I think this is the most successful version of it. I thought like Box Lux was the stupidest version of it. But I, you know, you're right that it's on purpose. Does that mean that it totally coheres? I don't know.

• 23:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, a part of the trap I kept falling down in my discussion with Adam is I see every movie and most movies are terrible.

• 23:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:30Sean Fennessey?

  So we have arrived at a movie that is wildly ambitious and just like rippling with ideas. You know, that is working so hard and maybe too hard, but working so hard to communicate that it is interested in a lot of things.

• 23:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 23:42Sean Fennessey?

  And then we're like, yeah, but is it like too many things? Or is it too big or too supermarket sweep? And I'm like, I don't know. What like, what do we, what do you, what do we want?

• 23:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I mean, like the final, like the final point of this conversation will be, does a capital G great movie like have to nail everything down to be capital G great? And I like, I have been turning it over in my head. So we'll talk about the rest of the movie and then we'll talk about that.

• 24:07Sean Fennessey?

  Go ahead. Where do you want to go next?

• 24:08Amanda Dobbins?

  So I want, I want to talk about Laszlo Talk.

• 24:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 24:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Because so many of the ideas that we just enumerated. And you've been describing it as like a micro epic, but really a character study. And there are several characters.

• 24:24Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:26Amanda Dobbins?

  In this movie, worth exploring. But he is like the vessel for most of the things. And I've, at points in the film, while watching it the first time, I was like, wow. This is the most amazing performance I've ever seen and I'm really fixated on this. And at some other points, I was like, okay, I see like the metaphors, like walking around in like incredible sweaters. By the way, this is my Lazlo Toth outfit and just tremendous fits throughout. And sometimes I was like, is this character developed at all? Is this person just, is, is this literally a vessel and the receiving end of everything else?

• 25:07Amanda Dobbins?

  And all other ideas and all other sources of action and development? And I'm not totally sure where I land, so it's memorable. Um, but you know, maybe it's just like the giant cross shining down at the end of it. But I was like, there is some like Christ like stuff going on here throughout this movie, which, you know, for a Jewish, like a very decidedly Jewish character, even though he ultimately gives up on his faith.

• 25:37Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Christ was a Jew as we know.

• 25:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, we do know that. That's true. I, I do remember during the three and a half hour run being like, okay, but like you gotta do something. You know, like this, I need like a little bit more from, I'd like, I need some action from him. And that may be the point.

• 25:56Sean Fennessey?

  So, okay, I think this is a really good question. I hadn't thought about it this way and it made me think about it.

• 26:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:01Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if you're gonna like my answer.

• 26:03Amanda Dobbins?

  That's fine.

• 26:03Sean Fennessey?

  But I'm gonna give it to you.

• 26:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:05Sean Fennessey?

  We only meet Lazlo for, what was it roughly, like a 13 year stretch of his life? It's in the immediate aftermath of the most traumatic thing that could happen to a person. He survives the Holocaust. He escapes Europe. Amidst World War II and gets out and comes to America. He's been separated from his wife, who is clearly like his emotional twin. You know, the person who is he has like completely wrapped his life around, at least intellectually and emotionally. And he doesn't have that person. He's in a new land. He's not speaking his native language and he has just witnessed the worst things in the universe. He's in Dacko.

• 26:40Amanda Dobbins?

  No, he is book involved.

• 26:41Sean Fennessey?

  He's in book involved. Excuse me, she's in Dacko. He's, of course, we don't really get to know this guy. He's deeply traumatized.

• 26:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 26:48Sean Fennessey?

  He's unable to, he either is unable or doesn't want to communicate. He very quickly slips into heroin addiction.

• 26:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 26:53Sean Fennessey?

  Because he's obviously trying to quiet whatever is inside him. And he's deeply damaged. And through this time, he's re-traumatized a couple of times. Some ways that are more, that are less severe by like having his agency taken away from him. And other ways that are incredibly violent and invasive. So we don't see the young kid at Bauhaus wowing us. We don't see how his mother treated him. We don't see what his life was like between the ages of 50 and 70 before he became more infirmed. We don't see really any happy times. We only see bad times. And when things are bad, and when things are bad for a lot of men, as you know.

• 27:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:34Sean Fennessey?

  They tend to go very internal. They tend to not communicate.

• 27:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:38Sean Fennessey?

  And he doesn't communicate a lot.

• 27:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's not, it's not the lack of communication. And even I know, you know, people have been like, well, he kind of has a temper and he's meant to reflect. Frankly, I don't think his temper is that bad. Like every single complaint he has, it's grounded in, in reality. Maybe he shouldn't throw the book at the contractor, but that's kind of.

• 28:02Sean Fennessey?

  That wasn't nice.

• 28:03Amanda Dobbins?

  That's not nice. And that's kind of when you like violates some HR things. But otherwise, he's just exacting, you know? So that's, that's what I have to say.

• 28:12Sean Fennessey?

  I really enjoy when he pulls the other architect aside. He's like, everything.

• 28:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:16Sean Fennessey?

  That is ugly and stupid and especially ugly is yours.

• 28:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 28:22Sean Fennessey?

  Um, when you mentioned that one of the centerpiece scenes is that conversation between Harrison, which is like all charm and all ideas. I view the one like release moment is a moment when I talked to Adrian Brody, I tried to signal this to him without actually spelling it out. And he didn't know what I was talking about, which I thought was notable. But I was like, the one time when you let loose, when you like explode is when he's in the car.

• 28:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 28:46Sean Fennessey?

  With Ersabet.

• 28:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:47Sean Fennessey?

  And he's like, they don't want us here. They don't want us here. That's like him finally verbalizing what it has taken him 10 years to get off his chest or to feel comfortable saying or whatever, that he feels as alienated here as he did in Europe. He feels as unwanted, as hated, as misunderstood. And then that like sets up what's coming next with.

• 29:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 29:10Sean Fennessey?

  They're in New York and nephew and niece are moving to Israel. And should they move to Israel as well or should they stick it out in New York? And so I do see him as basically like a restrained, a forcibly restrained artist who doesn't know how to talk. And so you don't get.

• 29:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:30Sean Fennessey?

  A lot of what you're, I think you're circling for.

• 29:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I think what I'm bumping on, and it's not the performance and it's not the restraint, which all makes sense and which I like, I think is like frankly, magic. And like the pain and like the, there's just almost like a, a door to Adrian Brody's like heart that just like keeps open and closing without saying anything. Like it's really, really.

• 29:58Sean Fennessey?

  So phenomenal, yeah.

• 29:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Remarkable, but you know, on the one hand, Lazo Toth encounters like every single bad thing that like could ever happen. I mean, he does.

• 30:13Amanda Dobbins?

  And it is also true that like, none of it is his fault, you know? Like it's all being done to him. But as a result, you don't see him make a mistake. You don't see, he's well, he's, he's like pretty inhuman in the sense of.

• 30:30Sean Fennessey?

  He does feed his wife heroin to get her out of a spell and almost kills her.

• 30:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but even that, it's like, because she's in so much pain and that's, and that is also like where they get to have like an emotional connect, connection. And he confesses like his deepest, darkest secret to her and then like.

• 30:49Sean Fennessey?

  This is like when I go shopping for Campari for you and my wife. Just trying to.

• 30:53Amanda Dobbins?

  So much compari at your house.

• 30:55Sean Fennessey?

  There's a lot right now.

• 30:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I was like, what's going on here? Um, I mean, yeah, like, like, he's not living like a, like a perfect life, but even like, you know, his multiple hand jobs, the, the first one, he's got a.

• 31:08Sean Fennessey?

  He's got a thing he likes.

• 31:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but that one, he like, the, the first one, when he arrives in the US and he's like, I don't really, I don't really want this, you know, I just want the handjob because anything else would be too close. Cause really like in the back of his mind, like he still loves his wife, you know? And every.

• 31:25Sean Fennessey?

  He's getting bullied by his friend into getting a handjob.

• 31:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And then, you know, like you, he meets Gordon and he's like, well, I'm just gonna stay in line overnight so that your kid can have some food, which is like a wonderful thing to do, but there is, there's like, there's, he has no flaws, you know? And I think even, even his terseness and his, um, his exacting idea of what this monument should be. I mean, again, he, you shouldn't throw like notebooks at other people, but otherwise that is presented. And I think we are meant to see it as like a, some, a commitment to something holy and bigger.

• 32:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 32:10Amanda Dobbins?

  And then what it is actually revealed to be, which is like, we are trying, he is, he's so mad about the height of the ceilings because he's trying to recreate like the exact specifications of his cell at Buchenwald. You're like, okay, so there, there is, he's a little blameless. And I find that, I don't, I found that limiting when I was watching it. I was like, when are you, or it made me aware of, of outside forces of the movie or something. Do you know what I mean?

• 32:40Sean Fennessey?

  The associative quality that filmmaker would imbue a character with that idea.

• 32:43Amanda Dobbins?

  And I was just like, okay, but I've been here for three and a half hours and like, maybe you should make one mistake.

• 32:49Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's extremely astute and you're not wrong. I think you can rationalize it as I have and will.

• 32:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean heroin is bad, don't do it.

• 32:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, he has a very bad temper, he's extremely emotionally closed off. He's downright awful to his wife when she comes to America. I would say he's not as, quite as saintly as you're portraying it, but the idea that you've located is right. Which is that this character is valorized in this world, which is mostly a broken, corrupt, grubby world.

• 33:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 33:20Sean Fennessey?

  And if you look at the movies that this movie has been compared to, let's just use The Godfather, because that's an easy way to explain it. Michael Corleone is, is not sympathetic.

• 33:32Amanda Dobbins?

  No, not at all.

• 33:34Sean Fennessey?

  Not at all. By the end of the first Godfather film, he's essentially the villain, and in the second Godfather film, he's sort of Satan. And obviously, that is a choice that we make, and we say, oh, well, then the filmmaker isn't associating himself specifically with that point of view. He's more elucidating the way that systems and families work, and the way that the nation, you know, like, imprints these ideas on us and makes us burn each other down, as opposed to an artist who is historically a more saintly figure. A figure that operates in solitude and creates something special that no one could understand but the artist. But that's what I believe too. I'm a person who talks about art for a living and likes it and wants to believe in the holiness of the act. So it doesn't really bother me.

• 34:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess I believe in the holiness of the art and not the act. And I, I-

• 34:25Sean Fennessey?

  That's why I talk to the directors.

• 34:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, honestly, it is, because I do sometimes, at some point, get impatient with what is, undeniably, like, a very hard thing to do, and there is a lot of work that goes into making anything. And, and that is just like the practical, physical work before you deal with everyone else who's trying to make a buck off of you, which is the only way to get it out there, which like, the, the impatience that Toth has for literally everyone else in his life is like inspiring to me, you know, I, I, I understand that.

• 35:02Sean Fennessey?

  You are a brutalist.

• 35:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so I, I understand all of that, but I-

• 35:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, I get tired of listening to it because it doesn't affect, to me, the result is the result. You either get there or you don't. And maybe I'm prefiguring like how I feel about things. I don't know. Maybe we're, this is therapy. We're discovering it in real time. But I, I think-

• 35:23Sean Fennessey?

  This is why this is such a special movie. This movie confronts you with all of these ideas and asks you to think about how you really feel about them. That does not happen in fucking The Fall Guy.

• 35:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I agree with you. I said all of that. But I do also think I feel differently than what the movie is putting forth. And it's like, I, again, to me, the, I was thinking about this with, like, when you guys were talking about A Complete Unknown, which is a very, very different type of movie in a lot of ways, but is at least, you know, it's about an artist. And I've heard-

• 35:55Sean Fennessey?

  And interestingly, doesn't take that saintly portrait.

• 35:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. And also, I think, to your frustration, at least in the first conversation you had with Mal and Chris, before you guys just like started like exchanging bootlegs.

• 36:09Amanda Dobbins?

  It doesn't explain anything about him and is maybe also like incurious. And it really just does present him as like, well, this like intriguing and like undeniably like magically talented person just showed up.

• 36:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, a shadow swept into town.

• 36:28Amanda Dobbins?

  And I, like, that to me is exhilarating, like that you just get presented with something. And I do believe that like some people have genius and some people just don't. And that is like part of what makes it genius. And so, I don't mean to diminish the struggle, but this movie does also end by saying it's the destination, not the journey. So the holy thing at the end is, is more what matters to me than all of the whining.

• 36:55Sean Fennessey?

  Do you want to talk about Ergebet, Jofia, and where the movie goes in the end? Is there anything in the first half that you want to talk about anymore? I mean, we haven't said the name Guy Pearce.

• 37:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah. Well, we said Harrison Van Buren. I, I want to talk about Guy Pearce again when we talk about whose movie is this. I guess we mentioned there were several other characters in this movie that, to me, are-

• 37:22Amanda Dobbins?

  They have less weight to carry and so they are more vivid. And I mean, Guy Pearce steals this movie for a huge portion of it. And I do think there is something telling that like the character and the portrait of the evil venal businessman or like the interloper, the person getting in your way, is to me like instantly indelible. And the saliently artist guy is kind of like, well, we're like feeling out how, where we feel about him. But like the movie knows who that, who the Guy Pearce is.

• 37:56Sean Fennessey?

  Hundred percent. I wrote this the first time that this is a very real thing. When an extremely powerful person comes into your life and they can immediately seduce and if they want to destroy you because of what you're willing to give them. Because you start imagining what they could create for you.

• 38:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 38:10Sean Fennessey?

  He, Corbeille nailed something with that construction and found the right actor who had the right like mix of charm and insidious underbelly, but also so funny. Like you can't, like you're supposed to laugh. He's supposed to be such a ridiculous hilarious character.

• 38:29Amanda Dobbins?

  And like, and I mean, just his booming American voice, which we know, you know, is not his natural register. Also, Joe Alwyn, like the way those guys are hitting their Rs, you know? It's like, it is almost like a parody of Americans that is perfect. Like that is, that is how the Americans in this movie should be speaking, you know? So I, I mean, I can't believe that Guy Pearce is not going to win an Oscar. Like he kind of walks away with the movie for me.

• 38:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think a real pain not being nominated for Best Picture throws a slight monkey wrench in there. However, I think that would mean Edward Norton would win, but that's a whole other conversation.

• 39:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, yes. We've been doing a lot of Complete Unknown in my house.

• 39:10Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, interesting.

• 39:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but Knox just wants, he's just like, like a Rolling Stone, please. Like two minutes in.

• 39:16Sean Fennessey?

  An hour and 20 minutes into the movie.

• 39:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I was like, that's sort of the whole point of the movie.

• 39:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Anyway.

• 39:24Amanda Dobbins?

  The other characters and the other performances. I mean, are you ready? Should we talk about it?

• 39:30Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely. I felt like you went in, though, looking for Kitty Oppenheimer.

• 39:37Sean Fennessey?

  And did you find her? In the, in, in the performance by Felicity Jones?

• 39:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Not in the construction of the character.

• 39:43Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 39:44Amanda Dobbins?

  In the performance? I mean, yes.

• 39:47Sean Fennessey?

  You didn't think it worked?

• 39:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Not at all.

• 39:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, people have been pretty split on this.

• 39:52Amanda Dobbins?

  And I know Adam said, like, Adam had it right when it's just kind of, she's just sort of, for my money, like, disastrously miscast. And you mentioned that an earlier version of this movie had a whole cast of actors who I think would have been wrong, except for Marion Cotillard as Erjabet, and that clicked the character, the second half of the movie in just like-

• 40:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but she was already the star of The Immigrant, which is like such a close call.

• 40:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Adrian Brody was also this, already the star of The Pianist.

• 40:21Sean Fennessey?

  Very true.

• 40:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, what are you doing?

• 40:22Sean Fennessey?

  Very true. Good point.

• 40:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I, I, Felicity Jones seems like a wonderful person and has just like never really been the actor for me.

• 40:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 40:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and like, I, I think even when I heard the cast, I was like, really? Are we, are we?

• 40:39Sean Fennessey?

