The Top 10 Underseen and Overlooked Movies of 2025. Plus: ‘Is This Thing On?,’ ‘Ella McCay,’ and Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.

Sean and Amanda kick off the show by reacting to the brief teaser released for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s ‘Digger’ starring Tom Cruise (1:08). They then cover two new releases that they found absolutely baffling in Bradley Cooper’s ‘Is This Thing On?’ (4:17) and James L. Brooks’ ‘Ella McCay’ (23:17). Finally, they share their top ten most underseen and overlooked movies of the year (45:01). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producers: Jack Sanders and Jacob Cornett Shopping. Streaming. Celebrating. It’s on Prime. 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.

• 0:14Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fantasy.

• 0:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 0:16Sean Fennessey?

  And this is The Big Picture, a conversation about some weird and wild movies. Today on the show, we will dig into two of the more strange new releases of 2025. I'm referring to Bradley Cooper's Is This Thing On? And James L. Brooks's Element K, his first new film in 15 years. We'll also shed some light on some smaller films from this year by sharing our top five most underseen and overlooked movies. We're also going to talk about Tom Cruise's next film, which just got a teaser. We'll do it all next.

• 0:45Amanda Dobbins?

  This episode of The Big Picture is presented by Amazon Prime. You know how in every great holiday movie, there's that last minute scramble to make it all come together? From gifts to hosting essentials, Prime's fast shipping is always there for you during the holidays, especially when it's last minute and just can't wait. So if you need fast, free delivery that saves the day, it's on Prime. Head to amazon.com/prime to shop now.

• 1:08Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. It's Digger time.

• 1:12Sean Fennessey?

  Tom Cruise's Digger.

• 1:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14Sean Fennessey?

  Digger is the character that he's playing in the new film.

• 1:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18Sean Fennessey?

  By Alejandro Gonzales Inaritu, coming out October 2nd, 2026, from Warner Brothers.

• 1:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:24Sean Fennessey?

  We saw a teaser trailer of Tom, shot from behind, dancing.

• 1:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29Sean Fennessey?

  To a Gorillaz song, Oh, Green World.

• 1:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:32Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think?

• 1:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, oh, brother. I, I, I'm being.

• 1:36Sean Fennessey?

  You're nervous.

• 1:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course I am.

• 1:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, this looks like Tropic Thunder reheated, like with Inaritu, uh, thinking that he's funny. It's, it's a bad sign anytime the movie poster has to have an explanatory blurb that proclaims itself a comedy. Because that's when you know it's not obvious.

• 2:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's a really good note. You don't want to self-identify the genre on the poster. So the poster of Digger does in fact say, "A comedy of catastrophic proportions."

• 2:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:12Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I really like the poster. Very clearly Saul Bass-inspired poster. Looks like Anatomy of a Murder, or Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three. That orange palette is really, really nice. I thought it was fine.

• 2:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:26Sean Fennessey?

  I thought, I thought it was fine. I'm not like, no.

• 2:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:29Sean Fennessey?

  It's Tom Cruise finally breaking free of the franchise shackles after several years of not making any movies that are outside of that space. So I'm into that.

• 2:41Sean Fennessey?

  Inari two, you know?

• 2:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. This has, uh, the, the release date has Venice written all over it.

• 2:46Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 2:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:48Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. Dang.

• 2:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Just, just floating that for you.

• 2:52Sean Fennessey?

  For me?

• 2:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:53Sean Fennessey?

  What about for you?

• 2:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I'm just, I'm just circling it.

• 2:56Sean Fennessey?

  You want me to go to Venice this year? Next year?

• 2:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Last year you talked about it, or I guess this year.

• 3:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 3:01Amanda Dobbins?

  You discussed.

• 3:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You know what? It all shook out. I didn't think the Telluride slate was that great. And then I look back on the Venice slate and I'm like, eh.

• 3:10Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 3:10Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 3:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I guess the answer is that we should go to Cannes.

• 3:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Yeah. You're right about that.

• 3:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, maybe this would be Cannes.

• 3:21Sean Fennessey?

  Possible.

• 3:21Amanda Dobbins?

  And then they could sit on it for a while.

• 3:23Sean Fennessey?

  Certainly possible.

• 3:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, we'll see.

• 3:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, this film also stars Jesse Plemons, Sandra Huler, Riz Ahmed, Sophie Wild, Emma Darcy, Robert John Burke, Bern Gorman, Michael Stuhlbarg, John Goodman. I got any movie with Bern Gorman, Michael Stuhlbarg and John Goodman, that's like, it's hard to make a bad movie with those three guys. I'm just putting that out there.

• 3:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 3:44Sean Fennessey?

  Chivo shot it?

• 3:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, there are always a lot of very talented people on both Tom Cruise films and Inari two films.

• 3:52Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:53Amanda Dobbins?

  We'll see.

• 3:54Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Uh, so you're not, you won't watch this film? Just, just confirming here.

• 3:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I will go to any European film festival that shows it.

• 4:05Sean Fennessey?

  You know, this is an interesting slot where this movie is October 2nd. It's actually, it's actually the A Star is Born Venom slot.

• 4:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:11Sean Fennessey?

  And we're about to talk about the legacy of A Star is Born.

• 4:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 4:15Sean Fennessey?

  And Bradley Cooper here because

• 4:16Amanda Dobbins?

  We sure are.

• 4:17Sean Fennessey?

  We're going to pivot into Is This Thing On? Now, this is the new movie, uh, co-written and directed by Bradley Cooper, his third feature film after A Star is Born and Maestro. It stars Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Bradley Cooper, Andre Day, Amy Sedaris, Sean Hayes, Christine Ebersson, Karen Hines. The story is thus, after many years together, Alex and Tess have reached an amicable end to their marriage, thus beginning the awkward stage of figuring out how to live separately while raising two boys and maintaining their friendships. Alex discovers a new hobby and in the process learns more about himself and his relationship.

• 4:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:54Sean Fennessey?

  Bradley Cooper

• 4:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 4:55Sean Fennessey?

  Has been a bit of a totem of this show.

• 4:58Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 4:58Sean Fennessey?

  Some might say an icon, certainly someone we love to talk about.

• 5:02Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true. We started really cooking with this show right around the time of A Star is Born. And both loved that film.

• 5:10Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, I think The Ringer in general was like really out on the, on the barricades for A Star is Born before the other people got it.

• 5:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 5:19Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think we were maybe still waiting for some other people to get it, but I stand by that. And then, you know, Bradley Cooper still acts.

• 5:28Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:29Amanda Dobbins?

  While directing, he's certainly a presence in the Philadelphia sports world.

• 5:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yep. Rocket Raccoon.

• 5:35Amanda Dobbins?

  And sure.

• 5:36Sean Fennessey?

  The little guy in Dungeons and Dragons, Hunter Among Thieves.

• 5:39Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right.

• 5:40Sean Fennessey?

  Good performances.

• 5:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, he's, he's around, he's present. Somebody is always thanking him at an awards show.

• 5:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 5:45Amanda Dobbins?

  And.

• 5:46Sean Fennessey?

  Multi-time Academy Award nominee, never won.

• 5:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. And so we have been, you know, podcasting along with him, you know?

• 5:55Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and now here we all are once again.

• 6:00Sean Fennessey?

  So the first question that I want to ask you, I usually ask, what did you think of this movie?

• 6:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 6:07Sean Fennessey?

  This time I'm going to ask you, why did Bradley Cooper make this movie? What is this movie?

• 6:13Amanda Dobbins?

  This is loser behavior is what this movie is. That is, that's my review is that like this is top to bottom loser behavior. Which is different than saying that it's distinctly bad.

• 6:25Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 6:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know if it's totally bad, but I think all of the characters and the choices made are, are losers. So, and I just, and I don't identify with it in, in any way.

• 6:41Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 6:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And was very irritated by it. I don't, I mean Bradley Cooper is. If he's divorced, he's not divorced in this way after like a long time, you know, a 20 year marriage and two children and...

• 6:57Sean Fennessey?

  The star Will Arnett is.

• 6:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 6:58Sean Fennessey?

  The star Will Arnett is divorced and you can feel him bringing, I'm sure, some of his personal experience to it. And he's a co-writer on the film as well.

• 7:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna say, so...

• 7:05Sean Fennessey?

  And it is in fact, based on a person's true life story. A man who worked in finance and who discovered stand-up comedy. That's the hobby that I was alluding to. And who used stand-up comedy to kind of figure out his place in the world, which is, you know, a little bit of a groaner. No disrespect to that man's actual wife, but the premise itself is a little bit eye roll-y.

• 7:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, again, loser behavior. But I, the answer to the question, why did Bradley Cooper want to make this, is that it really just does feel like he's doing a solid for a friend.

• 7:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's possible. Obviously, Will Arnett and Bradley Cooper are friends. It feels to me like a very conscious, purposeful, kind of like slowdown after the mania of Maestro, which is a movie that I thought was ultimately successful, but very flawed, had really high highs. I still am somewhat conflicted about it because, you know, as many people said, it's not really a very good movie about Leonard Bernstein, but it's a really interesting cinematic exploration for him. You know, he's really challenging himself to do some big stuff. This is a huge pullback. This is a hyper intimate, I don't know, somewhere in that like Woody Allen, Paul Mazursky mold where of like intimate character drama with some funny moments and very sincere, but also dopey at times.

