Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’ and the Best Frankenstein Movies. Plus: Jennifer Lawrence Is Ablaze in ‘Die My Love.’

Sean and Amanda are joined by Rob Mahoney to cover a pair of new releases, but before diving in, they react to two new movie trailers for ‘Michael’ and ‘The Testament of Ann Lee’ and the news that a ‘Miss Piggy’ movie from Cole Escola, Jennifer Lawrence, and Emma Stone is in development (0:53). Then, they unpack Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein,’ starring Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi. They talk through the divisive reception to the film thus far, explain why the second half of the film is much stronger than the first, and hypothesize what its awards chances are (9:26). Finally, they cover Lynne Ramsay’s new psychological thriller, ‘Die My Love,’ starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, which they all thoroughly enjoyed and view as Lawrence’s best performance of her career (57:53). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Rob Mahoney Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:11Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is the big picture, a conversation show about fatherhood and motherhood. We're here with our large adult son, Rob Mahoney. On today's episode, we're going to talk about Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which is now streaming on Netflix. This is a massive spectacle of a movie and obviously tremendously personal to del Toro. So we will dig deep into his vision, I suppose. Sure. Later in this episode, we'll also discuss another vision. Lynn Ramsey's Die My Love, which is a searing new drama starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson. And is about how being a mom is extremely cool.

• 1:47Sean Fennessey?

  You guys excited? Oh, thrilled. Yes. All right, let's talk about some news before we talk about those two big feasts of a movie. The first thing that happened this morning is that there is a new trailer for Antoine Fuqua's Michael, which is a musical biopic about the life of Michael Jackson, who is a normal person.

• 2:05Amanda Dobbins?

  No scandal.

• 2:05Sean Fennessey?

  No controversy.

• 2:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:07Sean Fennessey?

  And we don't have to explore any of those ideas.

• 2:09Amanda Dobbins?

  No legal disputes.

• 2:10Sean Fennessey?

  Nope. We need to see a great artist perform his music, as we must in all musical biopics. Amanda, what did you think of the Michael trailer?

• 2:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I watched it under duress. We watched it here together. And it was a little bit because I had seen a still photograph of Miles Teller's wig from this trailer on the internet.

• 2:29Speaker 04

  How would you describe it for the people who haven't seen it?

• 2:30Amanda Dobbins?

  And I said, that's enough for me.

• 2:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's very flat. I guess in that sense, it's sitting well on the head, better than some wigs that we see. It was shoulder-length-esque, right?

• 2:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Sort of like he was not unkempt enough to be in a, like, off-Broadway production of Hair the Musical.

• 2:54Sean Fennessey?

  For context, Miles Teller is playing Michael Jackson's attorney in this film.

• 2:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 2:58Sean Fennessey?

  Which gives you some insight into what some of the movie will be about, perhaps.

• 3:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So I saw that wig, plus, I'm trying when I can to avoid trailers because I like to go in fresh to a movie. Plus, this just seems like a real big headache, you know? And we're gonna, we have a job. And if we still have this job in April 2026, like, I'll see it. I guess we'll talk about it. But I'm trying to wait, you know, for as long as possible.

• 3:24Speaker 04

  Keep it at bay.

• 3:24Sean Fennessey?

  On the other side of the door, I think, as long as you possibly can. You had a very negative reaction to the trailer.

• 3:29Speaker 04

  It looks bad.

• 3:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 04

  Like, it looks low-rent. It looks like an extension of the Bob Marley into Bruce Springsteen, like, devolution that we're all going through with this stuff.

• 3:39Amanda Dobbins?

  You have seen Deliver Me From Nowhere?

• 3:40Speaker 04

  You guys successfully steered me away from it.

• 3:42Amanda Dobbins?

  So you didn't even go?

• 3:43Speaker 04

  I was like, the reviews coming off of The Big Picture are so scathing that I simply cannot be bothered to watch it before it goes on streaming.

• 3:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's not, it's definitely not worth showing up for. This movie, I do think people are going to show up for. There's a lot has been going on with this film over the last few years. I remember quite vividly at two CinemaCons ago, there was a presentation of footage from this movie because they've been working on it for some years. Graham King, the producer who produced Bohemian Rhapsody, came out and showed us some of the footage, including, you know, featuring one of Michael Jackson's relatives playing Michael in the film. And...

• 4:17Sean Fennessey?

  In the room, the theatrical exhibitors were like, put it inside of me now. You know, that there was so much excitement because this was such a sure thing coming off of this wave of, you know, Bohemian Rhapsody, Elvis, movies like this really working.

• 4:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:31Sean Fennessey?

  We're a little bit of a slide at the moment on this kind of film.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 4:35Sean Fennessey?

  As Matt Bellany reported, I want to say it was last year, there's been some critical legal issues around what appears in the movie. And some major errors were made in terms of what the story was even allowed to explore relative to the Jackson estate. And some of the settlements that were made with some of his accusers. So they kind of had to rip up the third act, apparently.

• 4:57Speaker 04

  Right.

• 4:58Sean Fennessey?

  And push back the release date. Now, there's one interesting piece of context around that. We just came out of the worst October at the movies in like 25 years. One of the reasons for that is because this movie was supposed to come out in October.

• 5:09Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 5:10Sean Fennessey?

  And it got pushed because of this problem. And then the other thing that happened is the Mortal Kombat 2 also got pushed into May.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  You think that had like a huge ripple effect?

• 5:16Sean Fennessey?

  Honestly, it would have been the biggest movie on Halloween.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:20Sean Fennessey?

  And it didn't come out. So those two movies not coming out, I think contributed to what happened here. But it's probably good that Michael didn't come out because everybody who made it would have been sued straight to hell. And.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  Again?

• 5:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. So those are just kind of like, that's some legal scaffolding around. It looks like a pretty mediocre movie about an artist that we already know quite a great deal about.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  Right. How are all those legal troubles sitting with you and your fellow capitalists who are so excited about the prospects of this movie financially?

• 5:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I want people going to movie theaters, but I'm much more interested in good movies than people going to movie theaters. And this looks pretty rote, you know? It looks very familiar. There is like a polish to the cinematography and production design that almost feels like AI.

• 6:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:04Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it really feels like it's like a Sora version of just recreating something that we watched in our childhood. You know, the rise of this massive pop star over time. So I don't, you know, artistically, what's this, what's this movie going to tell me that I didn't know about Michael Jackson?

• 6:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely nothing. I've got to be honest, though. Like, if we are being as honest we can be, like, you know, like, Mama Say, Mama Say starts starting in the trailer and you're just like, okay, here we go. The music is still amazing. It's, it's

• 6:32Sean Fennessey?

  You don't need this movie to tell you that.

• 6:34Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true, and it's really, it's really, really hard to separate the art from the artist when you are making a musical biopic about the artist. Even though, as I understand it, it was the resolution of this legal dispute and the delay that this is Michael part one.

• 6:48Sean Fennessey?

  So that isn't indicated in the trailer.

• 6:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 6:50Sean Fennessey?

  So there was suggestion that they were going to break the movie into two, and that may still be the case.

• 6:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 6:54Sean Fennessey?

  Famously, I saw Dune and didn't know what to say. So this could be a similar situation where it could be Michael Cullen part two.

• 7:02Speaker 04

  Oh, my god.

• 7:03Sean Fennessey?

  I'm honestly not sure.

• 7:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Then that they would have kicked some of the quote-unquote problematic aspects of the story.

• 7:11Sean Fennessey?

  Right. Part one could have featured zero lawyers instead of at least one.

• 7:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 7:15Sean Fennessey?

  We'll see what happens. There was a slightly less controversial trailer that was also released this morning for a film that Amanda and I have seen, you've not yet had a chance to see, Rob, The Testament of Anne Lee, which is Mona Fastfold's new movie, a, another biopic of sorts about the founder of the Shaker movement, who's portrayed by Amanda Seyfried in the film. So you haven't seen it. You didn't know what to expect.

• 7:37Speaker 04

  None. What's, I mean, based on talent, sure. And it just fucking rips. Very well-assembled trailer. Speaks to me very directly. I mean, anytime you can get a percussive rhythmic element of just like somebody slamming blacksmith steel into your trailer, you should do it, for the record. And anytime you can put Amanda Seyfried in your movie, you should also do that.

• 7:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she's very, very just remarkable in this movie. Can't wait. It's a very interesting movie. I would say not a perfect movie, but a fascinating movie, and at times ecstatic.

• 8:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Especially the first half. I really liked this movie. I liked not knowing what to expect from this movie, so I hope that this trailer is all that you watch.

• 8:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's appropriately mysterious.

• 8:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Like, very cool, and I'm really excited that it got acquired and is going to be in the mix later this year for the, for the awards race.

• 8:23Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, okay, the third and final piece of news which you guys shared with me this morning. There is a Miss Piggy movie happening.

• 8:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 8:29Sean Fennessey?

  This movie is going to be written by Cola Scola and we know because they told the Lost Culture, Lost Culture reads this podcast that Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence are going to produce the movie.

• 8:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Jennifer Lawrence did, and then she went on one of the late night shows and gave a little more information on what's happening.

• 8:46Sean Fennessey?

  What is happening?

• 8:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, she said that it came to her during COVID lockdown when everyone was in their rooms and also everyone was being canceled and somehow they were talking about.

• 8:58Sean Fennessey?

  Is this about the cancellation of Miss Piggy?

• 9:00Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 9:00Sean Fennessey?

  That would be an amazing idea.

• 9:02Amanda Dobbins?

  She said that that is what sparked it. And then she turns to the audience, she's great, and she's just like, that is not entirely the plot.

• 9:09Sean Fennessey?

  Entirely the plot.

• 9:11Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's really, really good.

• 9:12Sean Fennessey?

  That's a clever idea.

• 9:13Amanda Dobbins?

  And then she said that she went to Emma Stone.

• 9:15Sean Fennessey?

  After the hunt, colon, Miss Piggy.

• 9:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And Emma Stone, she's like, Emma Stone is a shark, so she's the, she's the business person, you know? And it was explaining their collaboration and then she mentioned that Cola Scola is writing it. Wonderful stuff.

• 9:29Sean Fennessey?

  It's just thrilling. As a longtime Muppets dork, this is incredible news.

• 9:33Amanda Dobbins?

  She also mentioned that Emma Stone is like the Muppets dork of the three. So that, once again.

• 9:38Sean Fennessey?

  Just one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.

• 9:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:40Sean Fennessey?

  And so unsurprising.

• 9:42Amanda Dobbins?

  But you totally missed this on the internet.

• 9:44Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't see it.

• 9:44Amanda Dobbins?

  You know what I meant to ask you the other week and we should have talked about when we talked about the mastermind? So did you know that the Louvre got robbed?

• 9:51Sean Fennessey?

  I did, yes.

• 9:52Amanda Dobbins?

  You did, that did make it to you.

• 9:53Sean Fennessey?

  I did, yes. How could that miss? Yeah, it didn't.

• 9:55Amanda Dobbins?

  There's like a whole, like, personal interest or, you know, like weird news section of the world that Sean just regularly.

• 10:03Sean Fennessey?

  If it's about like something crazy in the sea, I don't know what's going on. Okay, that makes sense. Has a whale done something? I don't know. I can assure you they have. You can't trust them.

• 10:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you know what the password was at the Louvre?

• 10:12Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, this is big. I read it, but I don't remember.

• 10:14Amanda Dobbins?