  You know, before the, um, respeacher controversy came out, you know, about the fixing? I had heard, people had said to me, I don't, I have no idea if this is true or not, that her ability to learn Hungarian was like unmatched. That people were like, I don't know how she did this because she's speaking in a language that is incredibly difficult to learn.

• 40:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 40:58Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, Brody, I guess, had the advantage of having a Hungarian mother and, you know, his group with his grandfather. And he at least had heard the language a lot and that she had not, and she just learned how to speak it in the movie. And people were like, what the fuck is, this is crazy how she pulled this off. But I do think that she has a little bit of the black licorice thing for some fans where you're just like, I don't buy her in movies.

• 41:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I just say something? And this is related to respeacher. And I, I know I'm a proponent of the, like, you gotta sing to win the Oscar. And I think that's really true. Everyone talking about like, learning lines of a different language, even a language as difficult to pronounce as Hungarian, is the same as learning how to sing, or, you know, I mean, they're memorized. Most of this is just written out, you know, in letters.

• 41:41Sean Fennessey?

  Look at you, caping for Monica Barbaro, just so blatantly.

• 41:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I am caping for Monica Barbaro, like, so hard, but what are we talking? She learned Hungarian. No, she memorized lines, you know, like, she, I.

• 41:51Sean Fennessey?

  Are you sure she doesn't understand it?

• 41:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not sure. If she has a, has, do we have any clips of her doing press in Hungarian?

• 41:58Sean Fennessey?

  What, what do you think?

• 42:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know.

• 42:00Sean Fennessey?

  Say Amanda is so wrong in Hungarian.

• 42:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Am I out of line here?

• 42:04Speaker 06

  No, no, I don't think you're out of line. I, I think it's, more people could probably learn the foreign language if you're reading it off of a letter, than could just learn to sing out of nowhere. I think there's a more inherent talent that you're tapping into that is a little bit harder. But also, like, it's not just reading lines, right? Like, you have to understand the intent behind it to be able to put the right inflection and the right performance.

• 42:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Some of the line readings, in both Hungarian and English, I didn't really feel brought the craft that I have come to expect from the brutalist.

• 42:34Sean Fennessey?

  Many people agree with you. I've never tripped on this at all. I, I don't, I really didn't feel like I was watching a performer who was out of her depth or didn't fit in the movie, and, I don't know, maybe I just like her as an actor. I, it's one of those things where this is just pure subjectivity.

• 42:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And maybe I don't like these characters either. Like, am I, these characters, I mean, this and Amy Adams in The Master, which, you know, I, I'm a little bit with Adam in the ones, like, two hand jobs, including one very angrily given by, like, a cross, a cross-wife.

• 43:07Sean Fennessey?

  We all need a supplicant.

• 43:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, um, I, I, I see the influence, uh, and I guess.

• 43:13Sean Fennessey?

  How wonderful.

• 43:14Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not, it's great, I mean, that's great, you're right. Seeing movies is good and liking movies.

• 43:18Sean Fennessey?

  Hand jobs, we've all been there. It happens, you know, it's part of life. It's a part of life.

• 43:23Amanda Dobbins?

  But, I mean.

• 43:25Speaker 06

  Don't look at me. Why you look at the camera at me?

• 43:28Sean Fennessey?

  I'm just, we're just talking here.

• 43:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but, I, I don't know. What was I really supposed to get from that character? And like, I, I.

• 43:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I just, I'm, you know, she's got her own career and she deals with losing her life, like, in it, you know, like, not her actual life, but her job and her family and everything in a very different way.

• 43:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Amanda Dobbins?

  And she takes just, you know, she's writing like a women's column and, because that's the only journalism job she can get in America, and she wants to go back to Israel to be a grandmother. I guess there are different ways of dealing with trauma and that's what is being illustrated?

• 44:11Sean Fennessey?

  I think that that's probably just a representation of the way that America viewed women and that it was, it's not this,

• 44:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 44:16Sean Fennessey?

  you know, evolved, sophisticated, land of equality, that a woman who would be as well educated as she is at Oxford, who has a more sophisticated job in her native country, comes here, like so many immigrants who come here, and are asked to do less than what they are capable of in order to make a living. That's what that stands for. I think in the movie, they're meant to be a team. And you see the way that she charms Van Buren and almost navigates that relationship on his behalf because he doesn't have those tools. And you could see a world in Hungary where she did that for him. And that's something that you see a lot of great artists have.

• 44:50Amanda Dobbins?

  The producer wife or the producer partner. Sure, yeah. Which is a very common thing, including on this movie.

• 44:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, and Brady Corbe's partner, who is also a filmmaker, who knows who is who in these relationships, but I don't know. I, I watched that and I was like, this actually is how it is. Anytime I meet like a power couple, one person has one job and the other person has the other job. And that was how I understood the character. Now, we get less time with her because she only comes in in the second half of the movie.

• 45:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 45:15Sean Fennessey?

  So if we're concerned about developing Laszlo, she's even less developed. I mean, we don't really know anything about her other than what she shares to Van Buren. So it's never going to be as deep a character. If you don't like the performance, I can't argue that.

• 45:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I, I really, I don't like it. And I think it's, it's just so uneven in terms of... The presence that, like if you buy him as much as I buy Brody Asath, and you don't buy her, then the entire concept of the characters and whatever equality or power couple, like we're a team that is meant to be communicated, just kind of

• 45:50Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't hit.

• 45:51Amanda Dobbins?

  It doesn't happen.

• 45:52Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so I wrote about this on Letterboxd.

• 45:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, good.

• 45:56Sean Fennessey?

  I'm gonna tell you about it right now. I guess you have not seen it then, you haven't been keeping track. Jofia.

• 46:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:02Sean Fennessey?

  Who is the niece.

• 46:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 46:03Sean Fennessey?

  Who is the daughter of, is it Laszlo's sister?

• 46:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 46:07Sean Fennessey?

  Laszlo's sister, and it sounds as though she has died, and so she is then paired in Dachau with Felicity Jones's character.

• 46:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:19Sean Fennessey?

  And she is mute for the entirety of the film until the end.

• 46:23Amanda Dobbins?

  No, until she's pregnant and is like, I'm going to Israel.

• 46:29Sean Fennessey?

  She's the first character we see. She's portrayed by Rafi Cassidy, who is also in Vox Lux, who is also in White Noise.

• 46:34Amanda Dobbins?

  First and last.

• 46:35Sean Fennessey?

  First and last person that we see in this film. I obviously noted, noticed that the first time I saw the movie. Well, not really, honestly, I probably didn't think hard enough about it. But it occurred to me, and I think this is the intention, is that this is a movie that is told from her perspective. And that the reason the movie ends the way that it does, and she has the last word, and she is the one who interprets the work of the artist, is it's a literary device, the way that you might have a connected family member telling the tale of a great member or a couple in a family. And I don't know why that didn't occur to me the first time, but it completely alters

• 47:18Sean Fennessey?

  my perspective on the film, because she is a person who moves to Israel and who is a Zionist. And who sees opportunity to communicate her politics and her faith through these works of art and this life story. And that doesn't mean that that is what the movie is about. It means it's something that people do.

• 47:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 47:36Sean Fennessey?

  And it's something that people use art to do, the same way that Harrison Van Buren uses art to make a gymnasium, and the city forces him to make a church. And so it's all of these influences that are, that encroach upon what an artist wants to do. Now, again, that only flatters, the thing that you're saying is kind of annoying, which is that this is like a perfect portrait of an artist. But maybe it also complicates it, because maybe Jofia is is creating an act to honor her uncle, who she sees as such an important person in the story of art and her faith. So there's a reason he's not flawed. Also, the other thing, too, is that she has met every main character in this movie, which I find interesting.

• 48:22Sean Fennessey?

  Like, when she comes into the film, like, everything she's communicating, it's like, it can be rationalized, it can be logic.

• 48:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I don't think your interpretation is wrong, and I think it is probably right. I mean, it is undeniable that the first shot is of her in a room somewhere in Hungary, we assume.

• 48:43Sean Fennessey?

  Seemingly is.

• 48:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and like, right. And not only does the epilogue close with her, but they flash back to that exact room. So you're meant to go back to it. I think that the way the character is handled in the intervening three hours just does not communicate that device and perspective effectively enough for me to, for it to land.

• 49:12Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 49:13Amanda Dobbins?

  And.

• 49:14Sean Fennessey?

  That may not be the intention, it's just my read.

• 49:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you don't watch it the first time. And because it, I mean, it just, there's, there's so much in between that you, and it happens so quickly.

• 49:27Sean Fennessey?

  It's just so much movie.

• 49:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and like, and it doesn't land. And to go back the second time, if you, if you're looking for it, you can kind of piece it together, but there, like, I don't know if that is fully developed, to be quite honest, which is sort of, which is my larger issue with the ending.

• 49:46Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 49:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is like, cool ideas that I don't, that I think are kind of like tacked on.

• 49:54Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 49:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Almost in like a super, well, okay, so, I mean, let's talk about the ending. Um, that is, that's more about the epilogue.

• 50:02Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:04Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I, like, I wrote in here, where does this movie turn for you? And like, maybe it doesn't turn for you. I had a couple instances where I was like, huh, this is interesting. The first is when Felicity Jones shows up and, you know, and there is like that delineation from part one and part two. And I think part one is like, pretty unassailable.

• 50:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Part two, Felicity Jones shows up and I'm like, well, this is interesting. And I, you know, I wonder if this is how this you really meant for this to go. But I'm, I'm gonna keep going on with it. And then there's the, the Carrera trip, which that was tough because as soon as they do that shot of the quarry in Carrera, I was just like, this is the best thing I've ever seen in my entire life. Mr. Marble Dude is my number one film character of 2024.

• 50:53Sean Fennessey?

  The Italian anarchist. Shout out to him.

• 50:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And gives like an incredible speech about the only time he's left the quarry is to like, go beat Mussolini's body with his dead hands and he's got like that immaculate sweater and the hair.

• 51:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 51:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And you know, when he shows up late and he's like, I will go take a coffee and then we'll go, I mean, listen.

• 51:11Sean Fennessey?

  Guy Pearce rolls his eyes.

• 51:12Amanda Dobbins?

  In like incredible. Loved it.

• 51:15Sean Fennessey?

  Would you give, oh, oh, give up a few fingers to have that guy's swag?

• 51:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Cause that's, he earned it.

• 51:21Amanda Dobbins?

  May I also like age as well as he does, you know?

• 51:24Sean Fennessey?

  The locks are beautiful.

• 51:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. He's, he's doing great. And, and then they're partying and you know.

• 51:31Sean Fennessey?

  This is all part of the plan though, right? Like he draws you in. He's like, I'm gonna give you the beautiful imagery and then.

• 51:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 51:37Sean Fennessey?

  Now I'm gonna hit you.

• 51:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. And so, and so then Van Buren rapes, uh, Laszlo Toff. And here is my reaction sitting in the theater. As soon as I heard the pants on, I was just like, oh no. Like don't, but not in like, I want to protect this character. Like this is, he's been through too much, you know, this is like a horrible thing to witness.

• 51:56Sean Fennessey?

  Too bold and obvious a stroke.

• 51:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I was just like, oh, what the fuck? Like, what are you guys doing?

• 52:00Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and I, watching it a second time, like I've obviously thought a lot about it. And the way that sex is used in the movie is notable and clearly trying to set that up. Or at least like the exploration of like sex is power. Did you know? You know, which then gets really, really literal. It's like, I, we need another word beyond literalized for the, I, I guess Met, Adam Namens Metta Five was, is very good. Um, and I like, I, so I do understand at least structurally.

• 52:39Amanda Dobbins?

  What they're trying to do in terms of the sexual dynamics between each character

• 52:45Amanda Dobbins?

  in the film is explored, including Zofia and Harry,

• 52:49Sean Fennessey?

  Harry, yeah.

• 52:50Amanda Dobbins?

  AKA Joe Allen, who just, I mean, hats off to that guy for just being the worst man in every movie that he takes on. He does it willingly and then he's just like cinema.

• 53:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's almost like filmmakers saw him in his real life and thought, is this the worst man in the world?

• 53:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Wasn't his fault.

• 53:05Sean Fennessey?

  Let's put it to the test.

• 53:06Amanda Dobbins?

  No, he got dumped for what's his name? What's that guy?

• 53:10Sean Fennessey?

  Matty Healy.

• 53:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, Matty Healy. So that's not his fault.

• 53:15Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 53:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, listen, like, you know, he's, I, now she's dating Travis Kelsey and we gotta do that whole Super Bowl thing again, whatever. Not his fault. But, so everybody has a weird, awkward, memorable sex scene that is meant to communicate something about where they are in life and how they or their bodies are, are being used or violated, you know, like, like I, I get it. I, I felt throughout that the sex scenes were like a little bit more shock value than character develop, like, they were always just like way weirder than they needed to be, you know? Which like, sure, you can go for it, but

• 53:57Sean Fennessey?

  That's my tempo. What can I say?

• 53:58Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, well, it's just kind of like

• 54:01Sean Fennessey?

  Sex can be a very weird thing.

• 54:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Gilding, I mean, sex is weird, but it's like, at some point I was like, okay, you guys are really trying to let me know that there's like some weird sex stuff going on here.

• 54:11Sean Fennessey?

  Well, okay, so I, I definitely had the same thought

• 54:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 54:13Sean Fennessey?

  in The First Hand Job. I was like, interesting, that is the base of this man's dick. Like, they're just like, they're just gonna shut, this is that kind of a movie. Like, very early on, it's like, this is a European film. This is not an American movie. Like, we're, we're going to

• 54:26Amanda Dobbins?

  The First Hand Job, I was like, okay, that's fine.

• 54:29Sean Fennessey?

  It's not something you would see most American movie stars do.

• 54:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 54:32Sean Fennessey?

  What happens in that sequence.

• 54:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 54:34Sean Fennessey?

  And so I think it's trying to say to you, like, strap in. This isn't, this is not, um, a Robert Zemeckis movie.

• 54:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 54:41Sean Fennessey?

  You know what I mean?

• 54:41Amanda Dobbins?

  But I'm, I'm talking more about like his, you know, the old timey porno that he goes to see in the middle. And I was like, okay, cool.

• 54:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I, I think, yeah, to me, I mean, you could probably be like

• 54:51Amanda Dobbins?

  The Second Hand Job, whereas like, all right, all right. I, I too like the films of PTA and Um, the Zofia, I guess that one, that one's okay. That's just like, that's, that's relatively subtle.

• 55:06Sean Fennessey?

  They don't show it.

• 55:07Amanda Dobbins?

  They don't show anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but it's communicated pretty clearly that there's something kind of forcible and awkward going on with Harry.

• 55:13Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I guess in the way that this movie is like doing it all, all of the time. It's, it's really doing of it, doing it all. But anyway, so tonally, or I guess in terms of we are going to make explicit the explicit. I guess the rape makes sense.

• 55:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's just not a subtle movie. Um, and it's not a subtle gesture to have the evil capitalist patron rape the artist. That is the most you could literalize it to your point, one of the core ideas of the movie, and he chooses to do so. The case that I would make.

• 55:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:47Sean Fennessey?

  Is that many of the films that we consider great films, and many of the reasons why we remember these great films, tend to do these things. They tend to have very big, clearly communicated gestures. These are not subtle, ambiguous, quiet films. They're films about desperation and confusion and violence. And so when you go down the list of movies that are clearly influences on this movie, and when you go down the list of like, the epic, which is what this movie is in the tradition of, they all have this shit.

• 56:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, I don't disagree, but I, and, and so like structurally, it is in keeping with the rest of the film. I don't know, like my reaction in the moment, and my reaction walking out was like, well, okay. You know, and that's, that's where it turned. And then it, it moves very quickly and suddenly.

• 56:40Sean Fennessey?

  Now, this is where I bumped.

• 56:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:42Sean Fennessey?

  And still bump.

• 56:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 56:44Sean Fennessey?

  Is.

• 56:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Heroin to the dinner scene?

• 56:46Sean Fennessey?

  The dinner scene.

• 56:47Amanda Dobbins?