• 8:17Sean Fennessey?

  But with like none of the stick-to-it-iveness to make the movie as sour as I think it should be if it really wants to impact you.

• 8:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 8:24Sean Fennessey?

  Has a softness on it that I don't think really does it any favors. I think this is a movie that has some good performances, has some interesting ideas that are not totally realized. I absolutely hated the way that this movie looked and felt. The like, the filmmaking style kind of made me sick and...

• 8:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's weird because I really like Cooper as a director. I think he's got real panache. And I think he's really interested in a kind of classical filmmaking that is exciting. And this is like an experiment that he decided on and had to stick to, which is hyper intimate, right on the shoulders of the backs of his actors.

• 9:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Sean Fennessey?

  Intense, extreme close ups. You know, I will say I also had to sit in the front row at my screening of this movie. And so that made it even more challenging, how close the camera was to everything that was transpiring, whether it's Will Arnett on stage doing a comedy routine, or Laura Dern in crisis in her car. The like, the forced intimacy of the movie made it very uncomfortable, but not in the exciting way that I was hoping for.

• 9:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 9:26Sean Fennessey?

  Really, just slightly irritating to be watching.

• 9:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I completely agree. My instinct to having to spend two hours with these people, very close up in their their faces, as they worked through these problems, was just grow up. You know, like I, it, it, it does want to bring you like intensely into what's going on with them, but what's going on with them is pretty like mundane and annoying and stakesless. And.

• 9:59Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it didn't have to be, but it does turn out to be, you know, like, not, I don't want to spoil the movie for people who haven't seen it because it's just come out, but you know, like when it concludes, you're like, what did we even, what did we learn? That like, you gotta find something for yourself that makes you happy? Like, no shit.

• 10:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, seriously. I mean, I was thinking about driving on the way and like, we are two children of divorce. And we are scholars in the divorce movie genre. I think many of our favorite movies are about, are either told from the perspective of the child of divorce, or they are written by the, they are told from, I guess, the perspective, or they are at least about one of the parents, but the parents experience a tremendous amount of guilt and often like punishment and are really put through the

• 11:00Amanda Dobbins?

  the wringer, forgive me for the, the pun, for, for going through this divorce. Like, they've made a mistake, they, they fucked up and it's cataclysmic. And it aligns with, I guess, our experience of being kids of divorce and also like. The characters are taking some responsibility.

• 11:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 11:15Amanda Dobbins?

  No one's taking any responsibility in this movie.

• 11:17Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I don't even really know what happened.

• 11:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:19Sean Fennessey?

  It's a classic divorce of two people who like just kind of fell out of love and had enough fights that they realized they shouldn't be together. There is not like a big dramatic cheating incident. There isn't something that they're trying to show us like, I think, a more modern version of divorce where it's like two people who were really in love and kind of drifted. You know, having children can be very challenging and hard on a relationship.

• 11:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 11:38Sean Fennessey?

  You know, there's something sincere about the movie.

• 11:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Laura Dern has a volleyball career that just went away.

• 11:44Sean Fennessey?

  But seemingly 20 years ago.

• 11:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Sorry, I just saw Jack's face. I'm like, what's going on? Yes.

• 11:50Sean Fennessey?

  Have you seen this film?

• 11:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  No, I was supposed to, and then we had Clint Bentley come in for Train Dreams. And he was like, what are you doing tonight, sir? And I'm like, oh, I'm gonna go see, is this thing on? He's like, actually, you're gonna come see Train Dreams at the Arrow. And then I never, never got back to it.

• 12:05Amanda Dobbins?

  That's really nice.

• 12:06Sean Fennessey?

  That's a better outcome.

• 12:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, a better film.

• 12:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 12:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Good job, Clint Bentley.

• 12:10Sean Fennessey?

  I don't mean to get too in the weeds about some of this stuff, but Laura Dern's volleyball career, and Laura Dern is like, she in her late 50s, like, whoa.

• 12:19Amanda Dobbins?

  She just is also not coded as a volleyball player. Like, I brought Jack into this because the look on his face of total confusion of like, what do you mean?

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Is she supposed to be an active volleyball player in a film?

• 12:30Amanda Dobbins?

  No, she's a former. She's a retired.

• 12:32Sean Fennessey?

  She's a, she had a stellar career as a volleyball player, presumably collegiately and maybe even in the Olympics. But, you know, if we're, if we're tracking Laura Dern's life, like, she's got two kids under 10?

• 12:43Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, they're 10.

• 12:44Sean Fennessey?

  They're 10?

• 12:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 12:45Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 12:45Amanda Dobbins?

  They're 10.

• 12:46Sean Fennessey?

  She's got two 10-year-olds.

• 12:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And then I think that they, I think they turn 11 because we see one of the birthday parties.

• 12:49Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. And she's like, thinking about going back to coaching volleyball? And she's like, an icon in the space, which of course there is like, first of all, volleyball in general, fantastic sport. I played it all through high school. Women's volleyball, genuinely great spectator sport. It's no disrespect to volleyball. I fucking love volleyball.

• 13:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's not.

• 13:06Sean Fennessey?

  But as like a, as a, as a plot point in the movie, it's very odd. It's not introduced until an hour in.

• 13:12Amanda Dobbins?

  All respect to Laura Dern, just one of the great American actors, very cool, and, you know, is a spry 59. I, I did not bump on the ages of her children at all. And I didn't bump on the age of, I just was like, Laura Dern does not read volleyball, you know? And there is a, to me, she does not read volleyball.

• 13:34Sean Fennessey?

  Well, there's a very famous image that is created in this film of her from behind.

• 13:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 13:38Sean Fennessey?

  Getting ready to strike a volleyball. What position would you have played if you would you have been a hitter? Would you have been a setter? Would you play back row, play defense? Like, what would you have done?

• 13:48Amanda Dobbins?

  So, do the setters have to be the tallest?

• 13:51Sean Fennessey?

  No, the hitters are usually the tallest.

• 13:52Amanda Dobbins?

  The hitters are the tallest, yeah, but setters are second. So I would probably be a setter, right?

• 13:55Sean Fennessey?

  I was a setter.

• 13:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm like mid, you know, I'm on the taller side for women, but I'm not six feet tall, so.

• 14:01Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, good to know.

• 14:03Amanda Dobbins?

  But then I couldn't have done that because, you know, that jams your fingers and then I need to play the piano.

• 14:07Sean Fennessey?

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

• 14:35Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk about the comedy part.

• 14:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, because the volleyball.

• 14:37Sean Fennessey?

  The volleyball is so confusing and the movie attempts to kind of just like turn the car around mid movie and be like, well, what about the woman's perspective? And you're like, ah, you didn't really invest me in this at all through the first hour of the movie. The first hour of the movie is really about Will Arnett. Again, I'll say Will Arnett, I think one of the funniest people alive. Joe Blues, maybe my favorite TV character of the century. Very few actors can make me laugh as hard as he does. Watch him on Conan doing bits about Jason Bateman, nothing funnier in the world. I really like Will Arnett. I feel something very sincere coming from him in this movie. You can tell he's trying to get through some stuff. There's a weird thing, though, where it's a movie about stand-up comedy and understandably it's an amateur who isn't, has no experience.

• 15:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but it's the that thing you do problem.

• 15:18Sean Fennessey?

  And that's the thing, the jokes are not funny. He's not that funny in this part. It does make sense dramatically for him to be not that funny or that seasoned. But the other comedians, some of whom are professional and very successful comedians, are like kind of funny, but there's not a lot of laughs. We saw this in a movie 40 years ago, you know, Tom Hanks and Sally Field made Punchline, another dramedy about the world of stand-up comedy that isn't that funny. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip had the same exact problem. Where it was like, this is a show that's kind of about SNL, but it's not as funny as SNL. Do you buy it? This is dangerous stuff, man. This can sink a movie when that stuff doesn't work. And, you know, we were talking to Chris Ryan and he saw this and he liked the comedy stuff. He liked the stand-up stuff, which takes place at the Comedy Cellar in New York.

• 15:59Sean Fennessey?

  I couldn't get into it. I just couldn't get invested in it. I didn't, I, I was, I'm kind of baffled by the whole movie.

• 16:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I sat there thinking if I were a person even going to open mic night at the Comedy Cellar, and this is what showed up, I would ask for my money back. I'm just like, the Comedy Cellar-

• 16:19Sean Fennessey?

  Five bucks?

• 16:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Fifteen was, I think, the rate.

• 16:23Sean Fennessey?

  You see five bucks when I was in New York.

• 16:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but still, that's a legendary, that's like a hallowed place. And I'm like, this guy just gets to wander up on stage?

• 16:30Sean Fennessey?

  It seems so easy for him to just get up there.

• 16:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, how did that happen? So-

• 16:34Sean Fennessey?

  There is also a thing in the movie where it's just like, it sure seems like every woman wants to fuck Will Arnett in this movie.

• 16:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:38Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm like, what's going on here? This is fairly unexamined.

