Pod Insights The Big Picture Top Five World War II Movies, and ‘Blitz’ About this episode Sean is joined by Chris Ryan and Rob Mahoney to discuss the robust domestic box office this past holiday weekend (1:00), before digging into Steve McQueen’s latest movie ‘Blitz,’ now in select theaters and on Apple TV+ (12:00). Then, they explore the renewable resource that is World War II movies, assessing the various subgenres that have sprung from that genre (26:00). Finally, they each share their top five WWII movies (42:00), and talk about whether they think the genre will persist.
Host: Sean Fennessey
Guests: Chris Ryan and Rob Mahoney
Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner
Video Producer: Jack Sanders
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Transcript 22,872 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 What's happening? It's Todd McShay and I'm back with a new home and a new show at The Ringer and Spotify, The McShay Show. It's a video and audio podcast coming to you year round with all my NFL draft information, big boards, mock drafts and player movement. Plus, I'll be chatting with some of my best friends in football, including some of your favorite football analysts. During the week, we'll have episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays that'll include discussions about my player rankings, who's rising, who's falling, and who your NFL team should be keeping an eye on. Plus, we'll be reacting each week to the college football playoff polls and giving you previews and picks for each Saturday slate. In addition, I'll have episodes on Saturday nights with my immediate reaction
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1:42 Sean Fennessey? go to LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. That's LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. Terms and conditions apply. 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.
2:20 Sean Fennessey? I'm Sean Fantasy and this is the Big Picture and Conversation Show about WW2. I'm not talking about the little son of the former president, George W. Bush. I'm talking about the World War. On today's episode, we are also talking about Steve McQueen's new film Blitz. It's a WWII feature told through the eyes of a young boy in 1940's London.
2:39 Speaker 02 Thanks for gesturing toward that.
2:41 Sean Fennessey? My youngest boy from London. He's back here on the home country. This movie is available to stream right now on Apple TV+. You're a subscriber to Apple TV+ right, Rob?
2:51 Speaker 03 Of course, I'm a patron.
2:52 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, CRU as well?
2:53 Speaker 02 Lifetime.
2:53 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, that's so. So you can watch that movie right now. We're also going to talk about our favorite WWII films, which is also fertile territory. Rob Mahoney is here in person. Nice to see you in the flesh.
3:03 Speaker 03 Thank you, likewise.
3:04 Sean Fennessey? Chris Ryan, hi.
3:05 Speaker 02 Kind of like the Marshall in Montgomery of this podcast, right?
3:09 Sean Fennessey? Really? Does that make you the Rommel? Who are you in this?
3:12 Speaker 02 Me and Rob.
3:13 Sean Fennessey? Oh, okay.
3:14 Speaker 02 And you're Churchill.
3:15 Sean Fennessey? I thought we were the Mar- no, you're the-
3:16 Speaker 03 You're the-
3:17 Sean Fennessey? You're the-
3:17 Speaker 03 You're the Churchill, I think.
3:19 Sean Fennessey? You're Pat?
3:19 Speaker 03 This is getting convoluted already.
3:21 Sean Fennessey? You actually, you have the, uh, who was the naval commander again? Uh, who, uh, come on. Gregory Peck played him in a film? This is how I know about history is just from watching movies?
3:30 Speaker 02 No, I don't know. Who's, who's the naval commander?
3:32 Sean Fennessey? Come on, Jesus Christ.
3:33 Speaker 02 I don't really rock with the Navy that much.
3:35 Speaker 03 But you're the sea-
3:35 Speaker 02 You're the sea guy. Yeah.
3:37 Sean Fennessey? So ironic. You've, you've not, but you're not into the pilots either?
3:40 Speaker 02 Uh, no, I'm into the pilots, especially in Dunkirk, you know?
3:43 Sean Fennessey? Sure.
3:43 Speaker 02 My guys, I'm on him.
3:45 Sean Fennessey? Um, I really appreciate you being here. You served in WWII, right?
3:48 Speaker 02 I did.
3:49 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. And what was that experience like for you?
3:51 Speaker 02 Uh, you know, it was like, I, I thought like I was, I was over it. You know, I'd left it in the past, but this podcast is digging it up for me.
3:59 Sean Fennessey? Okay, interesting.
3:59 Speaker 02 But this is good.
4:00 Speaker 03 I appreciate everything your generation did for us. I just want you to know.
4:03 Speaker 02 Keep, keep, keep it going. I'm already mad about the chair.
4:05 Sean Fennessey? Speaking of great generations, we have a great generation of moviegoers active in the world right now. A little bit of news. We had an extraordinary box office weekend because of three films. And I know that they're three films that you've all seen multiple times. So I'm very excited to share this news with you guys. $420 million in the domestic box office over the holiday weekend. Thanks in part two, Gladiator 2. Wicked and Moana 2.
4:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think in part doing a lot of heavy lifting there for the first two of those movies.
4:32 Sean Fennessey? Well, almost entirely those three films, but you know, I'll say I did my part. I saw the film Moana 2 not once, but twice in movie theaters this weekend. Once for this podcast and once for my daughter's future.
4:43 Speaker 02 Wait a second, so you saw it independent of your daughter?
4:46 Sean Fennessey? I did.
4:47 Speaker 02 And then saw it with your, did you screen it to make sure it didn't have any troubling imagery?
4:51 Sean Fennessey? No, no, I recorded a podcast about it. Yeah. Yasi Solak and Rob Harvilla, you can find that on the feed.
4:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:58 Speaker 03 I was thinking that might've been some of the reason for the box out, like the Yasi bump is such a real thing.
5:02 Sean Fennessey? Huge, just tremendous. Yasi literally bought 10,000 tickets.
5:05 Speaker 03 Yep.
5:06 Sean Fennessey? And she just sat in several theaters alone. Uh, no, I, I saw it because I needed to record.
5:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:11 Sean Fennessey? And it was during school time, so I went again, brought Alice over the weekend. Both screenings, packed house. You and I were in an AMC over the weekend, seeing an early screening of a forthcoming film.
5:21 Speaker 02 Can't you say what it is?
5:22 Sean Fennessey? It's called The Brutalist.
5:23 Speaker 02 We're Brutalist Boys.
5:23 Sean Fennessey? We are Brutalist Boys once more. And, uh, that theater also, there was, there was a buzz, there was a hum. Were you at the cinema this weekend?
5:30 Speaker 03 No.
5:31 Sean Fennessey? Oh shit.
5:32 Speaker 03 But apparently I was the only one who wasn't like, I, I do think, as I'm trying to understand what happened here. I mean, Moana happened here. Ask literally any parent, uh, they will tell you it is, is an unavoidable force in their lives. So that I understand. But why like this Thanksgiving, why this period of time? Why, why the Gladiator 2 part of this? I don't really understand. Wicked, like theater nerds and parents, I get. What is the strong second wave weekend crowd for Gladiator 2 like?
6:01 Speaker 02 It's not me, unfortunately. I don't, I don't know.
6:03 Sean Fennessey? I, well, I mean, I think, I think that the reason that happened, it's a good question because obviously Gladiator 2 has not been terribly well received. Hasn't been that well reviewed. Seems like it's been considered a bit of a letdown. It was for us. You haven't seen it yet?
6:15 Speaker 03 Not yet.
6:16 Sean Fennessey? Um, I, it's just because there were no movies for grown men in the movie theater. You know, like that's ultimately what it is. Like it was really the only option.
6:23 Speaker 03 But with all due respect, who is the grown man rolling up solo or with a couple of other grown men on like Thanksgiving Friday? Is that a robust audience?
6:32 Speaker 02 You never know because like I, I actually did, this hasn't happened in a while. But I actually did have a moment a couple of weeks ago where my wife and I wanted to see different things. And I was like, well, why don't we just go to the movie theater at the same thing and split? You know, which is not.
6:45 Sean Fennessey? You guys did do that?
6:46 Speaker 02 We didn't. We wound up not being able to get into real pain that time. But like, it was.
6:50 Sean Fennessey? It was very progressive of you to think about it.
6:52 Speaker 02 I thought, I, I want to bring that back into my.
6:54 Sean Fennessey? I've done it before. I think it's a nice thing to do.
6:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:56 Sean Fennessey? Sometimes you got, I've also seen everything all the time. So my wife is like, can't go to the movies with me anymore.
7:00 Speaker 02 Were you leaning over to Alice and spoiling Moana 2 constantly like throughout the movie?
7:04 Sean Fennessey? Um, no, no, I was, there were scenes that were, that are traumatic. I'll just say Moana is in significant peril at one point in the film. And I was locked in on watching her reaction and she was, she was cool. She was chilling. She was like, Moana is going to be good. Moana is, she's got demigod in her future.
7:21 Speaker 02 Wow.
7:22 Sean Fennessey? So she's, she felt good about the whole thing. But it's, it's interesting because like, obviously it's been a huge down year coming off of the strikes. Most of the movies that have been successful though, look a lot like these movies. Moana 2 was not meant to be a movie. It was a TV series commissioned by Disney plus. One thing I wanted to flow to you guys, and Chris, you talk about this all the time on the watch too. You talk about it on prestige as well.
7:43 Sean Fennessey? I think that the Moana 2 success could potentially signal, or even confirm, that the whole D plus TV strategy was a mistake. And that the entire purpose of Disney plus, and maybe only Disney plus, but it could be other streaming services too. We could talk about what Apple could do with this sort of thing in the future. Is basically as strong marketing for active library. If you're a parent, you need Disney plus and you're probably watching Moana a lot. And Moana is a movie that's probably going to be handed down across streaming for 10, 20, 30 years. And then when you open Disney plus now for the last two weeks, the first thing you see is, is the trailer to Moana 2.
8:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:19 Sean Fennessey? So kids become aware of it instantaneously. So they don't even need to promote the movie on billboards or on commercials, because that primary viewing space that you already have for your kids is pushing the movie out. So there was so much, it changed the paradigm, I think, of how people got excited about a movie. Because it seemed like the marketing was relatively modest for Moana 2, and yet it still is breaking records.
8:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:39 Sean Fennessey? So I, it's an interesting, like. Positioning where it felt like they started out by making all of these TV shows that were meant to support and continue the storytelling of other franchises. But now, maybe it should just be a place that pushes out future theatrical movies and then houses them once they come to streaming?
8:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, I, you know, I think it's different for each one of their sort of verticals. Like, I think Marvel has had an up and down experience on Disney as far as like, how much do we want to push our chips in and move story forward in these kind of niche shows about smaller characters? Star Wars has frankly just been like, kind of like a car accident, you know, where it's like, we are doing these legacy characters, but we don't really know how to move the story forward past Skywalker. But with Disney, you're right. I think it's basically like the world's greatest billboard. And if that's going to be the primary thing that people have on in their house all day long, it's just great advertising. Frankly, also, we saw this earlier in the year. I feel like Shogun got an extraordinary boost from being advertised on D+.
9:37 Speaker 02 And also because they needed stuff to advertise before Disney movies. They were doing commercials for it in theaters. So I think it's become a really effective, a really effective marketing space.
9:48 Speaker 03 But this is where Disney is different from, I think, Apple or any other platform. Like, the gateway drug element of having your kids in front of a TV locked in on Disney movies, ready to click the next thing that comes up is so different from, like, I, you know, I'm watching Blitz on Apple TV and it wants me to watch Silo. It's like, I mean, respectfully, I'm gonna, if I want to watch it, not now. There isn't that propulsive, like, onto the next thing quality that I think kids naturally get sucked into.
10:14 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I think it does explain one reason why Netflix has spent so aggressively over the last 10 years to build a library so that they can always be kind of cycling new content in front of people. Like, with Apple TV, you see all the time now, like, they've only produced, what, 40 shows? They've only produced 40 movies. They license some movies, but not very many. So when you go there, it's very easy to reach the bottom. And what I think a lot of these streaming services want you to do is to never reach the bottom, to always be served something new, even more so if they're able to basically maximize the theatrical experience financially and then let you have more and more of it on the streaming. It's just an interesting observation, especially because The Wicked Phenomenon is obviously not slowing down. That movie's doing really, really well. That's also a movie that has been bifurcated and will be part of an extended universe of stories.
10:57 Sean Fennessey? You've got like, you've got The Wizard of Oz, you've got Return to Oz, you've got Oz, the Great and Powerful. There's like many, many movies like this.
11:03 Speaker 02 Do you think they'll remake Wizard of Oz?
11:05 Sean Fennessey? There was some speculation about this online over the weekend. I wouldn't rule anything-
11:08 Speaker 02 Do they have the rights to that specific story?
11:10 Sean Fennessey? I think that's a MGM Warner's project and not a Universal project.
11:15 Speaker 03 Plus, Tim Burton owns it now.
11:17 Speaker 02 My guy Zaz needs to greenlight that tomorrow. Go full Rohirrim with it. Just make an animated Wizard of Oz.
11:23 Sean Fennessey? It's really, I guess it's a question of who has the rights to the L. Frank Baum novel, rather than the original film. So I guess whoever can get their hands around that. I don't actively, I don't know. Bob, do you know who's, who's, who owns L. Frank Baum's estate right now?
11:37 Speaker 04 I have no idea.
11:38 Speaker 02 Get on that, Bob.
11:39 Speaker 04 I'll, I'll spend the next 10 minutes looking that up diligently and make sure that I'm legally correct, so I don't slander anyone.
11:44 Sean Fennessey? Thanks for your service, Bob.
11:46 Speaker 04 Happy to be back.
11:47 Sean Fennessey? Movies, we're back. Movies are back.
11:49 Speaker 04 Moana's back, I guess.
11:51 Speaker 02 Does it feel good for this to be what movies are back for?
11:55 Speaker 03 Moana 2 setting the biggest five-day opening in movie history.
11:59 Speaker 02 For, for your, the movie theater to be pandemonium playground of children screaming and singing throughout movies. That's what you want.
12:07 Sean Fennessey? I, I'll say, I think the bigger problem is, is grown ass people singing along to Wicked and not children. There were, there was no singing in Moana 2 for me. Actually, the kids in both screenings were very well behaved. It's the weirdo 32-year-olds who are singing along to Popular and, you know, nobody mourns the Wicked or whatever.
12:25 Speaker 02 You mocked that, but I, I thought you, you carried a beautiful tune during The Brutalist.
12:28 Sean Fennessey? Thank you. I appreciate that. I mean, if you want me to do the Daniel Blumberg score, like,
12:35 Sean Fennessey? I'll be doing that on this show, probably for the next 12 years.
12:39 Speaker 02 Every time you win a draft, I hope Bobby drops the Brutalist score.
12:43 Sean Fennessey? That's the needle drop. I need that hit in the future.
12:45 Speaker 04 It's the new Thanos. And by the way, if you would like to make your own Wizard of Oz film at home, you can, because they entered public domain.