  The dinner scene sucks, respectfully.

• 56:49Sean Fennessey?

  This is the weakest part of the film.

• 56:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And I don't know. I, I think that like the resolution of the dinner scene and like Harrison Van Buren's ambiguous, but like

• 56:59Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's

• 56:59Amanda Dobbins?

  pretty clear death.

• 57:00Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's why that scene happens.

• 57:01Amanda Dobbins?

  It has to.

• 57:02Sean Fennessey?

  You need to get to that.

• 57:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, and that does make sense. But like, why is she just like, even, even her dialogue, and again, maybe it's the poor woman, she's like, "You are an evil rapist," in that weird accent. And I was like, "Well, let me tell you, Felicity Jones is not built for this."

• 57:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 57:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's, I

• 57:23Sean Fennessey?

  It is the weakest part of a movie that, to that point, has made bold moves that I've been like, "Wow, I can't believe they did that." But the whole time I was there, I was in it.

• 57:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:31Sean Fennessey?

  I was not distracted at all. And then when that scene happened, I was like, "Gosh, I hope this isn't the last scene in the movie." Because this would be a terrible way to end this movie that I'm loving. I, I see it as like, it's, it's cement in the construction. And there needed to be an, an event that would traumatize Harrison, that would reveal him and traumatize him. And this is the best that they could come up with.

• 57:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but it's like, the plot mechanics are like, really showing. And it's showing both narratively and in execution. I mean, at least the Felicity Jones of it. Once like Joe Owen is going upstairs and the like camera's following him.

• 58:07Sean Fennessey?

  It shifts.

• 58:07Amanda Dobbins?

  They're searching for him.

• 58:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 58:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and even

• 58:10Sean Fennessey?

  Great wonder there, by the way.

• 58:11Amanda Dobbins?

  What?

• 58:11Sean Fennessey?

  And they're following him up the stairs.

• 58:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, it's really great.

• 58:13Sean Fennessey?

  The technical stuff in the movie is crazy.

• 58:14Amanda Dobbins?

  And his performance and like the suggestion that it's not unfamiliar behavior.

• 58:19Sean Fennessey?

  He knows, yeah, they know.

• 58:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that they know, but like, but again, that is just, it's a suggestion. The movie communicates without being like, beat the drum literal. You know, that sometimes subtlety actually does work for me, even in a movie like The Brutalist. So it doesn't work, and that kind of pretty quickly after the, the rape. You're kind of like, alright, this, these plot points are like, rolling up pretty quickly. And things are getting dire and also obvious. And, you know, and in the middle, they shoot up and she almost dies. And

• 59:03Amanda Dobbins?

  That's bad. I'm glad she didn't die, you know, but it's also like, okay, we've now we've just added an overdose into this. Like, okay, all right, shit's bad.

• 59:12Sean Fennessey?

  No, I mean, people have pain and they're trying to, they're trying to handle their pain, you know?

• 59:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Me too.

• 59:17Sean Fennessey?

  I have a severe hip flexor strain. I'm taking a lot of Advil. You know, I'm doing my best. This is life.

• 59:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I threw my neck out the other night.

• 59:24Sean Fennessey?

  This is 40.

• 59:25Amanda Dobbins?

  It was like, I, I was like, oh God, I'm never gonna be able to walk again.

• 59:29Sean Fennessey?

  I know exactly how you feel.

• 59:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. It's okay. I got a new pillow and a heating pad and we're back in business.

• 59:34Sean Fennessey?

  I'm, I'm very happy for you.

• 59:35Amanda Dobbins?

  So, so that all happens. And I'm, so I'm just trying to, like, my mind state.

• 59:40Sean Fennessey?

  Teed up the epilogue here.

• 59:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So, but so I would say that the last 30 minutes, and when I re-watched it, I was kind of like watching the, the clock. And it's the last 30, or you know, except for the epilogue, last 30 minutes. And it's just, it's making really big strokes really fast.

• 59:58Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm. Yes.

• 1:00:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And then the epilogue. Okay. So, first of all, the epilogue is at the Venice Biennale. So, A+. I, I was like, oh, I know where in Venice you are. I love Venice.

• 1:00:13Sean Fennessey?

  I thought, as I was watching the movie, there's no way Amanda can hate this.

• 1:00:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Can. And also, I, I was joking about you performing the disco, ba-da-da-da, but that shit rules. That's really funny and good. I have a real spot for Italian disco, so.

• 1:00:28Sean Fennessey?

  All the variations on the score throughout the film are really smart.

• 1:00:30Amanda Dobbins?

  The score is magnificent. The score is like incredible.

• 1:00:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:00:34Amanda Dobbins?

  So, Venice, that's cool. You know, I like, I'm, it's great. And then out comes Zofia, who you don't totally understand as Zofia right away because Raffi Cassidy is recast as.

• 1:00:50Sean Fennessey?

  Her daughter.

• 1:00:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Her daughter.

• 1:00:52Sean Fennessey?

  Which is played by Ariane Labad.

• 1:00:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And so it's, she is giving the speech and you're trying to figure out in like, real time, what is going on, which is very cool.

• 1:01:04Amanda Dobbins?

  But and I like I like that aspect of it. And in many ways is the opposite of just like the last 30 minutes of yelling at you of like, OK, and now there's a rape, and now there's an overdose, and now there's a suicide, and now everyone's yelling. But it is revealed that the well, that Toth is being honored at the Israeli pavilion, which seems to indicate that he did eventually follow Ergebet to Israel, even though she's not there.

• 1:01:34Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:34Amanda Dobbins?

  It's 1980, so some time has passed. She was not in good health.

• 1:01:40Amanda Dobbins?

  He has been designing buildings, which we see via some sketches now infamous.

• 1:01:46Amanda Dobbins?

  You also see their locations, so they're almost all built in the United States in the 70s.

• 1:01:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:01:53Amanda Dobbins?

  And

• 1:01:54Sean Fennessey?

  A lot in Connecticut.

• 1:01:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, and the which is where the Attila's wife is from, who we didn't talk about at all. I liked them. I mean, I didn't like them as people, but that those were some great scenes.

• 1:02:07Sean Fennessey?

  The first half of the movie is

• 1:02:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, and another and and and a lot of sexual stuff going on there, but but

• 1:02:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's a huge theme of the movie.

• 1:02:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, but

• 1:02:16Sean Fennessey?

  The the insane weird desire of artistic people. And the way that when we get close to artistic people, we get more turned on because they can access something we can't.

• 1:02:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Imp lied and danced around as opposed to, you know, fully hit over your head.

• 1:02:31Sean Fennessey?

  True, but the same way that like there's something that makes us hate ourselves for how attracted we are to certain things. And like, that's what that whole scene is about, you know, where she's like hot for him, but she can't help make fun of his nose and she can't help, you know, lie about him making a pass. And the same is true for Harrison and his relationship with Laszlo. Like, this is good stuff in the movie. I like that stuff.

• 1:02:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course, but like

• 1:02:52Sean Fennessey?

  Just too much?

• 1:02:53Amanda Dobbins?

  You understand my you understand my point.

• 1:02:54Sean Fennessey?

  I I do, yeah.

• 1:02:56Amanda Dobbins?

  So

• 1:02:56Sean Fennessey?

  These people want to fuck. What do we what's the problem here?

• 1:02:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Everybody wants to fuck. That's cool. Listen, all I want are movies where it's like two people want to fuck. But even in that, I tend to prefer the ones where they like they fuck immediately after the movie ends as opposed to the I like the foreplay is, I guess, what you could say. Um. Okay, so, and they finished the community center. We know that in the epilogue.

• 1:03:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:03:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Because it's shown in a drawing that may or may not have been drawn by AI.

• 1:03:26Sean Fennessey?

  The only things that were completed, were sketched by AI are in the video.

• 1:03:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:03:30Sean Fennessey?

  That is behind him, behind her while she's giving the speech. Apparently, everything that we see while they're walking through the hallway was drawn by artists.

• 1:03:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, that's good, that's good. Okay, and then she starts into her, her speech, her tribute to her uncle, adopted father, more or less. And, and you are right that it is, it is very pointed and political. And whether or not she is infusing her own interpretations, or whether it is just the intent of the thing, um, is unclear.

• 1:04:05Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm. It is deeply ambiguous, what the intention is.

• 1:04:09Amanda Dobbins?

  But she reveals, in, in her telling of it, which when you're watching it for the first time, you're just kind of like, okay, so I guess this is what happened. Especially after 30 minutes of just rapid plot being thrown at you. And it's like, okay, well, this was actually all designed as a tribute and a recreation of his time at the concentration camp. And then she's like, he did it, ta-da. It's the destination, not the journey. And then, one of the greatest song cues of all time, uh, one for.

• 1:04:37Sean Fennessey?

  "One For You, One For Me" by La Bianda, the Italian disco.

• 1:04:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, speaking of Italian disco. So I walked out of the movie, it was very late. I like, I, I think I made like, what can only be described as like an Amanda emoji as I walked out, just to myself. I was just like, okay, like, gotta go find my car.

• 1:04:58Sean Fennessey?

  It's not a good movie to have no one to talk about with afterwards, yeah.

• 1:05:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I was like, alright, um, I think in the moment I found the treatment of the Holocaust tribute as like, a reveal to be in poor taste.

• 1:05:13Sean Fennessey?

  The first time I saw it, I thought it was genius, but I was like, oh, they treated this like a reveal.

• 1:05:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:18Sean Fennessey?

  I've come to understand it totally differently.

• 1:05:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And, but, you know, I, most people will, will see this movie once, so.

• 1:05:25Sean Fennessey?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:05:26Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's important to do.

• 1:05:27Sean Fennessey?

  When I talked to Adam about it, he was like, the artist is a smuggler, we love that idea. He smuggled in all these ideas.

• 1:05:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:05:32Sean Fennessey?

  Which he may have. But Laszlo does not talk during the epilogue. In fact, he's in a wheelchair and it appears as though he's infirmed in some way. And maybe unable to communicate, which would allow Zofia to speak on his behalf with her own intent.

• 1:05:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And that's all fine, but it's in the span of about five minutes at the end of a three and a half hour movie. And then it hits to one for them, one for you, one for me, which like, maybe that's from the perspective of Zofia, but I like, don't think so.

• 1:06:10Sean Fennessey?

  No, I think it's from the perspective of Brady Corby flipping his fingers off at the people who pay for movies.

• 1:06:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but I.

• 1:06:16Sean Fennessey?

  And that old canard about what directors do and what actors do.

• 1:06:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, but it, you also just have to connect it to the discussion of the art that came immediately before it. And the, and the artist as smuggler and this is this project that he was, you know, laboring for so long and also, you know, had to build a church in the middle of was actually like a reconstruction of his pain. And also his love for his wife, which like, okay.

• 1:06:43Sean Fennessey?

  Certainly some gilding of the lily there.

• 1:06:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. So my, my instant reaction was like, I, I think that's in poor taste. It like much in the way that like, you know, nine 11 shows up in box lux along with everything else. And I'm like, like, okay, sure. If you want like that, that just that grab bag of let's, let's use the greatest horrors in history.

• 1:07:05Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, you gotta remember.

• 1:07:06Amanda Dobbins?

  For my own narrative. Well, but it's.

• 1:07:07Sean Fennessey?

  Like this, this, this guy starred in the American remake of Funny Games. You know what I mean? Like this, this, this, the like, the cinema of confrontation of like, of transgression is obviously something he loves.

• 1:07:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:07:20Sean Fennessey?

  He's doing it over and over again.

• 1:07:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:07:21Sean Fennessey?

  He's trying to upset you. He's trying to make you go like, ugh. They just raped him? You know, like, he's, that's the intent.

• 1:07:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but I don't go, ugh. Like, I'm not like, wow, how transgressive.

• 1:07:31Sean Fennessey?

  Or like, gross choice. Or the world is gross. Whatever, whatever, whatever your takeaway is. Like, I think.

• 1:07:37Amanda Dobbins?

  No, my takeaway is like, come on. Like, like, Mr. Highfalutin, you're like, trying to do, like, one of these great things. I'm like, like, no, you didn't nail that. Sorry. I like, respectfully, your, your, your britches are too big for whatever's going on with you. And that's, you know, and maybe that can lead us to like, the final thing of, does it, does the movie have to stick the lid? Well, I don't know, let's talk about the ending a little bit more.

• 1:08:03Sean Fennessey?

  Do you see it in any particular way?

• 1:08:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, the.

• 1:08:06Sean Fennessey?

  The, the epilogue in particular? I mean, that is the thing that, for people who have seen the movie more than once, for

• 1:08:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:08:12Sean Fennessey?

  Oscar voters, I guess, you know, like, the movie is, it's not been widely seen yet. You know, it's, I think it's only in like, 800 theaters or something. It's done actually really good business, but, um, this is never gonna be a movie that, as you say, people, like, millions of people will see five times.

• 1:08:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:08:28Sean Fennessey?

  Um, for a variety of reasons. But it's incumbent on us, when you get a big

• 1:08:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, to see it multiple times.

• 1:08:35Sean Fennessey?

  juicy piece of steak, to like, dig in.

• 1:08:37Amanda Dobbins?

  So I think, I think I understand it a little bit more the second time around. And now that you've had the warning of, because, once you, once you see it the second time and you're reminded, oh, right, it starts with Sofia. It starts with, and I think the last sentence of that scene is, we wanna make sure we get you to your proper home. Or something that is about like, your home, in, in like, a very sinister way. And so this idea of what is home and can there be a home for anyone and all of these things becomes resonant and is, and is resonant in the epilogue.

• 1:09:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Her character is more or less abandoned until two hours in. She gives one speech about Jerusalem. And I just, I still, I, I still think like my first viewing of it and just being like, oh, okay. Is, is gonna be how a lot of people feel and like has to be because you only get one shot with someone with a three and a half hour movie. And I also, even if it is about her.

• 1:09:44Sean Fennessey?

  Not about her.

• 1:09:45Amanda Dobbins?

  She's the narrator. But like, okay, so what does that mean? Like, what, how does that, what does that change for you?

• 1:09:52Sean Fennessey?

  It means that no matter what an artist does, people will always use what they do to their own ends. Like that, I think is a huge part of the intention of that entire experience and that there is all as much pomp and circumstance is necessary before a project begins as much as is necessary after it ends. That like, to be in the world of arts, especially at this high level, you are constantly being evaluated and reevaluated and used. And that might be.

• 1:10:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Fucking break. I mean, honestly, you know, I have, I have no patience for like, as a, as a long project of art, I'm like, I'm sure that that's true. Like, that's tough, you know? You also got to make the movies.

• 1:10:31Sean Fennessey?

  Sure, yeah. I don't know, I mean, he has been.

• 1:10:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Is the movie good enough that?

• 1:10:35Sean Fennessey?

  He has been very circumspect about whatever happened on Vox Lux. It's obvious. They wrote this in the immediate aftermath of that movie being released. I don't know if he didn't get final cut. I don't know if they made him change a lot of things. It's, it clearly pissed both of them off, him and his partner Mona. And so this being the thing that they threw themselves into, the only reason that like, you're being like, come on and being frustrated by it is because it's like, this movie might win best picture. Like if this was just an independent movie and A24 didn't buy it.

• 1:11:05Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I don't think that's true. It's because I, first of all, because I saw Vox Lux and second of all.

• 1:11:09Sean Fennessey?

  Well, maybe it wasn't the movie he wanted you to see.

• 1:11:12Amanda Dobbins?

  And second of all, because it asks for three and a half hours of my time. And it does want me to think about it. And so there we go. So that's the thing. It gets me asking all of these questions. I'm engaged in it. It's obviously an achievement on so many levels. Performance, craft, like ideas, the, just the, the conversation around it, which, and I, and I don't mean the brutal boys. I mean, like, people who have seen the movie wanting to talk about it and me wanting, have been like, waiting for two weeks to talk to you about it. I, is it still, is, is something that is so ambitious? Still great if it can't land its own plane? And you think it lands its plane?

• 1:11:53Sean Fennessey?