  It was Louvre.

• 10:15Sean Fennessey?

  It was Louvre. Just a step up from one, two, three, four. That's just not ideal.

• 10:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Anyway, yeah, the Miss Piggy movie news was everywhere on my internet, but welcome aboard.

• 10:23Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I'm happy to learn about it and I hope that film actually gets made. A film that has been made is Frankenstein. Let's speak of this film now.

• 10:31Amanda Dobbins?

  It has.

• 10:31Sean Fennessey?

  This, as I mentioned, is written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. This is del Toro's 13th film as a director. It's based on the Mary Shelley novel, which you may or may not remember, has the subtitle, Frankenstein. Semi-colon.

• 10:44Speaker 04

  It is semi-colon.

• 10:45Sean Fennessey?

  Or comma, "The Modern Prometheus."

• 10:47Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:48Sean Fennessey?

  Which should tell you a lot about this film's perspective.

• 10:51Speaker 04

  You don't think Frankenstein's a modern Prometheus?

• 10:53Sean Fennessey?

  Well, is this Frankenstein a modern Prometheus?

• 10:55Speaker 04

  I can assure you not.

• 10:56Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it is, it stars Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Charles Dance, Felix Camerer, who people may remember from All Quiet on the Western Front. And let's talk about it right now.

• 11:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Christoph Waltz.

• 11:10Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah, Christoph Waltz. Well, you can see.

• 11:12Speaker 04

  I forgot about him already.

• 11:16Sean Fennessey?

  This is Frankenstein. It follows the life of a scientist who wants to reviveify a corpse and create new life.

• 11:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:24Sean Fennessey?

  And the trials and travails he encounters along the way, learning how to be a dad of the undead.

• 11:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I start with a question?

• 11:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, you may.

• 11:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Inspired by some, you know, pre-recording text messaging that the, that the two of us were doing while one person observed. So you guys are pretty big into Frankenstein?

• 11:42Speaker 04

  No.

• 11:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, are you not? Could you?

• 11:44Sean Fennessey?

  I wouldn't say that I am either.

• 11:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 11:46Sean Fennessey?

  I know a lot about it.

• 11:49Amanda Dobbins?

  All right. Could you please explain your complicated relationship to Frankenstein?

• 11:55Speaker 04

  This is not a character I care about a lot.

• 11:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Why have you seen so many Frankenstein movies then?

• 11:59Speaker 04

  I mean, you just, they just kind of make their way to you.

• 12:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean.

• 12:02Speaker 04

  But I think the problem is that many of them are not very good.

• 12:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 04

  Uh, it's a pretty limited list and they're like, the influence is wide, the parody is everywhere. Like you can't escape Frankenstein. But I don't care about Frankenstein in the way that I care about Dracula. Like, like the iconography is there, but there's not a lot of soul there, you know?

• 12:18Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we, I, you know, me, Rob and Chris.

• 12:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Or isn't there.

• 12:22Speaker 04

  They're, they're certainly trying.

• 12:23Sean Fennessey?

  Me, Rob and Chris did an episode about Nosferatu.

• 12:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I listened to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:28Sean Fennessey?

  I think we had a lot of fun talking about the kind of long history of the vampire movie and the Dracula movie. And there, there is a very long history of Frankenstein films. This is a rare case where the original, or not, maybe not the original, but the James Whale version from the 30s looms very large over film history. It is widely considered one of the most critical texts in all of movie history. And the fact that we live in a time now when horror movies are so important to movies, it feels even bigger. There have been a lot of Frankenstein movies.

• 12:56Speaker 04

  Tons.

• 12:57Sean Fennessey?

  There have been some adaptations of the novel. Most of them are using the novel as a kind of a springboard. And then there's been this whole group of movies, which I'll talk about after we talk about the Del Toro movie, that. Are basically curbing the core idea and then making a completely different kind of movie. Before we get to all that, I wanted to start with you to talk about Del Toro's version. Because Amanda and I have sort of briefly been a bit rude about the film coming out of festivals. And we both went to go see it a second time just to make sure that we saw what we saw.

• 13:27Speaker 04

  Still feel rude.

• 13:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but so I'm very curious how you feel about it.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  I liked it. Again, this is not a character who I have a strong attachment to. But if you're going to make a Frankenstein story, this is the guy you go to to do it. And I think this is sort of the spirit in which you want to attempt it. Try to make it new, try to introduce some new wrinkles, try to find like some spark of life, if you'll allow it, like in the story beyond what we've already like worn into the ground. I think it kind of gets there and is mostly successful. And I like the movie, but don't love it.

• 13:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 13:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I ask in what context you saw the film?

• 14:01Speaker 04

  I saw it in a full theater.

• 14:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 14:03Speaker 04

  Here in Los Angeles, which I have many questions about why that's not a widely available experience. I don't know why this was not a movie released in October. Why any of that stuff was happening, very curious to me. But ultimately like a lively viewing experience.

• 14:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  How did you see it?

• 14:18Amanda Dobbins?

  But you did see, well, I saw it at the Venice Film Festival. And then I saw it again yesterday, also in a theater, a matinee with more people than are usually at this local theater for a Wednesday matinee.

• 14:31Speaker 04

  This is a very Venice vibe, though, this movie.

• 14:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, though I don't think.

• 14:35Sean Fennessey?

  Or Switzerland, or the North Pole.

• 14:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely Venice is, there's more velvet in Venice.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  I can imagine.

• 14:45Amanda Dobbins?

  As opposed to like whatever, you know, weird substances are going on here. And there are more colors.

• 14:50Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 14:50Amanda Dobbins?

  The desaturation here is something that I'd like to discuss, but.

• 14:54Sean Fennessey?

  Did your second viewing unearth anything new for you?

• 14:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that it made me understand that I find, in addition to the fact that I do not like the way that it looks visually, and that I don't really care that much about Frankenstein, the story, I find the interpretation of this story a little facile, even like even within that context. I know this is a project that Del Toro has been wanting to make since he was a child and, you know, discovered the book and

• 15:32Sean Fennessey?

  Been talking about it since the 2000s.

• 15:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And it looms large over so much of his work and I feel that he has interpreted the Frankenstein story in much better ways in the movies that he made before this.

• 15:44Sean Fennessey?

  So Eat Shit Mary Shelley, Eat Shit Childhood Guillermo del Toro, you're just like stomping on dreams and legacies out here.

• 15:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I feel, I feel bad about it. I think that, I mean, I do just think that it looks bad. And, well, we can talk about it.

• 15:58Sean Fennessey?

  We should explore the ways in which that, because I think that there will be, this is going to be, it already is a divisive movie.

• 16:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:04Sean Fennessey?

  I think there are people who have been following Del Toro's work very closely that love it, and there are people who've been following Del Toro's work very closely that are, are kind of like a little sick of this. And a little, I'm a little bit worn out, I think, on some of this. And I think also the, the Netflix era of, of, of Del Toro's work has augured this curious visual transformation that I'm not stoked about. And this one is like, it's a, I don't hate this movie, but I definitely don't love it. And there's things I admire about it and things I really like borderline revile about it. And I, I'm curious what you mean by facile in terms of the interpretation of the story. Like, what are the changes or the things that he's reading into it that you think are not working?

• 16:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I just, brother, you are the monster. You know, I groaned the first time, but it is

• 16:54Amanda Dobbins?

  It like it is an adaptation of a novel, but he's been doing more complex work with these ideas, whether it's about, you know, humanity and creation and the God complex. And I don't know what it's like having a dad that's mean to you and like being obsessed with your mother and like just and feeling like an outsider from the world and what is family and what is love and like what is a human and like what is man and what is monster and how do they mix? And this is just like a real literal to the point that they have the brother say, you are the monster at the end. And I was like, yeah, you know, I did get that you were going

• 17:34Amanda Dobbins?

  with that. There's no, there's no nuance and there's not a lot of thematic depth beyond. I mean, it is like, you know, a very Gothic pulpy story and like plot's great. Roger Ebert and I agree, but I've seen all that before and I don't think I saw anything more than the plot.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  Some of that is just Del Toro. Like there are, there are three lines in every movie he makes. It's like, did you really have to say that out loud?

• 18:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 18:00Speaker 04

  Uh, and I think the trade off is like, if you're dealing in archetype and myth, which he is doing, whether he's creating it or adapting it, do you need the cool line? Like, do you need to be less than obvious? Like, there is something about his movies that is elemental that when it works, it really, really clicks.

• 18:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 18:14Speaker 04

  And it feels like a story that's always been part of your life. This kind of does feel old at certain parts. I admire the ways in which he tries to make it new, but like, I think some of that is unavoidable for the way he makes movies and wants to make.

• 18:27Amanda Dobbins?

  It's why he's never been like a huge, and you know, at some point, I don't really respond to monster stories in the same way. Like, I don't need it embedded in like archetype and myth. Like, the monsters are all around us in real life. See part two of this, you know, conversation for like another way in which I, I respond to different explorations of the human experience. But yeah, some of it was just a little silly.

• 18:52Sean Fennessey?

  He's had this interesting evolution as a director where, you know, his first few films. Some of them are about actual monsters that don't have a lot of depth in terms of where they came from, you know, what they're, you know, Cronos and Mimic, his first American movie, these are like real classic monster movies.

• 19:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 19:11Sean Fennessey?

  And over time, he's gotten increasingly fascinated by the idea of like, the monster is misunderstood.

• 19:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:16Sean Fennessey?

  He should be better, he should be looked at as just as human as you or I. And he keeps going back to that concept over and over again. With Pinocchio, he talked about how he wanted to make Pinocchio like a Frankenstein movie, and he wants to make this movie like a Pinocchio movie.

• 19:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 19:28Sean Fennessey?

  And-

• 19:29Amanda Dobbins?

  He made Pinocchio a fascist.

• 19:31Speaker 04

  Well, he was-

• 19:32Sean Fennessey?

  He was existent of fascist times.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  I do think Pinocchio is a better Frankenstein movie than this is a Frankenstein movie, ultimately.

• 19:39Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think it's because that movie is pretty scary, and this movie isn't scary at all.

• 19:43Amanda Dobbins?

  No, not at all.

• 19:44Sean Fennessey?

  And I think that he has way too much empathy for the monster in this movie. And I, you know, it's probably a facile reading on my part to say like, he just sees himself as the monster. He had, the person that he's comporting his personality into is the person who is like, kind of been victimized but will rise above.

• 20:00Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 20:00Sean Fennessey?

  And that has been very present in a lot of his films, in Nightmare Alley, in Shape of Water, like, that's in all those movies. And so he's kind of beating this drum. With some filmmakers who we like will say like, well, that's a, that's a theme that they return to.

• 20:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, that's a Sofia Coppola movie, sure.

• 20:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. In the case of this movie, to me, it's ultimately because the movie itself is just not as good, so I'm not willing to allow it.

• 20:20Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 20:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, also, he does identify with the creature, and this film is divided into two pretty unequal parts. Part one, The Creator's Tale, and part two, The Creature's Tale. Creature's Tale, for my money, is way more involving. You can tell that's where his heart is.

• 20:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, I totally agree.

• 20:35Amanda Dobbins?

  It has the better performance from Jacob Elordi, but you sit through almost two hours of, like, Oscar Isaac is never bad. He's just sort of, he's cast in an island of, you know, a weird CGI tower and a very, very broad British accent, sort of like Morgan Spector on The Gilded Age, like, level. But, and Morgan Spector's great on The Gilded Age, but you know, like, we're, we're playing to the back of the theater.