• 16:42Amanda Dobbins?

  There are like a lot of shots of, I mean, his dad bod is like a recurring bit in his comedy, but there are just like more shots of his so-called biceps than I personally needed to see. I'm not there on my aging journey. No, I, I thought that as like this serious actor playing the emotions, he-

• 17:02Sean Fennessey?

  He's pretty good.

• 17:02Amanda Dobbins?

  He's pretty good. And there's, there's one moment-

• 17:04Sean Fennessey?

  I would argue that's the best part of the movie is his performance as this guy going through this thing.

• 17:08Amanda Dobbins?

  There's one moment with the kid's socks, which again, like logistically, I wasn't sure why they weren't there, but he had their socks. But-

• 17:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 17:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I like, I felt something in that moment. That was, you know, that was good, sad filmmaking. Everything else was confusing.

• 17:27Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk about Bradley Cooper's performance.

• 17:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that I enjoyed. I think Bradley Cooper's an amazing director of himself.

• 17:34Sean Fennessey?

  I agree with that. He has done a curious thing in the movie, which is a movie with like low stakes and a kind of confused narrative structure. And he shows up every 32 minutes to be the funniest person on screen for five minutes and then disappear again.

• 17:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And also so handsome.

• 17:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, he's got long hair and a beard and a mustache at a certain point.

• 17:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, and a hat.

• 17:56Sean Fennessey?

  He's an actor who is close friends with Will Arnett. What does Will Arnett's character do?

• 18:00Amanda Dobbins?

  We don't know. That's another thing.

• 18:01Sean Fennessey?

  He works in finance, I think is the idea.

• 18:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so, but you never really, you see him in a suit.

• 18:05Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 18:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And he keeps talking about some job and the mortgage that he's paying for this house.

• 18:11Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 18:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Because they live in, you know, somewhere on Metro North. He gets an apartment at the city.

• 18:16Sean Fennessey?

  Presumably in Connecticut, yeah.

• 18:17Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, money is never really discussed, but everything's fine.

• 18:22Sean Fennessey?

  But they're old friends, Cooper and Arnett's characters, and Cooper's character is married to Andrew Day. And they're part of this crew of people who've been hanging out and spending time together for years. And they're at that stage of their lives.

• 18:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 18:32Sean Fennessey?

  You know, we're getting to that stage of our lives. We're like, you know, maybe some marriages aren't working out. Or, you know, people are confronting, like, what happens when my kids get older?

• 18:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 18:40Sean Fennessey?

  And where am I in my life? And am I happy? All that stuff, I think, is rich. And, you know, this movie, N L M K, are fascinating examples of things that we want at the movies.

• 18:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:51Sean Fennessey?

  That represent a kind of movie that no longer really gets made unless you have a really powerful force, like a Bradley Cooper or Jim Brooks, to get a movie like this made. But just because the movie like this exists doesn't automatically make it good. It is a careful what you wish for conundrum, because with the wrong script, or just like the wrong... I feel like if you made this movie in 2023 or in 2026, maybe you'd get like a slightly different stew. You'd get a better outcome. Like, you just make one choice a little bit differently, or you wait for the script to simmer a little longer, so you pivot away from something that wasn't working. Like, it just feels like it wasn't, the cake wasn't ready to come out of the oven.

• 19:29Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 19:29Sean Fennessey?

  Is how this movie feels to me.

• 19:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's, it's just a movie about a dad finding himself. And it's, but dressed up in the clothing of a divorce movie and, you know, a, another, like a performer movie. And how is like, a man who is in the arts going to reconcile his personal life and his professional life? Which has been the theme of Bradley Cooper's other two movies as well.

• 19:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 19:56Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's really just like, I don't know. It's, can, can this man be happy?

• 20:02Sean Fennessey?

  Why is Peyton Manning in the film?

• 20:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I laughed a lot. Because they introduce him from a distance and you're like, wait a second. Is that Peyton Manning? Is that Peyton Manning? And then Laura Dern is on a date with Peyton Manning and almost maybe got to sleep with Peyton Manning. That's, that's really funny. That is the funny.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Does he play himself?

• 20:21Amanda Dobbins?

  No, he plays Laird.

• 20:23Sean Fennessey?

  A former volleyball colleague.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Now we are cooking.

• 20:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 20:31Amanda Dobbins?

  He's maybe in charge of the national team.

• 20:34Sean Fennessey?

  And the incident that they like find themselves in where Laura Dern's character goes to a comedy club with Laird after their dinner, which is turning into a date in real time because we learned that they're both divorced. And then they stumble upon seeing Will Arnett's character performing comedy and that comedy is very much about his marriage and about his wife. And some things are uttered that are hurtful to her in that exchange. But everything that happens after that, where Laird disappears, Laura Dern's character confronts Will Arnett's character. And then that leads to like a kind of tentative reunion between them and like heat, like a chemistry. I didn't buy it all. Like I was like, this is complete fantasy. Like I have no idea what they're trying to communicate with this.

• 21:19Sean Fennessey?

  So it's like, is the idea that you should publicly humiliate your wife in front of her so then she'll want to sleep with you again? What is the movie, what is the movie trying to tell us about that?

• 21:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I have no idea. And the way, the way that where those characters end up is that she rediscover, rediscovers her love of volleyball and she like finds a purpose and she's coaching.

• 21:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 21:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 21:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 21:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, cause the Olympics are going to be here in two years.

• 21:41Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 21:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. And then he has like rediscovered himself and his happiness because he stands up on stage in the Comedy Cellar and makes fun of his family for, um, for laughs. And then that means that they can be happy together to the strains of under pressure as performed by their children.

• 22:03Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 22:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I, listen, listen.

• 22:05Sean Fennessey?

  So.

• 22:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen.

• 22:06Sean Fennessey?

  No, this is, this is important because you know, this is not, this is not an after son podcast, right? We don't love the movie after some, we just did the 2022 draft, people pulling their hair out, crying in the street. Why did you guys not talk about after son? It's just not a movie that a man and I love. Clearly Chris doesn't love it either. He didn't bring it up. But "After Son" used the a cappella of "Under Pressure" already in the movie. It's like, it is the most like powerful thing in that movie is the use of that music in those club scenes and then at the conclusion of the movie. And this movie does the exact same thing three years later. You can't use that, that, that musical cue three years after "After Son." What are you doing Bradley Cooper?

• 22:43Amanda Dobbins?

  It's just, it's also the just most creaking obvious. The kids are practicing it for 90 minutes of the two hour movie. And you're just like, okay, so I know exactly how you're gonna end this. At one point Laura Dern's character says, "That performance isn't for, isn't for like, for so many months from now." And I'm like, oh, great. Okay. So you're just gonna set up the dumb, I don't know. I guess the family turns out okay, so it's not loser behavior, you know? You gotta do what you gotta do, but maybe I don't need to be a part of it.

• 23:14Sean Fennessey?

  This, this conversation feels like, uh, Sam Jackson shooting Robert De Niro and Jackie Brown, where I'm like, "What happened to you, man? Your ass used to be beautiful." Like, this is a real misstep for, for Coop. I need him to bounce back. I need like a crazy three hour massive period piece for the next film. I need something, I need him to reach back and to just go beast mode on whatever it is he's getting into soon because, uh, this wasn't it.

• 23:40Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 23:42Sean Fennessey?

  Ella McCay.

• 23:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:45Sean Fennessey?

  Ella McCay is, uh, written and directed by James L. Brooks. A television and movie legend. This is his seventh film as director. It's his first film in 15 years since "How Do You Know?", which was a debacle. It stars Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Loudon, Kumail Nanjiani, Iowa Debré, Spike Fern, Julie Kavner, Rebecca Hall, Albert Brooks and Woody Harrelson. A log line that I pulled from the internet is as follows. "At 34 years old, Ella McCay becomes the governor of the state she was born and raised in. However, navigating relationships with her husband, father and brother may just be her biggest challenge yet."

• 24:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:23Sean Fennessey?

  So.

• 24:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I would love for this to be a zag for us, right?

• 24:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 24:28Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, like you and I are both invested in the work of Jim Brooks.

• 24:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 24:35Amanda Dobbins?

  In many of the actors in this film.

• 24:37Sean Fennessey?

  Hundred percent.

• 24:38Amanda Dobbins?

  In the idea of, you know, late career, big swings.

• 24:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 24:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Masterpieces.

• 24:45Sean Fennessey?

  Let this octogenarian cook.

• 24:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, um, we like, we really end original movies about feelings.

• 24:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 24:53Amanda Dobbins?

  And.

• 24:53Sean Fennessey?

  Centered on women's.

• 24:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Strong women. And so I would love for us to be able to reclaim this. Absolutely cannot, like just absolute disaster.

• 25:04Sean Fennessey?

  It really is a disaster. It pains me to say that.

• 25:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Really, it's really very dire.

• 25:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, I was a bit mortified watching the movie.

• 25:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 25:13Sean Fennessey?

  And there are components of the movie that I found appealing, or at least worthy of discussion.

• 25:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 25:19Sean Fennessey?

  I don't want to dismiss it entirely.

• 25:23Sean Fennessey?