  I'll give you the dumbest answer I can give you.

• 1:11:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:56Sean Fennessey?

  I gave this movie four and a half stars.

• 1:11:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I, God.

• 1:12:00Sean Fennessey?

  That's the, that's the dumbest way to answer it.

• 1:12:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, at some point, I just, like, am mad at all of you for being on your, you know, on your, like, wavelength of conversation.

• 1:12:09Sean Fennessey?

  But I, and I understand that, but the truth is that I think that this is a movie that has flaws. But relative to the movie year that we just had, it's a movie that exceeds others in my view.

• 1:12:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:21Sean Fennessey?

  Despite those flaws.

• 1:12:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:12:22Sean Fennessey?

  And that, I do, that's how I've always thought about things. It might be sports brained and stupid, but I grew up reading Roger Ebert and I was trained to think in a, in certain systems. And the same way that the Oscar race is foolish and all art is subjective, um, a movie like this, very few movies allow for the possibility of conversations like this on the show.

• 1:12:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 1:12:45Sean Fennessey?

  To me, that's like a massive achievement. Am I grading movies against my very own particular personal experiences? Yes, so is every person alive.

• 1:12:52Amanda Dobbins?

  All of the time and we, and we should all be more explicit about that, honestly.

• 1:12:55Sean Fennessey?

  So to answer your question, can this movie be great even if it's not fully great, not 100% great? Yes, because no movie is.

• 1:13:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. I, I mean, so I agree with that. I have been thinking a lot about like, if, if I had seen it and if I had done a proper top five list.

• 1:13:10Sean Fennessey?

  Where would it sit?

• 1:13:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Where would it sit?

• 1:13:13Sean Fennessey?

  I think Chris put it at four.

• 1:13:14Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and, well, and would it sit? Because I, I agree with everything you're saying. And in the context of this show and like, being able to talk about things, like, God bless them. I'm like, amazing stuff. And also like, it's, it is, it's very good. And it's definitely one of the better movies that I saw for the calendar year 2024. I do think that there is something embedded in it that is about greatness and certainty to bring in another Best Picture contender. And, you know, it's like, if you're gonna go for it, like, then you you set the standard high. Like, you have to go for it.

• 1:13:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, think about it like this. This is this is helpful, I think. Was Challengers number one for you?

• 1:14:01Amanda Dobbins?

  No, Anora was.

• 1:14:02Sean Fennessey?

  Anora was, sorry. Was Challengers two?

• 1:14:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:14:04Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so Challengers was three for me. And Challengers, for both of us, was a joy machine. That does not mean it's a flawless movie. But you would put Challengers over The Brutalist in part because you think about what the movie's trying to do. Is this fair to say?

• 1:14:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:14:21Sean Fennessey?

  And versus what it accomplishes. And so The Brutalist is reaching for something that maybe it cannot achieve, but it is reaching.

• 1:14:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I think-

• 1:14:29Sean Fennessey?

  Whereas Challengers, which is great.

• 1:14:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:32Sean Fennessey?

  Its ambitions are lower. They're still way above most of what we do here, but it is lower.

• 1:14:38Amanda Dobbins?

  It is the-

• 1:14:39Sean Fennessey?

  And so how we grade these things, how we how we canonize them or not, is so complicated. Because that intention that I keep circling back to, people are like, don't talk about the intention. What is the movie? Look at the text. I don't live in that world. I'm never gonna live in that world.

• 1:14:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I'm also using the intention. But I think this this self-reflection in in the movie and the self-referential nature of it and the intention and these and maybe it's a little bit like, you know, I read the character of Lazlo La, like, slightly differently.

• 1:15:11Sean Fennessey?

  I tried to, you didn't hear this, but I tried to get Corby, and he did kind of associate himself with Van Buren, too.

• 1:15:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:18Sean Fennessey?

  To say like, how much of you, I think I asked him specifically, how much of you is in Van Buren? Because Van Buren's incredibly charming.

• 1:15:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:15:23Sean Fennessey?

  And an autodidact and a bit of a weird guy.

• 1:15:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:15:26Sean Fennessey?

  I think Brady is incredibly charming and a bit of an autodidact and a little weird.

• 1:15:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:15:31Sean Fennessey?

  And I say that with affection, but, you know, to write a character like that, you gotta be able to channel it. So if you think of the movie in this more multifarious way where it's like, sure, he's Lazlo, absolutely. But is he also not Ersabet? Is he, when he is being the supplicant to his wife when she's directing her movie?

• 1:15:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not even talking about like who he is in the movie. The, like, the movie as like its belief in like an artist, you know? And like the artist is the holy person.

• 1:15:57Sean Fennessey?

  You don't, you don't love that. You don't, you don't love that. Never loved that since I've known you.

• 1:16:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and as I said, when we're talking about it, like for me, it's not the artist, it is the art. It is the final product. It is like, did you nail it? And then a fascinating thing about this movie is that like Laszlo did, but because of the budget of the film, like, you know, like they can't build it. We can't see it, you know?

• 1:16:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. A $20 million building, yeah.

• 1:16:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. So I, I think, I think it's that strain and that argument of the movie that keeps me from, that, that I disagree with, like in the text of the movie and that also like kind of holds me back of being like, well, but you know, it really, it turned. Like it just, it did.

• 1:16:40Sean Fennessey?

  Let me ask you a question that I've thought about a few times. Do you think a lot of the details of this kind of discussion will fall away and this film will go into the canon?

• 1:16:50Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a great question.

• 1:16:53Sean Fennessey?

  And does it matter if it wins Best Picture or not? If it loses Best Picture, is it more likely to go into the canon? Whatever that, however loosely you define that?

• 1:17:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, who's canon?

• 1:17:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, I can't totally answer that, but like-

• 1:17:08Amanda Dobbins?

  That like, it's like our canon or like KFI's, like top 100, you know?

• 1:17:13Sean Fennessey?

  Cut the intersection of both, you know, the way that we remember Chinatown, you know?

• 1:17:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:17:19Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not saying it's as good as Chinatown, but just the way we remember. Another movie that I would say has flaws. Perfect script, great performances, has flaws, in my opinion.

• 1:17:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I, listen, I didn't, I, I know that you're just preemptively yelling at people on the internet who want to-

• 1:17:32Sean Fennessey?

  I know, I gotta stop doing that.

• 1:17:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but that's fine. You're always allowed to find flaws in things on my watch.

• 1:17:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's been so easy for us to say The Social Network, masterpiece, because it lost Best Picture to the King's Speech and so not only is it a, the synthesis of all these things we love, it's also weirdly an underdog now, relative to the way that movie history is codified by awards.

• 1:17:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so, though I think the, the thing that has made The Social Network- Great is that, I mean, it's less that it lost Best Picture and more that Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook continue to be Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.

• 1:18:06Sean Fennessey?

  That has helped.

• 1:18:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Um.

• 1:18:08Sean Fennessey?

  That has helped. I think it's both. But anyway, what do you, like, ultimately, what do you think?

• 1:18:11Amanda Dobbins?

  It is a long movie that's hard to see in the intended format.

• 1:18:16Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:17Amanda Dobbins?

  And I, I think that it might just not, I don't, even if it wins Best Picture, I don't think it will be seen as widely as many of the other movies that you just mentioned.

• 1:18:26Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, so, I don't know, like, in a film nerd canon, I think it's probably, like, in, you know, in the, in the new film nerd canon, it's probably already there. I-

• 1:18:39Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's the thing is-

• 1:18:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:41Sean Fennessey?

  We think canons are made by the old, but they're really made by the young.

• 1:18:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:18:44Sean Fennessey?

  And young people, by and large, that I've heard from-

• 1:18:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:18:47Sean Fennessey?

  -love this movie. In part because it's the first movie of its kind that they've gotten since they've been alive, since they've been interested in movies. Because movies like this don't come around very often. They can also acknowledge that it has flaws, they're not saying it's perfect.

• 1:18:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:59Sean Fennessey?

  But, you know, I just hear from a lot of listeners of the show who are under 25, under 30, and they're like, brutal boys, let's go, assemble, let's do this, you know? And God bless them, they care about movies and they want to see something-

• 1:19:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:10Sean Fennessey?

  They want to see somebody try to make something great. And so because of that, I think, I mean, we watched this, this year specifically with Interstellar. Interstellar having a 10-year anniversary, getting re-released, doing great business at the movie theater with the re-release.

• 1:19:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:19:23Sean Fennessey?

  You know, that's a movie that you and I, we were like, a little older when it came out, and a little more skeptical of, but if you were 18 when it came out, or 10, or even 25-

• 1:19:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen.

• 1:19:34Sean Fennessey?

  You'd have a totally different relationship to it. And so, my gut is that it will be.

• 1:19:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so, too.

• 1:19:41Sean Fennessey?

  Especially if it loses to Emilio Perez.

• 1:19:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, we have to talk about Nosferatu, but, but then we'll come back to whether it's gonna lose to Emilio Perez.

• 1:19:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:19:51Speaker 06

  Can I quickly, can I quickly add something about what I think the movie is doing? And like, we're focusing a lot on the artist patron dynamic because of the format of it being cinema. And like, we know, and Brady's talking about that a lot. So that is like unavoidable to characterize the discussion. But I also think like part of it, him and Mona, like the script itself, just texturally speaking, like they're interested in that being the lens with which this just unravels what America is. Like you guys didn't even talk about a lot of like the B-roll that they were using about Pennsylvania. Like Pennsylvania is America. It's like urban, it's suburban, it's agricultural. It is the state that I think the lore around it most accurately represents what like the American

• 1:20:31Speaker 06

  dream would to be sold to an immigrant coming, particularly who was in the like escaping the Holocaust in Buchenwald, like one of the camps that America did liberate eventually. And so like, I do think that a lot of the stuff that we're talking about, like Laszlo has to kind of be a cipher. And I, I agree with you, Amanda, that I actually was hoping to like occupy his mind a little more by the end of the movie. But I also think that that's kind of the point, like what he says early on in the movie, like the materials are supposed to show themselves. Like that is the philosophy behind brutalism. Like cement is great. I don't care if you can see it. It is, it is great for building buildings. And Laszlo actually says that. And so I think he ends up being a little bit kind of like a mirror for America, who

• 1:21:15Speaker 06

  like Van Buren is just America rolled into one character. He's all of the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in between. The repression especially because the relationship with his mom, it's sort of implied there's something sexually repressive going on in that. And I think that like, we get caught up in this dynamic because it's like, okay, this is a movie and we can kind of think about the fact that there's an artist being represented in the movie as like a meta textual version of the movie itself. But also like, I think that they were swinging at something so huge and that's what I really loved about it. And that's what Sean, what you're alluding to is like, we don't get a lot of movies that are actually trying to like take down the totality of what America is. And that first lasting image of, of the Statue of Liberty, I do think that that is sort of setting the expectation, like I'm going to flip America on its head by the end of this movie.

• 1:21:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think you're, I think you're, it's a totally accurate and insightful reading. I think if you're ungenerous to the movie, and you think that the artist is self-interested primarily in the creation of the movie, that the idea of America and American capitalism as this like all-consuming and destroying force is used in the same way that the Holocaust and Jewish identity is used, which is as a vector for a personal feeling. And if you are ungenerous, that's what you would say.

• 1:22:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Form follows function.

• 1:22:29Sean Fennessey?

  Um, it certainly does. And, you know, Enora, a much smaller movie in scale in some ways, is about the same thing that you're describing. It's about the relationship between labor and wealth. It's about the relationship between sex and power. They're the same movie in so many ways. And there is like these transgressions against this character that we love, who is an innocent and perfect, but also flawed. And how flawed and are they flawed enough? I don't know. We can debate that. But that mode of a story, I will slightly disagree with you that that idea comes across a lot in independent cinema. The idea that we are being crushed by the system that we are forced to live under is quite common. The way that it's communicated in this movie is not common.

• 1:23:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's hard to do and complicated, and it's also being suffused with all these other ideas that we're talking about about integrating into the American idea. I do, I totally agree with you about all the archival and the using Pennsylvania. And I think I rattled off the list of famous Pennsylvanians to Adam when we did the podcast. And it's just like the perfect snapshot of how great and terrible America is simultaneously. Again, though, like, the movie stands up to all this. Like, it's, it is, it is a useful magnifying glass for everything that we've said. What a, what a joy. What a great thing to happen for movies, that we can have movies like this. And it's not easy to pull it off. You know, I think there's also some like legitimate conversation to be had about the

• 1:23:57Sean Fennessey?

  $10 million budget and that only being accomplished because nobody got paid on the movie, which is like, it sounds like a really noble thing until you start thinking about everybody who is not Adrian Brody and Guy Pearce who didn't get paid on the movie. And I have some questions about that.

• 1:24:10Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and also, given the text of the movie.

• 1:24:12Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly.

• 1:24:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Who makes money off of, of, of art?

• 1:24:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And you could say, what was the, the long-range idea that if you make this movie great enough, that it will draw attention to how valuable these movies are and then people will get paid more on the next movie? But that's an insidious thing that is in the world, the arc of art, too. Like-

• 1:24:27Speaker 06

  Is there any ethical way to build anything in America at all? Or to do anything under capitalism or under the dream that we're being sold? And I think the answer is probably no.

• 1:24:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the answer is no. I, I think I'm a little bit less intoxicated with that specific idea. Cause I'm like, I made up my mind on that idea.

• 1:24:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Same.

• 1:24:43Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like I, I'm just like, it's bad. It's not going to get better. It certainly wasn't any good in 1947. And so it's, maybe it's a little less chewy to me personally, even though I think you're a hundred percent right in seeing it that way.

• 1:24:59Speaker 06

  And I mean, I think that there's some like self-examination going on with that too. Because Brody is Ameri- Brady is American.

• 1:25:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:05Speaker 06

  You know what I mean? Like, there is some sort of like inner repression of what it means to also have come up in this and lived in this that is being explored too, I think. Your, your point about him being parts of both characters or split between all the different characters, I think is a valid one. And I think sometimes can explain why maybe parts of Laszlo feel a little flat. Because like, you know, the part of yourself that you think of as the artist, it might be that one. That's just one dimension of you.

• 1:25:31Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm. How much of Laszlo is Mona? I don't know.

• 1:25:34Amanda Dobbins?

  European.

• 1:25:36Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely true. They got that in common. Very good movie. I'm glad that you did not come in here and just like piss on it and say, what a stupid asshole who made this.

• 1:25:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not, I just, I mean, listen, I know good content and I also am a smart person with a brain.

• 1:25:55Sean Fennessey?

  And I never accused you of being otherwise. Nosferatu.

• 1:26:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:01Sean Fennessey?

  I'm very, I'm very proud of you for going to see this film in the cinema.

• 1:26:05Amanda Dobbins?

  So I.

• 1:26:06Sean Fennessey?

  Kind of the inverse of the conversation we just had.

• 1:26:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I tried to get you to take this off the episode. Like that was, that was my, and not, and then.

• 1:26:14Sean Fennessey?

  I just want to hear you talk about it.

• 1:26:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I mean, well, I mean, here we go. So I, I did listen to your conversation with Chris and Rob. Rob, my mortal enemy, who's also a wonderful big picture guest. I like, great, every single time. I, I love you and hate you, Rob. And, and, and I think I netted out where all of you and, and you Bobby all netted out, which is like, you know, incredible to look at. It is very hard to make a movie that's specific and detailed and beautiful. And. There, but it is, it is craft. It's almost, it's an exercise rather than like an emotional connection.

• 1:27:00Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, you guys like vampires.

• 1:27:03Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:04Amanda Dobbins?

  So not even you like, I mean, you do like them, but it hold, they hold your attention.

• 1:27:09Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Whereas I, I was listening to another episode you did recently. I was listening to the, you and Chris half of Dumbuary.

• 1:27:15Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:27:16Amanda Dobbins?

  And, um, Chris tried to engage you, Sean, in a conversation about Chris Abbott's like Car Hertz and his wardrobe evolution and the film Wolfman.

• 1:27:25Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:25Amanda Dobbins?