• 20:58Sean Fennessey?

  Completely.

• 20:59Speaker 04

  There's a lot of like, I shan't ever do that, sir!

• 21:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 21:03Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's, but the movie just has to spend so much time with the creator first. And it's like, it's.

• 21:11Sean Fennessey?

  The thing is, is that it didn't have to.

• 21:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I agree, but he makes that choice. And I, and so we have to, and I'm like, I don't, why didn't you just make the second half?

• 21:20Speaker 04

  He is in the who says no to this guy era of his career. Like, where is the edit that takes 10 minutes out of the creator part of the story? And I think honestly, part of the reason that section is as long as it is, because I agree with both of you, that he identifies with the creature on some level. He wants to tell the creature's story. There is like the self-flagellating, I am also Victor Frankenstein part of him. That's like, I think putting himself through the paces of making this guy miserable and terrible, almost inexplicably, that also appeals to a story he's trying to tell. It's just too long a story. And as you're saying, like, doesn't have enough going for it.

• 21:52Sean Fennessey?

  It does do, here's one thing I'm very cynical about, about this movie. So the film opens with a prelude, which is a, a, a critical part of the Shelley novel as well, about the, the ship and the captain that are on a journey. And they eventually encounter Victor in the Arctic because Victor is chasing the monster to, you know, to kill the monster.

• 22:14Sean Fennessey?

  But the film opens with that and, and it manages to turn what is represented in the novel as a series of letters from the captain into a big action sequence. Now, my, the cynical part of my brain says that we're about to have a 90 minute stretch of costume drama. So just to make sure that you don't turn this movie off, we need to have the monster throwing a bunch of sailors into a ship.

• 22:37Sean Fennessey?

  That stuff doesn't look great. The CGI in this movie is not very strong.

• 22:40Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 22:41Sean Fennessey?

  And it sets you up for a certain kind of like adventure monster movie that this just is not. This is a sensitive drama about a scientist and his lost love. And a lot of that stuff is not rendered great and you can dispute it or not. But the, the movie does that thing that a lot of TV shows do all the time now, where they show you the end at the beginning and then they're like, how did we get here?

• 23:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:02Sean Fennessey?

  And then they go back to the very beginning and then they start telling the story.

• 23:04Amanda Dobbins?

  When they go back to that wide shot in the Arctic, I was like, this is the only truly beautiful thing in this movie. That's not true. There are a couple of other sequences.

• 23:12Speaker 04

  But they built the goddamn ship. Like, the ship looks great.

• 23:16Sean Fennessey?

  Why is everything around it?

• 23:17Amanda Dobbins?

  It looks, it looks like a set and the whole, you can see the set. And it's like very, like, I guess.

• 23:22Sean Fennessey?

  I don't have a problem with that because, so.

• 23:23Amanda Dobbins?

  They're going for like a soundstage thing?

• 23:25Sean Fennessey?

  I, I think it's they're going for like the, um. The kind of fussiness of this time in history.

• 23:30Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 23:30Sean Fennessey?

  You know, especially in more in the mansion and the homes.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:33Sean Fennessey?

  That there is like an artificiality to a lot of it because everything is kind of bought and hung. But the thing that I kept thinking about this, even watching this the second time, is that this movie is actually just more interested in the depth of its sets than in the depth of its characters. That it is ultimately, it is beautifully adorned, not beautifully shot. I feel like there's something in the filmmaking style where Del Toro now is like really interested in the wide shot and showing you everything that he built. But then that detracts a little bit from what he's trying to say. And I felt that all the way up until El Lordi comes to life and we can talk about the merits of that part of the film too.

• 24:07Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 24:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know, I like, I don't know whether the cinematography, it's just, it's flat, it's flat. It has like almost the motion smoothing aspect to it. Um, and I don't know whether that's because it's being engineered for, you know, Netflix. I watched it on screens both times, but uh, I assume they were digital. How did it look on film? Did you go see it on film?

• 24:26Sean Fennessey?

  Better.

• 24:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:27Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't, didn't change the, particularly whenever the CGI comes into play. There's a series of moments, you know, there's a very big explosive scene in the middle of the movie where a tower is on fire. Just doesn't look good. I mean, for, it's a hundred and twenty million dollar movie, it just doesn't look good.

• 24:40Speaker 04

  I was, I just kept waiting for the crimson peak moment for me, which is like, that's a movie that I think is more style than substance in a lot of ways.

• 24:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 24:47Speaker 04

  But it has so much visual flair and so much love of like color and contrast. And this is so gray, like other than Elizabeth's dresses where they just have her styled to look like a big old bug in a way that I, I really do like.

• 24:59Sean Fennessey?

  I think the costuming is very good.

• 25:00Amanda Dobbins?

  The costuming is great and she, she, you know, she is wearing red as a motif where everyone else is like very purposefully washed out. And so she has this beautiful red dress, like in one wide outdoor shot, it's outdoors, thank you. And then the red umbrella that follows her, and then I, I think the sequence one spoiler alert, she dies. And the monster carries her into the tomb and her dress like becomes like a different red. Like this, this looks beautiful, you know, and this is, the image is matching like the themes and the setting. But otherwise, yeah, man, it just, it looks yucky.

• 25:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And like, and like, kinda remarkably like the, like Wicked. And like, one of the rooms in Wicked, like even the windows, I was like, I've seen those before. And it's right before Elphaba and that guy do like a silent mime dance for 10 minutes.

• 25:53Speaker 04

  That's a bummer, though, because like, Del Toro is one of the few filmmakers who still gets the latitude and the budget to do, at least in a lot of cases, big, practical stuff, where it looks lavish, and they get hundreds of extras. Like, he has a leeway that many guys and women making films do not have.

• 26:08Sean Fennessey?

  He's also very vocal about this. I mean, he talks about it constantly, about the necessity of physical creation. And he's been extremely vocal about AI in the last year or so. And to me, I see what he is attempting. I'm a, I'm a pretty big fan of his. A lot of his movies resonate with me. I do feel like he's kind of just like spinning his own wheels a little bit here in terms of the story. Now, I do want to talk a little bit about what does work in the movie, and specifically because you ultimately came out liking it. I think the first half is not very effective, personally. I think Lorde has been getting very high marks for his performance. I think very understandably, I think that's one of the first things that we said when we talked about it at the festivals.

• 26:56Sean Fennessey?

  Why is that part so much more effective, do you think, than the first half of this movie?

• 27:01Speaker 04

  I think his, like, honestly, the creature, and you can tell that Del Toro cares about him so much by the fact that it's one of Del Toro's most emotionally well-developed characters. Like, he's not someone who spends a lot of time developing a lot of interiority. It's all visual, it's all, again, myth, it's like these very, everyone is kind of filling a role in his stories typically.

• 27:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he was archetype, yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  This feels like someone who, for better or worse, you spend a lot of time inside his head. And now narration from a creature may not be your cup of tea, and I wouldn't blame you if it wasn't. But like, they actually do dedicate a lot of time in understanding him in a way that they don't even with Victor Frankenstein. Like, why Victor Frankenstein makes the series of choices that he does, other than he's obsessed in the beginning of the story, and then ultimately doesn't even think about what he's gonna do if he gets the thing that he wants? Like, the next day, it's kind of like the, like, dog chasing the mailman kind of situation? Like, what would I even do if I caught him? But the story kind of stops there, and there's no other exploration of what Victor Frankenstein is about at all, really. That's not the case for the creature, and so I think there is something a little more well-articulated there.

• 28:07Sean Fennessey?

  In the novel and in other adaptations of this story, the monster is more of a monster and more violent and more responsible for the tragedies in the story. This movie very purposefully shifts almost all of the blame, for lack of a better word, onto Victor.

• 28:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:23Sean Fennessey?

  That Victor is the architect of everything that is wrong in this world. And, you know, you identified this as daddy issues. I think that's not unfair.

• 28:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, his father is played by Charles Dance, who

• 28:36Speaker 04

  Tough typecasting for Charles Dance these days.

• 28:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Can't name the right, you know, humors or whatever.

• 28:41Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Charles Dance has already played Victor Frankenstein's father in a film.

• 28:44Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 28:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 28:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And then it's just, so there's just a lashing to the face and then he loves his little brother more and then Charles Dance dies.

• 28:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 28:55Amanda Dobbins?

  He's out.

• 28:55Sean Fennessey?

  And so.

• 28:56Speaker 04

  Well, you did leave out the part where he is like gently fingering a model of a pregnant woman that is like the stand-in for his mom.

• 29:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that was pretty weird. And then, you know, and that is like echoed as for coffin.

• 29:08Sean Fennessey?

  And also Christopher Walt, the handle of Christopher Waltz's cane, Christoph Waltz's cane is also that same, I think that same figurine that he's toying with. We haven't even talked about Christoph Waltz because in the first half, for some reason, the film needs to introduce a character who is a benefactor that allows Victor Frankenstein to conduct his experiments, I guess. And that benefactor also wants to be placed into the body of one of his revived corpses.

• 29:31Amanda Dobbins?

  He's dying of syphilis because we all know the stages of the disease.

• 29:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 29:35Speaker 04

  But this is, this is ultimately the situation is you can't have the Del Toro decrepit manner if Victor Frankenstein himself had money. So somebody has to have money to pay him. And apparently it needs to be in like a war, like a, someone who owns a war machine. A war profiteer of a kind who therefore can also provide the bodies to make the Frankenstein.

• 29:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And you, and, and we learned that you got to take him from the middle of the pile.

• 29:57Speaker 04

  Yes, very important.

• 29:58Amanda Dobbins?

  They've been crushed at the bottom and exposed to the elements up above. Listen, like, I, I learned a lot about how Victor Frankenstein puts his science projects together.

• 30:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 30:10Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and they take really great care in like making all the gross muscles and the lymphatic system and everything looks real, you know, like it's.

• 30:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I feel sad for everyone involved that we're talking so much about the CGI. That does look bad because it is clear that so much care went into making so much of this.

• 30:30Sean Fennessey?

  Without a doubt. I completely agree, but they're working at cross purposes, unfortunately. I think that the challenge of this interpretation, and I welcome reinterpretation of any great work of art. I think film is a great medium for someone looking at a classic piece of literature and saying like, what if it was more like this and I turned the dial to the left? In this case, if you make the monster wholly sympathetic, not a little sympathetic, but also dangerous, wholly sympathetic, it kind of drains the juice from the story. And that makes it.

• 31:00Amanda Dobbins?

  It makes it Twilight.

• 31:02Sean Fennessey?

  There is a component of that. There is a component of that.

• 31:06Amanda Dobbins?

  He just wants a companion, you know?

• 31:08Sean Fennessey?

  And in fact, he's battling wolves, much like in Twilight. I think it just means that the movie's not going to be scary. Like Boris Karloff built his career on being terrifying. Is this supposed to be scary?

• 31:21Sean Fennessey?

  An epic romance of Frankenstein, to me, is not very interesting. Sure. I think if it was going to spend more time with Elordi and more of a psychological character portrait, that might be like a less event-packed film. Yeah. And it might be more internal, as you're describing. But it would be different. It would be different enough, maybe, to justify it. And Elordi is in this interesting position. One, they've redesigned the monster, right? So the makeup effects, I think, are really good in this movie. They look awesome. His practical visualization is very different from the Karloff character. It's very different from the character that Christopher Lee played in the Hammer films. It's very different from even what's described in the Shelley books, which is like where the skin is like hanging off of the character and it's much more grotesque.