  The movie is about a young woman who is very type A and very dedicated to her vision of the world and uses her career to further what she believes to be the right way to live and the right way to create a better society.

• 25:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 25:39Sean Fennessey?

  She eventually becomes the lieutenant governor in the state she was born and raised in, which I think we can safely assume is Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, some, some, it feels New England-y.

• 25:49Amanda Dobbins?

  It's never named, uh, which is.

• 25:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's never named purposely, one presumes.

• 25:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, um, but becomes quite obvious. And the, I was chuckling at the state you were born and raised in because when she's promoted to governor, Ella calls her aunt, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who says, the now immortal Ella, you are going to become the governor of the state you were born and raised in. And in a sentence right there. Is, is, is everything that's wrong with this movie?

• 26:22Sean Fennessey?

  It is, which is that there's like a tremendous amount of specificity in all the wrong places and a total lack of specificity in the important places.

• 26:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, and also rampant miscasting and...

• 26:32Sean Fennessey?

  Very true. I, I'm, I'm a fan of Emma Mackey. I think she's trying really hard in this movie to, to meet the moment and she's really carrying on her back the ghosts of Deborah Winger and Holly Hunter and Helen Hunt and Mary Tyler Moore and, and who's the actress who played Rhoda, her name escapes me.

• 26:54Sean Fennessey?

  The, the incredibly strong, complicated, at times difficult women that James L. Brooks is best known for. You know, Aurora from Terms of Endearment, Shirley MacLaine's character. These ferociously idealistic, but also sometimes quite sour figures that...

• 27:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Deeply capable outwardly and professionally and personally, um, like they're never dependent on a man, which is like amazing and especially in the seventies and eighties, um, pretty groundbreaking. And so, you know, men coming in and out of their life, they're not like, you know, sexless people, but they're trying to figure things out for themselves and they've figured out what they want to project out into the world. And they're trying to reconcile it within themselves and with the people around them.

• 27:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 27:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Which was, you know, a more progressive idea in the seventies and eighties than it is now.

• 27:55Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's also interesting in the movie Ella McCay because it's a movie about politics, right? It's a movie about politics with a kind of Obama era optimism that confronts like the bureaucracy and bitterness that tends to define career politicians.

• 28:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:13Sean Fennessey?

  Albert Brooks plays this gov- longtime governor, beloved governor, but Governor Bill of a small state presumably in New England, who has been elevated to a cabinet position in the White House. And so he's leaving and Ella will be filling his, in his place. And she's clearly like the architect of a lot of his policy over the previous decade. She's a real like go-getter type who probably came right out of college and joined up with his campaign and rose through the ranks and was his chief of staff and did all this work. And so she believes that rather than maneuver and manipulate the way that a politician does, she can kind of blunt force her way to change in the world. And she finds out that just like she can't always do that with her personal life, she can't do it

• 28:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 28:52Sean Fennessey?

  in the real world. So when I say that there's stuff about it that I like, like as an idea, that's a good idea for a movie.

• 28:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:58Sean Fennessey?

  And I, I kind of admire that Brooks wants to make a movie about this where it's like, it's not unlike a one battle after another, where it's like, we fucked up and now I'm Governor Bill.

• 29:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:08Sean Fennessey?

  And like Ellen McKay wants to come along and kind of fix things and improve the world. And, you know, her father was a, was a real asshole and she's, she's like, she's entitled to not forgive him.

• 29:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 29:19Sean Fennessey?

  You know, and that the only people in her life who she can really trust are women and these strong older women. So like all of those ideas, I think are sound.

• 29:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:28Sean Fennessey?

  The movie, it feels like people took laughing gas before they started making it. Like, it is bizarre.

• 29:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:34Sean Fennessey?

  The tone, the joke writing, the performance style, the editing, it's so misshapen all over the place.

• 29:41Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really goofy. And so those basic ideas are also the ideas that, you know, undergird Mary Tyler Moore and certainly broadcast news. And, um, but the, the tone is Leslie Knope and Parks and Rec.

• 29:56Sean Fennessey?

  Totally.

• 29:57Amanda Dobbins?

  And in a way, and, and because it is this like, small town, unnamed vibe, there is a like, you know, unspecified sitcom quality to the way they're all speaking to each other that undermines a lot of the situations. And then the stakes are both really big, but in, in, in the sense that she's like a young woman, like trying to figure out the world and make the world a better place.

• 30:21Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:21Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's also, you know, it's like, her ultimate downfall is like a four-figure bribery scandal, like by her dumb husband and like the local news reporter. It's not even like Axios or something.

• 30:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 30:34Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, it is like really very, she works so hard for like an incredibly admirable, like we need like child health bills in this country now more than ever.

• 30:44Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:44Amanda Dobbins?

  But like, they just yell tooth tutors a lot to talk about it, which again, is good. Like teach children how to take care of their teeth. And she's got a lot of statistics about it.

• 30:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 30:55Amanda Dobbins?

  But they're just screaming tooth tutors in a way that is like cutesy and gimmicky. And it is also, you know, not the Pentagon Papers. So it's, it's a real, it's silly. And then the interpretation of, of this script and this is, is not played as silly. It's played very sincerely.

• 31:19Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 31:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's quite confusing.

• 31:25Amanda Dobbins?

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• 31:55Sean Fennessey?

  Brooks is a tricky character because I feel like Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News are, for their times, perfect movies. I like Broadcast News more. That's one of my favorite movies of all time. I think a total classic.

• 32:09Amanda Dobbins?

  One of the great movies, yeah.

• 32:11Sean Fennessey?

  Terms of Endearment, very effective melodrama. You know, Terms of Endearment, based on a Larry McMurtry novel. Broadcast News is not based on anything but Susan Zirinsky, the CBS News producer, was a critical component, and the Holly Hunter character is based on her.

• 32:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 32:29Sean Fennessey?

  It's interesting to think about that and then the other films that Brooks has made. As Good As It Gets was a very big movie in its time, but I don't feel like it has as strong a reputation as it did. I'll Do Anything was famously like kind of a flame out where it started out as a musical and then it tested so poorly that they took all the songs out of it.

• 32:48Sean Fennessey?

  And then Spanglish is a movie, as I mentioned on the Sandler pod, that I really don't like. And How Do You Know is considered kind of a catastrophe. And so this guy who has given the world Mary Tyler Moore and The Simpsons and The Tracy Ullman Show and Taxi and these great movies, he has a reputation earned of greatness.

• 33:13Sean Fennessey?

  But there's no denying that like, there is just a total lack of clarity of what this movie is even supposed to be. Like, you can, you point out the performances, I think you're right on. There's a sequence in the movie that I found utterly confounding between Spike Fern and Iowa Debris. Spike Fern plays the like emotionally stunted younger brother of Ella McKay. And he is-

• 33:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Agoraphobic until proven otherwise.

• 33:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And he has to work up the temerity to go visit his ex-girlfriend, whom he broke up with under confused circumstances, and then re-compel her to get back together.

• 33:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:49Sean Fennessey?

  I, the scene, I felt like I was on mushrooms. I was like, what, what is, one, Spike Fern's performance style, like, he made a choice, right? It's like, that is a character choice that he made to talk that way, to communicate that way.

• 34:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 34:02Sean Fennessey?

  I, I didn't like it. I didn't think it worked. Your mileage may vary on that. It's very specific.

• 34:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I had more problems with Ella McKay's expository dialogue in this scene, which I texted you during the film. "You're still using your math to advise people on sports betting? Great job, everyone."

• 34:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 34:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I was the only person in the theater, by the way, so I was allowed to text.

• 34:22Sean Fennessey?

  Um, that, there are a lot of lines of dialogue, of expositional information delivery that are not good throughout the movie. Um, but the, you know, Vulture described this film as gas leak cinema, and I think that's very accurate, because there are times where we have, where you're in a scene in the movie and you're like, "What's wrong here? Like, is everyone okay? Why is this, like, this Woody Harrelson giving a very strange performance as a desperate dad who cheated on his wife, played by Rebecca Hall, earlier in Ella's life? And then Rebecca Hall's character passes away, and he becomes this kind of itinerant figure."

• 35:00Amanda Dobbins?

  After like, five minutes?

• 35:01Sean Fennessey?

  That death is very weird. I don't, um, but then comes back into her life later on, just as she's being named governor, because he needs to reconcile with her, and he needs forgiveness from her, so that he can maintain a relationship with a woman who is really into healing.

• 35:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:18Sean Fennessey?

  But that storyline, like, never resolves itself, and he's just like a gnat in her ear throughout the movie. And you don't know if you're supposed to think Woody Harrelson's funny or tragic. I found all that incredibly confusing. Kumail Nanjiani, like wasted in a weird part as a state trooper who is

• 35:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Who like

• 35:37Sean Fennessey?

  Her bodyguard.

• 35:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Wants to preserve the budget of the state and thus doesn't want overtime.

• 35:42Sean Fennessey?

  I was shocked by that. Who would care? Who would care about overtime budgets? We need to protect the sanctity of the overtime budget. He knows, because he's spent time with her and that's something she would care about. Like, I got it. I got the point they were making.

• 35:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, but again, it's like the details just don't, are not aligned in any way with reality and/or what they're trying to communicate in the movie.