12:51 Speaker 02 How about that?
12:52 Sean Fennessey? Oh, of course.
12:53 Speaker 04 Coming soon from Ringer Films, The Wizard of Oz.
12:56 Sean Fennessey? Taylor Sheridan's Wizard of Oz? Wow, that's amazing. Uh, okay.
13:00 Speaker 02 How the wizard fights back against the woke mom.
13:02 Speaker 04 I mean, Dorothy was the original lioness, when you think about it.
13:05 Speaker 02 She really was.
13:07 Sean Fennessey? Okay, shall we pivot to Blitz?
13:09 Speaker 03 Yes.
13:10 Sean Fennessey? So Steve McQueen, one of my favorite active filmmakers. He's been on the show a couple of times. I think the last time he was on was for Small Axe. His five film series he made for Amazon, which came out during COVID. And new movie is a period piece set during World War II. Clearly a very personal story. It's written by Russell Hanlon, but you can tell that there's a lot of McQueen's personal experiences and a lot of stories of his heritage and a lot of, you know, remembrances from people who were alive at this time. It's about a nine-year-old boy named George who's sent away during the evacuation while the Blitz is ongoing in London and jumps the train when he's being sent away to return to his mother. So you've got this kind of classic Dickensian tale, very Oliver Twist. Saoirse Ronan plays his mother in the film.
13:55 Sean Fennessey? Elliot Heffernan is the young actor who plays George. A very un-McQueen-like McQueen movie.
14:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:01 Sean Fennessey? And we'd spent like a lot of time in the three or four months in the lead up to it speculating about what this movie was actually going to be. It premiered at the London Film Festival and not one of the signature fall festivals, Venice, Telluride, Toronto, et cetera. Curious like if that was signaling something to us. Obviously, London is a huge part of this film and its history. And in fact, I think the theater where they premiered the film was previously a site that had been bombed and they rebuilt the theater on top of that space. And so, you know, there's like a kind of commemoration when they screen the movie. But the response to this movie has been remarkably muted. It had a short run in theaters and it is available to stream already. Rob, I'll start with you. What did you think of Blitz?
14:38 Speaker 03 I think part of the reason for that is I found it like kind of bland.
14:42 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
14:42 Speaker 03 And, you know, technically impressive at points, but bland ultimately. And I think structurally, pretty misguided. Like the, I as a viewer, I'm not super compelled by the George runs away from stuff framework of driving an entire movie. And
14:57 Sean Fennessey? That's tough because I get the personal connection. You get what he's going for in structuring the movie that way. It's just every time he goes through a little world of like a criminal conspiracy or a bunch of firefighters, I just want to stay with the firefighters and not follow the kid who's making kid decisions. So it's kind of a tough hang in that way.
15:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, we should probably just be straight up where it's like casting a kid actor to carry your film is like a 1 in 100.
15:22 Sean Fennessey? It's very hard.
15:23 Speaker 02 You know?
15:24 Sean Fennessey? He's not bad.
15:24 Speaker 02 No, but he's not Christian Bale and that's just tough. You know what I mean? Like, and I'm not trying to be hard on him at all because like he has to carry a bunch of different emotions and do a lot of really intense physical acting for such a small child. But to your point, Rob, I just found myself constantly wanting to go back to Saoirse or Harris Dickinson's character or Paul Weller's character. Like, I wanted to kind of be in the world of adults and I think that ultimately that was something that just felt much more unique to film. Like where I was like, oh, this is such an amazing portrait of London trying to get by at this moment of extraordinary terror. Whereas the child's odyssey felt like something I had seen before and didn't just didn't emotionally connect to it.
16:08 Speaker 02 That being said, I've thought a lot about this movie since seeing it. I think it's got a lot going on as far as ideas go. I think it's almost a more interesting film to talk about than it is to watch.
16:18 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
16:18 Speaker 02 But it left me a little cold, even if I really appreciated some of the stuff that happened in it.
16:23 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I think I'm mostly with you guys. I found it to be, I've seen the word anonymous thrown around to describe it, which I think is not really fair because there are a handful of flourishes, like artistic choices that remain in the movie that you don't see in your one of the mill period piece that comes to you from focus features or searchlight or whatever. Like, there is a, like a gravitas and an artistry that McQueen retains. I think the movie actually is like ultimately a little lower in my estimation because he kind of teases out what the movie could have been in the first five minutes of the film. The first five minutes of the movie, you get this incredible sequence, which captures these firefighters who are, you know, we later see in the film, who are attempting to put out the fires during the blitz. And you're immediately thrust into the drama of the moment.
17:04 Sean Fennessey? And the way that it's shot and the way that he captures it is like among the most riveting firefighting sequences I've ever seen in a movie. The way that the hose kind of loses control and the people are being blasted around and in the attempt to kind of like, you know, they're being engulfed in flame and trying to fight through it. And then he hard cuts out of that, once we see another bombing coming into this kind of like snowy, digitized imagery, which transforms into daisies, which is this, you know, sort of avant garde imagery that's sort of like a remembrance of the time before the Blitz. And the movie is all about, you know, Elliot Heffernan's character and Saoirse Ronan trying to come back together and also recapture that feeling that they had before World War II, just like all the people of London are trying to feel that way, too. And in that five minutes, I was like, we are in a Steve McQueen movie.
17:47 Sean Fennessey? This is really cool that he is gonna, you know, project some of his moves, some of his ideas and concepts onto this historical structure. And like, like you said, Chris, you referenced Empire of the Sun with Christian Bale, you know, the John Borman movie, Hope and Glory, like Mrs. Miniver. There are a lot of movies that are about civilians and young people during wartime, especially World War II. Yeah. So it's something we've seen before and I was hoping it was gonna be a twist and it's not really that much of a twist.
18:12 Speaker 02 Do you think it's a matter of perspective? Like, I, I'm not comparing this movie to Empire of the Sun, of the Sun, like one to one, because they're just completely different stories. But one of the things that Empire of the Sun does is really strictly stick to the POV of Christian Bale's character.
18:24 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
18:25 Speaker 02 So that everything is being viewed with this kind of childlike wonder and then a loss of innocence as the film goes on. And this movie is kind of all over the place. Like, it's worth noting that McQueen also last year made a documentary called Occupied City, which is about the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and is an epic undertaking and is also thematically about like a lot of like normalcy versus what happens to normalcy when terror and war come into the picture. I almost felt like that filmmaker was like, I can't let, I felt like he couldn't let it go. Like, he wasn't like, I just want to tell one story with Blitz. I want to tell five.
19:06 Speaker 02 I want to tell six. I want to talk about music and culture during the war. I want to talk about racism during the war. Class during the war. I also want to tell like a magical odyssey story during the war. I want to talk about what it must have been like to be a single mother during the war. Like, and yeah, like it fills up and it fills you up because you're thinking about all this different stuff. But when you get to the end of the movie, you're like, what, what was that about? What was the story of Blitz, you know, and it's hard to, it's hard to nail down.
19:30 Speaker 03 Well, it's hard when you deviate that much. Like, I think Blitz has a really hard time delivering the sort of emotional heft to be the movie it wants to be when you're not with George all the way through. Like, you, I, to be honest, even though he is in fires and he is being abducted and he is jumping off trains. And he is in a literal blitz. I just never felt that he was in that much peril. And it's like, for this movie to come off feeling that way is, I think, what makes it a little empty.
19:55 Sean Fennessey? I think a little bit of it is the lack of the transformation too that we're talking about. That, you know, that you mentioned with the Bale character, the sort of loss of innocence. We don't really necessarily feel that totally communicated. But in addition to Occupied City, which is this really strange sort of four plus hour documentary that uses like contemporary imagery of Amsterdam. And sets it against the sort of, like, the sort of narration that discusses what was transpiring in those spaces during World War II. A year before that movie, a film called Three Minutes A Lengthening, which is another documentary that is about like an image from World War II. That is made by Bianca Stickter, who is Steve's wife, was, is also like a fascinating exploration. So like, as a couple, they're kind of entrenched in this project.
20:39 Sean Fennessey? And I think you're right that they kind of can't, they're really stuck on it. Understandably, like, this is the signature event of the 20th century. And so it's very understandable that there's like a lot of rich material. We're going to talk probably for like an hour about, you know, a ton of World War II movies and why it is this fertile ground. But it's just so strange because I think of. I think of McQueen as a really hard, sharp, cynical, bleak, not like ultimately, there is like a sense of potential redemption in a lot of his stories, but there's nothing sweet about the movies that he makes.
21:10 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:10 Sean Fennessey? And they often, this movie looks very, even though it's about terror during war, there's something like soft in the composition. And it's notable to me that like, he's using more or less a different crew. Like Sean Bobbitt, his longtime DP is not on this film. It's shot by Yorick LaSalle, who's a great cinematographer, but who shot like little women and shoots Olivia Asas movies.
21:31 Speaker 03 Safter.
21:32 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
21:32 Speaker 03 Like a softer feel, yeah.
21:34 Sean Fennessey? Period pieces.
21:35 Speaker 03 But I mean, that is what this movie wants to be.
21:36 Sean Fennessey? It does. But I wonder if you apply.
21:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, what does Sean Bobbitt shooting the Stevie Joam sequence look like?
21:44 Sean Fennessey? Yes. The other thing too, is just that Steve McQueen's never made a movie at this scale. He's never made a movie with this much CGI. Those are tools that are hard to utilize.
21:53 Speaker 03 Did the CGI bother you?
21:54 Sean Fennessey? It doesn't look bad, but I mean, you know, at the risk of spoiling something like there's a very, a signature closing shot of the film, there's sort of like a pullback onto the city.
22:03 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:03 Sean Fennessey? After it's been fully bombed out. That is very, just, just digital. I mean, it is just like, it's, it's obviously been fully created in a computer and you can tell, you know, you can tell it's not in an attempt to be grand and to have this sort of vista of a destroyed city. You're looking at something artificial and that kind of like takes you out of the feeling that you're meant to have watching the movie, which is this sense of like place and terror. So I don't, it's, it's like, these are big, important choices in you, in your head when you're thinking of a movie, you're like, this will be good, we'll be able to do it like this. And then when it's executed, I don't know, it doesn't, it doesn't feel as weighty as you want it to seem.
22:38 Speaker 03 There are visuals that I think really do stick with you and sequences that I think are just like well executed set pieces or elements of these things that, that just really, really click and work within their little silos. And then the transitional pieces, I think are where the CGI sticks out and it, it felt a little bit in watching this, like, like playing a triple A video game, like playing a very glossy story, like you're running from place to place as this character, as everything is falling down behind you, or if you prefer like a.
23:05 Sean Fennessey? Big transformer hand is just about to grab Shia LaBeouf or whatever like that was the vibe. That's just not what I want from a blitz movie, to be honest, especially a Steve McQueen blitz movie.
23:15 Speaker 02 But do you know what I'm saying where it's like you wind up thinking about it more than you wind up enjoying it? Because like I I do think that, you know, the film itself has some personal resonance for me just because my dad was an infant in London during the the bombing. And like, I think that there is, at least from my understanding through my own family's perspective, a mythology that. Yeah, the English tell themselves about the stiff upper lip, the unity, the collectivism that they experienced during that time period. Which I don't think he necessarily suggests is untrue, but it does a great job showing how much more complicated that would have been.
23:55 Speaker 02 And how much, you know, race and class played into a pecking order when it came even to breadlines. And I thought that was fascinating, but deflated a bit when we then would go off into these almost magical realism sections. With George in his adventure across England to get back home.
24:17 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I just think he's sort of like teasing you with the possibility of like moments or extended stories that are just more interesting than the central story. And the central story is sort of like historically significant because George is not white. And there's very rarely been a young, non-white boy centered in a story like this. And McQueen's family is from Grenada and that heritage is explored in the movie. And he's made a lot of like documentaries and short films about this. And so in a way, I think you could very clearly see this movie as sort of like a prequel of sorts to Small Axe and how Small Axe is about those communities. Those, you know, West Indian communities that are in London and.
24:57 Sean Fennessey? So it it's not that it's not new and it's not that it's not relevant. It's just like the framework of the story is really the issue. It's like the script just feels soft. It just feels like a little iterative and not exactly what you want it. So it's disappointing. Like I I really, really anticipate new McQueen movies. And I don't know, there's a little bit of like, is this an Apple problem? Like, I don't know.
25:19 Speaker 02 I was wondering about that. I, you know, I, I, I just feel like you have to take the text as you get it. So without knowing anything about whether or not Apple was like, what we really want to do is tell like a wondrous story of perseverance, but you can do other stuff on the side. Alyssa Wilkinson had a really good piece about this movie in the Times where she suggested that the almost like abrupt nature to the episodic storytelling, like the way that these stories almost cut off just as they're about to take full flight was reflective of the way in which life itself was interrupted in London and how, you know, like one of the most striking images, I think, is the moments in these, in this movie before a bomb falls.
26:01 Speaker 02 And we know a bomb is coming as Paul Weller is in bed with a cat or as, you know, something is like, you know, very normal, everyday life is taking place. I thought it was an interesting re of the film that didn't change how I felt about my experience watching it. But I thought I would shout that out because I thought it was a really cool idea about, about the structure of it.
26:22 Speaker 03 I think like some of that plays in, in terms of the other like technical aspects of the movie. I thought the score was very strange and at times like it would be building up in a sort of way like you're about to reveal the alien and signs.
26:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:34 Speaker 03 And then abrupt cut to a new scene. And it's like, it's like it's building to something, something and then nothing. So I, I get that sort of like the cutoff momentum. And if that's the like artistic intent there, I support it. I just, I don't think it makes for a very cohesive watching experience.
26:47 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, he said something in the LA Times that I thought was interesting. He said, often people think war is what happens in far distant places. And he talked about what's happening in Gaza, Libya, Ukraine as sort of like inspiration points for the movie. He said, I wanted to bring it home. This is what happened here. This movie has a real sense of urgency. Unfortunately, I wanted it to be a roller coaster ride through London during the war. So I think that kind of accounts for that, like jumpy quality that the movie sometimes has. I did think it was notable. That in 2014, when he made 12 Years a Slave, he, you know, did a lot of press for that film, obviously. And he said at the time that the film industry had been negligent in covering stories about American slavery and the slave trade. And he said that World War II lasted five years and there are hundreds and hundreds
27:31 Sean Fennessey? of films about the Second World War and the Holocaust. Slavery lasted 400 years and there are less than 20 films about it. And yet, he was eventually drawn to making a World War II film, too. It's like, there's something kind of like-
27:42 Speaker 03 Two World War II movies.
27:42 Sean Fennessey? That's, yeah.
27:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:43 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. There's something kind of like undeniable about the appeal. And maybe we can use that as like a segue a little bit towards our World War II films conversation, because like, I just started mapping out the kinds of movies you can make about the conflict in that time in history. It's more or less every genre of movie?
28:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:03 Sean Fennessey? Is there a genre of movie that, I mean, I can run through this list that I, I spent hours plotting, but are there any kinds of films that you can't make during World War II?
28:12 Speaker 03 I'm kind of stunned at the variety. Like, you know it and you've seen a lot of these movies and you've seen the gonzo stuff. You've seen the very somber, solemn things. You've seen like the gallows humor in between zone, but the fact that you can make outright farce and musical and spy movie and sniper movie and also frontline battle movie out of something that I think a lot of people hold not only historically to a very strict standard in terms of what they want to see on screen, but like, it's a lot of delicate subject matter to just delve into with a sense of humor, to the point that some of the best filmmakers have tried it and just completely fallen on their face in doing so. But I, I don't know why it, it seems to like ebb and flow in terms of how we make these movies and like, why Blitz now?
28:55 Speaker 03 I don't exactly know, other than obviously the, the racial elements that are discussed in the movie are very pertinent and relevant and make sense. But otherwise, it doesn't really seem like we're in a World War II moment.
29:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's, uh, it's interesting. I think we always are. You know what I mean?
29:08 Speaker 03 Well, for you, in your house, yes.
29:09 Speaker 02 But I, I do think that there is something about the moment itself, the World War II moment, those years and even the post-war years. First of all, how it gives birth to everything that comes after it. So the way it shapes the world, the way it gives way to the Cold War, the way it kind of sets up all these powers for years to come. But I was thinking about this the other day, actually after watching Brutalist, we're not going to talk about that, but- Filmmakers.
29:35 Sean Fennessey? Also a World War II film in many ways.
29:36 Speaker 02 Filmmakers fascination with the past because it is a pure storytelling arena to be in. Because they don't want to show people on their phones doing group chat lol like that is like the way that people do dialogue.
29:51 Sean Fennessey? Soft promo for Rob's other podcast.
29:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, listen to group chat.
29:54 Speaker 02 But World War II technology, World War II fashion, World War II music is like firmly a period. But and it's got romance now.
30:06 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
30:06 Speaker 02 Like, you know what I mean? Like, something about Morse code, like encrypted Morse code is more like kind of romantic than a Nokia phone from like the Jason Bourne era. You know, that would be like an earlier technological development. So there's something about it that I feel like is like modern enough, but also has like the romance of like Shakespeare. You know what I mean? Partially also because I'm sure we're going to talk about the, at least in the narrative sense, the moral clarity of the conflict.
30:36 Sean Fennessey? I think that's a big part of it. I would suggest that there is also a social component, which is that, you know, at the time of the event, movies were becoming.
30:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:46 Sean Fennessey? The centerpiece of American entertainment and soon international entertainment. And studios repositioned a lot of filmmakers to work to create propaganda. Five came back, this great Mark Harris book about some of the best filmmakers working in Hollywood at the time, making documentary films to inspire. And then in the immediate aftermath of that, and even during the conflict, you've got the production of really good movies by really good filmmakers. And some filmmakers who were exiles from countries who were in the conflict. Fritz Lang in particular, coming to America or to England and making films like literally during World War II about Nazis. And so you've got that, so you have this sort of starting place where movies are becoming more and more popular.
31:26 Sean Fennessey? And this is a deeply cinematic conflict that you can portray in a lot, in a variety of ways. And so it becomes like part of the bedrock of not just American movie making, but you've got stories told through the Japanese perspective, the German perspective. You know, the Polish perspective, French perspective, Russia, like a lot of the great Russian cinema is made in the aftermath of the conflict. So it's this fascinating thing where it starts out as you can make. Sort of sly thrillers that have a strong political point of view, or you can make sharp satires, right? Like Lubitsch is making To Be or Not To Be, like really early in the conflict. And then it like it expands out and out and out. Adventure action movies. This becomes the best setting for those kinds of stories.
32:11 Sean Fennessey? Men on a Mission movies, Child in Peril movies like this one. POW movies, escape movies are perfect for this. Romance movies amidst the conflict. Some of the most beloved and celebrated movies in filmmaking history, like Casablanca, From Here to Eternity, The English Patient. These are World War II movies.
32:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:28 Sean Fennessey? Biopics, obviously. You've got these great leaders and figures that rise during this time. Patton and Churchill and Rommel and all these fascinating people who are part of the conflict. Musicals, there's like several great musicals.
32:42 Speaker 03 It's shocking.
32:43 Sean Fennessey? During World War II, The Sound of Music, Cabaret, South Pacific, Bed, Nobs and Broomsticks. I mean, these are all, Bed, Nobs and Broomsticks is kind of a prequel to Blitz. You know, like they're, it's, it's so interesting to me. And then there's the whole civilian element too, sort of like life during wartime and how people lived commonly during this period, which we get some of during the Saoirse Ronan stuff. And there've been a lot of movies like that.
33:04 Speaker 02 You were saying like Remains of the Day, things like that.
33:06 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. And then there's all the fallout. There's Holocaust dramas, you know, there's this post-nuclear annihilation dramas. There's desiccated cities and what Europe looks like in the aftermath of the war. Like all these movies get bundled on top. And so it's so interesting that, one, our favorites list is almost like a waste of time. You know, it's just like, it has to be so personal because the list is like, there's like 300 genuinely interesting movies made about World War II.
33:34 Speaker 03 There were individual years where it's like, there were dozens of World War II movies.
33:38 Speaker 02 And there are like 10 that are some of the most decorated films ever made. So it's almost like, yeah, obviously, but you know, I'm trying to just have a little bit more fun with it.
33:45 Speaker 03 But there is a reason for that. Like, yes, it is part like the propaganda machine and the cultural programming, but I cannot pretend that there is not a part of me that stirs at like a big horn section and an emotional salute in the middle of the movie. Like it hits and I've been trying to like isolate like what it is about. These movies that works like what what it is that I want from them. And I think the camaraderie is a big part of it, like the in the foxhole feeling, whether you're at home or on the front lines or wherever it is. There's the sense of like tragedy and humanity. And then I think the scale sometimes, right? Like it.
34:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:17 Speaker 03 It's you're either taking the very personal story and blowing it out, or you're showing the full like a bloody ocean, you know, washing up on Normandy like. I think the the scale of those things can be can be a little hard to wrestle with in a history book Wikipedia page.
34:32 Speaker 02 It's the it's all that. It's the totality of the conflict touching everybody from Eisenhower to a woman working in a factory in the Midwest, you know, it's. I think there's something very recognizable about watching these films because, you know, if you've gotten, if you're lucky enough to have gone to Europe, like one of the things that's just amazing about that place is you will be walking and it'll be like. Oh, Constantine was crowned next to this pizzeria. That's pretty cool. Like you will be like walking through history in a way you could still do it in the Northeast here and all over this country like you can see it, but. Maybe it's a little bit more woven into like the cities and the countryside of of Europe in a way that just hits you differently.
35:13 Speaker 02 And I also think that there's something about how this is a super genre of film that I am equally open to being romanticized by it. And also having all of that deflated. Like I will do the longest day, which is like the successful.
35:32 Speaker 03 Triumph.
35:32 Speaker 02 The D-Day and I will do a bridge too far, which is the failure that happened before it. You know, I I am open to the craven moral decay of the third man. And also, you know, Casablanca, you know, like I I am open to every kind of iteration of of of these stories.
35:49 Speaker 03 I think another thing that adds to the mythos of it is even though there are no cell phones in any of these films. This is this was really the first technology war, you know, or sort of like radar and sonar and mapping and spying and code breaking and all of these complex ideas. Plus the level of artillery and scientific sophistication that went into the the bomb making and the actions that were taken.
36:13 Speaker 02 Imitation game in your top five then?
36:14 Sean Fennessey? It is, yeah. That's number one for me, spoiler. But you have all this new world ideas getting bumped. This isn't bayonet fighting, you know what I mean? There's a certain kind of warfare that can be depicted that is so visual and so fascinating to kind of unpack and untangle. And I think the key point is what you said, Chris, which is that there is a simple morality to fascism bad that still works and still makes sense and resonates deeply. And it makes movies that would otherwise seem corny feel inspiring or feel justified in its corniness.
36:49 Speaker 03 The concept of a war you can win is just not something that we have a lot of exposure to anymore. But I also think because it is so straightforward in that way, there are a lot of these movies where the Nazis are just kind of like lurking on the outside of the frame or coming two years after the duration of the movie. And it just heightens everything. It just like completely raises the stakes. It casts this huge shadow over whatever like domestic travail you may be watching. And it just, it completely changes the tone of those movies in a way that you just can't do with any other element.
37:19 Speaker 02 And that's why you prefer films that center the German military anyway, right? Like Valkyrie and, you know.
37:24 Sean Fennessey? What do you mean?
37:28 Speaker 03 He's just a history buff.
37:29 Sean Fennessey? I hit you with one Booster Seed joke and you're just turning the fascism gags on me. Yeah, this is a, this is a pretty amazing and special way of thinking through film history. Like I, I definitely was like, honey, I just need one more minute. When I was working on the outline and it was like two hours later of just thinking about all the different kinds of films that fit into the ideas.
37:51 Speaker 02 I literally did this last night where I was like, my wife was like, do you, can you please spend some time with me? And I was like, I'm making an imaginary list of movies Rick Dalton would have been in.
38:02 Speaker 02 This is like the happiest I've been in 2024.
38:07 Sean Fennessey? We all just want to go back. We all just want to go back to a time when Rick Dalton was above the line. Um, what else can we say? What else is me? I mean, coming of age, for me, like, I was 16 when Saving Private Ryan came out, you know? So that in the Brokaw book and the Greatest Generation, all of that was being fed. Both of my grandfathers served, both of them were POWs during World War II. They never spoke about it, but everyone around them talked about it all the time. Um, you know, there was a real consciousness of the war in my family growing up. And so, uh, it's just kind of intrinsic to the experience. I think my grandmother had, my grandmother had six brothers and they all served in World War II or Korea. Like, it just was an elemental quality of American life at a certain time, especially if you were a particular
38:52 Sean Fennessey? class. And so it's no surprise that this stuff like continues on and on and on because it is passed down. It is sort of like, it is narrativized and there's like a legacy that is created through it. So yeah, Saving Private Ryan being the phenomenon that it was, not only being a movie that was like, you know, well reviewed and, and won awards, but was like a big fat hit on the heels of Spielberg making Schindler's List for, for my generation. It seemed obvious that there would be another 100 years of World War II movies. Now, I do feel like there is a lot of, well, they haven't done it like this. Like, there's a lot of like scraping going on on the edges of the story.
39:31 Speaker 02 Or it's, it's like, big time filmmaker is finally ready to tell his epic story, Dunkirk, you know, what have you, like Inglourious Basterds.
39:41 Speaker 03 I did see Tyler Perry has a movie coming out literally a few weeks, a World War II movie.
39:45 Speaker 02 Does he really?
39:45 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, The Six Triple Eight, I think is the name of it. So all of our Titans showing up. All Black Female Regiment, I think.
39:50 Speaker 02 Oh, wow. Well, we're also getting, uh, and, uh, Spike Lee did Miracle of Santa, like a couple of, of years ago. I do, I will note that there has been a, a minor burst of World War II genre dramas on TV. So a lot of what would have been B films, relationship films in the 50s and 60s perhaps, have now kind of like, you'll get SAS Rogue Heroes or what have you on TV.
40:20 Sean Fennessey? Do they work in that format? I feel like there's, the whole point is that these-
40:24 Speaker 02 Uh, you know, it depends on what you like. I like the, the early seasons of The Crown are quite good. Uh, when it comes to the World War II stuff-
40:30 Sean Fennessey? That is a World War II film, yeah.
40:32 Speaker 02 Um, Rogue Heroes is incredible. Um, I, you, you could make an argument that Blitz might have been better as a mini-series.
40:39 Sean Fennessey? Mm-hmm.
40:39 Speaker 02 Uh, but like, I, I think it's, it's, it's, as, as CGI becomes more and more prevalent, you'll probably see period pieces that look kind of fake, but then they can just kind of rock them up like that.
40:51 Speaker 03 I mean, one, one reason I think it works on TV like that, and one thing that, as you alluded to, Blitz might be missing is these movies lend themselves to big, dope ensembles, like huge companies of people, whether they're military or not, and it's like, I think Blitz by comparison feels very small in that way. I- in a way that I think is intended, but to me, the most successful ones often have, it's a, it's a rogues' gallery of actors who become big deals in five years after they were in it, or even in real time, it's like, oh my God, they got all these people to be in one company together.
41:22 Sean Fennessey? No, it's true, and I think it's often because some of the best and most kind of classically entertaining of these movies are team-up movies. Where you've got like unlikely figures being banded together to serve a common goal. I just re-watched The Guns of Navarone for the first time in a long, long time last night, and I was, as I was watching it, I realized that a movie that was released this year is a full-blown Guns of Navarone ripoff, which is the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. The first 30 minutes of the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is just ripping off Guns of Navarone. Not in a bad way, I mean, this is something that like, movies like this do, they're just, they're iterative and they're sort of like paying homage, it's like you're saying, like, it's like, it's my turn to do a movie like this. That is clearly Guy Ritchie's love letter to-
42:02 Speaker 02 Those kinds of movies.
42:03 Sean Fennessey? 50s and 60s action movies starring guys like Steve McQueen and Anthony Quinn and Gregory Peck, and I love those movies. I don't, those movies are not very deep. Um, they don't have a ton to say beyond, you gotta save the day.
42:16 Speaker 02 It's just cool guys walking away from explosions.
42:18 Speaker 03 I mean, that has its appeal.
42:20 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, that's the thing is like, and when people-
42:21 Speaker 02 That's most of my top five.
42:22 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I, trust me, there's room on all of our lists for movies like that, there's nothing wrong with them at all. It's interesting though, whenever, whenever people would criticize like, Michael Bay, I would always be like, this is not different from anything that's been happening in movies for the last 50 years. Like, Michael Curtiz movies are like Michael Bay movies, and this is where a lot of filmmakers make their best stuff. Michael Bay, of course, also made a World War II movie, Pearl Harbor. Like, every great filmmaker, really, almo- almost every great filmmaker takes a bite out of this apple.
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44:50 Sean Fennessey? What were your hard cuts here? Did you have ones where you were like, "I'd really like to put this on my list"?
44:54 Speaker 02 I had movies that I was like, would there, is there really any point to me putting this on a top five of World War II movies? Because we've talked about it so much. I tried basically to do this. The movies that I have watched the most and that I return to over and over again out of pure pleasure. And one that I was like, "I think everybody should see this."