• 32:04Sean Fennessey?

  This is like, it's kind of like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. A little bit. You know, like a kind of a lean, powerful, sutured figure.

• 32:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Is that the guy that has sex to Hallelujah?

• 32:16Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's everywhere in Watchmen. Yes, it is. Thank you for knowing that.

• 32:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Can we just say that the creature design is by Michael? Who works with Del Toro.

• 32:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, and frequently does amazing work. And, you know, if you've seen Hellboy or, you know, even, I mean, what is the Shape of Water? The creature design is amazing in that movie. I mean, that's a very fuckable fish man, you know? Absolutely, and he got fucked. Canonically.

• 32:42Sean Fennessey?

  I like how he looks. I like Elordi's performance, which is kind of in the tradition of a lot of silent cinema actors, where he has to be tremendously expressive. He basically only gets to say the word Victor for roughly 40 minutes of the movie. Yes. Before he is taught by a kindly blind man how to spell and read.

• 33:00Amanda Dobbins?

  John Milton.

• 33:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. He just turns out he's a visual learner. We're going about this the wrong way. He is. It's not my favorite shot in the movie, when David Bradley is holding a card that says I, and then the camera zooms in on his eye. And I was like, okay. Again, this is not the place you come for subtlety. It's just not. It's not. And then Elordi eventually, he learns the power of language, and he protects the kindly old man until he can.

• 33:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And he learns about Paradise Lost.

• 33:28Sean Fennessey?

  He does. And you know Paradise Lost, obviously, very important to Shelley, and I think is featured prominently in the novel as well, as like a signpost for the creature.

• 33:38Sean Fennessey?

  But the movie does then ultimately just become kind of like a revenge drama in the second half, where the monster revisits his former home, reads some papers strewn about.

• 33:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, they survived.

• 33:50Sean Fennessey?

  After the fire. It's like there's a full-blown tower fire.

• 33:55Sean Fennessey?

  And then there's some papers around, and he's like, oh, so this is how I aim to be a person. In the novel, I think, if I recall, the papers are in the clothes. It's a little more.

• 34:05Amanda Dobbins?

  They're inside the computer.

• 34:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think there's a couple of like storytelling mechanic stuff that is a little wonky. And then it just becomes like the Anarchic Chase movie into the finale. And I don't know, I didn't think this was very good.

• 34:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Mia Goth, innocent.

• 34:27Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah. Here's the problem.

• 34:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:29Sean Fennessey?

  She, of course, to me, is a living legend. I will watch her do anything.

• 34:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 34:34Speaker 04

  I, she needs to be crazy to be really effective in a movie. And this is a very demure, empathetic character.

• 34:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, this is like, you know, manic pity pixie goth girl. She just like, she really likes insects, guys.

• 34:46Speaker 04

  Loves them.

• 34:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and like, and weird things. And it's, you know, and she loves him too.

• 34:51Speaker 04

  I mean, Del Toro has a type, right? Like, two types, like, you're either pale and severe, or you're pale and naive. And she's in the pale, she's in the chastained mold.

• 34:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 34:59Speaker 04

  The Cate Blanchett mold of what he likes to do. Uh, she's perfectly fine in this, perfectly good. Uh, I was talking with Jack Sanders before. I'm curious about what the sex appeal of Jacob Elordi as the creature is in this movie? Because Elizabeth seems very cop, like, she meets him and within moments has grabbed his hands and put them around her throat. This is a woman who understands what she wants. But will audiences have a similar response? I honestly don't know.

• 35:24Amanda Dobbins?

  He's tall, he's tall.

• 35:26Speaker 04

  Was, was there?

• 35:26Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like, that is, I mean, that is Jacob Elordi. And actually, he's just like, very tall. And he just has tall energy wherever he goes. And it works.

• 35:32Speaker 04

  Was there any part of you that sees him as a mute, giant man in a diaper? And is like, I can fix him.

• 35:39Amanda Dobbins?

  No, um, I don't know if I could fix him.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm, you know, I've matured past that. You know, I, I, you can never fix, you can only meet them where they are.

• 35:49Sean Fennessey?

  Would you agree to be made his undead companion as he demands at the end of the film?

• 35:54Amanda Dobbins?

  No, because he seems pretty unhappy.

• 35:56Sean Fennessey?

  You have bride energy, though.

• 35:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Do I?

• 35:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Elsa, Lanchester bride energy.

• 36:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Not, not like, being a bride at a wedding. I famously hated that.

• 36:05Sean Fennessey?

  No, you don't have that energy. No, you have, I am a shrieking undead monster.

• 36:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, that's fine with me. But it just, it does seem like a long time to just go around. Like, he seems pretty uncomfortable.

• 36:19Sean Fennessey?

  You mean forever?

• 36:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you know?

• 36:21Sean Fennessey?

  He is indestructible.

• 36:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:22Sean Fennessey?

  Is this Frankenstein a little too powerful?

• 36:25Speaker 04

  You, you want a power set him?

• 36:27Sean Fennessey?

  He has Captain America's powers. I mean, he is indestructible, he can take bullets.

• 36:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 36:31Sean Fennessey?

  He's pushing a ship all by himself to lose it free. I don't know.

• 36:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Is Captain America more powerful than Superman?

• 36:38Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 36:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, why did you invoke Captain America instead of Superman?

• 36:42Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think you could probably burn the creature to death.

• 36:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Can you? Well, he's, well, I guess he escaped the fire.

• 36:49Sean Fennessey?

  I think he wouldn't heal.

• 36:50Speaker 04

  But he literally catches on fire and says, I feel my flesh regrowing.

• 36:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but if he, if you burned him out before it could regenerate. Maybe. I feel like this guy's indestructible.

• 37:00Amanda Dobbins?

  So we learned a lot.

• 37:02Sean Fennessey?

  That's just magic.

• 37:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Improv to Science Corner. Improv to Science Corner.

• 37:06Speaker 05

  Welcome to Amanda Doppens's Science Corner.

• 37:14Amanda Dobbins?

  So we learn that there's some sort of electricity that they gotta plug into the double lymphatic system, which is just above the heart and you're going in through the spine.

• 37:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, correct.

• 37:27Amanda Dobbins?

  So you gotta short circuit the electricity.

• 37:30Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 37:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Where was the electricity coming from?

• 37:34Sean Fennessey?

  Lightning.

• 37:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Lightning.

• 37:36Sean Fennessey?

  They harness the lightning.

• 37:37Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 37:38Sean Fennessey?

  This is how it happens in every Frankenstein film.

• 37:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I think I went to the bathroom.

• 37:41Sean Fennessey?

  Twice? This is the most epic set piece of the film.

• 37:44Amanda Dobbins?

  You think, I sure, it's just like really dark in there. And I was like, this sucks. You know, and I was like, that looks like wicked.

• 37:50Sean Fennessey?

  When he gets into a dispute with Christoph Waltz's character. Yes. He, Christoph Waltz attempts to steal one of the tools that's going to attach that allows the electricity to run a current into the corpse's body.

• 38:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 38:01Sean Fennessey?

  One of those tools, one of those prongs falls on the ground and bends.

• 38:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 38:06Sean Fennessey?

  It bends ever so slightly to the right.

• 38:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yep. Okay.

• 38:10Sean Fennessey?

  And when it's retrieved and screwed on, you see that somehow this tool, it's all very fallacy, doesn't totally work properly.

• 38:19Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 38:19Sean Fennessey?

  And because of this bend, this has somehow given the monster the powers of immortality.

• 38:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that's a limited experience in a limited worldview, but anyway.

• 38:29Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean?

• 38:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm just saying, you know, let it go, continue.

• 38:32Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I, the monster's very powerful in all of the stories.

• 38:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:39Sean Fennessey?

  Has superhuman strength and everything, but he is legit a superhero. He is a superhero.

• 38:43Amanda Dobbins?

  But I actually. So you don't think that if you caught the lightning again and like, you know, short circuited the lymphatic system?

• 38:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I've sat through a lot of science in this movie, so now we're gonna discuss it.

• 38:56Sean Fennessey?

  Honestly, the science is one of the best parts. The models, the like, the designs, again, like, the lymphatic notes.

• 39:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I just am like, probably you could reverse the current if you had the right tools.

• 39:06Sean Fennessey?

  Are you a physicist?

• 39:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I wasn't very good at physics. Too theoretical.

• 39:12Sean Fennessey?

  So, as you know, some of my heritage is Swiss.

• 39:16Amanda Dobbins?

  We know. Every World Cup, we hear about it.

• 39:18Sean Fennessey?

  This film features a bunch of Swiss people. This is very much what Swiss people are like. Swiss people are like, I know what the answer is. Like, they're just quite sure that they know how the lymphatic system will be re-energized with the current. And, uh, I'd like to salute them for acknowledging the Swiss for their hubris collectively. What else do you want to say about this movie? What else do you like about it?

• 39:37Speaker 04

  How much can we talk about, like, the ending ending?

• 39:39Sean Fennessey?

  Well, let's put a, let's put a casing around it and say if you don't want to hear the end, I mean, it's Frankenstein. It's not that different from Frankenstein.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  It is a little different than Frankenstein. I would say one of the departures is changing it from the normal kind of climactic end of Frankenstein, in which, yes, the creature survives, to one in which the message of it ultimately is around forgiveness, right? And this is where the idea of him being superpowered, I think, is kind of compelling. A lot of Guillermo del Toro stuff treats eternal life as like an unbelievable curse, an incredible burden. And if you were burdened with eternal life, one of the great burdens would be forgiving every asshole, whoever does you wrong, including your kind of father who cobbled you together from respective corpses. And so you can see, like, the interest in telling a story about, like, the larger human

• 40:24Speaker 04

  command being to forgive. If you are tasked with living forever, the greatest thing you could do would be to forgive the people who have wronged you. And I think, I think that it's a moving sentiment that maybe doesn't quite get all the way there.

• 40:36Sean Fennessey?

  To me, I read the very ending as, again, a somewhat simple-minded echo of something that Victor says to the monster earlier in the film, which is when he is exposed to sunlight.

• 40:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:48Sean Fennessey?

  He says, "Sunlight, go into the sun. Sun gives you life." When the movie ends, he's pushed the ship off, they take off on their journey, and he stands alone in the sunlight. And now, he's a creature that has life.

• 40:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:00Sean Fennessey?

  That's fine. That's like a little hallmark for me.

• 41:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Where are they getting the brains? Like, is, are they wholesale or are they piecing together his brain?

• 41:08Sean Fennessey?

  You mean, like, are they getting them from Ralph's or?

• 41:10Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no. Is it like?

• 41:12Speaker 04

  Is it a Whole Foods situation?

• 41:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I'd like to know, I'd like to, I'm trying to understand his memory and functions.

• 41:17Speaker 04

  Trader Joe's brain is incredible.

• 41:18Sean Fennessey?

  The frozen ones, come on.

• 41:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Are they just taking a wholesale brain from some guy in the war?

• 41:24Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 41:24Sean Fennessey?

  Because Christoph Waltz wanted it to be his brain.

• 41:26Speaker 04

  He wants it to be his brain.

• 41:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, so why doesn't he have the brain of someone, you know, of that guy? Why doesn't he have those memories?

• 41:34Speaker 04

  I don't know how the human soul works, I gotta say.