• 36:06Sean Fennessey?

  It feels very, to use your phrase from earlier, small stakes, low stakes. And the other thing is that, as you pointed out to me when you were watching the movie, the movie just literalizes the trauma

• 36:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean.

• 36:18Sean Fennessey?

  thing in such a dumb way.

• 36:20Amanda Dobbins?

  So it does, it does two things, which is, and this is not Julie Kavner's fault, but so Julie Kavner starts the film as the narrator.

• 36:29Sean Fennessey?

  She introduces herself as

• 36:30Amanda Dobbins?

  As the narrator. And you hear her before you see her. So you're like, oh, okay, Marge Simpson is narrating this movie. And then her opening narration uses the word trauma at least three and maybe four times, quite literally.

• 36:47Sean Fennessey?

  Ella looks up trauma in the dictionary.

• 36:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I forgot about that when explaining to her little brother. I was unbelievable.

• 36:56Sean Fennessey?

  Dude, that's, I mean.

• 36:58Amanda Dobbins?

  It was so, so, so bad. And there was like, and that's part of like the half me too plot. Like this is a movie that is trying, you know, it read a 2011, or I guess 2018 New York Times op ed page, headlines only. And then was like, let's write something quote unquote to the moment. Tough, tough stuff.

• 37:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I tell you what movie this reminded me of?

• 37:28Sean Fennessey?

  Tell me.

• 37:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, this was, this was my particular spiral. So the movie concludes, spoiler alert for, for Ella McKay. Jack Loudon, an actor I love, is her dumb American husband.

• 37:42Sean Fennessey?

  He's been done no favors in this film.

• 37:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Really, really upsetting.

• 37:45Sean Fennessey?

  Also a very bad performance.

• 37:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well, sure. Again, there are just some people who shouldn't be American. You know, we all know what the accent is and I think that we, we just have to be honest about the capabilities of accent coaches in this day and age. Anyway, she, Jack Loudon, I don't, I honestly don't really understand why he's mad at her and so he bribes, he accepts a bribe from a reporter.

• 38:13Sean Fennessey?

  He does, he's gonna be the first husband of this state and he's a person who has supported his wife through all of her ambition and she has gotten to the mountaintop and she neglects to thank him in her, you know, inauguration speech and he feels cast aside. He wants to be a special, important guy and not just a, the inheritor of a pizza parlor company.

• 38:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but he's also very stupid, so.

• 38:37Sean Fennessey?

  He's very stupid.

• 38:38Amanda Dobbins?

  He accepts a bribe from a local reporter who's found out that they, a married couple, had sex on.

• 38:47Sean Fennessey?

  He provides a bribe.

• 38:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, he provides a bribe.

• 38:49Sean Fennessey?

  He writes a check to a reporter.

• 38:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay, that's right, okay.

• 38:52Sean Fennessey?

  Which of course the reporter would never cash because the reporter is trying to ensnare him in a scandal, but like, that's the dumbest plot point I've ever heard.

• 38:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:00Sean Fennessey?

  What politician's husband is writing a personal check to a reporter?

• 39:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's just, it's just dumb writing.

• 39:07Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really stupid.

• 39:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's really bad writing.

• 39:09Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 39:10Sean Fennessey?

  Jim, Jim Brooks is a fucking legend, I'm an idiot podcaster.

• 39:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, I don't understand it either. It's very upsetting and so that puts Ella's career as the, as the governor in doubt. And so she negotiates with the state legislature, who are portrayed as the most powerful people on God's earth.

• 39:34Amanda Dobbins?

  To, that is also like a belief in local government that I have long since abandoned in this film.

• 39:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 39:40Amanda Dobbins?

  So she negotiates in her aunt's bar that she will resign and not run again for office if they put the child health bill through and they include the tooth tutors.

• 39:52Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 39:53Amanda Dobbins?

  So in the end, the resolution of this is that Ella McKay gets to be governor for three days and her work is done, but she gets no credit for it.

• 40:02Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:03Amanda Dobbins?

  She's and she doesn't have any of her family left, except for maybe her brother, because he's agreed to leave the house. This reminded me deeply of The Intern, another late career movie made by a true hero of mine that is just about how a millennial woman must be personally and professionally humiliated in order to, I don't know what, what am I supposed to take from this? It's just like you, you can only have it all if you don't have anything and you, you have yourself. Great. Thanks so much, everyone.

• 40:42Sean Fennessey?

  These are challenging lessons from some of our finest filmmakers.

• 40:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:46Sean Fennessey?

  You can only be a good divorced father.

• 40:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 40:49Sean Fennessey?

  If you do stand up comedies. And you can only be a capable governor of a small state in New England if you are publicly embarrassed.

• 40:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And don't have a job anymore. Well, that's not true. Then she starts Legal Aid. But then, oh, my God, that was, I, I forgot how this ends. Okay, so really admirable. She starts like a nonprofit to support housing and to, to prevent evictions. And so they're like, they're like in the call center. Kumail Nanjiani's character is now working for the call center instead of the state. And they're like manning the phones and like a really important call comes through and they're like, oh, my God, I knew it. I knew that we did it. And so they're like hand her the piece of paper and you like expect like Ella's going to be governor again or something. And she's like, everyone, I'd like to announce, I just got the news.

• 41:40Amanda Dobbins?

  We have saved 8,342 people from, you know, houselessness this year. And I was like, on the, that's, that's awesome. That is more than I have done and it's a real problem here in Los Angeles and, and like elsewhere in the world, but also. It's such a specific number. It's like in this, it's like when they're waiting to hit a million users in the social network. It's like, like, you know, we've, we've had like the, you know, fundraising tally on the thing and we hit like 8,492. What are you talking about?

• 42:15Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, I think, I think this, there's real sincerity in this point of view, which is very valid, that the change is not going to come on a macro level. It's going to come on a micro level. And I believe in that.

• 42:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:28Sean Fennessey?

  And I think James Brooks's heart is in the right place. I think the idea that like, it's actually people who have to fix the world and they have to work really hard and they have to be comfortable being hated and being annoying is very real. And we're in, in 2027, we're going to start to feel that because the only people that are going to be able to rise up in terms of what's happening in this country right now are people who are willing to be really annoying about it. I'm, I think it's again, an interesting idea.

• 42:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:55Sean Fennessey?

  Like I'm, I'm on board with where he's going. But to your point about the specificity of that number and the, just the, the general oddity of tone. I think a lot about the ending of Broadcast News, which is like such an elegant emotional quagmire.

• 43:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 43:11Sean Fennessey?

  That, that character is placed in.

• 43:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Even there, saved by, like, the, the impulses of Jim Brooks, like, saved by the, what happened on set because they filmed a different ending.

• 43:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 43:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And so, um, at the end, an alternate ending that they were trying, that famously was

• 43:30Sean Fennessey?

  She goes with Bill.

• 43:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Ruined by a cameraman. And so they, you know, they were like forced into this ending, which, you know, is maybe telling in its own way of, like, sometimes there are impulses that.

• 43:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the door is swinging, right?

• 43:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:41Sean Fennessey?

  And it can go the other way sometimes. And I, this one is just, it's just all wrong. And I think it'd be funny to try to reclaim it. And I know a lot of critics and podcasters are doing that. And, you know, the Ella McCay meme with the, you know, fixing the heel is a thing. And people are having a lot of fun with this movie. But to me, it's a much more sad story about the complete kind of desecration of these kinds of movies for moviegoers. The fact that the only way to make a movie like this successful now is to pretend like it's actually not as bad as it actually is and lift it up with memes when like. What we do need to me ultimately is what Jim Brooks has otherwise been doing is he's been

• 44:24Sean Fennessey?

  a producer for other filmmakers and he has supported other filmmakers in the last 30 years. You know, he produced Jerry Maguire, he produced Big for Penny Marshall, he produced Kelly Freeman Craig's movies, you know, most recently Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret. That's a great act. We need more Kelly Freeman Craig's making movies like this. Like, that's actually the thing that's gonna get these movies going and that requires studio executives not being fucking cowards. This is, you know, one rumor, one theory is that this movie exists so that Fox, Disney could get another Simpsons movie. That James L. Brooks said, "I'll give you another Simpsons movie," which is happening, I guess, in 2027, "if you let me make my movie Ellen McKay."

• 45:05Amanda Dobbins?

  That's sad. I mean, maybe you'll like the Simpsons movie, so that'll be nice.

• 45:10Sean Fennessey?

  I think the first Simpsons movie is really funny.

• 45:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 45:12Sean Fennessey?

  And the Simpsons completely changed my life and my point of view on comedy and writing and satire and the American family. So I thank James L. Brooks for all of his works. Ellen McKay is a no-go.

• 45:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:25Sean Fennessey?

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• 46:57Sean Fennessey?

  Underseen and overlooked.

• 46:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:58Sean Fennessey?

  You were not able to participate in this last year. You were on leave.

• 47:01Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right.

• 47:03Sean Fennessey?

  We talk about a lot of movies on the show over the course of the year. Stuff slips through the cracks.

• 47:08Amanda Dobbins?

  It does.