45:13 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
45:14 Speaker 02 But I left off a bunch of stuff that I was like... I would just say like, well, yeah, obviously. You know what I mean? Um, but yeah, like that was, that was sort of my guiding rule of thumb. I also tried to keep the movies more or less set between 40 and 45. So even though my favorite movies are probably the Fallout movies.
45:35 Sean Fennessey? Mm hmm.
45:35 Speaker 02 I kind of tried to keep them within the, the rails of the actual conflict.
45:40 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, that's interesting. I have one that is pre-war, just in an effort to talk about like a round group of films. But that's the other thing I'm trying to like, look at what is the best way to discuss some of these things like, you know, Night in Fog is a tremendously important movie about World War II. I wouldn't say it's my favorite, you know what I mean? Like, it's not something I'm gonna fire up. And there are even some films, like you mentioned, A Bridge Too Far, or Longest Day, or Tor, Tor, Tor, like these big splashy, you know, ensemble epics, like, I don't necessarily always love those movies, you know? Like, I find them kind of a chore to get through. So some things work for some people, some don't work for others.
46:14 Speaker 02 So the big Cornelius Ryan joints, like you're kind of, um.
46:18 Sean Fennessey? It's not really my thing, but I know you're more into those.
46:20 Speaker 02 Uh, do you, were you mostly European theater? Did you find yourself wandering over, over the Pacific Theater?
46:29 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I mean, there's like a couple of incredibly important Japanese films, like Konichiwa's movies, uh, Fires on the Plane, The Burmese Harp are both like, great. Essentially made in like 1946, like in the immediate aftermath of the war and sort of like reckoning with Japan's role in the war and effectively like what happened to soldiers after the war.
46:53 Sean Fennessey? Burmese Harp is particularly fascinating in that respect. But, um, a lot of those stories are more in the sort of post-nuclear examination that resonate more with me. Like, I haven't seen a ton of films about the actual conflict through Japanese eyes. Konichiwa would be one of those movies, actually.
47:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:10 Sean Fennessey? But they're not, I just haven't seen as many of those. Unlike like Ballad of a Soldier, like in Russia, there's a lot of movies that are like that.
47:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:17 Sean Fennessey? Um, where you see the world through the eyes of Russians, like Ivan's Childhood, the Tarkovsky movie. But I'm, they come entirely in the European theater in all the films that I picked. What about you?
47:27 Speaker 03 I've, I've picked some in the Pacific Theater for sure. And I think generally, you know, you were talking about how personal these lists are. For me, war movies when I was a teenager were not something I felt comfortable watching. Like, in the same way that I don't really like listening to a true crime murder podcast. It's like. A frontline battle movie is just not something I was locking in on and throwing on TV. And so the Pacific theater movies that resonated more with me are a little bit more smaller, personal stories, a little bit more every person involved and like the tendrils of this great conflict than they are, let's show, let's show the battle on the beach, let's, let's show the U-boats. Like, for some reason, that stuff when I was younger felt a little too tangible.
48:08 Speaker 02 Gotcha.
48:08 Speaker 03 And, you know, I don't want to say abstract it because obviously the, the nature of the war is shaping all these movies, driving the conflict. I think the movies we picked are not just movies set during World War II, but World War II movies in terms of what is driving the action. But there's lots of ways you can do that. It doesn't have to be machine guns, you know, on the frontlines.
48:27 Speaker 02 Absolutely. I mean, like, in some ways, I think that, like, our personal relationships, both to the conflict itself, but also to where maybe America's place in the world was at various points over the course of the last couple of decades, definitely influences this. I'll also say that I was largely introduced to these movies by my parents as comfort food. And even when Saving Private Ryan came, I was kind of like, ah, well, that's, I kind of intuitively understood that this is what happened, but like, that's kind of a bummer, you know what I mean? Like, you know, I kind of wanted to see Steve McQueen throwing a baseball against the wall, you know?
49:02 Sean Fennessey? I mean, that's, I think the most iconic movies are movies that we'll probably all talk about from our list, but that are often tightly focused on groups that are not in infantry battles.
49:11 Speaker 02 Sure.
49:11 Sean Fennessey? You know, like Saving Private Ryan is weirdly more of an exception than it is the rule, which is very different from the World War I movies. You know, like, All Quiet on the Western Front is trench warfare. You know, Paths of, Paths of Glory is trench warfare. Those movies, I think the war was fought differently for obvious reasons, but the kinds of movies that emerged in the canon are just very different from. The Great Escape, or Bridge on the River Kwai, or these other movies that are sort of like locked in as important films. You have to see if you want to understand the history of movies. So it's interesting that the, like, what the, what the war demands, like, what kind of movies they'll give you. Should also note that Oppenheimer is a World War II movie.
49:51 Speaker 02 It certainly is.
49:52 Sean Fennessey? It just won Best Picture and was one of the movie sensations of 2023.
49:56 Speaker 02 I wonder if we charted this, if we're, if we're on a every five years, there's a great World War II film run, because it's like between, before that Dunkirk, before that, Inglourious Basterds, before that. You know what I mean?
50:07 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, absolutely.
50:08 Speaker 02 I think that fairly routinely now, like, this isn't going anywhere.
50:12 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. No, I don't think so either. There's probably been more than just Ministry and Blitz this year, too. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but they're, they're always coming.
50:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:23 Sean Fennessey? They're always coming.
50:35 Sean Fennessey? And now it's time for a very special segment presented by Walmart. Since Amanda is on leave, I thought we could use this time to plan the perfect gift for her for the holidays. I honestly love going above and beyond getting gifts from my friends. Amanda doesn't know we're doing this right now, but I had this incredible lineup of possible gifts. So many quality gifts from Walmart. And when it comes to shopping, I thought about a lot of different kinds of things. I thought about maybe some gifts for Knox, her young son. I thought about maybe a new TV or a Roku that she could stream movies on. I thought about maybe a Lenovo, a laptop that she could, you know, look at all my spreadsheets and download what we're doing on the big picture going forward. But then I thought I need to take care of Amanda. I need to give her something that makes her feel safe, comfortable, happy at home,
51:20 Sean Fennessey? which is where she is right now. So here's what I came up with.
51:26 Sean Fennessey? That is the Ninja Creamy. You might be asking yourself, what is a Ninja Creamy? Well, I'm glad you asked. It's an ice cream maker. Amanda loves ice cream. I love ice cream. On this show, we support ice cream. And so I thought for this holiday season, she might like to dig into some ice cream. During the holidays, thoughtfulness is a big deal. So give the gifts that show you get them at Walmart.
51:56 Sean Fennessey? Shall we do our lists?
51:57 Speaker 03 Let's do it.
51:57 Speaker 02 Sure.
51:58 Sean Fennessey? Chris, would you like to kick us off?
51:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, so this is probably the most like important film history one and the one that I think is probably underseen at this point, but is important to see, which is Pison, Roberto Rossellini's 1946 movie. This is an episodic film. I think there's six stories told. It's set in Italy in the end of, towards the end of the war. It is stunning. It's a mix of professional, non-professional actors. It's got Rossellini's neo-realism style in full bloom. And one of the things that you have to kind of remind yourself of is that like you're not watching newsreel footage. And so you'll see, you know, footage from a dock in Sicily or something.
52:41 Speaker 02 And you're like, that isn't, that's just the boat and the people. Like that is really happening. This, you know, like because of the episodic nature of it, you may, your mileage may vary on various stories in it, but you'll never be bored. In fact, I think you'll be stunned by the modernity of the storytelling and the maturity of the subject matter and the moral kind of gray area that it operates in. He made a World War II trilogy, which I recommend everybody see. So Rome, Open City, Pison and Germany Year Zero, right?
53:16 Speaker 02 And Rossellini's movies are just fucking incredible. They are on Criterion Channel. It should be, consider it like a foundation of your film, like education.
53:25 Speaker 03 I'm taking notes. This was underseen, including by me.
53:28 Sean Fennessey? It's a, those three movies are made literally in the immediate aftermath of the war too. And they're capturing something that could only be captured at that time.
53:35 Speaker 02 And if you can, if you're watching these, the specifically Scorsese, but lots of people have talked about these movies. But you can find Scorsese talking about them on YouTube or on Criterion. And it's like getting a film education in and of itself to hear him talk about what these movies meant to him is really pretty awesome.
53:52 Sean Fennessey? Okay, Rob, your number five's already come up. What is it?
53:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's not underseen. It is Saving Private Ryan. And I think you can watch that movie and the story and the music and the sentimentality can hit you in a way that works really well. I think it cracks like wide open when you realize how fucking bleak that movie is. To me, the whole idea of this sort of like earn this conceit is that you can't, no matter what you do, no matter what anyone does, like all of this, there's nothing that can make it worth it. And to have Tom Hanks at the center of that. Is really breathtaking to watch and to revisit. And this is one like, I think there are a lot of movies in this, in the genre that, you know, in this world that we're talking about, that are just really hard to go back to. I do think you can go back to Saving Private Ryan for a couple of different reasons. Maybe with enough time in between. But it is propulsive.
54:39 Speaker 03 It does the thing that Blitz does in that it is kind of a winding vignette story, as a lot of these war movies are.
54:45 Speaker 02 It's travelogue, yeah.
54:46 Speaker 03 It's a complete travelogue and it feels totally different. And I think it, I think it packs the sort of punch that I was hoping Blitz would be able to deliver for me, but didn't.
54:56 Speaker 03 It is a World War II movie where like the stakes don't have to be end the war or kill Hitler or whatever, like it can be smaller than that. It could be more fragile than that. And like it's a, it's an instant classic for a reason.
55:07 Sean Fennessey? Spielberg has made 1941, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, I'm forgetting.
55:16 Speaker 02 Empire of the Sun.
55:17 Sean Fennessey? Empire of the Sun.
55:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:19 Sean Fennessey? Five.
55:20 Speaker 02 You could call Bridges Spies a post-World War II movie.
55:22 Sean Fennessey? It is, yeah. Warhorse, World War I.
55:25 Speaker 03 What's his deal? Like, why, why is that the thing to keep going back to over and over and over?
55:29 Sean Fennessey? I mean, you know, I think it's also like very much a prismatic American experience, you know, and Spielberg, one of the signature American filmmakers and storytellers of the 20th century, so it's not shocking that he goes back and back to it. Saving Private Ryan, probably my favorite of all of his World War II movies. I like Raiders of the Lost Ark.
55:46 Speaker 02 I think there's an argument that it's the great, the greatest film ever made about World War II.
55:50 Sean Fennessey? Do you think that's true?
55:51 Speaker 02 Well, I just, I, like I said, like, these are films, for the most part, with the exception of Pazan, that I like go back to over and over and over again because I, I just love the feel of them.
56:03 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
56:03 Speaker 02 But I probably, it's, it's pretty close, but I think Saving Private Ryan, you would not get a lot of arguments.
56:11 Speaker 03 It might be the one you put in the capsule that you sent into space to explain artistically what that period of history was like. It would be hard to pick one of these sort of fringe side stories from some other element of the world and say like, this represents this massive global conflict. So I think it probably taps into that as well as anything else.
56:29 Speaker 02 And it actually, I mean, like what's crazy about that movie is it does what it takes hundreds of other movies to do about the conflict, which is it both kind of launches the greatest generation idea and this sort of lionization of this entire thing, but also talks about. The incredible horrors that these guys went through and obviously didn't have the tools to like really talk about afterwards.
56:52 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I um, there was a conversation going on online over the weekend about the best shots of the 21st century or, you know, like people were screenshotting images from movies that they really liked and a bunch of people had pointed out that image from the Fabelmans where young Sammy Fabelman is filming himself in the mirror while his family is sort of breaking down, like while his parents are telling the children that they're separating. And, you know, it's this fascinating self reflexive moment where he's talking, like showing how he can't really cope with any emotional experience unless it's shot through the lens of like storytelling in his own eyes. And someone pointed out when they, when people were pointing to that scene that that was something that he came up with on the day. That Spielberg had not mapped that out and it wasn't in the script, but he was like, I want to try something.
57:38 Sean Fennessey? And then someone else pointed out in the immediate aftermath of that, that another thing that he did, and he's done this, he does this on every movie where he's just like, what if we did this? But the sequence where Adam Goldberg gets into the knife fight.
57:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
57:47 Sean Fennessey? With the German soldier was like something that they just came up with, like it was supposed to be a gun battle.
57:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
57:53 Sean Fennessey? And they were just like, what if we just did this on the ground in close quarters? Like body to body.
57:58 Speaker 02 Begging, don't do this.
57:59 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, which is one of the most
58:01 Speaker 02 Harrowing.
58:02 Sean Fennessey? visceral and upsetting scenes in World War II movie history. And I think it's like the kind of scene that you could shoot that scene in 1957, but not that way.
58:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
58:10 Sean Fennessey? And I think that's maybe one of the reasons why it like stands the test of time as one of the greats, if not the great, because it seems like one of the most direct representations of what this looked like and felt like. Um, and that probably will always
58:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's weird that like, I mean, I haven't seen Pizon more than I've seen Saving Private Ryan, but something happens in Pizon that's similar to what happens to Giovanni Ribisi in Saving Private Ryan. And that's just so much more upsetting, even though Pizon was made in 1946 with people who had just literally come out of that conflict.
58:42 Sean Fennessey? Uh, okay. So for my list, I've, I tried to basically choose one type of movie for each slot.
58:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
58:48 Sean Fennessey? So, you know, I've watched The Guns of Navarone maybe more than some of these movies, but I, I wanted to see like how the kind of movie this, like the weight. Could be held from the conflict. So A Matter of Life and Death is my number five. It's a Palin Pressburger movie from 1946, same year as Pizon. It's about a British pilot who the film opens with him sort of in the final moments of his life. Like they've just, there's just been a bombing raid and he's going down. And in the moment that he's going down, he sort of flashes and is essentially entering, if not the pearly gates, like he is about to be escorted to the afterlife. And there's some confusion and the person who's supposed to be escorting him misses him. And so he slips into this sort of like purgatorial, imaginary experience where he gets to sort of negotiate for the future of his life.
59:34 Sean Fennessey? The movie's not like an infantry battle movie. It's not a pilot battle movie. It's about a person who sacrificed his life for the war and sort of like what the sliding doors of that experience could have been for all people. Movie's ultimately like a romance and a fantasy and this incredible proscenium for Palin Pressburger to try things in America. The movie was called Stairway to Heaven because there is a literal image, the sort of like an escalator moving into the sky that is very memorable, resonated with Led Zeppelin quite a bit. And is like one of the signature films of the first half of the 20th century in Britain. But is like a beautiful movie about using real world events to apply the imagination
1:00:14 Sean Fennessey? and the mind and what like, what a movie can be springboarding off of the world. And the fact that they did this immediately after the film, like this is something that like Blitz actually never gets to.