• 41:37Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, you just circled back to Science Corner here, you know. Again, Science Corner is about asking or answering questions.

• 41:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I said it's a robust dialogue.

• 41:44Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 41:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 41:45Speaker 04

  This is the scientific method at work. We're not coming in saying this is what Tylenol does to you. We're saying we're gonna try to prove it through science.

• 41:52Amanda Dobbins?

  We're all gonna put on wigs like those people sitting in the bleachers when he reanimates people.

• 41:55Speaker 04

  Hell, yeah.

• 41:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And we're just, we're gonna discuss.

• 41:57Speaker 04

  Honestly, that would be great content. We have someone standing in the middle of an auditorium, a bunch of bringer staffers around them in powdered wigs, shouting them down, encouraging them, just like a real yay or nay situation based on takes a look.

• 42:07Sean Fennessey?

  I have a note about that sequence, which features the great Ralph Ennis, who I love, one of the great voices in movies. He's very effective in this movie too, as one of the sort of like science judges who's telling the doctor to leave immediately. But what Dr. Frankenstein in that sequence shows them with the, you know, top half of the human, you know, the head and the chest and that functioning hand, when he throws him the ball and that corpse catches that ball, everybody in that room, in what is the story taking place, 1855?

• 42:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:36Sean Fennessey?

  Would be like, what? This is the single craziest thing that has happened in the history of the world, that this man revived a body and made it react? And these three old men, I understand that they would be afraid.

• 42:50Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 42:50Sean Fennessey?

  And that there is something against God in the work.

• 42:53Speaker 04

  Undoubtedly.

• 42:53Sean Fennessey?

  But to just like scuttle it and be like, we'll never talk of this again? The craziest thing that has happened in the history of civilization?

• 42:59Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 43:00Sean Fennessey?

  You guys buy that?

• 43:01Amanda Dobbins?

  You sound a little bit like a tech bro defending AI right now, just like to put it on record.

• 43:05Speaker 04

  He's changing the world.

• 43:07Sean Fennessey?

  That's not, that's not very nice. That's not how I feel about AI at all. Okay. I think that this movie, what you said earlier is very true, which is that despite our many complaints and grouchy attitude about this, people do like this movie and they would have gone to see it. It probably would have been, I don't know about a massive hit, but it would have been successful.

• 43:27Speaker 04

  Something.

• 43:28Sean Fennessey?

  I also saw it in a movie theater yesterday at the Chinese, which is a huge room, the IMAX theater at the Chinese theater. And it was about three quarters full in the afternoon on a Wednesday?

• 43:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Los Angeles is a unique town.

• 43:42Speaker 04

  Absolutely so.

• 43:44Sean Fennessey?

  I thought it played well with the crowd, not great, but I'd like to tell you a crazy story. I sat down, I got there a little early for the movie. And I sat in the front row of the upper section so that I could stretch my legs as much as I wanted. And watched-

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Just the height of privilege for you.

• 43:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, truly. I watched the previews and then just as the film was starting, a very tall person walked past me to sit down two seats next to me. This person was wearing a black hoodie and boots and it was Jacob Elordi.

• 44:13Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 44:14Sean Fennessey?

  And I had some-

• 44:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Honestly-

• 44:16Sean Fennessey?

  I had some reservations about sharing this because I don't want to put this guy on Front Street.

• 44:20Speaker 04

  Sure. I thought for certain you were gonna say LeBron James.

• 44:23Sean Fennessey?

  No. And, and, and I had really nothing else to say, other than he watched this movie and he seemed to admire Oscar Isaac's performance. Because he was like, kind of like laughing at some key moments.

• 44:32Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 44:33Sean Fennessey?

  But it was fascinating to be watching the movie, sitting beside the monster.

• 44:38Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 44:39Sean Fennessey?

  And I felt a little uncomfortable.

• 44:42Sean Fennessey?

  And it also was like, it was humanizing, you know?

• 44:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:45Sean Fennessey?

  He's an artist. I just saw this morning some images of him taking photos out of costume during the production of the movie. Because, you know, one, I think he's an aspiring photographer, and two, he obviously was kind of blown away by the world that they had created.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:58Sean Fennessey?

  And it gave me like, maybe a little bit more empathy for the, the process of this film.

• 45:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Did he have a bag with him?

• 45:06Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 45:07Amanda Dobbins?

  God, it's just, all of these experiences are wasted on you.

• 45:10Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I was sitting in the dark.

• 45:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Still, I think he would be able to spot the potato, you know? Oh, okay, that's good.

• 45:16Sean Fennessey?

  He ate popcorn.

• 45:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, I mean, it's fine.

• 45:19Sean Fennessey?

  He was very polite when he walked past me to go to the restroom.

• 45:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, great.

• 45:22Speaker 04

  I realize this is the social clip that's getting pulled from this episode. It's just you saying, "I saw Jacob Elordi one time and he ate popcorn." And people want that. That's, this is the catnip.

• 45:32Sean Fennessey?

  But I didn't just see him, I saw him during the film Franken-dod.

• 45:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I like how that now you're like, "Well, I sat there because I wanted to stretch my legs out because I too am tall like Jacob Elordi." I know, I, yeah, nice try. Well, you're not as tall as Jacob Elordi.

• 45:45Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not as tall as Jacob Elordi, but I'm tall enough to need to stretch my legs. I'm not even as tall as Rob Mahoney.

• 45:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 45:50Sean Fennessey?

  We're doing our best, the tall guys of America.

• 45:52Speaker 04

  We truly are. It's our burden, you know?

• 45:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. So anyway, I just thought I would share that.

• 45:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. That's nice. That's very sweet that he wanted to do that. Yeah.

• 46:00Sean Fennessey?

  I was wondering how many times, if at all, he had seen it. Of course, he's been to the premiere of the film, but you know, a lot of filmmakers and actors can't watch their work or don't want to see themselves on screen.

• 46:11Amanda Dobbins?

  They tend to, they're front and center, so they don't leave. So if you're there at the premiere, you're there for it.

• 46:16Sean Fennessey?

  He might have had the same mentality that I had, and I assume you had too, which is like, I want to see this on the big screen before I can't see it on the big screen anymore.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Nasa Energy. Every ounce of dirt, sweat and gears, every checkered flag and trophy raised, every lap, every race, every hard fought place. They're all jammed inside every can of Nasa Energy. High performance energy for burning the midnight oil in the garage and pedal to the metal human horsepower for the streets. Go ahead, crack open a can of Nasa Energy and get after it.

• 46:47Sean Fennessey?

  Awards chances. Now, Rob, on the show-

• 46:50Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like 4,000.

• 46:52Sean Fennessey?

  In recent weeks, we have been noting that it's been rising in the estimation of festival goers and seemingly some voting bodies.

• 47:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:01Sean Fennessey?

  We've kind of firmly planted it right smack in the middle of our Best Picture power rankings for Best Picture. I know you're not an expert, but you're assuming that this movie is going to make it into Best Picture?

• 47:10Speaker 04

  On a gut level, that still sounds surprising to me.

• 47:13Sean Fennessey?

  Why do you say that?

• 47:14Speaker 04

  I don't know. Like, I guess, to me, it is so like mid-level Del Toro. It does have an audience, but is it going to be enough of an awardsy audience and that kind of pull? And ultimately, I think whether it gets in is going to depend more on how the Allardy performance in particular sits with people. And if that's one that people are championing and feels like something that is rising to the top of the pile, then all of a sudden Frankenstein just gets into the mix in a totally different way.

• 47:39Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think at this point?

• 47:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I think there's a huge amount of affection for Del Toro, and there's a huge admiration for all of the production design and costume design and physical work that did go into this movie. So despite the CGI of it all, I think you'll have below the line, you know, categories stacking up. And that will, that kind of brings the movie to more people's attention. Film, it's getting, you know, audience favorite awards at festivals. Jacob Allardy is pretty good and also has a significant following of, you know, me and many other people.

• 48:11Sean Fennessey?

  He's a good person you want to see at the Academy Awards. You want to see a young star like him at the Academy Awards.

• 48:16Amanda Dobbins?

  So- I am just because of the weird Best Picture year, which we say every year now. There's no, there's no normal year. But the weird Netflix slate, where it's just, it's a little early and it's hard to see how it's gonna shake out, but they've got House of Dynamite, they've got J. Kelly, they've got Frankenstein, and they've got Train Dreams, which I'm gonna see this weekend. And it's, this seems like the grabbiest at this point.

• 48:45Sean Fennessey?

  I agree with that. So, let's talk about Best Supporting Actor.

• 48:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 48:51Sean Fennessey?

  Very interesting slate of potential nominees here. We've got Benicio del Toro for One Battle After Another. Banger. Adam Sandler for J. Kelly. We've got Delroy Lindo for Sinners.

• 49:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:02Sean Fennessey?

  We've got Stellan Skarsgård for Sentimental Value. We've got Sean Penn for One Battle After Another.

• 49:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 49:06Sean Fennessey?

  We've got Paul Meskell for Hamlet.

• 49:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's a loaded category.

• 49:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 49:11Sean Fennessey?

  And if you wanna throw Miles Keaton in from Sinners 2, you can do that as well. Sure. Deserving. If you wanna throw Jeremy Strong in for Springsteen, maybe don't do that.

• 49:19Sean Fennessey?

  That is...

• 49:23Sean Fennessey?

  It's gonna be, not be easy for Alordi to get in.

• 49:25Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 49:26Sean Fennessey?

  I think there has to be a really strong appreciation for him, cuz I feel like at this point...

• 49:33Sean Fennessey?

  I feel strongly about Sean Penn and Benicio. I feel strongly about Sandler, even though he's never been nominated before. And I'd feel strongly about Stellan Skarsgård. That fifth spot is kinda where he would go. And Delroy Lindo was overlooked for The Five Bloods recently. Maybe there's a sense that he needs to be recognized before it's too late. He's so fabulous in Sinners 2. He's really great. Great. They need to run a really good campaign for him, I think, for that to work out. So you're saying Alordi needs to run a campaign? Did it ever occur to you that he followed you into that theater? And was like, you know what? I need to get a little word of mouth going. I need to get a little goodwill. It's very sweet of you to say. I'm just saying. I think we all know that that's not true. If in fact he has a chance there, then you do need to see Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling,

• 50:18Sean Fennessey?

  score, visual effects, even if you don't like it, it's in play.

• 50:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Okay.

• 50:24Sean Fennessey?

  Editing, maybe if there's a ton of support. Director, if there's an overwhelming amount of support. As you said, he has a lot of friends and has really liked. And he does a thing, when I saw Nosferatu last year, he conducted the Q and A with.

• 50:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, he's the champion.

• 50:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 50:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's the ombudsman of horror, basically. And I guess anything kind of horror adjacent.

• 50:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, so I won't be surprised if this ends up getting six or seven or eight nominations, honestly.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  Well, the design makeup stuff is a lock, I would think.

• 50:54Sean Fennessey?

  I totally agree. As far as where he's at, so he's now made his fable, his vampire movie, his kaiju movie, his Gothic romance, two comic book films, his noir, his Universal monster movie, another Universal monster movie, his Pinocchio, and his ghost story. He's kind of touched all sides of the Dungeons and Dragons die of genre filmmaking. I mean, he really has explored kind of the farthest reaches. And one thing that I have been a little bit disappointed by, even though I really liked Nightmare Alley, is it's been a long time since he's made an original movie.