• 47:08Sean Fennessey?

  Doesn't get attention. It's a brief mention after a festival, maybe, and we don't circle back to it. So we've put five together. How was this exercise for you?

• 47:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I found my groove. For a second I was like, we've been talking about a lot of films. And we see films at volume, but I'm not quite at the volume that you do. So I think most of my picks have come up in passing. There's also a genre element to most of them that, you know, I try, I decided to run towards my interests. Not that, you know, cinema often does, but in this case.

• 47:45Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't looked at your list.

• 47:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, in this case I collected a few. So in, in the end it was rewarding.

• 47:49Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 47:52Sean Fennessey?

  There are still some 2025 movies that are just now coming out that we're not going to get a chance to talk about, at least until we come back in January.

• 48:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, so I, I kept those off the board.

• 48:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I did. I wanted to cite The Plague before we talk, which opens on Christmas, which is a film that played at Cannes earlier this year. It's directed, written and directed by Charlie Pollinger. It's about a bunch of boys at a water polo camp and is a very upsetting body horror movie.

• 48:25Sean Fennessey?

  This would be a tough one for you to watch as the mother of two young boys and being a little worried about where their lives are going.

• 48:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 48:31Sean Fennessey?

  And whether they'll be the bully or the bullier.

• 48:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:35Sean Fennessey?

  The bullied or the bully?

• 48:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, neither's a good option.

• 48:41Sean Fennessey?

  It's a fascinating movie. Everett Blunk gives an incredible performance as this kid Ben in the movie. Joel Ederson's in the movie as the coach at the camp. And the sound design and the score of this movie is remarkable. I just wanted to put it out there for people. It's coming out on Christmas.

• 48:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 48:56Sean Fennessey?

  Check it out. It's the sort of thing that would be on this list if it had like an August release date, but it's coming out later this year. Okay, so let's start. You want to go first?

• 49:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. My number five is a film that we briefly discussed.

• 49:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 49:10Amanda Dobbins?

  And that is currently still in theaters, though if they're smart, they will get it out on some sort of VOD platform soon, because I do think at home, for people interested in romantic comedy, that Eternity would pass the small test. Now, you had some unkind things to say. Here's what I will say about Eternity.

• 49:32Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 49:33Amanda Dobbins?

  It is, I guess it's a high-concept romantic comedy if you haven't seen Defending Your Life. And if you have seen Defending Your Life, it is just a sort of remake of Defending Your Life. It stars-

• 49:46Sean Fennessey?

  As well as A Matter of Life and Death.

• 49:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 49:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's like A Matter of Life and Death and Defending Your Life smashed together in one movie.

• 49:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And it stars Elizabeth Olsen as a woman who, an old woman, who dies and finds herself in the afterlife. And the way the afterlife works is that you have to pick one eternity, like one really awesome place where you're spending the rest of your life. And her two husbands are both waiting there to spend the rest of her life, her eternity with her. And so she has to pick which husband she wants to spend eternity with.

• 50:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 50:21Amanda Dobbins?

  And her two husbands are played by Miles Teller, who plays the person she spent most of her life with, her second husband, who she spent 35 years with, and then Callum Turner, who was her husband who died in the war. And then it is, it specified the Korean War, and there are a bunch of jokes about that, which I thought were pretty funny.

• 50:43Sean Fennessey?

  Why are there no movies about the Korean War?

• 50:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 50:47Amanda Dobbins?

  This, I, you know, I think this movie works better in the setup than in the- Final hour, as, as most high concept things do.

• 50:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 50:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Think this film has a profound understanding of Callum Turner's appeal.

• 51:00Sean Fennessey?

  I was gonna say, it's not hard to know why you enjoyed the film.

• 51:03Amanda Dobbins?

  But I was like, wow, they really get it. And I think that there are a lot of people who really get it. And it's funny, they're supporting performances by Dave Anger Randolph and

• 51:16Sean Fennessey?

  John Early.

• 51:17Amanda Dobbins?

  John Early, my favorite.

• 51:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 51:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and you know, like, I have thought about different moments, and not just all of the Callum Turner being hot moments, though it's like, really, really funny how this is just a movie about how Callum Turner is hot. Like, we're all really happy for Dua Lipa.

• 51:33Amanda Dobbins?

  But it, you know, whether it is like the, the life museum that she goes through, which, you know, has like been recreated in movies over time, but it's another reference point. Or, um, a Dean Martin holiday song came on the other day and I laughed at the Dean Martin. Miles Teller is-

• 51:50Sean Fennessey?

  That part is funny, the Dean Martin part.

• 51:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Miles Teller is really good in this as the other guy.

• 51:54Sean Fennessey?

  He is. It's a very weird part for him to have taken on. He is definitely taking on the other guy part. He's the Albert Brooks to William Hurt in Broadcast News.

• 52:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:03Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, Miles Teller is six feet tall, very handsome, and the star of Top Gun Maverick. So for him to be playing like the schlubbiest guy is kind of cool that he made that choice. I think he's the best part of the movie. Elizabeth Olsen's trying. I don't really think that character is very well written.

• 52:16Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 52:16Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I, I get what you like about it. I get what you like. I'm not gonna piss in your cereal.

• 52:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Randolph, like in the afterlife, like convention.

• 52:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 52:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Drinking a lot of wine. Like, there, there are funny moments. It's like, well observed. I, I do think that the understanding of the Callum Turner of it all, and everyone else is like making jokes about it.

• 52:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 52:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, it's like, and if you want to spend time with Miles Teller being charming also in a grumpy way, I liked it. I think it's a good at-home experience.

• 52:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of like-

• 52:44Amanda Dobbins?

  It doesn't land the plane. It doesn't land the plane. That's fine.

• 52:46Sean Fennessey?

  But it is kind of like if in Defending Your Life, Albert Brooks in, in Purgatory, needed to choose between Meryl Streep and Heather Locklear, you know, it's like-

• 52:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, but like, like, that's fine. Let's have more movies like that. That's what I'm saying. I would like to honor the, the setup.

• 53:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 53:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Cause that's powerful.

• 53:07Sean Fennessey?

  I got you. I- I didn't love it, but I do think that similarly, we do need these films.

• 53:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 53:14Sean Fennessey?

  And you're right that, you're definitely right that at home, this would do very well at Christmas.

• 53:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:18Sean Fennessey?

  You know, you could see people cozying up around the fire, watching this movie. Okay, that's a good pick. I like it. Your picks are very pop in a good way that will make for a good discussion. I'm not sure if my picks are gonna make for a very good discussion, but I do wanna put them on people's radars. And I tried to pick a mix of stuff that was both available to stream and on VOD. Is it already, is not on VOD yet, or it is?

• 53:36Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's still in theaters.

• 53:37Sean Fennessey?

  It's still in theaters, okay.

• 53:38Amanda Dobbins?

  It's at the Regal Paseo. You wanna go after this?

• 53:39Sean Fennessey?

  I've already seen it at the Regal Paseo, so I'm good. My number five is Unbecoming a Guinea Fowl, which is Rangano N'Yoni's second feature film, which came out via 824 earlier this year, but a very limited release. It was a 2024 festival film. She's a Zambian filmmaker. It's a very unusual movie about

• 54:02Sean Fennessey?

  a woman who comes across the dead body of her uncle in the street at the very beginning of the movie, and sets off this kind of like perplexing series of familial interactions and cultural curiosities around her journey. Stars actress Susan Sharty, who's amazing in this movie. There's like a very specific overt reference to Misty Elliott in the Super Duper Fly video at the very beginning of the film that kinda like grounds you in the oddity of the movie. Beautiful cinematography and colors and music in this movie. And it's just kind of transfixing, like I haven't really talked about very much African cinema here. It's a very rare African film to get distribution in the United States from a major studio.

• 54:49Sean Fennessey?

  It's a real portal into this world, but also not alienating. It's very funny and very unusual and very disorienting at times. It's on HBO Max right now, if people wanna check it out. And I hope that N'Yoni gets to make more movies, cuz she has some real flair.

• 55:05Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, number four.

• 55:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Just veering. Way in the opposite directions. This is Ojai.

• 55:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 55:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I believe you saw with your sister Grace.

• 55:14Sean Fennessey?

  I did.

• 55:14Amanda Dobbins?

  When she was in town.

• 55:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 55:17Amanda Dobbins?

  So this was a Sundance film directed by Sophie Brooks and co-written by Brooks and Molly Gordon, who stars in it, along with Logan Lerman. And it's about a young couple who go on their first weekend away together. And then learn some things about themselves and their relationship to each other. And then try to rectify that. I'm Molly Gordon and.

• 55:42Sean Fennessey?

  I think she's wonderful.

• 55:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, she's wonderful and really funny. And there's a scene in this film when

• 55:51Amanda Dobbins?

  she's asked to tell the Logan Lerman character about her childhood. And is just running around like talking. And it's very funny and very funny.

• 56:00Sean Fennessey?

  Did you relate to this character?

• 56:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, yeah, of course.

• 56:08Sean Fennessey?

  I think Sophie's very bad. However, I do think, I do think, I love Molly Gordon. I love watching Molly Gordon.