1:00:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:00:25 Sean Fennessey? It never gets to an idea beyond when you had your boots on the ground. It's not a bad thing necessarily. It's not really what McQueen is going for, but it's like a testament to, I think, the kinds of stories that you could tell around this.
1:00:35 Speaker 02 And those, The Archers, which is the Palin Pressburger production company for a while there. They made like 15 movies about World War II, 10?
1:00:44 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:00:45 Speaker 02 Like, I can't remember.
1:00:46 Sean Fennessey? Life and Death of Colonel Blim is probably the other most famous.
1:00:48 Speaker 02 That's the big one. Yeah. But they, a lot, some of them were like propaganda movies. Some of them were like basically like submarine action movies. And then some of them were like these amazing romance films. So yeah, very cool.
1:00:59 Sean Fennessey? Number four, Chris.
1:01:00 Speaker 02 Uh, my number four.
1:01:03 Speaker 02 Is The Dirty Dozen. Uh, so this gets into the sort of, uh, this movie was just on for the first 15 years of my life, all the time. Uh, this is how I was introduced to Lee Marvin, uh, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, uh, John Cassavetes, Donald Sutherland, Men on a Mission, the, the, the dregs, the convicts who come through and save the day. I can't even remember really, like, but they're, they have to blow up a hotel with all the Nazis in it.
1:01:31 Speaker 03 Does it matter?
1:01:31 Speaker 02 But I just know that Jim Brown runs like a football route with a clip bond at some point. It's the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. Um, split into two. First half is basically training. Second half is the mission.
1:01:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:01:43 Speaker 02 Um, funny, corrosively like cynical, uh, and every, every cool guy ever is in this movie. I just love it so much.
1:01:52 Speaker 03 I could just watch Lee Marvin cook dudes all day. Just all, all day long. I do think the first half does take, it takes its time, kind of getting up and going a little bit. So it's kind of a perfect have on all the time movie where you can drift in and out a little bit. Oh, now, now we're really getting into it. Uh, but look, it's, it's incredibly enjoyable watch for a reason.
1:02:12 Speaker 02 One of the all time shitlord characters is Telly Savalas's character in this movie.
1:02:16 Sean Fennessey? All of these movies, almost all of them that are considered like the 1960s classics of World War II are all two and a half to three hours. Um, and so that, like you said, they are the sort of like, we have more hijinks to get into in the training sequences before we actually get to the mission, but.
1:02:32 Speaker 02 It's funny now though that we're like so mad at like Red One being long. And I'm like, but Dirty Dozen could be seven hours.
1:02:38 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Yeah. It's true. Uh, okay, Rob, what's your number four?
1:02:42 Speaker 03 Uh, my number four is Lust Caution. And maybe that's all I need to say about that. I don't, I don't know if this is the movie I want to be on record a bunch about, uh, even though it is beautiful, like. It is a, it is a team on a mission movie. Except the team is a bunch of students in Hong Kong who are like playing at being spies. And getting in way over their heads. It also includes.
1:03:04 Speaker 02 I've never seen this movie.
1:03:04 Speaker 03 It is.
1:03:05 Sean Fennessey? Great movie, Ang Lee.
1:03:06 Speaker 03 Ang Lee, Ang Lee directed. Like, maybe the pitch to you is it's kind of like a soft black cat launch because basically half the cast is in this movie.
1:03:14 Speaker 02 Oh, awesome.
1:03:16 Speaker 03 It is very racy. Uh, if that is not your speed, this is not the movie for you. But as like.
1:03:20 Speaker 02 I would be scandalized.
1:03:21 Sean Fennessey? Is it NC seventeen? I think it is NC seventeen.
1:03:23 Speaker 03 I have, I have only seen the R rated cut. I don't think they're that different, to be honest with you. Um, but people seem to clutch their pearls very hard at this movie. It, it is a spying as seduction movie. Like basically the entire premise is this group of, of these would be spies are trying to seduce and eventually hope to assassinate this government official. Basically was like working for the Japanese puppet government in occupied Shanghai, played by Tony Leung. So it's gonna be smoky, you know? It's, it's gonna be. I like, I, I think overall the vibe of this movie of just turning out this incredibly charged thriller in the middle of a war. Something that I didn't know Ang Lee could really do until I saw him do it. Uh, I, I would recommend it to literally everybody. Um, it's just an incredible, an incredible watch.
1:04:06 Sean Fennessey? Really great film. Um, definitely the first time I saw Let's Hang Away. Shop by Rodrigo Prieto.
1:04:10 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:04:11 Sean Fennessey? Martin Scorsese.
1:04:11 Speaker 03 She's so good in it.
1:04:13 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, she's amazing. Um, Joan Chen is in this movie. Uh, really, really good film. Like that pick, Rob. What is my number four? Hmm. Oh, Cabaret, which I did mention, which of course is, uh, Bob Fosse's musical about kind of Weimar Republic, Germany and the rise of fascism in Germany in the nineteen thirties. And it's like another movie that is kind of durational where at the very beginning of the film, you see the, the aspirant Third Reich sort of not being respected and still being a minority in, in Berlin. And then over time infiltrating the arts community and effectively running all of Germany by the end of the period. And it kind of sandwiches, you know, the rise of an ambitious singer and performer and this,
1:04:57 Sean Fennessey? you know, world of performance and theater. And what's happening in the world around it is much more significant. But the way that you can kind of throw yourself into your own personal experience.
1:05:11 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:05:12 Sean Fennessey? As something very awful is rising around you. Feels like an important movie right now. I don't want to put too fine a point on it.
1:05:20 Speaker 03 That's funny.
1:05:21 Sean Fennessey? But I'm a person who throws himself into his personal experience a little bit at times like this. So I think it's good to at least have a little bit of self-awareness. But if you haven't seen Cabaret, it's one of the great movie musicals and is. If you think Wicked is a really good musical.
1:05:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:05:36 Speaker 02 Check this out.
1:05:37 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Watch this movie.
1:05:38 Speaker 03 Listen to this.
1:05:39 Sean Fennessey? I'll look right into the camera for that one. Check out Cabaret, consider it. Okay.
1:05:43 Speaker 03 I'm not even a musical guy. I will watch and listen to literally anyone who is not Eddie Redmayne do. Will comment like the MC like welcome song.
1:05:51 Sean Fennessey? Did you not like that Tony's performance?
1:05:54 Speaker 03 Respectfully, I'm going to decline to comment on that.
1:05:56 Speaker 02 Are you a fan of the films like Veronica Voss? Like stuff that's like set in and around Germany like throughout this period?
1:06:04 Sean Fennessey? Like the Fassbender movies? Yeah, yeah.
1:06:08 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
1:06:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:06:10 Sean Fennessey? I think this entire period is fascinating to me and.
1:06:15 Speaker 02 Well, you're a dad now.
1:06:16 Sean Fennessey? I am.
1:06:18 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, well, it's just, it's just very unnerving. You know, 31 through 37 in Berlin is.
1:06:26 Sean Fennessey? Even 29 through 37 is upsetting to imagine. And it's not, not to be too pod save about this, but you know, it's not that unimaginable.
1:06:37 Speaker 02 The optic jump in your voice.
1:06:39 Speaker 03 The Cabaret really is us, who knew?
1:06:42 Sean Fennessey? Okay, number three, Chris.
1:06:44 Speaker 02 Number three is Bridgette Remagen. Have you ever seen this?
1:06:47 Sean Fennessey? I have, yeah. We talked about it once before on the show.
1:06:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, so this is a 1960s movie with George Segal. It's very simple. It's like the Americans have to hold a bridge.
1:06:55 Sean Fennessey? Yep.
1:06:55 Speaker 02 And the Germans got to take the bridge. And it's got an awesome cast. Robert Vaughn plays the German officer on the other side of things. It's got some absolutely extraordinarily like violent, like realistic feeling kind of shoot them up scenes. But I think if I'm being real. I just find these films that are sort of set in these Western European countries to be incredibly picturesque. And I love looking at the scenery and the landscape, even if it all is about to get blown up. This is a real, like, very interesting story that also is about the futility of this entire thing and about how like we're just fighting for an inch here and an inch there. But is just an awesome B movie. John Gilmour directed it.
1:07:39 Speaker 02 It's not, I would just, I've, I've, from what I've read, the not most historically accurate World War II movie ever made. But incredible George Segal performance at the center of it. So I would really highly recommend anybody who's just looking for like a kind of like cool sixties era. So like a little bit more modern, a little bit more racy, um, World War II battle movie.
1:08:00 Speaker 03 What, what relationship did your dad have to movies like this? How kind of it became like box office bait to make these adventure movies in the sixties?
1:08:10 Speaker 02 Yeah. Like, did he like them? Oh, he loved them. Yeah. Like, I think like when he saw stuff like Hope and Glory, it was a little bit more traumatizing or upsetting or triggering for him. But I think when he sees like these kind of like, imagine the coolest people you could possibly think of doing cool shit in Europe. He's like, yes.
1:08:29 Speaker 03 Speaking of traumatizing and triggering, uh, my number three is Grave of the Fireflies. Uh, thinking about this movie fucks me up.
1:08:36 Sean Fennessey? You have to explain it to Chris because there's no way he's seen it.
1:08:38 Speaker 02 I have not seen Grave of the Fireflies.
1:08:40 Speaker 03 I think the one animated entry on our list, which explains it, uh, a Studio Ghibli production, which they've actually made multiple World War II movies somehow. It follows these.
1:08:48 Sean Fennessey? Was another one.
1:08:49 Speaker 03 Absolutely. Uh, it follows these two kids in Japan who are orphaned by the war and basically left to fend for themselves. And it is one of the most devastating things I've ever seen. Like it is, you should watch it, but don't. And you really should, but like absolutely not under any circumstances. I watched this movie almost 20 years ago. I cannot watch it again. Some of the imagery in it will just like haunt you forever and ever. The fact that it is these, it is these two kids like so young that they shouldn't have to be doing this, but trying desperately to look after each other in a community that just like doesn't have the means to do that for everybody all the time. And it again, like not to bring everything back to Blitz, but it's like part of the reason why I'm frustrated with that movie is like,
1:09:30 Speaker 03 I've seen that you can make a movie about World War II featuring and starring only kids and it can work. And it can be an absolute emotional like haymaker.
1:09:39 Speaker 02 And for whatever reason like that wasn't able to connect in the same way. But Great With the Fireflies, like it's a masterpiece of this kind of filmmaking. It's just not the kind of thing you're ever gonna want to watch again.
1:09:49 Sean Fennessey? It's a, it's a, I'm not speaking directly to you because I know you won't participate, but it's the first non Miyazaki Studio Ghibli movie.
1:09:56 Speaker 02 Okay, yeah.
1:09:56 Sean Fennessey? It's Isao Takahata, who's the, one of the co-founders of the studio. And it would be like kind of a perfect bookend with The Boy and the Heron.
1:10:03 Speaker 02 For sure.
1:10:03 Sean Fennessey? This movie, they're, they're very much in conversation with each other. Uh, great pick. Uh, my number three is a movie called The Train, which I think is one of the best movies ever made.
1:10:13 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:10:14 Sean Fennessey? Um, this is a John Frankenheimer sort of heist movie. It's a movie about, um, French masterpieces that the Germans are trying to steal.
1:10:24 Speaker 02 So Monuments Men.
1:10:25 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, it, it, there, Monuments Men doesn't need to exist because we have The Train.
1:10:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, but it's like Monuments Men if it was about the killer, like the David Fincher movie.
1:10:32 Sean Fennessey? It's about black and white, yeah, La Biche, the, the Burt Lancaster character who is, uh,
1:10:37 Speaker 02 The train guy.
1:10:38 Sean Fennessey? He's Train Man.
1:10:39 Speaker 02 Train Man.
1:10:39 Sean Fennessey? He literally fixes the connecting rod on a train wheel in the film, like in real time. Like this is just, this is what I'm talking about. There's a lot of men's stuff going on in this movie, but it's shot in black and white. Beautiful film, like incredibly gorgeous to look at. Um, great performances all around. Uh, classic German motherfuckers as your villains.
1:10:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:10:59 Sean Fennessey? Uncomplicated kind of narratively in that respect. But it's a movie that's about sacrifice. Like most of the great World War II movies are about what you give up. A lot of Frenchmen in the resistance give their lives during the course of this movie to protect these great works of art. And then the movie kind of confronts you with this big idea, which is sort of like, is this sacrifice worth it? Because people are literally giving their lives for works of art they will, may never see.
1:11:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:11:21 Sean Fennessey? That are basically just boxed throughout the entire movie. And there's just like, it just says like Picasso, like written on a box during the film. Um, but it has all the spirit and intensity and grit of Heat and all of the like real world consequence of Saving Private Ryan smashed together. So it's a great movie if you haven't seen The Train.
1:11:39 Speaker 02 Uh, it's, uh, Jean Moreau and Paul Schofield are also in it.
1:11:42 Sean Fennessey? Uh, Paul Schofield as the, the German SS motherfucker.
1:11:46 Speaker 02 Uh, Lancaster fucking fired Arthur Penn. After like a couple of days and brought Frankenheimer in, but there's like a what if Arthur Penn had made this movie like.
1:11:55 Sean Fennessey? It probably would be much more strange.
1:11:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:11:57 Sean Fennessey? It would have that like itinerant new wave editing and all the stuff that he was doing at that time. But if this is a great, great movie, there's a great keynote Lorber transfer that I would encourage the physical media heads to pursue. It looks very much better than if you stream it compressed on Amazon or whatever.
1:12:12 Speaker 02 Uh, before I get to two, I'll just say a worst train movie is called Von Ryan's Express, which I highly recommend people see if only to watch Frank Sinatra read off of cue cards. Because every like conversation shot of Sinatra, he's like just looking to the right shoulder of the person like, let me tell you something, Mr. Mr. Fritz, I'm not getting on that train. I don't know why I'm doing Trump.
1:12:39 Sean Fennessey? I think you were doing Byron Mayo as Frank Sinatra there.
1:12:42 Speaker 02 My number two, I think this is on everybody's list.
1:12:45 Sean Fennessey? So we all have the same number two, which I personally view as an acknowledgement of the long history of these kinds of movies on this movie, which I think is one of the most perfect movies ever made. What is it, Chris?
1:12:55 Speaker 02 It's Inglourious Basterds.
1:12:57 Speaker 03 Certainly one of those big picture movies ever made.
1:12:59 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:13:00 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:13:00 Speaker 03 It was gonna come up.
1:13:01 Sean Fennessey? It might be, I think with Moneyball and The Social Network, it might be the big picture movie. Yeah. The film that we are the most celebratory about.