• 51:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:33Sean Fennessey?

  And I feel like he's a little lost in the sauce and not leaning into what really animates him. Like, the guy who made Cronos and Devil's Backbone, like, I want to see that guy.

• 51:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 51:46Speaker 04

  Well, and Pan's Labyrinth. Like, that's his masterpiece, as far as I'm concerned. And that's like, that's an original tale that doesn't feel original. I would also love to see him make something contemporary for the first time in like 20 years. Like, everything is period all the time. And I know you love, again, like, a Victorian manner and a certain kind of like buttoned up dress. And you want like the butterflies and the moths everywhere? Like, that's cool, but can we do something set in the present day?

• 52:09Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it is hard to have original ideas. You're describing things that he had when he was younger. And I think that there is something to the idea he's been wanting to make this movie his whole career. And because he couldn't, and/or for whatever reason, he got forced into other ways to interpret it. The projects that you wait forever for

• 52:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 52:32Amanda Dobbins?

  are sometimes a little labored. And so, you know, I don't know. He's done a lot. Give him credit for that. But like, I agree. I mean, I don't, I don't want another monster movie. I'm sure I'll get one.

• 52:43Speaker 04

  There's going to be a monster in it.

• 52:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. The monster is us.

• 52:46Speaker 04

  I mean, every time, no matter what.

• 52:49Sean Fennessey?

  The movie of his that I have always longed for is At the Mountains of Madness, which is a H.P. Lovecraft adaptation that he was going to make in the 2000s with Tom Cruise. It is like an epic cosmic horror monster movie that would have been on the same scale as Pacific Rim, but would have been more of a period kind of adventure story. That also is not original, but it would have been a little bit outside of the realm of a lot of the stuff that he's been doing in the last few years. You know, I want the best for him.

• 53:19Speaker 04

  I do, too.

• 53:20Sean Fennessey?

  I hope he's happy, and he shouldn't take any notes from me. He should do whatever he wants, but it's just something that I'm saying that I want.

• 53:25Speaker 04

  Well, I do think we zeroed in on it, which is if we thought of the film more favorably, then the through lines would feel different. It would feel like something that's like part of a scholarly text of it. Like, the line from Nightmare Alley to Pinocchio to here, you can see the daddy issues, you can see the interest in investigating like, you know, post-war or simultaneous war implications. Like, all that stuff is kind of there in a way that is interesting. And this just feels like, to me, between the three of those, like, kind of the relative dud at the end of the line. But there's an arc there that I can see what he's driven by and see what he's interested in. And maybe that arc has closed, and now we're on to something new and something interesting in a way that, like, at a certain point in time, Pacific Rim felt like a huge departure. And that, like, that movie is like as good as that kind of movie as you can make.

• 54:08Sean Fennessey?

  See, to me, that was like his attempt and success at like a general crowd-pleasing blockbuster.

• 54:14Speaker 04

  I was very pleased.

• 54:14Sean Fennessey?

  It was like a summer movie, and there's big robots and monsters, and he's having fun. And it was effective. They didn't have the weight of expectation and artistry that comes with a Frankenstein. Just give me five minutes to talk about the Frankenstein movie, okay?

• 54:28Amanda Dobbins?

  You go, girl.

• 54:28Sean Fennessey?

  So there have been so many of these kinds of movies over the years. And even right now, there is an animated film that I have not seen that is in theaters called Stitch Head, which is just a riff on the Frankenstein story because it's Halloween time.

• 54:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:43Sean Fennessey?

  In March, Maggie Gyllenhaal's movie, The Bride, comes out. Christian Bale is playing the monster.

• 54:48Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 54:49Sean Fennessey?

  Jessie Buckley. Moments before grabbing her first Academy Award will be appearing as the bride. I think the best Frankenstein movies is pretty consistently usually a boring list. Because the original whale film and then his follow up, The Bride of Frankenstein is often cited as like the best and the most important and are taught in film schools the world over and still work if you show them to a seven year old, they're still effective, they're still scary, they still have this incredible sense of atmosphere that is undeniable. And then Hammer films from England, the best one I think is The Curse of Frankenstein. New Warner Brothers archive 4K out there. You gonna check it out?

• 55:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Good job. Congratulations.

• 55:30Sean Fennessey?

  Flesh for Frankenstein, Paul Morrissey's adaptation. I know Rob's seen it, he's a fan. It's really good. It's sort of a double Frankenstein story, a man and a woman are simultaneously revived.

• 55:40Speaker 04

  This movie could have used a little more flesh for Frankenstein. Like you have to let the monster and Victor be depraved. Like the best way Amanda to harness the lightning is to let the freak flag fly. Like you gotta really raise it up there and let these guys be weirder and weirdly enough for Guillermo.

• 55:56Amanda Dobbins?

  You know what I was thinking about during this movie yesterday? Do you remember there was sort of a frankly disrespectful meme format about five to 10 years ago when someone would die, a notable person would die, everyone would treat like so and so taught me how to be weird. And this is sort of like Frankenstein taught me how to be weird, the movie. I just, you know, and there we go. I also just scrolled down on your list and there's an X-Files episode on here, so I'm gonna need you to.

• 56:23Sean Fennessey?

  I'm gonna get to that.

• 56:23Amanda Dobbins?

  That's okay. Let's just, let's keep it moving.

• 56:28Sean Fennessey?

  Two quick ones. Depraved is Larry Fessenden's reimagining of this where a US soldier who dies is revived. This is a very clever take on it. I did watch Mary Shelley's Frankenstein this morning, the Kenneth Branagh adaptation with Robert De Niro as the monster. A fascinating piece of movie history because the script that Frank Darabont wrote for that before he went on to make The Shawshank Redemption is considered one of the great movie scripts and one of the great adaptations in movie history and Kenneth Branagh kind of fucked it. And Guillermo del Toro himself said, I read that script and that made me want to make Frank's movie, his vision for the movie. The version that we got is like way operatic and crazy. And Brana is like shirtless through half of it and is like really showing off those abs.

• 57:13Sean Fennessey?

  Not a successful movie. Interesting movie.

• 57:14Speaker 04

  The list of movies that Kenneth Branagh kind of fucked is.

• 57:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, I mean, this is like right during the Emma Thompson, Helen Bottom Carter of it all. It's just, it's not what you want.

• 57:25Sean Fennessey?

  Helen Bottom Carter featured prominently in Frankenstein.

• 57:28Speaker 04

  Can't imagine why.

• 57:29Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. To me, Frankenstein is better for the inspired by movies. So very quickly a list. Edward Scissorhands is Frankenstein. The Spirit of the Beehive, the great Spanish film is all about young kids seeing Frankenstein and then being changed forever. Robocop is Frankenstein.

• 57:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:46Sean Fennessey?

  The Rocky Horror Picture Show is Frankenstein. Phantom of the Paradise, De Palma's movie, Frankenstein. Re-Animator, one of the greatest horror movies ever, Frankenstein. Poor Things just came out recently.

• 57:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:56Sean Fennessey?

  Frankenstein. Gods and Monsters, the biopic about James Whale, Frankenstein. Gothic, the Ken Russell movie about a bunch of horror writers getting together and scaring each other, Frankenstein. The X-Files, the postmodern Prometheus.

• 58:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I see what they did there.

• 58:08Sean Fennessey?

  Of the X-Files, I think.

• 58:10Speaker 04

  It's a legendary episode.

• 58:11Sean Fennessey?

  Black and white episode.

• 58:12Speaker 04

  Super funny.

• 58:13Sean Fennessey?

  Features tons of riffs from the Whale movie.

• 58:15Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 58:15Sean Fennessey?

  Really good.

• 58:16Speaker 04

  I mean, it's like, what if there were a version of Frankenstein that were obsessed with Cher? And could you save him by taking him to see Cher live? That is the, that's the textual plot of the episode.

• 58:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I appreciate that.

• 58:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Frankenstein is also ripe for comedy.

• 58:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:29Sean Fennessey?

  Young Frankenstein, the Mel Brooks movie, one of the funniest movies ever made.

• 58:32Speaker 04

  Frankenstein, but okay.

• 58:33Sean Fennessey?

  Frankenstein, thank you. Frankenhooker, have you seen that, Amanda?

• 58:36Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but you have talked about it many times.

• 58:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's about a prostitute.

• 58:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:40Sean Fennessey?

  Who is killed in a lawnmower accident and then revived.

• 58:44Speaker 04

  Why are you talking about this so many times?

• 58:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's an interesting film. Weird Science, also kind of in the Frankenhooker zone. Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein.

• 58:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Knox and I have seen this.

• 58:53Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 58:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, we, because they were showing it in like an academy museum.

• 58:56Sean Fennessey?

  Was he scared of the monster?

• 58:57Amanda Dobbins?

  No, he was laughing. He like, he picked up on the funniest.

• 59:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's good. It's funny.

• 59:00Amanda Dobbins?

  It was, I think it was last year, so it was before he had learned that things are scary.

• 59:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, we'll do that now too.

• 59:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 59:06Amanda Dobbins?

  But, um, no, loved it. It was great.

• 59:08Sean Fennessey?

  And Tim Burton, again, Frankenweenie is a very overt riff on this.

• 59:13Sean Fennessey?

  Frankenstein is forever. This Frankenstein? We'll see. Yeah, we'll see. So let's talk about Die My Love, which is, is it a movie about monsters?

• 59:24Sean Fennessey?

  Amanda, I ask you.

• 59:25Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a movie about the process of creation and creating a life.

• 59:28Sean Fennessey?

  Undoubtedly. Absolutely true. We have inadvertently thematically nailed this episode. So this is the new film from Lynn Ramsey. It stars Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, Lakeith Stanfield, Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek. Perhaps you've heard of those actors. It is about a young couple who moved from New York to Montana. I guess they're in search of a quieter life. They are about to be parents. Are they parents already when they arrive? It's kind of flickering across the spectrum, I think.

• 59:52Amanda Dobbins?

  She might be pregnant, but you know, things are not really communicated in a... They're literal, but plot details are sparse.

• 1:00:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, this is not a traditional literal narrative film. It is very much a film about experience. And in this film, we see the relationship between this couple. They have a child. And then everything that unfurls from there. So I will start with you, Amanda.

• 1:00:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you so much.

• 1:00:16Sean Fennessey?

  What did you think of Die My Love?

• 1:00:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I think as we near the end of the year, that this is one of my favorite movies of the year. It is catered directly to me. In fact, I saw a woman outside of a different screening. Jack and I ran into each other after I saw Die My Love and they, and he was there for something else. And someone overheard, hey, I just heard you saw Die My Love. And I, what'd you think? And I said, I loved it, but I am also 11 months postpartum at this moment. Hilariously, I also went on a date with my husband. So we were sitting there watching this couple in a very serious, similar and serious phase of life, go through these experiences. And I have a pretty fraught relationship with like mom culture, not just mom movies, but mom books and mom.

• 1:01:02Sean Fennessey?

  Mommy emails.

• 1:01:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, just like mommy emails, mama.

• 1:01:06Sean Fennessey?

  Can I just tell you?

• 1:01:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Sean Fennessey?

  Hang in there, mom.

• 1:01:09Amanda Dobbins?