• 56:15Amanda Dobbins?

  It's also, and then her friend is Geraldine Viswanathan, who's also amazing.

• 56:18Sean Fennessey?

  She's also great.

• 56:19Amanda Dobbins?

  So when they're on, it's great. I mean, I, I don't, if you're watching it as a movie about a relationship.

• 56:26Sean Fennessey?

  Is it self-recrimination, the movie? Is it Molly Gordon being like, sorry, I'm so, such a pain in the ass? Is it like, are we meant to be empathetic towards her? Is it?

• 56:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:38Sean Fennessey?

  We are, okay.

• 56:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so. I think that she doesn't.

• 56:41Sean Fennessey?

  Does it very violent and uncomfortable things to this Logan Lerman character in the film?

• 56:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sometimes you deserve that, you know, if you're, if you're dating around. Listen, they've been dating for four months. And they've had a conversation.

• 56:54Sean Fennessey?

  What have you done to Zach?

• 56:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Not using protection.

• 56:56Sean Fennessey?

  What have you done to my friend Zach?

• 56:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Having, it's, it's totally respectful, but it's just like every once in a while, you gotta like call people and get them a line, in line.

• 57:05Sean Fennessey?

  In line, yeah.

• 57:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Especially where sexual health is involved.

• 57:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 57:08Amanda Dobbins?

  So I, no, I thought this was funny. I mean, it like, again, like, all things like the setup and the first 30 minutes are very funny and then, you know, things kind of peter out, but I was rooting for her and, you know.

• 57:22Sean Fennessey?

  You got this, mama.

• 57:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't.

• 57:23Sean Fennessey?

  Molly Gordon edition.

• 57:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, don't go on a weekend vacation with someone when, if you're not clear on the

• 57:31Sean Fennessey?

  Is this something

• 57:32Amanda Dobbins?

  on the parameters of your relationship.

• 57:34Sean Fennessey?

  Is this something that a fuckboy will do? Will he be like, let's go on a weekend vacation and be romantic together?

• 57:40Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's, you know, a crucial plot point in Bridget Jones' Diary, of course. But I, I do think at this age and at this budget level, it's uncommon. It is particularly delusional.

• 57:53Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 57:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Normally, they wouldn't commit to 48 hours or, you know.

• 57:57Sean Fennessey?

  That's sort of what I'm saying.

• 57:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, sure.

• 57:59Sean Fennessey?

  That's strained credulity.

• 58:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but so I think the response then also perhaps strains credulity or is a proportionate response to the act involved.

• 58:09Sean Fennessey?

  I see. A fair point.

• 58:10Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 58:11Sean Fennessey?

  Fair point. Maybe it does, yeah. It undergirds the premise.

• 58:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:15Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, number four, speaking of your boyfriends.

• 58:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:19Sean Fennessey?

  Is Urchin. Urchin is available to rent on VOD right now. It is the directorial debut of Harris Dickinson.

• 58:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:28Sean Fennessey?

  Who is a very accomplished, tall, handsome actor who clearly wants to be Mike Lee. This new movie is about a guy named Mike who is sleeping on the streets of London and who's trying to get his life together, trying to get his substance abuse under control, trying to escape the very gnarly fate of his life. The movie is somewhat conventional in the, in the way that it explores those aspects of his story. You see him kind of receding back into bad habits and getting a job and losing a job and, you know, getting into a relationship and then messing up that relationship. And some of that stuff feels very familiar.

• 59:12Sean Fennessey?

  Some of it does feel like Mike Lee's Naked, the David Thewlis movie. The movie takes a really interesting kind of cosmic turn near the end that is really exciting. And I think augers well for where Harris Dickinson is going as a director. Like, I thought. Halfway through the movie, I was like, this is a little bit more straightforward than I want it to be, despite the fact that Frank Delane, who's the, plays the Mike character, is phenomenal in this movie. He definitely could have been on our performances list. He really is super, hyper committed. I really, really liked his work in the movie. But the final 10 minutes or so, when we start to feel him kind of like exiting the normal plane of existence, is hopefully a sign of things to come for Harris Dickens. So people should check this out. It's a, it's a, it's a cool movie, imperfect, but very interesting.

• 59:57Sean Fennessey?

  How do you feel about Harris making this leap? Will he take himself off screen to, to make these films?

• 1:00:02Amanda Dobbins?

  No, he's gonna be in four Beatles films, so it's gonna be okay, you know?

• 1:00:06Sean Fennessey?

  Who's he playing again?

• 1:00:07Amanda Dobbins?

  He's John Lennon.

• 1:00:09Sean Fennessey?

  Is that good casting?

• 1:00:10Amanda Dobbins?

  We, we talked about, and I believe Paul Meskell is, uh, Paul.

• 1:00:16Sean Fennessey?

  Paul McCartney, yeah.

• 1:00:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I can see it.

• 1:00:18Sean Fennessey?

  Is John Lennon attractive?

• 1:00:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I think that the glasses and the hair can kind of, you can bring Harris to where Lennon was.

• 1:00:31Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 1:00:31Amanda Dobbins?

  And there was a magnetism to him, you know?

• 1:00:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:34Amanda Dobbins?

  So you can't deny that.

• 1:00:35Sean Fennessey?

  Who played Lennon? Okay, all right.

• 1:00:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:00:39Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, number three for you.

• 1:00:42Amanda Dobbins?

  The Wedding Banquet.

• 1:00:42Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't seen this.

• 1:00:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's streaming on Paramount Plus, I believe. Let's make, make sure that that's the right one. Wedding Banquet, Paramount Plus. Yes, it is. So, this is a remake of the Ang Lee, uh, movie, The Wedding Banquet. And it's directed by Andrew Ahn, who did Fire Island. And it's co-written with Ahn and James Shamus, who wrote The Wedding Banquet.

• 1:01:06Sean Fennessey?

  That's right, the original.

• 1:01:08Amanda Dobbins?

  And so it follows, it's a similar setup, but it's in, by the US now. And so it's a gay couple and a lesbian couple, um, who are...

• 1:01:22Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, the gay couple wants to get married, but one of the men is concerned he won't be accepted by his family and then also will be cut off. And then the women couple are trying to, the woman couple are trying to have a baby and they're doing IVF, but they're running out of money because it's quite expensive and it's not going well. So they, two of the, one of the men and one of the women decide to do like a, and there's also some immigration status involved. So they decide to do like a fake marriage in order to get the money, pay for the IVF and get, lock citizenship down. And then obviously like the plan gets like pretty messy.

• 1:02:05Amanda Dobbins?

  This is, and that makes it sound like a lot more farcical than it is. What I liked about this movie was that it was pretty much like, you know, it plays everything softly and it has a great cast. It's Bowen Yang, but Lily Gladstone and Kelly Marie Tran and Yoonjae Jung, who you remember from Minari.

• 1:02:25Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. Emmy Award winner.

• 1:02:27Amanda Dobbins?

  So it, it's an outrageous plot, but everyone is, is soft pedaling it. Actors I like a lot. I thought this was like a pretty good soft touch portrayal of IVF, which you know, can, it's like not a, it's not about it. It's just like a thing that happens and is hard for the people, which I appreciate, you know? It's just like maybe a good lesson in general. We don't need to make things like about stuff.

• 1:02:53Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:02:54Amanda Dobbins?

  It can just, yeah, it can, you can portray a thing and how it affects people and that communicates it.

• 1:02:59Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if you noticed that while we're recording, it was announced that Bowen Yang is leaving Saturday Night Live.

• 1:03:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I saw that. It was actually, yeah, it was, I.

• 1:03:05Sean Fennessey?

  In the middle of the season, after eight seasons.

• 1:03:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Sean Fennessey?

  While being definitely one of the most notable cast members, it's kind of odd.

• 1:03:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, he's, hasn't he sat out some performances or some hosts as well? I think it's been a.

• 1:03:18Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 1:03:19Amanda Dobbins?

  It's been a fluctuating relationship.

• 1:03:20Sean Fennessey?

  It has.

• 1:03:21Amanda Dobbins?

  As, as I understand it. Anyway, I'm a fan of him. He's pretty good in this. I would say like the, the women are the performances to remember, but I liked it.

• 1:03:28Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Great call.

• 1:03:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:32Sean Fennessey?

  Um, number three for me, just came out.

• 1:03:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:03:36Sean Fennessey?

  I should have interviewed the filmmaker. This movie is written, directed, produced and edited by this person Curtis David Harder. It's called Influencers. It's a sequel. There was a movie in 2023 called Influencer, who's a thriller on Shudder, about a young influencer, a woman who is stalked and eventually meets a grisly end at the hands of a dangerous woman, played by the actress Cassandra Nodd, who is incredible in the original Influencer. Influencers continues the story. Another character from the film is trying to find the Cassandra Nodd character, CW, and bring her to justice. The movie is kind of globe trotting at this point.

• 1:04:19Sean Fennessey?