1:13:11 Speaker 02 In some ways, every World War II movie is inside of this movie. Uh, and like every little genre that you've broken down could be applied to this. The men on a mission, the romance, the satire, the sort of, um, in some ways fantasy, in some ways like fantasy of vengeance. But, uh, yeah, well, I mean, what, what else?
1:13:30 Sean Fennessey? During wartime, yeah, everything is captured here.
1:13:33 Speaker 02 Uh, I think the thing that I keep, I was thinking about this because Fast Bender is obviously back on screen with, um, not only kneecap, but with the agency. And so I was just thinking about his character in Inglourious Basterds, how that's still my favorite performance of his, other than Hunger by Steve McQueen.
1:13:50 Speaker 02 And how indelible the characters are from this film, like. Half a dozen people that I'm just like, that is, that is one of the most fully fleshed out, amazing depictions of a person, even if they're just like Quentin people, I've ever seen, you know? And then like, how many movies do you think have like six of them?
1:14:09 Sean Fennessey? Well, it's like a testimony, I think, or testament to the fact that he's seen all these movies. You know, like he's seen all of them and he has processed them and he is like attempting to outdo the best parts of all of them. You know, especially with Hans Lahn, that you can feel him in a fun way, saying, what if I could make my Peter Cushing, Hound of the Baskervilles, character, the worst Nazi ever?
1:14:33 Speaker 02 I know.
1:14:34 Sean Fennessey? And it's just, it's like a lot of inspired ideas like that, where he's sort of like, he's filtering his taste so wonderfully through this prism, because there's so much to pull from, and still making something wholly original, and just like wildly entertaining.
1:14:46 Speaker 03 Well, and that character messes with you so much, because like Christoph Waltz is so watchable. And there's also like the Sherlock thing going on, where it's like, you, you almost want him to solve the puzzle, but obviously you don't want him to solve the puzzle. And it just, it, it just wrenches you as you watch it. This has to be the, the most rewatchable of any of these movies. Like it, it, you can return to Inglourious Basterds, I feel like, in a way that is much harder to do with almost anything else on our list.
1:15:10 Sean Fennessey? It's very pop. You have a movie on your list coming up, that I think is for an older generation, almost like this, this, this movie, where people will just, would just put it on at all times. I think, it's funny too, because, well, one, obviously there's a kind of fantasy element to Inglourious Basterds, because not only do the good guys win, they win in the most extraordinary fashion imaginable.
1:15:27 Speaker 03 I think that's what makes it rewatchable that way.
1:15:29 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, maybe that's what it is, that there is a, it's not even hope and positivity, it's just like, if only we could just.
1:15:34 Speaker 03 Delusion, just straight delusion.
1:15:35 Sean Fennessey? I really enjoy that about it.
1:15:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, I was trying to tap it, I was trying to articulate this, it's just so weird how like my, like, I'll have a movie that I think is like one of my 10 or 15 favorite movies of any given year. And I'm like, there's this guy and this guy. And then I like forget the names of characters, or like really what they do. And then I'm like, I still think about like Bridget and Shoshona and Hickox and Zoller and, you know, it's just, it's so wild.
1:16:00 Sean Fennessey? It's great writing. It's just great writing. Okay, Chris, why don't you give us your number one then?
1:16:06 Speaker 02 Okay, uh, my number one is, uh, The Great Escape.
1:16:08 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:16:10 Speaker 02 Literally like a nightlight on in my house for most of my life. This is weird, it makes. Being a prison of war looked incredibly cool. Like, it seems kind of fun. Like, these guys do definitely go through a lot. But it's Steve McQueen, James Garner, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, and Richard Attenborough. And they, like, look cool and smoke and have, like, a July 4th party and dig tunnels. And it's, you can see the Alps and they're trying to get to Switzerland. And it's just, it's just like the most romantic version of this kind of story I think you can have. And the star power of it is blinding. You know, it is just blinding.
1:16:54 Speaker 02 It is so long and you forget, like...
1:16:57 Sean Fennessey? Is it? I don't remember.
1:16:58 Speaker 02 Oh, it's like a double videotape. Like, I think this one's 320 or something like that.
1:17:02 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:17:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:17:03 Sean Fennessey? Wow.
1:17:04 Speaker 03 Does, like, the star power of the World War II movie or the war movie still exists? Like, and the guys being dudes part of this canon? I feel like there was really a time where it's like, it's a fun thing to play as an actor, to go be a soldier for a couple of months or whatever. I, I, I don't know that we're gonna see, like, the Jacob Elordi war movie, except Elvis, I guess. Like, I don't, I don't know what the version of that is or if that's a thing young actors are still interested in.
1:17:29 Sean Fennessey? It's a, it's a good question. I, you know, I think one of the ways that in the post Saving Private Ryan world they navigated that was that onslaught of TV that Chris was suggesting, like Band of Brothers.
1:17:41 Speaker 03 The Pacific, all those, yeah.
1:17:42 Sean Fennessey? And we had Masters of the Air this year. So, speaking of Austin Butler, he did, he did do his version of it, just happened to be on TV. I don't know. I don't, I, I do think that the movies could use more movies. They're like original stories about historical events that have all the movie stars. For whatever reason, I tweeted about this, I'm sorry to say I tweeted about this on a podcast, but I tweeted last night, I just, for whatever reason, stumbled on the Revolutionary Road.
1:18:04 Speaker 03 Why didn't you, why didn't you skeet it?
1:18:06 Sean Fennessey? Because they don't allow you, because they don't allow you to upload videos more than 60 seconds on Blue Sky.
1:18:13 Speaker 02 And you were filming yourself crying?
1:18:14 Sean Fennessey? I was. Captured that. So you can check that out over on my Twitter. No, I was watching the Revolutionary Road trailer.
1:18:21 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:18:22 Sean Fennessey? And I was like, there are not movies like this.
1:18:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:18:25 Sean Fennessey? They're, they, there are not period piece adaptations of great literature with the biggest possible stars. Like in Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet's follow up to Titanic together. They made this desperately bleak movie about the impossibility of love in America. Like, that's what that movie is.
1:18:44 Speaker 02 That movie fucking rips and I'm not going to pretend otherwise anymore. Like, we gotta, we gotta get over it.
1:18:48 Sean Fennessey? That was how I felt. I was like, I don't care about the pretensions about like Sam Mendes not being good or whatever. When I saw that movie, I was like, this is incredibly powerful and good. My point being, I feel like the same thing that I, I'm identifying in that movie. I'm like, it would be awesome if it was, let's just do it. It's Jacob Elordi, it's Austin Butler, who else? It's Chalamet, obviously. He's the sniper.
1:19:07 Speaker 02 I think he's in there.
1:19:07 Sean Fennessey? Who else is on the list?
1:19:08 Speaker 02 Who should, who would be Attenborough? Who would be the British actor?
1:19:11 Sean Fennessey? Josh Brolin.
1:19:12 Speaker 02 Josh Brolin?
1:19:15 Speaker 02 And he would be like, I need you to get me zen.
1:19:18 Sean Fennessey? Oh, you mean the old, the old, oh, like the David Niven type?
1:19:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, the guy who's like the mastermind of the whole thing.
1:19:23 Sean Fennessey? Uh, oh, that's a good question. He has to be British.
1:19:25 Speaker 02 Well, X is British.
1:19:26 Sean Fennessey? Maybe it should be Fassbender. As a kind of nod.
1:19:29 Speaker 02 Not mad about that. Um, I would, I mean, it's not right, but I would go with Ralph Spall for, for David Attenborough.
1:19:36 Sean Fennessey? You'll never quit him.
1:19:37 Speaker 02 No.
1:19:39 Sean Fennessey? You're convinced one day he will be Jimmy Stewart.
1:19:42 Speaker 02 This movie is also very cool because it's not important. It's like, it has the room to let these guys hang out for 80 minutes.
1:19:51 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:19:51 Speaker 02 Before we really start getting serious about digging tunnels. And that's similar for Dirty Dozen. I think most movies now either have to be incredibly high concept or incredibly important. And the idea of it being like, I don't know, what if we took eight of the coolest guys ever and let them hang out in prison? Is, is, is like probably not enough to get a movie sold these days.
1:20:11 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:20:12 Speaker 02 It's a real shame. I'm glad we have the POW representation on this list, though, like of the subgenres go.
1:20:17 Speaker 03 I mean, honestly, you mentioned earlier, like, every one of these movies is about a bridge somehow, like, bridge movies might have been their own thing.
1:20:22 Sean Fennessey? I got another one coming for you very soon.
1:20:24 Speaker 03 I can't wait.
1:20:25 Sean Fennessey? Okay, Rob, what's your number one?
1:20:27 Speaker 03 This is my favorite World War II movie. It may not be Adrian Brody's favorite, or George Clooney's favorite. It's The Thin Red Line. It's a very different war movie, and in every way that a war movie can be different. And I think there's, there's no single mission. There's not really a team. There's just like a bunch of guys. There's barely even a main character. And I think-
1:20:46 Speaker 02 Much to Adrian Brody's chagrin.
1:20:48 Speaker 03 Much to his chagrin, and deservingly so, but I think the end point-
1:20:52 Sean Fennessey? You want to put some framework around that, that Adrian Brody thought he was the star of this film?
1:20:55 Speaker 03 He was under the impression-
1:20:56 Sean Fennessey? Showed up at the premiere and realized that he has one scene.
1:20:58 Speaker 03 Yeah. Extremely tough beat, but-
1:21:01 Sean Fennessey? That's what Terry Malick does, you know?
1:21:03 Speaker 03 You know who you're getting into bed with.
1:21:05 Speaker 02 I don't think they knew that then.
1:21:06 Sean Fennessey? He's feeling it out.
1:21:06 Speaker 03 Now we do.
1:21:07 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, he's just feeling his way through the picture.
1:21:08 Speaker 03 Yes. The result of that, though, is like this very decentralized story that I think makes it like an everyman soldier kind of thing. Sometimes I just want to watch, like, suns steepling through trees as people wax poetically about the meaning of life and conflict. And I think it has something that these other movies don't, which is, it is in like an idyllic setting. You know, no disrespect to the European countryside, but like, putting a World War II movie in like an island paradise is just such a different vibe. And I think lends itself almost to more of like a Vietnam parallel in a lot of ways than a World War II parallel.
1:21:42 Speaker 02 And his like obsession with Paradise Lost, like this idea of like an Eden that gets desecrated somehow.
1:21:47 Speaker 03 And also, we are the Eden who gets desecrated by ourselves all the time perpetually. And I'm here for the meditation for it. I have a lot of leeway for the Terrence Malick experience.
1:21:55 Speaker 02 Me too. This is an incredible movie.
1:21:57 Speaker 03 This is my movie.
1:21:57 Sean Fennessey? I do too, but I must admit, this has never been one of my Malick movies.
1:22:01 Speaker 03 Never clicked for you.
1:22:01 Sean Fennessey? But I've probably, never seen it on the big screen, and I probably need to take another look.
1:22:06 Speaker 02 This is also a really good example of, I would be, almost be interested to revisit Blitz in a few years, because when I first saw this, I can't possibly even communicate like the level of excitement that was around this film from both like, film nerds who were like, I can't believe Malick's back, but also just from anybody reading Premier Magazine was like, this cast is, should be illegal.
1:22:26 Speaker 03 Yeah. We should say Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson. Those are the guys who didn't get cut out of the movie.
1:22:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, Clooney, like, I mean, it's like, and it's, it's a lot of Nick Nolte muttering, you know, before you start to like get your hands around it. So, I think that- A lot of these movies need to be separated from their release and separated from their context before you can really truly appreciate them.
1:22:48 Sean Fennessey? You're gonna reclaim, that's the way I reclaimed Revolutionary Road just now?
1:22:52 Speaker 02 Well, I'm just, I'll see you here in five years, this very day, this very hour.
1:22:55 Sean Fennessey? Revolutionary Road was released 17 years ago, so will you see me in 17 years?
1:23:00 Speaker 02 You don't think we're gonna be friends in 17 years?
1:23:02 Sean Fennessey? Well, what do you think?
1:23:02 Speaker 02 Do you think that I will be in the hospital for my zen addiction?
1:23:08 Sean Fennessey? Pulling particle plastics out of your bloodstream.
1:23:10 Speaker 02 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award.
1:23:13 Sean Fennessey? You're gonna be like the, the writer that the dude comes across in the middle of Big Lebowski when he's on a quest for the homework? Okay, my number one is The Bridge on the River Kwai, which I said I didn't have a movie in the Pacific Theater, and I guess I sort of do. This is a movie about a prison camp in Thailand that the Japanese are running, full of British soldiers and a handful of American soldiers. The, their purpose at this camp is to build a bridge that the Japanese need to transport materials during the war effort. And it becomes this complicated, I film about the necessity of duty and honor and
1:23:53 Sean Fennessey? the code of the military set against the most unimaginable suffering you could ever see. It's also a movie about a mission and also a movie about an escape. It's kind of a blend of a lot of the best of these movies. This is David Lean's film from 57. You know, in addition, Alec Guinness features William Holden, who's like your classic American matinee idol in the film. Alec Guinness in this movie is so tortured by the end of it. It's like one of the signature film performances of all time. I don't know, I, I must have been my grandparents who hipped me to this movie when I was a kid, but another movie similarly that was just like, "Did you ever see that?" Like, they would ask you when you're nine years old, like, "Have you seen that one yet?" If I was like excited about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they were like, "Bridge on the
1:24:38 Sean Fennessey? River Kwai, that's a film, that's a film, not these turtles."
1:24:41 Speaker 02 Please turn into that guy with Alice really soon.
1:24:43 Sean Fennessey? I mean, I'm already there, you know, I'm already, I'm already, you know, chortling about Bridge on the River Kwai on this pod.
1:24:47 Speaker 02 When is she gonna learn about the secret of the ooze, though? That's what I really wanna know.
1:24:50 Sean Fennessey? I mean, I can't wait to perform ninja rap for her. Like, I'm so lit up with Vanilla Ice lyrics from my youth. This is a great film. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. Any thoughts, Chris? You relate to Guinness in this movie?
1:25:02 Speaker 02 I, I was trying to think if there's ever been a non-perfect Alec Guinness screen performance. I know there probably is, but it's not coming to me.
1:25:10 Speaker 03 Him mailing it in is usually pretty perfect, too.
1:25:12 Sean Fennessey? What about when he was forced ghosted in the most recent trilogy?
1:25:17 Sean Fennessey? Was that a good performance or not good?
1:25:19 Speaker 03 Did that happen?
1:25:20 Sean Fennessey? Didn't, wasn't, didn't he get?
1:25:21 Speaker 02 Did he show up? I can't remember.
1:25:23 Sean Fennessey? Does he not, did we not see the old Obi-Wan in any of the more recent?