  And you just like, you just like straight up liked him. You were like, I like, I don't care about that. That's like, not interesting to me in a movie. That is interesting to me, but like vampires and rats, like at some point you just like straight can't hold my attention.

• 1:27:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And at some point that is what happened to me with Nosferatu. I wasn't even scared. Sometimes it was like, wow, look at that camera going up that staircase. That's very beautiful. And look at, you know, Lily Rose Depp with her tongue and her cheekbones. I thought a lot about her cheekbones and they are Johnny Depp's cheekbones, which is a little unfortunate, but she wears them well. So, but that is like where my mind was going because there was, I, I did not really feel an emotional core.

• 1:28:07Sean Fennessey?

  You're thinking the technical exercise aspect of it.

• 1:28:09Amanda Dobbins?

  At the, at the center of the film.

• 1:28:11Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Bob, you, in the notes you, you shared, I think a word that is useful in talking about it, how did you describe it?

• 1:28:19Speaker 06

  Airtight. It is so considered. And I think that this is Robert Eggers's style of filmmaking. And I think clearly a lot of people respond to it. And it's undeniable how amazing the craft is and how amazing it looked and how there's like maybe three people that can pull it off in this way. But I think it loses what I think the three of us love about a lot of movies, which is like that little piece of magic that you're not really sure what's going to come next.

• 1:28:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, the other word you used, Bobby, is sterile, which I thought was also very accurate. And I think kind of speaks to why I just, I couldn't stay focused.

• 1:28:55Sean Fennessey?

  I got pretty involved in the second half in the Lily Rose Depp performance, which I don't know if I

• 1:29:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Is wonderful.

• 1:29:01Sean Fennessey?

  Did enough of a good job talking about. That's the one thing that kind of moved beyond. I guess the sort of schematic aspect of the movie, because it is a remake. We do know the story, even if you've not seen the Murnau film, like you get the idea, you know? And so it's not that surprising. I think getting interested in her, not just the convulsions, but feeling like a little bit more connected to that character and understanding how she was feeling and the way that she sacrifices herself. And then that final sequence, which is so amazing and so painterly. But for like long stretches of the movie, I felt similarly. I felt like it's elegant and certainly considered. And I have had people explain it to me this way. I don't know what you dreamt of when you were nine, that was like your ambition.

• 1:29:46Sean Fennessey?

  But this is what this filmmaker dreamt of. He dreamt of being able to make his Nosferatu. This was the thing that drew him to art and theater and film. And sometimes the thing that is like your first thing, you don't, maybe you shouldn't realize it. You know, maybe, maybe it's not, it's hard to break form from where you were when you were that young and you were thinking about it. I don't know if that's true for him or not. And the truth is, is that the public doesn't care because this movie is huge. Like I'm, I'm personally stunned as a, as a long, long time Eggers fan, who is in fully since The Witch. I'm in my wildest dreams would I have guessed that this is like a $200 million movie or $250 million movie.

• 1:30:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I, you know, I do think people like vampires. And if you just want to go see some weird shit beautifully rendered on a, on a screen, which, which a lot of people do, and also like, I'm not knocking that, that's, that's great. And it is really well done. It just does not hold my personal attention.

• 1:30:45Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's legit. I think that's totally fair.

• 1:30:47Speaker 06

  I actually think that like, I'm really glad that I did go see it though, because of what you're talking about. The Lily Rose Depp performance is like, that's genuinely electrifying stuff. And I think that that kind of is like the exception that proves the rest of the movie for me.

• 1:31:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Because when it's not- A 10 minute reel could have communicated it to me, but that's okay.

• 1:31:03Speaker 06

  Well, you saw the Zoom audition that was going around.

• 1:31:07Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:31:08Speaker 06

  When she, you didn't see this? This was going around on the internet for the last couple of weeks of, of her Zoom audition for the part. Because I guess they were maybe casting it during COVID potentially, but it, it was pretty authentic to the original audition. What actually made it into the movie.

• 1:31:25Sean Fennessey?

  Should we power rank some movies?

• 1:31:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's do it.

• 1:31:28Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, let's, let's bring Joanna Robinson in.

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• 1:32:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Joanna Robinson is here. We're gonna power rank some of these best picture contenders, but Jo, we haven't spoken since the Academy Award nominations come out. Give us your gloss. What'd you think? Any surprises?

• 1:33:08Speaker 08

  Give us your gladiator too.

• 1:33:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:10Speaker 08

  You know?

• 1:33:11Sean Fennessey?

  Thumbs up, thumbs down?

• 1:33:13Speaker 08

  Um, in general, pretty thumbs up, I think.

• 1:33:17Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty good.

• 1:33:17Speaker 08

  Um, yeah, pretty good. I would say the big headline stories for me are Nosferatu overperforming. Made me really, really happy personally. Love Nosferatu. Um, and I don't know, Sebastian Stan being in the mix is really exciting for me. I think the director lineup is really, really interesting. All first time director nominations, which is really, really fun. Um, and then my guy, like my guys Coleman Domingo and Yur Borisov being in here, which like was not a sure, sure thing, was a probably thing, but not 100%. That throw me to my core.

• 1:33:56Sean Fennessey?

  So you got a lot of what you wanted.

• 1:33:58Speaker 08

  I did.

• 1:33:58Sean Fennessey?

  Anything you didn't get that you wanted?

• 1:34:01Speaker 08

  Anything I didn't get that I wanted, um, you know, I usually, when the snubs happen, I usually sort of feel the sting and then put it in a box away because we have other work to do, which is-

• 1:34:14Sean Fennessey?

  That's very healthy. I don't do that.

• 1:34:16Speaker 08

  Figure out how, uh, how to go forward from there. Um, I don't know. I don't, there's nothing I'm dwelling on.

• 1:34:23Amanda Dobbins?

  You wanted Sing Sing in Best Picture.

• 1:34:25Speaker 08

  I did want Sing Sing. I did want Sing Sing in Best Picture.

• 1:34:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:28Speaker 08

  I guess I, I guess I like ramped down my expectations to the point where I was like Coleman getting in is my win, uh, at this point. So, uh, I took that win. I guess, yeah, Marion, Marion Jean-Baptiste in Best Actress.

• 1:34:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Amen.

• 1:34:41Speaker 08

  I think, yeah.

• 1:34:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I tried to move that conversation up to this episode because that's how much I want to talk about it, but, uh-

• 1:34:47Sean Fennessey?

  We just finished a long disquisition on the brutalist and the brutal movement.

• 1:34:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:52Sean Fennessey?

  Um, so there was not enough room for hard truths.

• 1:34:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Amanda weighs in.

• 1:34:56Sean Fennessey?

  Gavel bang.

• 1:34:57Speaker 08

  Can't wait.

• 1:34:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Why don't I have a gavel?

• 1:35:00Sean Fennessey?

  I know. You have enough noise makers for the show.

• 1:35:02Speaker 08

  Can you, um, can you bang the massive water bottle on the table? Does that work? Okay.

• 1:35:09Sean Fennessey?

  This is gonna end up with coffee in my lap every time we do this.

• 1:35:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I saw a, a friend of ours recently, uh, Tim Simons, and I brought the water bottle and he was like, oh, the water bottle.

• 1:35:17Sean Fennessey?

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:35:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:19Sean Fennessey?

  It has a life of its own.

• 1:35:20Speaker 08

  The famed water bottle.

• 1:35:21Sean Fennessey?

  Somehow Chris was ejected from third chair in favor of the water bottle. Um, what about you? Anything like two weeks later that jumps out at you that you've had some time to think on that feels right or wrong, or that you're interested in in terms of the races?

• 1:35:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I, mostly just that I, I don't know what's gonna happen. And so we're gonna do power rankings and I feel pretty sure about like I can block them, you know? Like I know what's in the 10 to 8.

• 1:35:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:35:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I know what's in the middle. I know what my front runners are.

• 1:35:50Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm. The tiers.

• 1:35:51Amanda Dobbins?

  But I don't, I, I really don't know. I, and I, and like you, I find that like deeply frustrating and scary. Um, I, I'd like to know things. I'd like to be right.

• 1:36:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:04Speaker 08

  That isn't exciting. You guys aren't excited by the mystery of it?

• 1:36:07Sean Fennessey?

  I am.

• 1:36:07Speaker 08

  What if we knew, what if we knew every single category was locked down at this point? It would be so boring.

• 1:36:12Sean Fennessey?

  I, I agree. I think throughout this season, I have pretended to be intrigued by that while also having some anxiety about not being right. But now that I know that no one is going to be right, really, because this is so hard to predict, and there's still a handful of very important precursors that will probably reveal a lot more to us and we can talk about that. I feel comfortable and excited to not know because I'm not putting any money on this and I never do. My predictions are my predictions. My track record over the years speaks for itself. I'm pretty good at this. If I suck this year, great. Who cares? What's the difference? You know? Maybe this is just about accepting middle life, you know, middle age.

• 1:36:49Amanda Dobbins?

  That's beautiful.

• 1:36:50Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I gotta be content with the limitations.

• 1:36:52Speaker 08

  That sounds deeply untrue. Given your reaction, given your action to being on House of R and like crushing us in our hype draft on our podcast. That sounds deeply untrue to me, Sean, but I like the, uh, I like the fiction you've created for yourself.

• 1:37:05Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I also don't feel in competition with Amanda anymore, you know? I have more empathy for Amanda than I've ever had. And so some of this was rooted in, you know, but it's like, honestly, Amanda has two kids and I'm like, good luck to you, my friend. Like, I don't know what you're doing. That sounds tough.

• 1:37:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Meanwhile, I did think about what your punishment should be if, if I do somehow win the Oscar bet.

• 1:37:28Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:37:29Amanda Dobbins?

  At this, this happened because I ordered some new three pound weights. And so I think that you should have to do a video podcast, holding them out for as long as you possibly can.

• 1:37:39Sean Fennessey?

  Deal.

• 1:37:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I also ordered some one pound weights. I, we can, you know, Patreon can be like my, my new 2025 workout routine that I was doing with Bobby earlier. But you could also do the one pound if you want to try.

• 1:37:51Sean Fennessey?

  And I don't want to do any of them, but I'll do it if I lose.

• 1:37:55Speaker 08

  Amanda, do you ever in a pinch just hold the water bottle out, uh, if you can't access your hand weights?

• 1:38:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, I've done that before, or like a can of like beans or something.

• 1:38:04Speaker 08

  Sure, sure.

• 1:38:05Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I am not the most coordinated person and I'm trying my best every day to be healthier and, you know, do my weight training, like all the doctors told me, the instant I turned 40.

• 1:38:16Sean Fennessey?

  Do you want to talk about what you just had for lunch?

• 1:38:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh yeah, well, that's, that's not my fault. That's just, that's the location. I had a fun size peanut M and M and a cheese stick. So, so, you know.

• 1:38:29Speaker 08

  I, you know, pro, protein. I'm hearing protein.

• 1:38:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, in both.

• 1:38:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, caloric content, certainly.

• 1:38:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Anyway, I get nervous that I'll like drop the water bottle. Do you know?

• 1:38:38Speaker 08

  That's fair.

• 1:38:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Or the, or the can.

• 1:38:40Sean Fennessey?

  Joanna, do you feel comfortable knowing the tears? Cause I'm not even totally sure I feel that comfortable.

• 1:38:46Speaker 08

  I know the bottom two, the top three, and then there's a messy middle.

• 1:38:50Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, the top three. So let me just throw one wrinkle, which has been pointed out by a few of the pundits out there that I think is kind of interesting, which is that there's a case to be made that this year is starting to look a little bit like 2002. 2002 was the year in which Chicago won Best Picture, but The Pianist, starring Adrian Brody, won Screenplay, Director, and Actor. Is it possible that we have a year that looks just like this in one of two directions? Could it be brutalist for Director, Actor, maybe even Original Screenplay? I don't think so, but maybe. And then either Emilia Perez or Wicked emerges as the winner?

• 1:39:34Speaker 08

  No.

• 1:39:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:37Speaker 08

  Sorry, yes, yes, and no, no, let me do.

• 1:39:40Sean Fennessey?

  When that happens, we will be running this back, Joanna, and playing it on the show.

• 1:39:44Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 1:39:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I was with you until and Wicked. How about that?

• 1:39:48Speaker 08

  Certainly not Wicked. That's what I was gonna say. Certainly not Wicked. Certainly not Wicked. Yeah.

• 1:39:52Sean Fennessey?

  Anne Thompson, Anne Thompson is the only pundit who, coming out of the nominations, who has been doing this a long time and knows a lot about the Academy, was like, this was a great nominations day for Wicked, even though they didn't get Screenplay.

• 1:40:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Tons of craft. It is everywhere. Yes.

• 1:40:08Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't totally see that. We didn't talk about it. We haven't texted about it. I don't know if Katie saw it that way, for example, like, but Anne, on a couple of different pods, pointed it out, and I was like, okay, I'm just gonna put it in the back of my mind.

• 1:40:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that is true, but I think every nomination in craft that Wicked got, Emilia Perez also got.

• 1:40:25Sean Fennessey?

  Very true.

• 1:40:26Speaker 08

  And we can't, I mean, also Dune is showing up all over the crafts as well, and we all probably have Dune at the bottom of our list, right? So like.

• 1:40:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I know that was hard for you to say out loud, Joe.

• 1:40:38Speaker 08

  It was, but I said it. And, you know, I believe in truth telling on this podcast. No, I just think that the Wicked conversation doesn't make any sense to me at this point, just at this point.

• 1:40:54Speaker 08

  But and also it's tough to compare this year to 2002 because there's so many things are different. Different voting body. And

• 1:41:02Sean Fennessey?

  Rank choice. We didn't have that back then.

• 1:41:04Speaker 08

  Right. We're going to talk about, you know, some of the controversies surrounding this particular year in campaigning, but Harvey Weinstein's shadow loomed so large over that Chicago win that it's really hard to replicate what happened there.

• 1:41:18Sean Fennessey?

  But that is a great segue to what's happening right now, which is that we are in the midst of one of the most fervent smear campaign seasons we've had in a long time.

• 1:41:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Speaking of smear campaigns, we've all been educated in the in the past weeks and months about how they work in 2024. I'm speaking, of course, of Baldoni and Blake Lively.

• 1:41:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:41:40Amanda Dobbins?

  So I I agree with you. I mean, like, people like people are like out there working and posting. And, you know, we have the Fernando Torres blackface scandal. We have Carla Sofia Gascon's old tweets.

• 1:41:56Sean Fennessey?

  Old tweets, yes.

• 1:41:57Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, which, again, I just like Netflix is sponsoring that film, like Delete the Tweets. But I have never understood that. And then at the start of the campaign is what I'm saying.

• 1:42:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's clear that some people who were not previously very famous get famous and don't remember things that they did five years ago. That clearly is what happened here.

• 1:42:15Speaker 08

  But I just don't understand if like if anyone in PR is repping you, why step one on the introduction to being in the spotlight isn't go delete all of your old tweets? Why is that not step one?

• 1:42:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's a fair point.

• 1:42:27Amanda Dobbins?

  The brutalist, of course, with the AI controversy, which keeps going. What else am I?

• 1:42:34Sean Fennessey?

  Nora, the lack of an intimacy coordinator. That was an early one in this stretch.

• 1:42:38Speaker 08

  Right. And then Amelia Perez was also under the AI umbrella.

• 1:42:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And then and then also the Amelia Perez. I don't I don't know whether you can count.

• 1:42:49Amanda Dobbins?

  This is not smear campaign, but there has been like a pretty organized just detraction of

• 1:42:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:42:55Amanda Dobbins?

  It's portrayal of both trans characters and Mexico.

• 1:42:59Speaker 08

  And Mexico, yeah.

• 1:43:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I think are legitimate complaints, but there's like a, there's like a short film that's being passed around. So that is like people doing the work.

• 1:43:09Speaker 08

  Guys, I watched it. Do you watch it?

• 1:43:11Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't seen it yet. Give us our, you give us the review of, of what is it called? Remind me what it's called.