  But not even just the like, you got this mama bullshit. But like, there have been a lot of novels and like quote unquote, attempts at like, high art to talk about what it is to be a mother. And I seldom connect. That's probably a me thing. I'm not a joiner, but I just, they don't, well, they, they speak to someone else's experiences, not to mine. And for everything that is like similar about a large percentage of this world population, everybody has a different experience. This spoke to me. This is about, it is about the weird and terrifying experience of postpartum. It is about depression.

• 1:01:53Amanda Dobbins?

  It is about postpartum depression. It's like, you know, it is the things separate and apart. And I think if you've experienced one, you'll relate to some of it. If you've experienced both, you'll relate to it more. But I found the, like, the vignettes and the presentation of this phase of life and like new life, essentially, to be just so accurate of all of the emotions and just wildly weird dissociative, isolating feelings that go on in this moment. I found it like very funny. Both my husband and I were like laughing a lot and like shout out to him for going and

• 1:02:37Amanda Dobbins?

  being like, yeah, that was good because Robert Pattinson is portrayed just like a really, you know, he's basically not there. And that's part of the thing, and I think he does a great job in it. But so I, I thought it was, like, I'll stop talking. Did you guys like it?

• 1:02:55Speaker 04

  I'll let you go, Rob. I spent most of this movie wanting to throw up.

• 1:02:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00Speaker 04

  And I loved it. Loved every second of it. I mean, it's like, it is very my shit in that experiential, like, impressionistic kind of way. And I think it gets at something, like, it's so weird that this and If I Had Legs I'd Kick You are coming out so close together.

• 1:03:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:16Speaker 04

  Because they're both kind of reaching for something similar, both really effectively. But it gets into this like very primal thing that... Like, there's a part of all of us that is hanging the wallpaper and baking the cake and trying to participate in society. And then there is the voice at the back of your head that just is telling you to run into the woods and never look back. And my understanding, again, very secondhand, is that postpartum mothers maybe experience that like more acutely than basically anyone else.

• 1:03:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 04

  And so like, turning that into this very visceral feeling over the course of this movie is just overwhelmingly effective.

• 1:03:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think it's a pretty great movie. It's very much in the tradition of all of Lynn Ramsey's movies, which are about these experiences of like profound alienation and feeling completely disconnected and unable to really like be seen and understood, right? Jennifer Lawrence's character in this movie is experiencing something that millions of mothers experience, but that feeling is like, why can't anyone understand how I feel right now? And why won't they accept how I feel as being normal?

• 1:04:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:04:19Sean Fennessey?

  And that is a really hard thing to translate into a film. And it's really interesting that, you know, you said the Mary Bronstein's movie, this is even in One Battle After Another, the Perfidly Beverly Hills character expresses this. And there have been a lot of movies about the challenges of motherhood. What was the Amy Adams film that we talked about on the show?

• 1:04:35Speaker 04

  Night Bitch. It's just impossible to watch this and not think about Night Bitch.

• 1:04:39Sean Fennessey?

  I know, which is like...

• 1:04:40Amanda Dobbins?

  So funny, I did not think about Night Bitch once, even though you guys had a great episode.

• 1:04:43Sean Fennessey?

  I appreciate that.

• 1:04:44Amanda Dobbins?

  And I did think that Night Bitch portrayed some of like the difficulties of having a toddler in like, I've been there and I see it sort of way.

• 1:04:53Sean Fennessey?

  But that movie was more about a certain vision of parenting, maybe, than... Because I don't see this movie as entirely about motherhood. I feel like it's much more about the female psychology, like the expressions of it, because she does spend time mothering her child in the film.

• 1:05:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Sean Fennessey?

  But I wouldn't say that that is like the thrust, that like it's much more about the ways in which she is seeking like relief from her experiences or like, and the movie very complicatedly explores what is like a desire dream, what is a nightmare, and then what is the practical reality of what is happening to me? And it's not really too worried about you understanding which is which at any given time in the film.

• 1:05:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, which I think the implication is that she also doesn't totally know. I mean, I think that it communicates a very specific feeling postpartum, which is that...

• 1:05:50Amanda Dobbins?

  You are like physically and emotionally tied to this other thing that was was was you.

• 1:05:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:58Amanda Dobbins?

  And that you did create. I mean, it is about like the consequences of creation. And now it exists.

• 1:06:05Sean Fennessey?

  It's like when your baby looks at you and says, you are the monster.

• 1:06:08Amanda Dobbins?

  But now it exists outside of you, but but still there's like there, there are still physical, like biological and emotional connections.

• 1:06:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:17Amanda Dobbins?

  That are and and things that are messing with your head and your body that are like of you, but are also completely separate and and sort of random and come from nowhere. And so one minute you can be like really happy and then you are very angry and then you're very stressed out and then and then and you like love this baby, but also like you're you feel like you're gonna throw up because you don't know what to do about it. And it like it really like is dissociative. That's the only way that I can describe the experience and it feels like it is coming from from somewhere else, like the call is not coming from inside the house, even though it is. And I thought that this the disconnected

• 1:07:00Amanda Dobbins?

  style of this movie and also like the very feral.

• 1:07:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Physical performances like really communicate that kind of person who's lost, not just in her body, but in the world.

• 1:07:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:07:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and and and how much of it is animalistic, like it really is.

• 1:07:19Sean Fennessey?

  Totally.

• 1:07:19Amanda Dobbins?

  It's so fucked up. The whole experience is so.

• 1:07:22Sean Fennessey?

  This is the thing. Yeah.

• 1:07:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I guess it's like amazing or whatever, like mama, look what you did, but like also.

• 1:07:28Sean Fennessey?

  You did, girl.

• 1:07:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but but it is, but it's just, it is really, you feel like you're in a nature documentary, you know?

• 1:07:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's not a miracle, you're a miracle.

• 1:07:36Amanda Dobbins?

  It just, it's, it feels so, um, it's, it is really, really bizarre. So I loved it. I found myself a little disappointed when it got more literal.

• 1:07:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And I mean, this is a person with like serious postpartum depression, uh, which is real and also which I had. So, you know, like, and it happens to many people and there's no shame around it. And also getting help is really good. But I found that once the character like is hospitalized and they pin down like, this is what's going on here. And this is, it's less a statement of fact and more like something to be solved.

• 1:08:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I guess like is. That's what we want in life, you know? And like, that's what's good for the character. And I guess is maybe the only like, story arc that's possible, you know? But, and I guess it's a movie, so it has to have a story.

• 1:08:29Speaker 04

  But it does it? Like, I think that's why.

• 1:08:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think so.

• 1:08:32Speaker 04

  I struggled with that a little bit, too, just because I feel like it breaks the spell of the movie a little bit. Like, it does ground it in a way that isn't just like uncomfortable, but I feel like it's just kind of spinning its wheels until we can get back to the experiential bits. I, I, I get why it happens logically. Like, I'm sure there are some audiences who would just watch this and think like, why aren't you checking this woman in somewhere?

• 1:08:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:08:52Speaker 04

  And I think the movie actually does a good job of that through the lens of Robert Pattinson's character, where yet, that guy is like feckless and absent. And interesting in a way that some of the other analogues in some of these other movies about parenthood, the husbands are not. So like, there's something there. And there are scenes genuinely where it's like, my wife just ran headfirst through a glass door? Like, what am I supposed to do? In a way that is understandable, and yet, I just don't want to see the hospital sequence. I just want to stay with Jennifer Lawrence, because like, everything she's doing in this movie is fucking electric.

• 1:09:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I definitely want to talk about her and what she brings to this movie. The thing that you're saying, which is like, this movie's attempt to kind of wrangle itself into a narrative film, is a real challenge. There is, we were talking about Frankenstein, there's another 19th century piece of literature that this reminded me of, The Yellow Wallpaper, I'm sure you've read it, that is also very much about kind of like, female alienation, loneliness, and mania. The Bell Jar is about this. Like, there's, there are other, and it's, it's hard to make those stories cinematic, because they're taking place in someone's mind.

• 1:09:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:09:57Sean Fennessey?

  And this movie, I think, probably gets about as close as you possibly can, because it ha, Lynn Ramsey creates these series of surrealist images of what may or may not be happening inside of this person's head, which is largely effective. We don't know, like, our empathy is with Lawrence, but she's also doing things that we're just like, why did you do that?

• 1:10:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:19Sean Fennessey?

  And- It makes the movie like, it's not on a track. It's an experience and it's not, if you sit down and if people listen to this show and they're like, oh, new Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson movie? It's like, reset your expectations from what you're going to witness. And I think if you're a mother or a parent or child who has some empathy for this experience, you'll understand it a little bit better. But it is an audacious piece of filmmaking. The story is, is that Martin Scorsese read this book in a book club. And he thought Jennifer Lawrence should play this woman, which is an interesting thing to think.

• 1:10:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Isn't she also in the book club?

• 1:10:55Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so.

• 1:10:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, she's not?

• 1:10:56Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so.

• 1:10:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought that they were in the book club together.

• 1:10:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think she was contacted by him and said, I just, he said, I just read this book. And I think you should, you should do this. And her production company optioned the book. And I'm just gonna, I gave away some of this when we talked about No Hard Feelings a couple of years ago. But I'm not done a 180 on a performer so dramatically, like probably in my life. In 2015, 14, 13, when she was winning Academy Awards and was the toast of Hollywood. I was very vocally like, this girl is a bumpkin. This, this performance style is no good.

• 1:11:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:29Sean Fennessey?

  This is not interesting to me at all. This is the most like affected, like older men, like putting a 22 year old in a position and like not protecting her and letting her just be like frivolous and weird. I was pretty mean spirited about it. I don't feel good about that. But I do think that she has transformed herself into an amazing and fearless actor. And she takes parts, now we talked about this with Emma Stone last week on the show. She too is now like, I made The Hunger Games, like I'm good. It's time to try something that is significantly more audacious and, and bold. And she's really great in this movie. And I did not know this until I listened to her on the New York Times interview podcast. But she was pregnant while she made this film. Unbelievable. Which is quite crazy.

• 1:12:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I could tell. But that's only because I, I mean, cause she is like extremely naked. And it was more about the breastfeeding scene where I was just kind of like, what's going on here? And how is this physically possible? And then I was like, oh, that, that must be. But she, I mean, she's just like, she is quite literally tits out, but not in a sexual way. In a, this is like my body is leaking sort of way. And I loved it. She's, it's, there was an Emma Stone quote in the New Yorker piece that I think the Martin Scorsese anecdote comes from. And it's like, there's a. Old dear Anadag, if an actor is onstage with a cat, who are you going to watch, the actor or the cat? The audience would watch the cat, Stone explained,

• 1:12:56Amanda Dobbins?

  because it's going to respond genuinely in the moment, while the actors are still acting. It's that quality, Jen's the cat. I think, I mean, you know, Emma Stone is very good at giving quotes about the nature of acting and other things. But I was like, that is true. She just turns on or like turns off her Jennifer Lawrence and is in the moment of wherever she is in a way that is astounding.

• 1:13:19Sean Fennessey?

  If you listen to her talk on this, well, first of all, Jen's the cat certainly recalls Bill Simmons as Paul George.

• 1:13:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:13:25Sean Fennessey?

  Famous, famous line in podcasting. Paul George and Jennifer Lawrence, two 34-year-olds who are transforming their identity every day.

• 1:13:34Amanda Dobbins?

  He's in the garage.

• 1:13:34Sean Fennessey?

  No one in common. It's a great moment.

• 1:13:40Sean Fennessey?

  Don't know where to go from there. Pick me up, where am I supposed to go?