1:25:26 Speaker 03 I feel like, I feel like they might have called in Ewan for that one.
1:25:29 Speaker 02 Is he not in Rise, though? Oh, yeah, right, right. He would be, they would be.
1:25:33 Speaker 03 They did all the voices. I don't know who did it. I know Liam Neeson got roped into something at some point.
1:25:40 Sean Fennessey? Just Googling forced ghost old Obi-Wan Kenobi.
1:25:45 Sean Fennessey? Uh, well, I'm seeing the end of Return of the Jedi.
1:25:49 Speaker 02 Amanda, are you sure you don't want to come back early?
1:25:53 Sean Fennessey? Maybe you're right. Maybe they're just bringing in, bringing in Ewan McGregor. What about at the end of Return of the Jedi, when he's there? Who's the actor who plays, uh?
1:26:00 Speaker 03 Old Anakin?
1:26:01 Sean Fennessey? Who plays Old Anakin, yeah.
1:26:02 Speaker 03 I can't even name that guy's name. He's barely in the movie.
1:26:05 Speaker 02 Peter O'Toole.
1:26:08 Sean Fennessey? You like Return of the Jedi?
1:26:10 Speaker 02 Uh, not, not that much. Luke doing the somersault off of the prison barge?
1:26:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, off the sail barge.
1:26:16 Speaker 02 Among the coolest things that's ever happened. But, uh.
1:26:21 Sean Fennessey? You were Boba Fett guy, though.
1:26:22 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:26:22 Speaker 02 No, I was, I was.
1:26:23 Sean Fennessey? Boba Fett!
1:26:24 Speaker 02 I thought he deserved to go.
1:26:26 Speaker 03 What are your thoughts on Salacious Crumb? How do you feel about Salacious Crumb?
1:26:28 Speaker 02 Who's, who's that?
1:26:29 Speaker 03 Jabba's little like pet.
1:26:30 Sean Fennessey? Little muppet.
1:26:31 Speaker 02 He gets choked out.
1:26:32 Speaker 03 Uh, Jabba gets choked out.
1:26:33 Speaker 02 Jabba gets choked, what happens to Salacious? He get thrown in the sarlacc?
1:26:36 Speaker 03 He probably gets fed to the, the rancor or something.
1:26:39 Sean Fennessey? What did that inspire in you? Jabba getting choked out just later in life?
1:26:43 Speaker 02 It's made me passionate about disassembling the deep state, like I told you.
1:26:48 Sean Fennessey? Sarlacc pit, yea or nay?
1:26:49 Speaker 03 Oh, yea, yeah.
1:26:50 Sean Fennessey? I like a sarlacc pit.
1:26:51 Speaker 02 Kind of a permanent, you know, there's not a lot of parole from the sarlacc pit.
1:26:55 Sean Fennessey? Well, we don't know.
1:26:56 Speaker 02 Oh, we don't know what's at the bottom. Right, exactly.
1:26:58 Speaker 03 Well, Boba Fett knows.
1:26:59 Sean Fennessey? Is it just an esophageal carcass? Like, what's going on there?
1:27:02 Speaker 03 I don't, I don't like that word.
1:27:03 Sean Fennessey? Well, I used it.
1:27:04 Speaker 02 Uh, is there a Studio Ghibli movie about what's at the bottom of the sarlacc pit?
1:27:09 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, The Boy in the Sarlacc Pit. It's a beautiful film.
1:27:12 Speaker 02 Uh, should we do some honorable mentions?
1:27:15 Sean Fennessey? There's so many movies we could name.
1:27:16 Speaker 02 All right, here's the problem. Dunkirk, Saving Private Ryan. Schindler's List, no, nobody had them. Well, Stephen Fry, Brian was on, was on Rob's list, right?
1:27:25 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
1:27:26 Speaker 02 Uh, I'm not saying that those are not some of the greatest movies ever made. I just didn't feel like putting them in my top five. I know that that won't matter, but I'm just saying so.
1:27:34 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I feel confident if Amanda were here, she would have her Means of the Day on her list.
1:27:38 Speaker 02 I will say The Third Man is one of the greatest films of all time.
1:27:41 Sean Fennessey? I think I, I, I did this and I set up this whole landscape here. For whatever reason, the movies that are in the aftermath.
1:27:47 Speaker 02 Right.
1:27:48 Sean Fennessey? Didn't feel like what I should do. That's my favorite movie.
1:27:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:27:51 Sean Fennessey? So I like, I love, I, I love that movie and it's very much about Vienna in the aftermath and what can happen in a world after a war. But I don't know, for whatever reason, I just wasn't linking it to this.
1:28:02 Speaker 03 Didn't feel like a war movie in that way.
1:28:03 Sean Fennessey? Uh, what else? Atonement?
1:28:06 Speaker 03 Atonement, for sure.
1:28:07 Sean Fennessey? Recent film that I think has been canonized. People really love that movie. You know, Downfall?
1:28:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:28:12 Sean Fennessey? Um, is a very popular 21st century movie about, you know, the portrait of Hitler at the end.
1:28:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:28:16 Speaker 03 Um. How seen is the actual movie? Like the meme?
1:28:20 Sean Fennessey? It's been mean.
1:28:20 Speaker 03 The clips? Absolutely.
1:28:22 Sean Fennessey? You know, it's actually quite hard to see now.
1:28:24 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:28:24 Sean Fennessey? Um, it's not streaming anywhere right now. I don't know why that is.
1:28:28 Speaker 02 What's the movie that Branna and Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci made that was about, like them talking about the actual camps and stuff like?
1:28:37 Sean Fennessey? Oh, yeah, I can't remember. I mean, Anthropoid is another one that I was thinking of.
1:28:41 Speaker 02 HBO movie, but it was like incredible though.
1:28:43 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, yeah, I can't remember the name of that movie. Uh, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, we haven't mentioned The Best Years of Our Lives is kind of similar to the sort of the aftermath movies like, uh, Third Man.
1:28:51 Speaker 02 I got a couple. Uh, Stalag 17 and Five Graves to Cairo are two Billy Wilder, Wilder movies that are just incredible.
1:28:58 Sean Fennessey? Uh, Stalag. Austrian exile who came to America to make films.
1:29:01 Speaker 02 And Stalag is a great, uh, companion piece to Great Escape. Uh, in fact, probably a little bit more of like a cynical kind of comic take on it. Um, some more recent stuff, Fury. Uh, David Ayer's.
1:29:13 Sean Fennessey? I like Fury.
1:29:14 Speaker 02 Uh, incredibly violent, chank movie. I gotta say Valkyrie's pretty entertaining.
1:29:18 Speaker 03 Um, I, I was thinking about watching that one for this. Would you recommend it?
1:29:22 Speaker 02 I'm just saying it's entertaining. I'm not saying it's like accurate depiction of the German High Command.
1:29:27 Sean Fennessey? Anytime you can get Brian Singer directing Nazi Tom Cruise, you got it. You had me at Nazi Tom Cruise, I gotta be honest.
1:29:34 Speaker 02 I thought it was Macquarie.
1:29:35 Sean Fennessey? Macquarie wrote it.
1:29:36 Speaker 02 Uh, Operation Crossbow is the movie I was thinking of when I was like, movies that Rick Dalton would be in.
1:29:41 Sean Fennessey? I haven't seen that.
1:29:42 Speaker 02 Dam Busters as well as like, kind of like the.
1:29:45 Sean Fennessey? Damn Busters?
1:29:46 Speaker 02 Damn.
1:29:47 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:29:47 Speaker 02 Like bursting the dam.
1:29:48 Sean Fennessey? Is that the movie that the dude watches in the Big Lebowski? That's log jamming.
1:29:54 Speaker 02 That is, god damn it. It's the greatest generation we're talking about. Speaking of which, Mr. Roberts?
1:29:59 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, good film.
1:30:00 Speaker 02 Uh, Jack Lemmon and Henry Fonda, um, directed by John Ford.
1:30:05 Sean Fennessey? And Ensign Pulver?
1:30:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, and it's basically a like, uh, comedy, it's very, very stagey, but it's a comedy set on a, uh, uh, destroyer. Parked in the Pacific.
1:30:16 Sean Fennessey? Hmm, Come and See, I've mentioned on this show many times, one of the probably the most destroying film. Um, uh, Melville, Silence of the Sea, another film made right in like the immediate after, I think 48 or 49. Uh, Phoenix, Christian Petzold's movie from about five years ago, which maybe actually more like 10 years ago, which is very good. I've talked to Naiman about that on the show a few times. Lena Wirtmuller's Seven Beauties, I'm just thinking of international films here. I mean, Pan's Labyrinth is a World War II movie.
1:30:42 Speaker 03 I didn't even think about that.
1:30:43 Speaker 02 You're right.
1:30:43 Sean Fennessey? You know, very much about, like, I think that's right at the end, I think it's set in 45, um, in Spain. What else? What else is?
1:30:51 Speaker 03 How does history remember the Clint stuff? The Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima? Like, I feel like Letters from Iwo Jima is probably more successful than Flags of Our Fathers.
1:30:58 Sean Fennessey? I think it's a better movie and a more well-regarded movie. I think just because Flags of Our Fathers just feels very.
1:31:03 Speaker 03 It's, it is propaganda.
1:31:05 Sean Fennessey? Um.
1:31:06 Speaker 03 Straight up.
1:31:06 Sean Fennessey? But it, I think the fact that he attempts to balance it by telling the other story is interesting. I mean, there's so many more. I think I do think I made a list of roughly 300.
1:31:16 Speaker 03 There's a lot.
1:31:17 Sean Fennessey? On social media.
1:31:18 Speaker 03 I do love like the spy craft, counterintelligence part, like Black Book, I think is worth noting. Also, like, I would never put this movie on a top five list, but I have time for you 571 personally.
1:31:30 Speaker 02 Robbie, it was definitely on my long list.
1:31:32 Speaker 03 I'm, I'm, I'm happy to throw that on. That's in terms of that part of this list. That's gotta be there.
1:31:37 Speaker 02 If people are interested in the spy craft part of World War II, I'd highly recommend the novels of Alan First, who's written about like a dozen books that are set between like 36, seven through World War II and are just all about like resistance fighters and spy networks across Europe.
1:31:53 Sean Fennessey? Would it be helpful if I just said movie titles right now?
1:31:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:31:56 Speaker 03 Isn't that what we've been doing?
1:31:58 Sean Fennessey? But with no commentary.
1:31:59 Speaker 02 Should I sing the Star Spangled Banner while you do it?
1:32:01 Sean Fennessey? Just do the Brutalist score for me underneath.
1:32:04 Speaker 02 Boom, boom!
1:32:09 Sean Fennessey? Where Eagles Dare is a movie we haven't met. Have you seen that one?
1:32:11 Speaker 03 No.
1:32:12 Sean Fennessey? Really good. Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood as two guys going undercover in Germany during World War II.
1:32:16 Speaker 03 Now we're talking.
1:32:17 Sean Fennessey? Spy movie quality. Patton, movie that I like, don't love. Catch 22. Mike Nichols' adaptation of the Heller novel. Midway.
1:32:33 Sean Fennessey? Tom, you're gonna have to pipe this in, I think.
1:32:36 Sean Fennessey? Should we just make this the permanent theme of the show?
1:32:38 Speaker 02 No, it should just be playing while we talk the entire time on a loop.
1:32:42 Sean Fennessey? This is very Zone of Interest, honestly.
1:32:43 Speaker 03 I haven't.
1:32:44 Sean Fennessey? Speaking of World War II.
1:32:45 Speaker 02 Zone of Interest, yeah.
1:32:46 Speaker 03 I still haven't seen The Brutalist, but now when I do, I'm just gonna hear you doing the score when I see it.
1:32:50 Speaker 02 Has anyone said Zone of Interest in a more excited way?
1:32:53 Sean Fennessey? Zone of Interest!
1:32:55 Speaker 03 I saw every time I've been on a plane recently, it's been available. That is a particular plane vibe.
1:32:59 Sean Fennessey? Not a good place to watch it. Chris, you forgot your favorite, Captain America, The First Soldier.
1:33:04 Speaker 02 Oh, you know what? I will say that I thought about throwing on a long list, just as an example of how much room there is to play with this genre is Overlord.
1:33:13 Sean Fennessey? Fun movie.
1:33:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:33:14 Sean Fennessey? Horror movie set during World War II.
1:33:15 Speaker 02 Horror movie with Wyatt Russell set during World War II, yeah.
1:33:18 Sean Fennessey? There's two very big ones, one of which I don't really care for very much, one of which I like. Jojo Rabbit.
1:33:25 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:33:26 Speaker 03 That's the one you love.
1:33:27 Sean Fennessey? Which I don't like very much.
1:33:28 Speaker 02 You like watching that on planes.
1:33:30 Sean Fennessey? I don't. Greyhound, have you guys seen Greyhound, the Tom Hanks movie?
1:33:32 Speaker 02 I have, and it's not bad.
1:33:33 Sean Fennessey? Pretty good.
1:33:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:33:34 Sean Fennessey? Pretty good, naval battle film, um, set on an aircraft carrier. And it was released during COVID on Apple TV.
1:33:43 Speaker 03 Wow.
1:33:43 Sean Fennessey? If we had seen it in the movie theater, I think it would have done quite well. I think we actually did the dad movie Hall of Fame with Kevin Clark.
1:33:52 Speaker 03 Around.
1:33:52 Sean Fennessey? Hinged to that movie. Pretty good if you haven't.
1:33:55 Speaker 03 How many World War II movies is Apple TV churning out?
1:33:58 Sean Fennessey? I don't know. They've sent something in the marketplace, I guess. I don't know, there's so many more.
1:34:01 Speaker 02 Michael Mann's The Keep.
1:34:03 Sean Fennessey? You know.
1:34:04 Speaker 02 Up in the Carpathian forests.
1:34:05 Sean Fennessey? You know, I just, I just want you to know that I bought it on 4K from Vinegar Syndrome over the weekend. They're issuing it on, on, on home Blu-ray 4K release for the first time ever. And this completes my Michael Mann collection.
1:34:17 Speaker 02 Wow.
1:34:18 Sean Fennessey? So now I have every film he's ever made.
1:34:20 Speaker 02 Are you saying you're better than me?
1:34:22 Sean Fennessey? I'm saying, level up.
1:34:24 Speaker 03 Level up to Vinegar, shout out to Vinegar Syndrome, by the way.
1:34:27 Sean Fennessey? It was forty-four dollars and ninety-nine cents and I bought it.
1:34:30 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:34:30 Sean Fennessey? Because I'm supporting the cause. I wouldn't pay that much, honestly, for most films. But the last piece of the Michael Mann puzzle.