• 1:43:15Speaker 08

  I don't even remember. I'm so sorry. I don't remember what it's called. Um, but maybe could look it up while I vamp and say that it was put together, uh, by a French, uh, creator and it is a musical, uh, sorry, it's, it's put together by a Mexican creator. It's about, it's a musical about the French experience through the eyes of the, this Mexican creator, uh, spoofing the fact that Amelia Perez purports to, uh, represent Mexico when it was created by a French person. And the opening dance routine, uh, where the music is, I mean, Amelia Perez has things going for it. I do not think this is the best, like catchiest musical, musical, shall we say?

• 1:43:58Amanda Dobbins?

  The songs are bad.

• 1:43:59Speaker 08

  The songs are bad. The opening musical number where, where the song is basically on par with, I think the quality of the songs in Amelia Perez, has people in striped shirts, berets, have, they have like, like little Ratatouille rats. It's like the mo, all the stereotypes that you can think of, of France. And it's, uh, you know, it's, the quality is janky, but the intention is kind of funny.

• 1:44:24Sean Fennessey?

  The name of the short film is Johann Sacre Bleu.

• 1:44:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. But so, so that is an important part of the campaign and everything that we just mentioned has been getting its airtime. People are, people are, are out here, but who is seeding these campaigns?

• 1:44:40Sean Fennessey?

  Qui bono? Who benefits?

• 1:44:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Is, well, it's, it's not just that. Well, that's what I would say. Is it because obviously Harvey Weinstein, um, in addition to many sexual crimes and assaults was the key of just like, I will take out all my competitors. Can we trace all of these to direct competitors? We can't, I mean, we can't officially.

• 1:45:04Sean Fennessey?

  I think that would be a little bit difficult to do.

• 1:45:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:45:06Speaker 08

  I think there's a, a mix. I think it's a mix.

• 1:45:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Or is it overzealous? Not overzealous. I mean, this is the way the internet works, but is it just, is it people on the internet?

• 1:45:16Sean Fennessey?

  It's stan culture colliding with strategy.

• 1:45:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 1:45:20Sean Fennessey?

  Those, I think it's both things happening at the same time. There's a, now there are literally online armies seeking out some of these materials while also there are, honestly, people in the business who do this. They design and execute campaigns. You know, the Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni version of it is very unseemly and very ugly and very public. This stuff is relatively more harmless because of the frivolous nature of awards, but some of the things that are on earth are pretty gnarly.

• 1:45:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:49Sean Fennessey?

  I would, the.

• 1:45:50Amanda Dobbins?

  It's ugly stuff.

• 1:45:51Sean Fennessey?

  It is very ugly stuff. Um, I'll tell you one movie that is completely unaffected and I'm not saying that it's responsible for anything, but it's fascinating how unaffected it is because it feels like the most old school nominee and that's a complete unknown.

• 1:46:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:46:02Sean Fennessey?

  Which got eight nominations, which was a little bit of an overperformance, including in many key categories. We just saw Timothy Chalamet, honestly, just smoked the fuck out of Saturday Night Live.

• 1:46:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, he's a star. We all know that.

• 1:46:13Sean Fennessey?

  That was just fabulous. As a Bob Dylan super fan, I salute you. Like the song choices, the oddity, obviously he's a multi-time SNL guest and is always very funny on the show, has a real knack for it. LaGuardia, high school kid that he is. Um, and that, the, that's the other lingering thing is like, we were doing the, could the second, the movie at number two win? And we were talking about Enora and now I'm like, well, what about a complete unknown in that movie?

• 1:46:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you for bringing this up because I, we did that podcast at 7:30 in the morning after the Oscar nominees were announced. And so I, I played the game wrong and there was one listener who reached out to me. I, I would say it was like, it wasn't mean, the correction. It was like neutral. I, I could have used a little more friendliness in, you know, our year.

• 1:46:57Sean Fennessey?

  On the internet?

• 1:46:57Amanda Dobbins?

  2025. You know, like it's still January somehow. Like help us out.

• 1:47:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:47:02Amanda Dobbins?

  But Sue.

• 1:47:04Sean Fennessey?

  For six more hours.

• 1:47:06Amanda Dobbins?

  No, there's another day.

• 1:47:08Sean Fennessey?

  Isn't there, is there, oh, there's 31 days.

• 1:47:10Amanda Dobbins?

  30 days have September, April, June and November. Yeah. That's, I mean, it just like, it keeps fucking going. So what is number two on the Dune ballot is the question. What is number two on the?

• 1:47:22Sean Fennessey?

  That's a perfect question for you.

• 1:47:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:24Speaker 08

  Oh, for for me?

• 1:47:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, if you're Dune 1.

• 1:47:28Speaker 08

  If I'm Dune 1, I might be substance 2, honestly.

• 1:47:30Sean Fennessey?

  Ooh.

• 1:47:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, interesting. Okay.

• 1:47:32Sean Fennessey?

  I could see that.

• 1:47:33Speaker 08

  You're a complete unknown 2, perhaps. But I think that, uh, the the problem with this mudslinging that we've just sort of recapped is like, yes, is it rising to the level of being reported in the trades? Yes, it's not just Brazilian stan armies, uh, you know, on Twitter, uh, you know, spamming things. This is being reported in Deadline and Variety, et cetera, et cetera. But is it really, really rising to the level of effect impacting, uh, Academy voters? That level of controversy? I don't think the AI controversy made an impact. And I'm not even sure this particular mudslinging. Perhaps, I mean, Carla's direct involvement in the Amelia Perez,

• 1:48:17Speaker 08

  I'm Still Here back and forth is certainly not doing her campaign any favors. But Netflix and Zoe are staying completely silent on this, I think, just to sort of keep their noses clean. So the question is, yes, it's nasty and it's and it's brutal, but it's but it's it all feels a little bit more surface than some of the sort of deep state Harvey moves that we used to see. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:48:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, those and those campaigns were more coordinated and seated. And they often had this, not just a veil of controversy around an individual associated with a movie, but about an ahistorical quality of the film.

• 1:48:54Speaker 08

  Exactly.

• 1:48:54Sean Fennessey?

  That was often the way that he would lean into these. And this has not quite pursued that same thing. Generally speaking, I don't know if any of the single shots have felled any campaign that had a chance to win at this point. The Carla Sofia Gascón story, which is extremely fresh in our minds. It just happened today as we're talking about it. Because she's so central and is the titular character in that movie, feels like the most it has pierced the armor of that movie.

• 1:49:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And when it won Best Musical or Comedy, she gave the emotional speech at the Golden Gate.

• 1:49:25Speaker 08

  I also, yeah, I also think that, um, that movie was the most vulnerable to being impacted by something like this.

• 1:49:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:34Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 1:49:34Speaker 08

  For a couple, like Netflix-based reasons. But also just like the run-up has felt so ephemeral and confusing to people.

• 1:49:42Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's all, it is a little virtue signaling signaling as a vote, I think. I think there is a camp of it who are like, we. espouse what we think this movie is about.

• 1:49:54Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:49:55Speaker 08

  Right. And of the like, Green Book variety of like, we think we're really doing something here.

• 1:50:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:50:01Speaker 08

  And perhaps we are not doing what we think we're doing here. Correct.

• 1:50:05Sean Fennessey?

  Does Conclave benefit from any of all this?

• 1:50:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so. I, I, I met a Conclave, like Stan in the wild. And I was like, oh, actually, I met two because my friend Molly's dad, really into Conclave.

• 1:50:17Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, exciting.

• 1:50:17Amanda Dobbins?

  So. He's not a voter.

• 1:50:20Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:50:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:21Sean Fennessey?

  Not a man of the cloth either.

• 1:50:22Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I don't think so.

• 1:50:24Speaker 08

  But he's, but he's just a guy, a guy who likes.

• 1:50:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:26Sean Fennessey?

  Just a Conclave guy.

• 1:50:27Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, so.

• 1:50:28Sean Fennessey?

  Conclave dad.

• 1:50:29Amanda Dobbins?

  But I, I, I feel like, and maybe we can go through, but like, as our 10, nine and eight, if you think about where their second and third vote would go, it might be to Conclave. It has a little bit, I mean, it is a crowd pleaser. So.

• 1:50:47Sean Fennessey?

  As a matter of course, let's recap where we left this off. So before you return, Joanna and I did this on December 20th.

• 1:50:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:50:56Sean Fennessey?

  And this is where we netted out well before the nominations were announced. At number 10, we had Nickel Boys. At number nine, we had A Real Pain. At eight, A Complete Unknown. At seven, Dune Part Two. At six, Sing Sing. At five, Emilio Perez. At four, The Brutalist. At three, Wicked. Two, Conclave. And one, Anora. It's been 40 days since then.

• 1:51:17Amanda Dobbins?

  And we have been in the desert.

• 1:51:18Sean Fennessey?

  Um.

• 1:51:21Sean Fennessey?

  We obviously missed on two titles here.

• 1:51:25Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:51:25Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Sing Sing did not make the cut and A Real Pain did not make the cut. I'm Still Here did, and what else am I forgetting that made the cut?

• 1:51:31Speaker 08

  Substance.

• 1:51:32Sean Fennessey?

  Substance, which, which Katie lobbied for back in November, and then we took off.

• 1:51:36Speaker 08

  I hope she feels, I hope she feels, I know she feels quite smug about it.

• 1:51:40Sean Fennessey?

  She was like, we, well before The Golden Globes, well before.

• 1:51:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. You were resistant to this for a long time. You finally did, you did predict it like the week before the nominations.

• 1:51:50Sean Fennessey?

  I did, but for all the reasons I talked about when we talked about it in August, which is just, there's literally no history of a movie like this getting into Best Picture. It's never happened in Oscar history. So it is, it is in that respect, a watershed moment. I think very exciting. It's, it's not my favorite movie of the year, but it was in my top 10.

• 1:52:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:08Sean Fennessey?

  So, um, I think. We aired there by not sticking to at least Katie's guns in that conversation, Joe, but that was a pleasant surprise. I'm still here. Did we even talk about it on December 20th?

• 1:52:19Speaker 08

  No, we talked, I think we talked about, we might have in a larger context talked about Fernanda. Like, we definitely talked about her, but I don't think we talked about the film at all. And both the substance and I'm still here, you know, feeds into something that Amanda's always reminding us of is just like, bear in mind the international vote, bear in mind the international vote, and bearing in mind the international vote, does that mean we need to take the Golden Globes more seriously than we've been taking it? Because it used to be Golden Globes is something of a precursor for one reason, but now is it a precursor for a different reason, which is this like block of international voters? I think we can all agree that the Demi narrative coming out of the Golden Globes helped push the substance into this,

• 1:53:01Speaker 08

  into this category and the Fernanda win also. So, you know, it's, it might be a little bit of a chicken and egg scenario, but I think it's, it's important to always listen to Amanda, I guess, as the, and Katie.

• 1:53:15Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe not, maybe not always.

• 1:53:15Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a big world, you know?

• 1:53:17Sean Fennessey?

  It is a big world. Well, I wanted to ask you both about this too, because that point that you're making, Joanna, is interesting and I'm, I'm not sure if this is just a coincidence or maybe a signal of how things are evolving within the Academy, but all five best actress nominees appearing in best picture nominated films almost never happens. In fact, it's usually a standout performance in a film that does not get the same level of plaudits, at least from the Academy. So,

• 1:53:42Speaker 08

  It was like the 1970s, the last time they had all?

• 1:53:44Sean Fennessey?

  Is that the last time that was the case?

• 1:53:45Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:46Sean Fennessey?

  So that's cra- I mean, 55 years is a long stretch. So anyway,

• 1:53:52Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not sure what that says, but one thing that is notable about that Golden Globe split is that Fernanda is, was the only person who's nominated now in this category competing in drama and all four of the other nominees were all competing in comedy or musical. So it's a little hard to even know how strong Fernanda Torres is, except the movie got into Best Picture.

• 1:54:09Speaker 08

  Right, yeah.

• 1:54:10Sean Fennessey?

  Which is still very surprising to me.

• 1:54:13Speaker 08

  But it got into Best Picture and I think we should celebrate it being here, but I think because it was not nominated for screenplay, editing or directing, it belongs at the bottom of our list.

• 1:54:24Sean Fennessey?

  You think it's 10? You think it's 10?

• 1:54:25Speaker 08

  Yeah. It's either that or Dune. I'm happy.

• 1:54:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I think it's Dune because

• 1:54:29Speaker 08

  We put Dune at the bottom.

• 1:54:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Because I do not underestimate the Brazilians.

• 1:54:33Speaker 08

  Dune also did not get directing screenplay or editing.

• 1:54:37Sean Fennessey?

  Are you sure Nickel Boys isn't in 10th, guys?

• 1:54:40Amanda Dobbins?

  But I think the fact that Nickel Boys made it in and did get screenplay.

• 1:54:43Speaker 08

  It got screenplay.

• 1:54:44Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like there is awareness and movement of it. Like, it's inclusion, to me, signifies something.

• 1:54:52Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know how it gets in. I guess it got in screenplay because that category isn't that strong this year. It should have been in cinematography. That's the thing. I don't understand that.

• 1:54:57Speaker 08

  But also, Ramel getting sort of snubbed in directing was, you know, a big, a lot of people were really bummed and surprised by that.

• 1:55:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, they wanted that.

• 1:55:06Speaker 08

  Whereas I, and I feel less so the case with my love, Denis. You know, like, I feel like I was disappointed that Denis wasn't in there, but I think more people really wanted Ramel Ross in there.

• 1:55:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:55:17Speaker 08

  And then they wanted Denis in there, so.

• 1:55:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Respectfully, the writing was on the wall for Denis pretty early.

• 1:55:23Sean Fennessey?

  It's a damn shame. Okay, so I like to just roll with you guys. You guys can help me guide this. So you think I'm still here at 10 and Dune at 9, or not? Dune at 9? I would Dune at 10.

• 1:55:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Either way. I think Dune at 10.

• 1:55:32Speaker 08

  They're not in 10.

• 1:55:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And I'm still here at 9.

• 1:55:35Sean Fennessey?

  Do you like Dune Part 2? You do. You do.

• 1:55:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I had a, I had a very nice time. We all saw it together. Van yelled, like, oh damn, when, that was, that's a great time. The guys, they float.

• 1:55:45Sean Fennessey?

  If you were in Paul Atreides' shoes, would you choose Zendaya or Florence Pugh?

• 1:55:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, wow. Um, well, I kind of forgot what his shoes are. So he, there were like a lot of prophecies that he's gonna, like, what?

• 1:56:01Speaker 08

  Florence Pugh, hot princess, political marriage.

• 1:56:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:56:04Speaker 08

  Zendaya, marry for love, marry for, you know, the people.

• 1:56:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, but it's, but doesn't he also know he's gonna like?

• 1:56:15Sean Fennessey?

  Don't spoil anything.

• 1:56:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, I, I stopped. Okay? Don't, what did I tell you?

• 1:56:19Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't read Dune Messiah, unlike you.

• 1:56:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I will block you.

• 1:56:22Sean Fennessey?

  Block me from what? Sitting beside you on a bi-weekly basis for the next 25 years?

• 1:56:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I just thought he kind of knows that he, like, has to pick Florence Pugh. So it's more about, like, survival versus...

• 1:56:36Sean Fennessey?

  That doesn't answer the question of what you would do.

• 1:56:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, well, I would be Rebecca Ferguson, so.

• 1:56:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I've been planning this all along. It's that, listen, it's a mother of a son. Both of those movies have come out when I was pregnant and I have really, really.

• 1:56:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:54Speaker 08

  Okay, but my follow up question is this, do you feel like you're gonna be able to sit there and podcast on a biweekly basis wearing like 20 tablecloths at any given moment?

• 1:57:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, at this point in my quote unquote YouTube career, I would welcome having a uniform, you know?

• 1:57:09Speaker 08

  Okay, alright.

• 1:57:11Sean Fennessey?

  We love a YouTube career here at The Ringer, don't we?

• 1:57:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, 40 years old.

• 1:57:15Speaker 08

  We love to swathe ourselves in tablecloths in order to podcast.