• 1:13:43Speaker 04

  Um, how about this? You know, I'm gonna go from cat to dog. A dog plays a very prominent part of this movie. I will say, there is a perspective shot moment in which it is not exactly clear who Jennifer Lawrence is pointing a gun at. And the like, physical discomfort in my theater at the prospect that she could be pointing it at this dog, I think taps into some of the power of this movie. Like, there is a very feral place that this movie takes you to. There is Ablaze that is kind of like, not judgmental of Jennifer Lawrence's character, but is making you actively question everything about her. It's completely ugly. And it's like, I don't even know that she's like, losing her grip so much as her grip on like, the person that she thinks she's supposed to be. And so it's like, it's this very fine line.

• 1:14:27Speaker 04

  It's like, the whole movie's on that razor's edge of challenging you to stay there with it. And it's so good at keeping you there to the point that if you played, "Hey, Mickey," for me in this room right now, I might have a nervous breakdown. Uh, so it's like, there's just like, a Pavlovian thing that happens with this movie that is just incredible.

• 1:14:42Sean Fennessey?

  Some very good needle drops in this film.

• 1:14:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Him showing up with the dog is really, really. I like this husband character in the the recent history of unhelpful husbands and absent husbands, which if I had legs, I'd kick you, also does very well.

• 1:14:59Sean Fennessey?

  We never talked about the reveal of who the husband is also in that movie, which is quite good. I don't want to ruin it for anybody who hasn't seen that movie.

• 1:15:04Speaker 04

  He's doing less. Like Jackson in some ways is absent and in some ways is trying and I don't think is very good at it.

• 1:15:11Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I mean, he should never show up with a surprise dog is just like a free marriage advice from me to you. But um, some of it is that he can't get in to help her either, right? And so he is presented not as, you know, an outdated father or someone who is like checked out, but that there is like, like a barrier between what's going on with her and what's going on with everyone else. And though he would like to help, he just like can't.

• 1:15:43Sean Fennessey?

  He has no idea how to access, how to make her feel better or yeah, he, it's tricky, right? Because the film also, I don't know if you could call the character an unreliable narrator, but we don't actually know what's happening. So like in her mind, she's imagining that maybe he's being unfaithful, but we don't know if that's just a manifestation of her feelings of doubt and like low self-esteem. Or is it actually something that's really happening in the text of the story? And the movie resists, I think that like the neatness, you know? Because it's a time in your life when nothing is neat, right? Every day you're like, fuck, like, I don't know what I'm doing.

• 1:16:16Speaker 04

  It also doesn't matter, like if her decision-making and actions are being driven by that fear, then the fear is real, right? Like then that's the reality of her situation.

• 1:16:25Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very interesting, accomplished movie. I think it's also pretty smart about um, who your parents are and like what's going on with them.

• 1:16:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:34Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Nick Nolte and Sissy Spacek and them as like manifestations of their sons' foibles. And then what you're passing down to your children is something I think about all the time. It is like a constant obsession of mine and me thinking about what my parents have given me and how I'm passing it on to another person.

• 1:16:52Amanda Dobbins?

  That's your Frankenstein coming out.

• 1:16:53Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you know, I'm trying to not literalize it. I'm not trying to be the monster.

• 1:16:57Speaker 04

  What do you think you're passing to this podcast? Like this is your baby too.

• 1:17:00Sean Fennessey?

  That's true. Uh, hopefully. Thoughtful takes.

• 1:17:04Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:17:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. A dollop of sincerity. Some stern authority at times.

• 1:17:09Speaker 04

  No doubt.

• 1:17:10Sean Fennessey?

  A talking to.

• 1:17:10Speaker 04

  You'll tell a young Jennifer Lawrence, that's not what you should be doing.

• 1:17:13Sean Fennessey?

  Discipline. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, this is a really interesting film. So this film was picked up at the Cannes Film Festival for quite a large sum by MUBI. I saw the most recent trailer for this movie is pitched as from the studio that brought you The Substance.

• 1:17:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Substance, yeah.

• 1:17:28Sean Fennessey?

  Which feels like maybe not the best way to sell the movie because it's not entirely in the same register, but it does have some thematic cores.

• 1:17:35Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:17:35Sean Fennessey?

  That are similar. And they're releasing this movie wide. We're talking about it now in detail because it's going in like 2,800 theaters. That's pretty bold for what I would call basically an experimental film starring two of the biggest movie stars on earth. And I don't know, I don't think a movie like this is gonna make a lot of money, but that doesn't really matter.

• 1:17:55Speaker 04

  Not concerned with it. Ultimately, I think the appeal of it being that wide is Jennifer Lawrence is giving not just one of the best performances of her career, but of this year full stop. Like, this is.

• 1:18:05Amanda Dobbins?

  A thousand percent.

• 1:18:06Speaker 04

  This is an arresting display that I think will catch you and catch you off guard in so many ways. And like, if you could say one, if I would say one negative thing about this movie, it's that it is kind of the one note, right? Like, we're in this state of chaos perpetually, but everything that she's doing is so surprising and keeps you on the edge of your seat to the point where like, I don't even care if that's the one note. Like, just keep giving it to me over and over and I will live in this place because she's demanding that I pay full attention to every movement of her body.

• 1:18:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, this is a Lynn Ramsey film about postpartum depression, shot in an impressionistic style. You know, it's, it is true that the people who go to the movie theater because Katniss Everdeen and what's his name? This is like our fifth Twilight reference of this podcast.

• 1:18:50Sean Fennessey?

  Edward.

• 1:18:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Edward, yeah.

• 1:18:51Sean Fennessey?

  Edward Cullen.

• 1:18:52Speaker 04

  Is that number one on the big countdown? Is it gonna be one of the Twilight?

• 1:18:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Were those this century? I guess they were. They gotta be.

• 1:18:58Sean Fennessey?

  Certainly were, for sure.

• 1:18:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:00Sean Fennessey?

  You just spoiled Saturday's live show. I'm sorry. How dare you?

• 1:19:03Amanda Dobbins?

  That'd be so awesome.

• 1:19:04Sean Fennessey?

  It's a new moon, right?

• 1:19:05Amanda Dobbins?

  If we just, I was gonna say Breaking Dawn, when Dakota Fanning shows up as one of the Voltery and then that baby, Renesmee.

• 1:19:12Sean Fennessey?

  Renesmee.

• 1:19:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, never forget.

• 1:19:14Sean Fennessey?

  One of the great achievements. Who's Renesmee in Die My Love? I forget. Who played the baby? Could have been. I think it was Renesmee.

• 1:19:22Sean Fennessey?

  Let's do best actress quickly, since we were talking best supporting actress, or supporting actor, I should say. So Jessie Buckley is currently leading the Heisman race.

• 1:19:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Another mom.

• 1:19:32Sean Fennessey?

  Another mom. Renata Renzve in Sentimental Value, another story about your parents fucking you up.

• 1:19:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:38Sean Fennessey?

  Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You.

• 1:19:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:40Sean Fennessey?

  Another mom. Cynthia Revo in Wicked for Good, she is of course, mother. And Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Emily, also mother. Plus, you've got Chase Infiniti. Plus, you've got Emma Stone.

• 1:19:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Whatever, we won't get into spoilers.

• 1:19:55Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:19:58Sean Fennessey?

  And I guess you've got Kate Hudson in Song Song Blue, a movie I haven't seen, and Sydney Sweeney and Christie.

• 1:20:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Everyone's trying for Kate Hudson. I think that'll be like a very nice Golden Globes red carpet, you know?

• 1:20:08Sean Fennessey?

  She will be nominated for being musical or comedy, for sure.

• 1:20:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe they'll let her perform and I think that's fine.

• 1:20:17Sean Fennessey?

  You think Jennifer Lawrence is getting in for this movie?

• 1:20:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, and I wish she were.

• 1:20:20Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:20:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I think, I think that Rose Byrne and Jessie Buckley are gonna like lead the mom contingent. And I, I would pick this over Emma Stone in Begonha, but I don't think voters will.

• 1:20:36Sean Fennessey?

  This is heartbreaking to hear.

• 1:20:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's just a little small. It didn't have a great reception at Cannes, even though it was, you know, picked up. And I, I do think it's the best performance of her career, definitely since Mother. And I'm really excited, once all the mommy movies come out, for us to have, you know, moms versus dads. I mean, this episode was it a little bit. And it is, I just...

• 1:20:59Speaker 04

  Who do you feel like is winning?

• 1:21:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I just think men need to get hobbies, you know, because I like...

• 1:21:04Sean Fennessey?

  I have an extraordinary hobby.

• 1:21:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:06Sean Fennessey?

  Isn't that one of the great hobbies?

• 1:21:08Amanda Dobbins?

  You guys actually, you can't create life. And so then you just, you know, you make aliens and like create psychological dramas for yourself. And it's like, not that kind of...

• 1:21:15Sean Fennessey?

  What's wrong with that?

• 1:21:16Amanda Dobbins?

  There are other things that are way more complicated than like, oh, did I do a good thing by making this monster? Didn't, will my dad love me now? Like, grow up.

• 1:21:24Speaker 04

  You won 15 minutes in this movie of Robert Pattinson, like, playing pickleball?

• 1:21:29Speaker 04

  That would have solved it. Everything's fixed.

• 1:21:31Amanda Dobbins?

  How do we know that he's not? You know, they've got a lot of land.

• 1:21:34Speaker 04

  He's off camera a lot.

• 1:21:35Sean Fennessey?

  So funny, because before I had a child, I did have a hobby. It was called drinking, and I drank all the time. And I don't really drink that much anymore. So, you know, I've replaced one hobby with life.

• 1:21:47Amanda Dobbins?

  That's, that's beautiful.

• 1:21:48Sean Fennessey?

  That's what it's all about.

• 1:21:49Amanda Dobbins?

  That's beautiful.

• 1:21:49Sean Fennessey?

  Truly.

• 1:21:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And you're holding it together so well, you know?

• 1:21:52Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean? I feel that I gave a Sterling performance today in the act of movie podcasting. Hey, Rob Mahoney, you're the man. Where can we find you?

• 1:21:58Speaker 04

  You can find me on The Ringer NBA Show every week. You can find me on the Prestige TV Podcast most weeks, including, we got Pluribus coming up. There's a lot happening.

• 1:22:06Sean Fennessey?

  I heard this is good.

• 1:22:07Amanda Dobbins?

  What is Pluribus?

• 1:22:08Speaker 04

  A show that, according to Joanna Robinson, is one of the best pilots she's ever seen that I still need to watch.

• 1:22:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you know the logline?

• 1:22:14Speaker 04

  I don't. It's crazy. But it is a mystery-type show I'm consciously trying to avoid.

• 1:22:18Sean Fennessey?

  Vince Gilligan's new show starring Ray Sehorn from Better Call Saul.

• 1:22:23Speaker 04

  That's a better pitch.

• 1:22:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:22:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I'm gonna watch the Emma Thompson detective series instead.

• 1:22:27Speaker 04

  Oh, that's, I mean, that also seems very worth your time.

• 1:22:28Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Well, thank you to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Next week, CR and I are going to the Badlands, where we're gonna be talking about Predator, the Predator movies, whatever's going on in England with him.

• 1:22:38Speaker 04

  Is Chris gonna be on your back, cut in half like an android?

• 1:22:42Sean Fennessey?

  That is how I think of us all the time. Uh, thank you, guys. We'll see you soon.