  Takes place in southern, this one takes place in southern France. These are really stylish, really slick, smart movies about the internet and how the internet works. There's like an AI component to this one that is, I think, pretty clever. And these movies are made, this movie's been made pretty cheaply and really sharply. And it's like, it is, it is, it does eventually become a violent thriller, but for them, there has like a little bit of like John le Carré, like spy craft going on in it. That is pretty nifty and at this scale for like effectively a straight to shutter movie. I thought it was really impressive and I think Harder is a really good filmmaker. So I want to give it a little shout because I feel like it's maybe not getting enough attention.

• 1:05:02Amanda Dobbins?

  This movie is pro AI?

• 1:05:04Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:05:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Like you?

• 1:05:07Sean Fennessey?

  No, but it is, it is, it has a, it's a really funny movie about like right wing influencers versus left wing influencers, lifestyle influencers versus people who are just trying to have fun, but capturing their lives on social media. Like it's, it's pretty.

• 1:05:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm just having fun.

• 1:05:23Sean Fennessey?

  Many people are saying you're just having fun, not trying to get free yogurt. You would never do that. You would never attempt to acquire yogurt.

• 1:05:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm really grateful. I'm still eating that yogurt. Thank you, Powerland Sisters.

• 1:05:36Sean Fennessey?

  Jack, is this okay?

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  Of course, it's all great.

• 1:05:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Jack got some yogurt.

• 1:05:43Sean Fennessey?

  That's great. Congrats on your yogurt, Jack. Happy for you, bro.

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:05:48Sean Fennessey?

  What's number two for you?

• 1:05:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Megadoc. Yeah. Which we've talked a little bit about, but I thought on this episode, especially after the James L. Brooks.

• 1:05:55Sean Fennessey?

  Streaming now on the Criterion Channel.

• 1:05:57Amanda Dobbins?

  There you go. So this is Mike Figgis's portrait of the making of Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis,

• 1:06:05Amanda Dobbins?

  which I saw at the Venice Film Festival and has amazing access. And the further we get down the road of Francis Ford Coppola and but also of these beloved filmmakers hanging on, chasing their dreams to the very, very end, past 80.

• 1:06:28Amanda Dobbins?

  It's very specific to Coppola in a lot of ways and what enemas him and what makes him one of the great American filmmakers and also what explains all of the completely inexplicable things that have happened in the back half of his career. Again, like incredible access. I'll just still think about the request from Natalie Emanuel's agent that she not be filmed eating. Just, just really, really special stuff. But it is also a movie about someone who's been dreaming of something his whole life and specifically about making a movie and waiting for the technology to catch up to this vision in your head and can it?

• 1:07:13Amanda Dobbins?

  And can the vision in your head be realized? And how that actually happened or didn't happen in Coppola's case and in the case of Megalopolis is, I think, fascinating. Again, really helped me understand Megalopolis. But if you are listening to this podcast and you're interested in how films are made, it's just, it's really good.

• 1:07:34Sean Fennessey?

  Totally agree. I like this movie a lot. It's a great show.

• 1:07:38Sean Fennessey?

  The next film I'm gonna recommend is another movie that I that we talked about on the show. I saw it out of Sundance. It's called The Things You Kill. It's now available to be rented on VOD. I thought there was a chance we would be talking about it a little bit more, and maybe you would have to see it, because it was candidate submission for international feature at the Academy Awards. It was not selected.

• 1:07:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:07:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's a film about a Turkish university professor, teaching in the United States, and his mother dies, and she dies under suspicious circumstances, and it drives him kind of crazy. And as he's grieving, he hires this gardener to enact revenge on the people who he feels may or may not be responsible for his mother's death. This is like a very chaotic, violent, scary, disorienting thriller. I think I probably used somewhat regrettably the word Lynchian to describe it back in January when I saw it at Sundance.

• 1:08:36Sean Fennessey?

  But it does have those elements of what is really happening, what is the dream state, what is the mania of a person in the face of crisis. Really, really strong filmmaking from Ali Reza Katami, the writer and director. Ekin Cox's performance as the star as Ali is really, really good. And this is like a bit of a, it's just, it's a, it's a gem. It's a really, really good, small, independent feature that had a, you know, had a festival premiere and seemed like maybe it was destined for bigger things. And then these movies just kind of come and go sometimes. So The Things You Kill is my number two. Okay, number one.

• 1:09:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Joanna briefly mentioned this on our Performances of the Year. But it's Jane Austen wrecked my life, which is now streaming on Netflix. Have you, have you seen this yet?

• 1:09:20Sean Fennessey?

  I have not seen it yet.

• 1:09:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I just absolutely loved this, and not just because Jane Austen is in the title. It is a romantic comedy, I guess, an intellectual romantic comedy, but it's a pretty classic love triangle. There's a French woman who is stylish enough that I, you know, was being like, I guess I need to get bangs now or a sweater. So you need that element. She's a writer, and then she goes to the Jane Austen Writers residency. And she meets someone there and then someone else from her life comes back. And then she's also, um, so she's trying to decide between them, but she also has writer's block. And as much of it is about her trying to, to be an artist or a writer as it is about which of these

• 1:10:06Amanda Dobbins?

  knuckleheads is gonna figure it out. I thought it was very funny. And it like, small is unfair, but like self-contained in a, a great way and very charming. So if you're looking for something to stream, there you go.

• 1:10:20Sean Fennessey?

  You think Eileen would like it?

• 1:10:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. Where is Eileen on Jane Austen?

• 1:10:24Sean Fennessey?

  Doesn't seem to care that much.

• 1:10:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, then-

• 1:10:25Sean Fennessey?

  But I wouldn't say dislikes.

• 1:10:27Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, then, then maybe she wouldn't like it, but I do think that there, in the way that Jane Austen is like the bones of so many of our romantic comedies. You know, she, I think she appreciates many of the hallmarks.

• 1:10:40Sean Fennessey?

  She does.

• 1:10:40Amanda Dobbins?

  There is like, they recreate like a period style ball at some point, but, but not in the sense and sensibility. We've done a week's worth of night shoots to make this real. It's like the people at the residency are doing it for shits and giggles.

• 1:10:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:10:56Amanda Dobbins?

  So there's some knowingness to it.

• 1:10:58Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. It's convenient that it's streaming on Netflix.

• 1:11:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:02Sean Fennessey?

  My number one is available to rent right now for 99 cents on Amazon Prime.

• 1:11:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Wow.

• 1:11:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's called Volcanizadora, which means tire repair shop.

• 1:11:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:11:13Sean Fennessey?

  I think in Spanish. Uh, I don't, don't, don't, don't, don't fact check me on that one.

• 1:11:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:11:19Sean Fennessey?

  Um, this is a very strange movie. It is the latest movie from a guy named Joel Patricus, who is a vigorously independent filmmaker who makes unusual intimate indie movies, shot on film. It's about two guys who go into the forest to follow through on a very fucked up pact that they make with each other. Um, one of the guys is set for a potential prison sentence. The other guy is in a state of crisis in his life. But the movie is just like kind of a hang. Just these two dumb guys talking at each other.

• 1:11:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:11:55Sean Fennessey?

  For the first hour before the events of the movie get a little bit more complicated.

• 1:11:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:00Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting movie about male friendship.

• 1:12:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm. We've had several of those this year.

• 1:12:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Uh, it gets very gnarly near the end. There's some intense stuff that happens in the back half. It's also very funny. And there's, there's nobody making movies quite like Joel Patricus. And your mileage will definitely vary on whether or not you enjoy the movie. But if you can get your head around what it is he's trying to accomplish, I think it's very singular. Very beautiful.

• 1:12:29Sean Fennessey?

  You know, guys.

• 1:12:31Amanda Dobbins?

  You're going through it.

• 1:12:32Sean Fennessey?

  They're, men are going through it in 2025.

• 1:12:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:35Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Dads is a dad movie as well. Dads are going through it. Dads are having a hard time because they want to be good fathers.

• 1:12:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:12:42Sean Fennessey?

  They want to be successful men. They want to not go to prison.

• 1:12:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. They are trying to figure out how to have it all.

• 1:12:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:12:48Amanda Dobbins?

  It's hard.

• 1:12:49Sean Fennessey?

  So whether you're in.

• 1:12:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And James Earl says you cannot.

• 1:12:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. You're, you'll be Woody Harrelson and you will not be forgiven by your daughter. That is where we land. Um, so that's it. That's our list.

• 1:13:02Sean Fennessey?

  How are you feeling? Two more episodes to go this year.

• 1:13:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Two more episodes to record. How many episodes left for people to listen to?

• 1:13:07Sean Fennessey?

  Sixteen more. So this will be the first 30-episode month.

• 1:13:11Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I'm counting. Okay. So this, okay. So one, two, three, four. Four more episodes in this calendar year.

• 1:13:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Amanda Dobbins?

  And then fi- another one. So five before we come back from the break.

• 1:13:25Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:13:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:27Sean Fennessey?

  You think that's the perfect amount?

• 1:13:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I hope people listen. We're working pretty hard.

• 1:13:31Sean Fennessey?

  We are working very hard. Uh, so thanks to Jack Sanders, our producer, for his work on this episode. The next episode is about Marty Supreme.

• 1:13:43Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a really, really good movie.

• 1:13:45Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really, really good. Please go see it.

• 1:13:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. We'll be talking about it in depth and we'll see you then.

• 1:14:08Speaker 03

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