• 1:57:20Sean Fennessey?

  Chris was onto something with all that layering. He's just hiding, you know? At a certain point, he's just gonna be all blanket. Um, okay. Joanna, if we go Dune Part Two at 10, I'm Still Here at 9, what do you say is the last in the eight, nine, 10?

• 1:57:33Speaker 08

  Nickel Boys.

• 1:57:35Sean Fennessey?

  Nickel Boys. And you agree?

• 1:57:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I think that's right.

• 1:57:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Nickel Boys. Okay, seven films left. Many people say there are six films that could win. How many films do you think can win?

• 1:57:45Amanda Dobbins?

  One, two, three, four, five.

• 1:57:50Sean Fennessey?

  You agree with that, Joanna?

• 1:57:51Speaker 08

  Four.

• 1:57:51Sean Fennessey?

  You think four? Okay, so then what's at seven, six, and five?

• 1:57:57Sean Fennessey?

  Or rather, seven and six for the, just for the sake of this conversation?

• 1:58:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess, um, seven is, I would say Wicked. What would you say?

• 1:58:05Speaker 08

  Sure. Yeah. It's only got editing.

• 1:58:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:09Speaker 08

  It doesn't have director's screenplay.

• 1:58:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so the people who are voting for Wicked first.

• 1:58:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I, I don't think that there are enough of them. So that's really all that matters. I was trying to play it out with number two. But I guess like, no one who's voting for Dune is gonna put Wicked at number two.

• 1:58:29Sean Fennessey?

  I could be wrong about this, but I think I read that the last time a film did not have nominations for directing or writing and went on to win Best Picture was Grand Hotel in 1930.

• 1:58:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:58:39Sean Fennessey?

  So that puts Wicked in a very difficult position.

• 1:58:43Speaker 08

  That's why it's at the bottom.

• 1:58:44Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so Wicked is seven. Uh, number six.

• 1:58:49Speaker 08

  Substance.

• 1:58:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I agree.

• 1:58:51Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think the Substance is that strong? I guess it does have a lot of nominations.

• 1:58:56Amanda Dobbins?

  When I said I think that five movies could win, then in the back of my head, I was like, actually, like, then watch The Substance win and me be totally wrong. I do think that The Substance could be six. I don't think it's gonna win either.

• 1:59:09Sean Fennessey?

  Fucking crazy.

• 1:59:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think it's gonna win either, but listen, like, nothing is rational anymore.

• 1:59:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's too divisive.

• 1:59:14Speaker 08

  I don't think it's as wide of a field as we're worried it is. I think it's a much more narrow field. But, yeah, I would put The Substance.

• 1:59:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I also think it's at six, but...

• 1:59:23Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so what are your five that you think can win are what's here now? So Joanna, if you think it's only four, then what goes into the five spot?

• 1:59:32Speaker 08

  Uh, complete unknown.

• 1:59:35Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, man, I'm not convinced.

• 1:59:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:37Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not convinced.

• 1:59:37Speaker 08

  I don't think Conclave... I don't think Conclave is... I think the director snubbed for Conclave, and the fact that Stanley Tucci didn't get nominated, like, there's a lot of things that just sort of make it look like... Like, Conclave is likely, is like, a favorite to win in screenplay, right? Like, I think it's gonna get a screenplay win. Um, but it's just nominated for screenplay and editing. It's not not, like, the burger snub, it feels really pointed.

• 2:00:02Sean Fennessey?

  Right, so you're saying that Conclave is five?

• 2:00:06Speaker 08

  Yes, sorry.

• 2:00:07Sean Fennessey?

  I thought you were saying a complete unknown is five.

• 2:00:08Speaker 08

  Oh, no, I think you asked me that and I misspoke. Conclave is five for me. And then...

• 2:00:12Sean Fennessey?

  I think I agree with that. You don't agree with that?

• 2:00:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I, I think I do too. But lem, I'm just thinking through it.

• 2:00:21Sean Fennessey?

  Cause the director missed for Conclave, and Mangled getting in.

• 2:00:25Speaker 08

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:00:25Sean Fennessey?

  In addition to Mangled getting screenplay.

• 2:00:27Speaker 08

  Right, yeah.

• 2:00:28Sean Fennessey?

  And Barbaro and Norton. I don't know, I, that movie, you could talk me into the top three right now. You really could.

• 2:00:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Over.

• 2:00:38Sean Fennessey?

  Over Enora.

• 2:00:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I kind of think it might be.

• 2:00:41Sean Fennessey?

  You don't think so?

• 2:00:42Speaker 08

  I don't think so.

• 2:00:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I.

• 2:00:44Speaker 08

  Just because, okay, I've, I.

• 2:00:47Sean Fennessey?

  It is very old Academy. It doesn't really look like a movie that would win Best Picture right now, based on what we've seen with, you know, Nomadland and Moonlight and movies that like, you know, everything everywhere all at once. Like A Complete Unknown is something very traditional. It's a good version of traditional, but it is.

• 2:01:05Speaker 08

  I mean, what's true about Enora, and I think it's worth noting, is that it has very little Below the Line support. So, you know, that's a tough beat for Enora, but I think it's silly to ignore directing, screenplay, and editing as these bellwether categories. And since Enora, Brutus, and Amelia Perez all have all three.

• 2:01:27Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:01:28Speaker 08

  I think it's silly to keep any of those out of the top three. But I'm happy to put Complete Unknown like.

• 2:01:35Amanda Dobbins?

  That's a persuasive argument.

• 2:01:35Sean Fennessey?

  It is. And I think a lot of people think that Sean Baker has a strong chance to win editing.

• 2:01:41Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 2:01:42Sean Fennessey?

  And he, he cuts all of his own movies.

• 2:01:43Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 2:01:44Sean Fennessey?

  So that, you know, editing has historically been a bellwether. I'm not as obsessed with that, that correlation as I was maybe three or four years ago. I think ranked choices kind of fucked with that a little bit, but.

• 2:01:55Speaker 08

  That's, that's true. It's just the only exception is something like Birdman, where they mistakenly thought there wasn't any editing in that.

• 2:02:01Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 2:02:02Speaker 08

  Heavily edited movie. But other than that, editing is like one of the strongest precursors for a Best Picture win, so.

• 2:02:10Amanda Dobbins?

  The thing I'm having trouble with, with A Complete Unknown, is like, I can't, I can't group it in terms of the ranked ballot. Like, I don't know what the other movies that a Complete Unknown stan is going for, and vice versa, you know, like.

• 2:02:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think.

• 2:02:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Is it number two on a Dune person's ballot? Is it number two on a Nickel Boys ballot? Like, I don't think so.

• 2:02:32Sean Fennessey?

  But I think Conclave, Wicked, Dune Part Two, these are Hollywood movies. They're big productions. They're, they're all about like a certain kind of classical craft. And so in my mind, I see those movies as all sort of grouped together.

• 2:02:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:02:44Sean Fennessey?

  And so you've got.

• 2:02:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess it could.

• 2:02:45Sean Fennessey?

  A producer who's been working in Hollywood for 40 years, who's a member of the Academy, who's a 62-year-old man.

• 2:02:50Amanda Dobbins?

  So I guess it could

• 2:02:51Sean Fennessey?

  Probably likes a complete unknown.

• 2:02:51Amanda Dobbins?

  It could be number two on a lot of Wicked ballots. I think I was grouping Wicked and Amelia Perez in my mind, but maybe.

• 2:02:59Sean Fennessey?

  I think they're different. I do think they're very different. And I think then there's also the Netflix factor too. And that, you know, that's a streamer movie and none of these other movies really are. Nickel Boys is Amazon, but I don't think it's seen that way because it had a theatrical release and yada, yada.

• 2:03:13Sean Fennessey?

  I, I'm, I'm willing to ride your editing point and say a complete unknown is four and a Nora is three. What do you think?

• 2:03:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm good with that too. I like, you know, the history teaches us.

• 2:03:26Speaker 08

  Look how high a complete unknown has come. Like that is.

• 2:03:29Sean Fennessey?

  Amazing.

• 2:03:29Speaker 08

  You know, amazing.

• 2:03:30Sean Fennessey?

  On our list in November.

• 2:03:32Speaker 08

  It's a part of it, I think, is like, you know, the, the strength of the traditional Oscar movie, the Bob Dylan fandom that's out there, Timmy doing a masterful job in the campaign and, uh, and, and all the rest. Mangle getting into directing is a bit surprising and unsettling for me, but I am, I liked complete unknown. It just doesn't feel like a very splashily directed movie. Do you know what I mean? But someone was pointing out to me, and I love this, that like mo, I think it's, how many of the directors? All of them are screenplay and directing or wrote and directed their films.

• 2:04:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, that's right. Which I don't think is great. And frankly, a lot of writers seem frustrated by because.

• 2:04:13Speaker 08

  I think it's fascinating.

• 2:04:14Sean Fennessey?

  Who was it? I think it was Michael Weber, the screenwriter, who pointed out on Blue Sky that the job of writing a movie for a director is so complicated. And that reaching a director's vision while also maintaining your own point of view and artistry is very different than a writer, director coming in, like, for example, Mangle was very open about talking about how he rewrote Jay Cox's script.

• 2:04:37Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 2:04:38Sean Fennessey?

  That was adapting the Elijah Wall book. He just said it. He just said it at a Q and A in front of press. He was like, I just took this, I read this script. I liked it, but I was like, I wouldn't do it this way. I'm going to do it a different way. Just his right, obviously as an artist, but then now he and Jay Cox share this nomination. Cause Jay Cox built the house and then James Mangle redesigned it.

• 2:04:57Sean Fennessey?

  As opposed to. Spike Jon- not Spike Jones, Charlie Kaufman writes a movie and then some filmmaker goes off and makes that movie. They're just different jobs. And so I thought that deline- I hadn't totally thought about that delineation in that way. And it made me wonder if we, if we're an increasingly tourist academy.

• 2:05:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 2:05:14Speaker 08

  Well, it's similar to, similar things are happening with the Emmys. There was like a run, you know, where like you would get wins for like Phoebe Waller Bridge or Donald Glover's. These, I'm sorry, like these like star slash creators of their own show. And that's, that's sort of a trend you see over on that side. And so I think it is an interesting, you know, do we award someone for being the most, the most nominated? You know, sort of thing. And I mean, obviously Amelia Perez hopes so, but you know, I just think that's a really interesting stat this year.

• 2:05:48Sean Fennessey?

  So we'll say a complete unknown is at four. A Nora is at three. A Nora, which got six nominations, all six that it needed to maintain some presence at the top of the heap. And then Amelia Perez and The Brutalist. Now they've both taken on controversies in the last couple of weeks.

• 2:06:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure have.

• 2:06:13Sean Fennessey?

  We've just had a long conversation about The Brutalist.

• 2:06:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, the thing about The Brutalist is that I, I still don't know how widely seen it is. And yes, it's on the Academy portal and everyone's job to watch it, but, but will they, you know?

• 2:06:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that's a, that's a real big if. I think it has the votes of most of the, the people who make a point of seeing it, certainly over Amelia Perez. It's just like, it's like a pure, it's a numbers thing.

• 2:06:46Sean Fennessey?

  I think there's a couple of what ifs or confirmations when the precursors come around.

• 2:06:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:53Sean Fennessey?

  For example, if The Brutalist wins the PGAs, I think it's over.

• 2:06:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think The Brutalist will win. If it doesn't, I don't think it means that it's over for The Brutalist.

• 2:07:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Agree.

• 2:07:05Sean Fennessey?

  I think any other movie could win. If a Nora wins PGA, which I don't think is going to happen, but if it does happen, then I'm really going to be thrown for a loop.

• 2:07:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:07:13Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm not, I'm going to think every race.

• 2:07:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Are you able to share who you voted for?

• 2:07:17Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, yeah, it's just my, if you look at my countdown list, it's the order of my, I always do the order of my list. Um, so the Brutus would be one, Nickel Boys would be two, et cetera, et cetera.

• 2:07:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:07:25Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I don't think BAFTA Best Picture figures in as much in this race because I think Conclave is gonna win.

• 2:07:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:35Sean Fennessey?

  But if it doesn't win, that could also signal something.

• 2:07:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:07:38Sean Fennessey?

  I think, I don't totally know what's gonna happen with SAG, but it could be wicked for SAG. And that could just end up being like the Hidden Figures win where it's just like, people like this movie. And it's a great ensemble, but it doesn't indicate Best Picture, or it does.

• 2:07:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Or it, that feels like another place where it could be Amelia Perez.

• 2:07:58Sean Fennessey?

  And if that happens, you'll see a lot of people start predicting Amelia Perez. So this is a kind of a, it is a fun set of precursors here that may or may not, what do you think, Joanna?

• 2:08:07Speaker 08

  I've been over complicating this and I'm trying to like simplify it in my own head as, like as often the case at this time in the campaign, we get spun out trying to. I think it's neck and neck between The Brutalist and Amelia Perez right now, uh, for a number of reasons. And I, I don't, I, earlier in the campaign, I was like, there's no way Amelia Perez is gonna make it as far to be a frontrunner in the Oscars. And I was wrong. And so I don't want to count it out when it has just won again and again and again. But we also have the history of the over-nominated but never-winning Netflix movie. And so if this goes down the power of the dog, Mank, Roma route, should we be surprised by that?

• 2:08:52Speaker 08

  We shouldn't be surprised by that. You know what I mean? Because we've seen it time again.

• 2:08:55Sean Fennessey?

  I'll have you know Mank won cinematography, Joanna, so how dare you? Eric Messerschnit, his, his Oscar lives on.

• 2:09:03Speaker 08

  But not to say no wins, but not to say just because it gets all the nominations means it's a done deal.

• 2:09:09Amanda Dobbins?

  The Irishman did not win an Oscar.

• 2:09:11Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, for 10.

• 2:09:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so.

• 2:09:12Speaker 08

  For right now, I'm putting the slight edge on The Brutalist.

• 2:09:17Speaker 08

  What do you think? But it's a slight edge.

• 2:09:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I'm where both of you are, where it seems pretty neck and neck.

• 2:09:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I do think, I think actually both movies appeal to an international voter because as we discussed, it is a very European view on America, by it, I mean, The Brutalist, even though it is made by an American. I do think there is just something to the undeniability of Amelia Perez. Like, you know, we should also point out that since you guys did the last list, we have a new president and he's not exactly been friendly to anything.

• 2:10:01Speaker 08

  Yeah. On the one hand, yes. On the one hand, yes, if we want to talk about the resistance Oscars, obviously, like, we can talk about that. But I also think The Brutalist, with its critique of what American industry does to artistry, you know, the, you know.

• 2:10:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:18Speaker 08

  Actually, I won't talk about specifics, but I'll just say that, like, you know. It's also an immigrant story.

• 2:10:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you can just say Carrera, and I think, like, we know. Yeah.

• 2:10:30Speaker 08

  But I think that, like, I think Amelia Perez is the more obvious sort of, you know, we're trying to stand for something vote, but I think The Brutalist is also there. And then The Brutalist also has the advantage of being in that Oppenheimer bucket, and we talked about this before on The Big Pick, of like, recognizing the great genius of a man and how that is like an important narrative that the Oscars really like over. I think it's the reason why you don't often see best actresses nominated for best picture nominees, because the stories about interesting women aren't necessarily what the Academy thinks is the best picture. And so I think when it comes down to it, if you're telling, if you're asking me, what

• 2:11:14Speaker 08

  do I think the Academy, even this new international body Academy, is going to vote for, I think it might be the story of the misunderstood, maligned male genius.

• 2:11:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I buy that. I think you're right. I do also think, looking at, like, Are 10 through 7 or 10 through 5? I think the brutalist will be higher on the ballots of most of those people than Emilia Perez will. And I think that's sort of the, that's ultimately the decider, right? Because it's what's, it's collecting votes in later rounds.

• 2:11:46Speaker 08

  The other thing to consider on the Netflix front to contradict myself is that as opposed to previous years when Netflix had like such a spread of nominations, they would often do well in the documentary or they would have, you know, like a second or third, you know, nomination.

• 2:12:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 2:12:02Speaker 08

  Floating around. Maria and the piano lesson are sort of out of the game. So they're not having to like focus their attention on running in like an Angelina Jolie Best Actress campaign or focus on the documentary category, which they usually focus on or anything like that. They have all of their resources to pour into this concerted Emilia Perez effort.

• 2:12:24Sean Fennessey?

  It's not as though they were light on resources in the past.

• 2:12:27Speaker 08

  Yeah. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying like if you're slightly split focused and then you're not split focused at all, then that's somewhat different.

• 2:12:35Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think this is the closest they got or was Roma closer? Or was Power of the Dog closer?

• 2:12:41Speaker 08

  Roma felt so close. Really, really close.

• 2:12:45Amanda Dobbins?

  And Roma also felt like people really, that was like the anti Netflix vote.

• 2:12:51Sean Fennessey?

  Sentiment.

• 2:12:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:52Sean Fennessey?

  Not the anti Quirrell sentiment.

• 2:12:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 2:12:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Um, I, I think it's, I, I still, there's a part of me that won't let myself believe that the brutalist will win because I, and while I respect what you're saying, and I think Oppenheimer obviously does look like an old version of the Academy celebrating a great man. Oppenheimer just had the Christopher Nolan, it's time thing going in such a heavy way. And it was a $980 million movie. Like, there's really never been anything like Oppenheimer, so.

• 2:13:21Speaker 08

  It had a lot of, it was, it's not the only reason it won.

• 2:13:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:24Speaker 08

  But I think it's like.

• 2:13:24Sean Fennessey?

  It was a factor.

• 2:13:25Speaker 08

  A factor.

• 2:13:26Sean Fennessey?

  But if you look at the three previous Best Picture winners before that, which really constitutes kind of the new Academy, I think most clearly, it's Everything Everywhere All at Once, Coda and Nomadland.

• 2:13:38Sean Fennessey?

  Which is like such a strange trio. All three female centered stories, smaller movies.

• 2:13:45Speaker 08

  I refuse to use the Nomadland COVID year as an indicator of anything. That was such.

• 2:13:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I do agree that that's an asterisk. But then the year before that is Parasite. So that which is also very unusual. But at least like, you know, we can hold our heads high on that one.

• 2:13:59Sean Fennessey?

  Right. So I don't, I mean, it's good because it's, I feel like it's helpful to use historical context as a prism through to look through the future, but it's not like it's not. Everything is different. 10 nominees now, 10,000 Academy members, ranked choice voting, more international body, yada, yada, yada, yada. Everything is different. So I wonder what this will tell us about it, if anything, or if it'll just be a randomized sequence of events, just like everything else in life.

• 2:14:27Speaker 08

  Do you want to, do you want to, out of superstition and in order to protect your own heart, put the brutalist second so that it gets to be like an underdog story?

• 2:14:35Sean Fennessey?

  No, because I'm not like rooting for it like a fan or something. I think.

• 2:14:40Speaker 08

  You don't have the Brazilian flag in your, in your blue sky bio?

• 2:14:44Sean Fennessey?

  No, because I mean, I, I think it's a pretty good collection of nominees. I think I would be extremely annoyed if Wicked won.

• 2:14:53Sean Fennessey?

  Emilia Perez, I don't think should win, and I don't love that movie at all. And I think Netflix winning at this exact time in entertainment history is complicated.

• 2:15:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:05Sean Fennessey?

  And I wouldn't feel good about it. Everything else on the list is a movie I either like or love.

• 2:15:11Sean Fennessey?

  And I can't say that in a lot of Oscar years. So it's not like, you know, if Anora wins, Anora is great.

• 2:15:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Big fan.

• 2:15:21Sean Fennessey?

  So.

• 2:15:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Number one movie of the year for me.

• 2:15:23Speaker 08

  If A Complete Unknown wins, I would be happy. Like I would be happy.

• 2:15:26Sean Fennessey?

  It wouldn't have been my choice, but I couldn't be like furious about that.

• 2:15:29Amanda Dobbins?

  It would be a little bit like Billy Crystal coming back to the Oscars, you know? I would, I would just, I would feel warm and cozy.

• 2:15:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:35Speaker 08

  I would feel great about that. I just, I, I. I don't want it to seem like I'm out here just banging the drum against Amelia Perez. I just think it would be a, I think it would be a bad win. And I think The Brutalist or, which isn't a movie I even like loved entirely, but I admire so much more than I admire Amelia Perez, or A Complete Unknown, or Enora, or even Conclave. Um, you know, I, I just think those would-

• 2:16:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Have a substance.

• 2:16:03Speaker 08

  They would, yeah.

• 2:16:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Keep going. We gotta get to number seven for me.

• 2:16:06Speaker 08

  Um, yeah. Um, so yeah, there's-

• 2:16:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I tell you that I finally, I, I met a real Amelia Perez fan in the wild?

• 2:16:17Sean Fennessey?

  No, tell them, tell us.

• 2:16:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, my father loved it.

• 2:16:21Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 2:16:22Amanda Dobbins?

  My dad, like in the middle of like my two children, like trying to eat the phone, was like, hey, I loved Amelia Perez. It's like a new opera. And my dad is like a, loves opera.

• 2:16:33Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:16:34Amanda Dobbins?

  And so I said, okay, you know, I can see that. I think that that is probably like the best, the structural, you know, idea defense that you can make of the movie. But then I said to him, okay, but the songs are really bad. And then his response to me, he was like, go back and listen to some Verdi and then give me a call. And I was like, sir, it is eight in the morning. Like, we're not gonna be throwing, throwing shots at Verdi. Um, but yeah, I guess that, that's one opera guy who does have a penchant for hot takes.

• 2:17:02Sean Fennessey?

  What was his take on its portrayal of trans identity in 2024?

• 2:17:07Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, we didn't get to that because my son was like, here's a truck.

• 2:17:12Speaker 08

  Um, I guess the question I have about all of this uh, big pick host is what's the best for movies? What's the best for the movies in terms of a win?

• 2:17:26Sean Fennessey?

  We, we talked about this a little bit with The Brutalist, that I think a movie like The Brutalist inspires something, hopefully in the future of movie fandom and movie making, that I think is very valuable. Um, but I think Sean Baker does the same thing. Sean Baker is an independent filmmaker who does not waver from his point of view. He works with a very small team. He never spends too much money. He's gone up, up, up, up, up quietly in his career. His movies are always interesting, even if you don't like them. And a win for someone like him is a good story and good for movies. A Complete Unknown is a little bit more of just a straight up industry story, where it's like a biopic of a famous person with the biggest young movie star in America and the steadiest hand in Hollywood, but it's not bad.

• 2:18:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, but I think what Joe is asking is like, what's good in terms of the Oscars? What's the best in terms of Oscars as like an ambassador, you know, ship for things that we love, which is like, the answer is none of these.

• 2:18:15Sean Fennessey?

  Nothing.

• 2:18:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:17Sean Fennessey?

  Do you disagree?

• 2:18:19Speaker 08

  What's, what would be the movie that would be the answer?

• 2:18:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Nothing. There's no, there's no good answer.

• 2:18:25Sean Fennessey?

  It wasn't that kind of a year. It wasn't, I really was not that kind of a year, I don't think. It doesn't feel like a year where when Titanic wins, you're like, this is it. This is what, this is-

• 2:18:37Amanda Dobbins?

  It wasn't a Barbenheimer year. We had it the year before.

• 2:18:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah. And I mean, there are a variety of reasons why that happened. It doesn't, I'm not, I don't think I'm, I'm not trying to criticize any particular movie by saying that, but I don't know if there is a movie that represents what this all could or should be like.

• 2:18:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, all of, almost all of these movies, if they win, I will get a text from like the non-movie friends in my life being like, what is that? Should I watch it? You know, which is just, and then the answer will probably be like, I don't want your angry texts after you do, so no.

• 2:19:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:19:07Speaker 08

  I mean, it depends. If it's, you know, it's a Nora, maybe, you know?

• 2:19:11Amanda Dobbins?

  That's not true. One of my friends, Katie, who is normally texts me being like, what is this? Did watch a Nora, loved it, and also wanted me to know that she recognized the strip club and thinks it's a very good strip club.

• 2:19:24Sean Fennessey?

  That's sick.

• 2:19:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And then was mad when I like, didn't give her enough credit for it. So Katie, here you go.

• 2:19:30Speaker 08

  If we're, if we're, if we're thinking about movies that would anger our non-movie friends if they watched it just because it won Best Picture.

• 2:19:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:37Speaker 08

  Amelia Perez, The Brutalist, and The Subs, no, no, The Subs is not popular.

• 2:19:43Sean Fennessey?

  Nickel Boys is there too, which is a movie I would love to see seriously in it, but is a movie that many common moviegoers are like, what the hell? Like, I don't know how to do this.

• 2:19:50Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's definitely number one and two. Like, these are the movies that would- Would irk people the most if they're just like sweeping in.

• 2:19:58Sean Fennessey?

  And I think to the Resistance Oscars question, if Amelia Perez wins, the Oscars are immediate. I don't think they want that because I think it's immediately going to be clarified as like woke Hollywood rewards movie that even woke people can agree on, which that could very well be the outcome.

• 2:20:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 2:20:15Speaker 08

  I also always, as we always should like to look for, and there's something I should have brought up with Substance earlier. Always look for a movie that can make Hollywood feel good about their own jobs, their own industry. And I think something like The Substance, which is about celebrity, which is about existing in Hollywood, is like something that's, that's a movie about being in movies to a certain degree.

• 2:20:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 2:20:40Speaker 08

  The brutalist, I think you could say is in that it's a, it's a movie about artistry and artistry struggling, like bumping up against cynical industry, um, I think could appeal to a lot of artists.

• 2:20:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but how many of the people voting, because it's not just directors and actors voting. It is producers and, um, you know, every single below the line category. How many of those people are watching and thinking, yes, I am Laszlo Toth? And how many of those people are watching and thinking, yeah, okay, you think you're Laszlo Toth, but I'm like dealing, I have to deal with your shit every day.

• 2:21:17Speaker 08

  I think the below the line people, I mean, I think that's a really, I always like to look at the movies that were nominated heavily below the line because of the below, below the line people who could say like, yeah, this represents our craft, what we do. And so I think The Brutalist does appeal, both Amelia Perez and The Brutalist appeal in that regard. Whereas Enora doesn't, so, yeah.

• 2:21:38Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I'm going to recap this list that we've put together.

• 2:21:42Speaker 08

  This mess?

• 2:21:43Sean Fennessey?

  This is our second to last power rankings before the Academy Awards.

• 2:21:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 2:21:48Sean Fennessey?

  We only have one more in February. Number 10, Dune Part Two. Number nine, I'm Still Here. Number eight, Nickel Boys. Number seven, Wicked. Number six, The Substance. Number five, Conclave. Number four, A Complete Unknown. Number three, Enora. Number two, Amelia Perez. And number one, The Brutalist. Is this the first time The Brutalist topped the charts? Think so.

• 2:22:10Speaker 08

  Yeah, we had, we had a Nora up there for so long.

• 2:22:13Sean Fennessey?

  We did. And I believe Brutus was four last time it's since been released. One other last point that I thought about is both a brutalist and a complete unknown undermine this story that had been happening over the last five years of the December release. Don't release your movie in December. It's too late.

• 2:22:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 2:22:28Sean Fennessey?

  And in these two cases, and they were different. One was a festival movie that came out in the fall. One was held all the way until late November before critics and academy members saw.

• 2:22:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Again, it's like, it's a strange year. That happened because there was sort of the vacuum and.

• 2:22:42Sean Fennessey?

  And he finished it in June.

• 2:22:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 2:22:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 2:22:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And, but also, a Nora won the Palm. And everyone was just like, okay, a Nora, do, do, do, do, do. I'm waiting for some sort of challenge. And it just didn't really happen. But if you wait until December, you take the risk that someone swoops in in October and is like, I got this.

• 2:23:00Sean Fennessey?

  Very unusual year. So maybe not any lesson to be taken from that.

• 2:23:04Speaker 08

  No, the lesson, sure, we can, we can maybe take that you can release it late in the year lesson, but I'm just gonna do one last love letter to Dune and say, don't drop your movie at the beginning of the year. People's memories are too short.

• 2:23:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Except for Everything Everywhere All at Once.

• 2:23:20Sean Fennessey?

  That's the counterweight to that.

• 2:23:22Speaker 08

  But that came out even later.

• 2:23:24Amanda Dobbins?

  It was March.

• 2:23:25Sean Fennessey?

  It was. It was maybe, maybe early April. It premiered at South by and came out very shortly after that.

• 2:23:29Speaker 08

  I know it came out at South by.

• 2:23:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, maybe it was early April, but it was very early in the year. So, I don't know. The thing is, there's no playbook. Everything that we used to think is evolving every day.

• 2:23:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, how do we do our jobs?

• 2:23:40Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we don't know any. This is why I said I have to have empathy for Amanda and not worry about winning anything. Cause I don't fucking know. I'm just some guy holding weights, you know? Well, I, I think I'll win the Oscar bet, so I'm not as worried about that, but.

• 2:23:53Speaker 08

  Yeah, the director thing.

• 2:23:54Sean Fennessey?

  I just got, I got one thing in my favor in that one, you know? But you know, I won't lord it over you. I'll just make you take a beautiful photograph in front of my collection.

• 2:24:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, great.

• 2:24:03Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe you can be there that jo, that day, Joanna. You can, you can join us in the, in the media library.

• 2:24:08Speaker 08

  I'd love to. I'll be, I'll be in town for this award season. I'm excited. I'll be in L.A.

• 2:24:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, good. Are you going to parties? Probably not. That doesn't sound like something.

• 2:24:15Sean Fennessey?

  You make it sound like you go to parties, which you do not.

• 2:24:17Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I was like, maybe I want to go to some parties after we record with Joe. But then I thought about how tired I would be.

• 2:24:23Sean Fennessey?

  We could go to the bar. The three of us could go to the bar.

• 2:24:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that does sound fun, but it's like, you know, sometimes parties are fun to have past apps. And I like that.

• 2:24:31Sean Fennessey?

  All right, let's wrap this up.

• 2:24:32Speaker 08

  Do you want to go get In-N-Out at the Vanity Fair party with me?

• 2:24:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I would do that.

• 2:24:37Sean Fennessey?

  Joanna, you have 900 pods. I'd like to encourage everyone who listens to podcasts to listen to all your pods.

• 2:24:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Really? It's really true. Like, getting on Joanna's calendar is tough work, and we appreciate you making time for us.

• 2:24:49Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you, Joanna.

• 2:24:49Speaker 08

  Always a joy.

• 2:24:58Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to Joanna Robinson. Thanks, Amanda. Thanks to our video producer, Jack Sanders. Thanks to our show producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on today's episode. Next week on the show, we're talking about Sundance. You went to Sundance?

• 2:25:10Amanda Dobbins?

  One night only.

• 2:25:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, you saw how many films?

• 2:25:12Amanda Dobbins?

  One.

• 2:25:13Sean Fennessey?

  You saw one film. I'm watching dozens of movies virtually over the next four days. We'll come back and talk about them.

• 2:25:19Amanda Dobbins?

  An equal partnership, just like The Brutalist.

• 2:25:23Sean Fennessey?

  You are Erjabet in this equation?

• 2:25:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so.

• 2:25:26Sean Fennessey?

  Anyhow, and then maybe Nickel Boys as well.

• 2:25:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 2:25:29Sean Fennessey?

  We'll get into it, which we hope more people are seeing every day.

• 2:25:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Go see it.

• 2:25:33Sean Fennessey?

  Go see that great film. We'll see you then.

• 2:25:40Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:25:52Speaker 02

  Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

• 2:25:56Speaker 07

  What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple, like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive, or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes and more time in the moment with everyone. Crafted with real fruit, Simply juices and fruit drinks make any holiday drink effortless, inviting, and completely delicious. Simply. Say yes to simple.