1:34:38 Speaker 02 For, for the DVDs that you're buying these days, where are we at?
1:34:41 Sean Fennessey? It's all in the nineteen ninety-nine range.
1:34:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, okay. Remember when like video games were like eighty dollars?
1:34:46 Sean Fennessey? I do.
1:34:46 Speaker 03 Oh, they still are.
1:34:47 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, yeah.
1:34:48 Speaker 02 And your parents would just be like, what the fuck?
1:34:50 Sean Fennessey? You'd have to wait, I would have to wait for Christmas.
1:34:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:34:52 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. And then do you wait for Christmas every year?
1:34:53 Speaker 03 Uh, no, I'm increasingly playing fewer and fewer. But the good thing about, uh, being an adult man is I don't have to reckon with my parents saying, what are you doing with my life? That's just my inner voice.
1:35:02 Speaker 02 There's also the problem that you can buy them online now where it just doesn't hurt at all.
1:35:06 Speaker 03 You don't have to go to the store.
1:35:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:35:07 Sean Fennessey? We haven't mentioned another reason why these films, I think, resonate and keep getting made, which is Call of Duty.
1:35:11 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
1:35:12 Sean Fennessey? The Call of Duty created a whole new generation of interest around this. Yeah, well, yeah, but I, I think because of the, you know, only some of those games are set during World War II, right?
1:35:21 Speaker 03 I think there are all sorts, all sorts of conflicts, I think, yeah.
1:35:23 Sean Fennessey? Um, but I feel like one of the most popular in the first three or four was a World War II game. And that spawned a whole new level of interest around them. Okay, and anything else you got? Well, can we talk briefly about Oscar chances for Dungeon?
1:35:35 Speaker 02 I was gonna ask.
1:35:36 Sean Fennessey? I've been, uh- I've been like, holding space for this film in the 10. And it seems like no one truly loves this movie.
1:35:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:35:47 Sean Fennessey? Which is not a good thing for a Best Picture contender. And it does seem now like Wicked and A Complete Unknown, which were two movies that people are like, I don't know, is this gonna be good? I'm not sure if this is gonna make it. Now I feel like both of those movies are definitely making it.
1:36:03 Speaker 03 Oh.
1:36:04 Sean Fennessey? And so, I could be wrong on A Complete Unknown, Wicked without question.
1:36:08 Speaker 03 That was the stunning, I felt like you lumping in it with Wicked is revealing.
1:36:11 Sean Fennessey? Uh, maybe, maybe not. I think A Complete Unknown does what it needs to do to satisfy a certain kind of audience.
1:36:18 Speaker 03 Okay.
1:36:18 Speaker 02 You do.
1:36:18 Sean Fennessey? I, if I had to guess right now, I would say yes.
1:36:21 Speaker 02 So it's those two.
1:36:21 Sean Fennessey? Because that area at 9/10 feels so weak and undefined. And things have been moving in and out of it for the last six weeks. And I had had Blitz in there. I think I had Blitz in there all the way back in September when Amanda and I did an Oscar bet. I think I had it, I'm pretty sure we had it in two weeks ago when, when Katie Rich and Joe were on the pod.
1:36:42 Speaker 02 Is that when you did the last power ranking?
1:36:44 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. And now, it's like, didn't do anything in theaters. It was released into the Wicked, Moana 2, Gladiator 2, Yacht Rocker Documentary corridor.
1:36:59 Sean Fennessey? Have more people seen Yacht Rocker Documentary than Blitz? Honest question.
1:37:02 Speaker 03 No.
1:37:03 Sean Fennessey? Right?
1:37:04 Speaker 03 I don't know.
1:37:05 Sean Fennessey? A lot of people have Max.
1:37:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:37:06 Sean Fennessey? Not a lot of people have Apple Plus.
1:37:08 Speaker 03 That is true.
1:37:09 Speaker 02 Does, does Yacht Rock start right at the end of a new, of the most recent Dune Prophecy episode?
1:37:14 Sean Fennessey? I thought you were gonna ask, does it start right at the end of World War II? Is that the?
1:37:17 Speaker 03 That's where it picks out.
1:37:18 Speaker 02 I mean, not technically, no, but doesn't everything?
1:37:21 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, exactly. Was, was Fagan born, what, 46 probably? You know, it's gotta be right in that zone. He's a sort of a post-war baby.
1:37:26 Speaker 02 He's a hep cat.
1:37:27 Sean Fennessey? The greatest generation, a baby boomer.
1:37:28 Speaker 03 Hmm.
1:37:29 Sean Fennessey? Um, yeah, I don't, I don't think it's getting in Best Picture right now.
1:37:32 Speaker 02 So here's what I wanted to ask you, is that there were two movies that were kind of like the flagship awards films, I thought, for streaming services. Emilio Perez for Netflix. This, Blitz for Apple.
1:37:44 Sean Fennessey? Yep.
1:37:44 Speaker 02 In the past, like for instance, when Coda made its run, I know that Coda is a much more crowd pleasing film than Blitz and is a much more obviously like kind of uplifting film than Blitz.
1:37:58 Speaker 02 But I was like, what like literally, what is Coda until like two weeks before the Oscars?
1:38:03 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I mean, that was in 2021 at a time when it was there were hardly any movie theaters open for the first half of the year and the competition was significantly more slight than the last couple of years. And like you said, that was a time when a lot of people were depressed and sad and in their home and separated from their family. And that's a movie that made people feel great. It's big contender that that year was The Power of the Dog, which is a real feel bad movie. Very artfully made movie, but not exactly what the world wanted at that time. This year is different. I will say, I thought about this a lot. 1917 Dunkirk, Hacksaw Ridge, The Imitation Game, War Horse, Inglourious Basterds, and Atonement all got Best Picture nominations.
1:38:45 Sean Fennessey? If there's a big splashy war movie with a big budget and a star like Saoirse Ronan, it's probably going to get nominated for Best Picture.
1:38:53 Speaker 02 And can't you take this movie and say now more than ever, you know, and like kind of?
1:38:57 Sean Fennessey? I mean, that's what McQueen is saying in the press. He's saying that this is a movie about right now. This is a movie about what is happening in other countries and what could happen in England and in America, what have you. So there's a story to tell and it fits the mold. And yet weirdly, you know, we spent 25 minutes talking about it and I'm like, how many people that are even listening to this episode saw it?
1:39:15 Speaker 03 I think one thing that may work against it is Saoirse Ronan is in this movie. It's telling that we've barely talked about her. Like, and I know there's a long history of best supporting actresses making an absolute meal out of like underwritten wives and mothers. Like, that's the whole deal for the most part of that category. This part gives her nothing to work with.
1:39:34 Sean Fennessey? She gets to sing.
1:39:35 Speaker 03 She gets to sing. And I think the scene of the movie, in addition to the firefight sequence and some of the set pieces that feels most like a Steve McQueen movie is the Saoirse at the jazz club, like dance. Like, that feels like a movie I want to watch. For the most, for the most part, she's just kind of chasing after her kid, which is to say she can't even do it because she doesn't know where she is. She's like walking about town.
1:39:59 Speaker 02 If she were a huge central part of this movie in like a big movie star way, then I see the route to a lot of different awards. But other than that, like it's barely a war movie. It's not a super, like a star driven vehicle. It's in this weird like neither fish nor fowl kind of situation.
1:40:15 Sean Fennessey? It is. I just, I think it will be an interesting test of the age of the Academy members because they've added so many people in recent years. I think the expectation is always that older film, like older set films like this tend to do better with older Academy members. The Saoirse question is interesting. As recently as September, I was like, well, she's getting two nominations.
1:40:35 Speaker 02 She's gonna get nominated for the outrun.
1:40:37 Sean Fennessey? And she's gonna get for best actress. Maybe she'll even win because she's been nominated so many times despite barely being 30. And she'll also get nominated for supporting for this. I still think there's a path for her to get nominated for supporting, even though I agree with you that like, she's not misused. It just, it doesn't feel like a developed arc.
1:40:53 Speaker 02 No.
1:40:53 Sean Fennessey? She's just a mom who misses her kid and is trying to make a living during this terrible time in history. Supporting actress right now, Ariana Grande in Wicked, Ciara's favorite performance of the year. Zoe Saldana for Lioness, excuse me, Emilio Perez. Felicity Jones for The Brutalist, which you can attest you enjoyed. Thumbs up.
1:41:11 Speaker 02 Thumbs up, alright.
1:41:12 Sean Fennessey? Monica Barbaro for A Complete Unknown. I will say definitely the revelation of that movie.
1:41:16 Speaker 02 That's awesome. It's cool.
1:41:18 Sean Fennessey? Danielle Deadwiler in The Piano Lesson and Isabella Rossellini in Conclave. And the Conclave hive is a buzz because now they're like, I see an opening for a BP win. And a lot of times when you get a movie that is like, everybody decides we're gonna make this the best picture. It gets a lot of stray nominations that you don't see coming.
1:41:33 Speaker 02 Has Conclave been under the microscope yet? Like, is there gonna be like, actually Conclave isn't good? I know that people are saying, like, I know Damon is, this movie is just not that good.
1:41:42 Speaker 03 Too many popes in it? What's the problem?
1:41:43 Speaker 02 Uh, I just think it's like, Conclave winning, or Conclave being the clubhouse leader,
1:41:51 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:41:51 Speaker 02 would draw attention to Conclave in a way that Conclave didn't have to deal with when it first came out.
1:41:56 Sean Fennessey? It's very true.
1:41:57 Speaker 02 And I think everybody was like, damn, that shit was pretty entertaining. And now if you actually have to interrogate it, I wonder whether or not it stands up under scrutiny.
1:42:04 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I mean, short of Adam, I don't know a lot of people who really didn't like it. And I think that's going in its favor. As opposed to Blitz where I don't feel like a sense of enthusiasm, but we're reading tea leaves that are losery, so I don't know.
1:42:16 Speaker 02 I feel like my Letterboxd algorithm, for the most part, is either like, no matter what film I see, if I go on Letterboxd, it's just like, it's giving mother, you know? Like, so that's one kind of comment, and then the other is...
1:42:28 Sean Fennessey? Who is giving mother in Conclave?
1:42:32 Speaker 02 I don't want to spoil it.
1:42:33 Sean Fennessey? Don't spoil it.
1:42:35 Speaker 02 Or, this is a piece of shit. This is like, late capitalist claptrap.
1:42:40 Sean Fennessey? Wow.
1:42:40 Speaker 02 You know, like, so, like...
1:42:42 Sean Fennessey? That's on the Taylor Sheridan boards?
1:42:43 Speaker 02 No, it's just like, that's just like my, like, when you go through Letterboxd reviews, those are generally what? Like, the two kinds.
1:42:48 Sean Fennessey? So you're just looking at rando Letterboxd reviews?
1:42:51 Speaker 02 What am I supposed to be doing?
1:42:52 Sean Fennessey? I just look at the mutual people that I'm following.
1:42:54 Speaker 03 You don't ever like, pull up a movie?
1:42:55 Sean Fennessey? Oh, yeah.
1:42:56 Speaker 02 I don't follow that many people.
1:42:57 Speaker 03 I'm not following you? I don't know, I couldn't tell you.
1:42:58 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:42:59 Speaker 03 Guys, let's get on it.
1:42:59 Sean Fennessey? I will happily follow you.
1:43:00 Speaker 02 This is our own Conclave, you know?
1:43:03 Sean Fennessey? Who's who? I'm Lithgow, obviously. Hmm. I, I don't, I don't think that there's much to like, cancel about Conclave.
1:43:11 Speaker 02 I didn't mean cancel. I mean, like, interrogate, like, whether or not this is, like, worthwhile. Now, I honestly, like, I look at all this stuff from an outsider's perspective. I think probably Enora should win, like...
1:43:24 Sean Fennessey? I think Conclave has an opening if you believe the theory that Enora and The Brutalist are a bit too indie for the sensibility of Best Picture. After Parasite One, I've kind of dispensed with that expectation. I think movies like Enora can definitely win Best Picture. It's still probably my pick right now.
1:43:43 Speaker 02 It's your pick because, is it your want to or will win?
1:43:47 Sean Fennessey? I still think it will win.
1:43:48 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:43:49 Speaker 03 What do you want to win?
1:43:50 Sean Fennessey? Uh, probably The Brutalist, because I think it, like, represents the ambition that I'm most interested in from filmmakers. Uh, it's a, it's a cool year, though. Like, I love Dune Part Two. I think that's a great movie, and I think that's a, those pair of movies together are great together. I think I was...
1:44:05 Speaker 02 Enora and, or Brutalist and Dune Two. Oh, Dune...
1:44:08 Sean Fennessey? Those are two movies that I love that are, that are contending.
1:44:11 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:44:12 Sean Fennessey? But, the wicked thing...
1:44:15 Sean Fennessey? Is very real. The reason why I said on the show that I would be a brat if it won, even though I think the movie looks kind of ugly and is a little hokey in its storytelling. My issue is more that it's a part one. So if a part one wins best picture, I think like all bets are off in the Moana two conversation we were having. I'm just like, movies are gonna get fucked up. If they're like, we're awarding half of a story that isn't a fanfiction of classical Hollywood, we will have fewer and fewer new things ever again. So that, that really was the origin of my concern around that.
1:44:51 Speaker 03 Just to dive into, into your mind for a second.
1:44:54 Sean Fennessey? Please do. Thank you.
1:44:54 Speaker 03 Would you have felt this way if like Across the Spider-Verse won best picture? Like an unabashed part one to be continued?
1:45:02 Speaker 02 I would feel pretty upset about that.
1:45:04 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, the thing, the case that I've made over the years is that I like those movies being represented in best picture. And I think Wicked being represented in best picture, best picture would be a good thing.
1:45:11 Speaker 03 Sure.
1:45:12 Sean Fennessey? It's a movie with a ton of craft, with big stars, that represents like a certain kind of Hollywood filmmaking. I have no problem with a movie like that being nominated. It winning would be annoying. It winning would send a weird message, just like Spider-Verse part one. It would be a weird message.
1:45:24 Speaker 02 We're not gonna give Avengers Doomsday part one best picture, right?
1:45:29 Sean Fennessey? No. And if you ever suggested it previously, people would be like, you should kill yourself. And now if you're like, if you say that Wicked shouldn't win, you're like, you're an incel.
1:45:39 Sean Fennessey? It's like, it's a totally fine musical.
1:45:41 Speaker 02 You're so on Twitter, so hard.
1:45:43 Sean Fennessey? No, I just, I saw all the feedback to the episode that we did where I was basically like, this movie's okay. And it is, it's just okay. But a lot of okay movies have won best picture in the past. So we shall see. What do you want to win best picture?
1:45:55 Speaker 02 Uh, I think Anora.
1:45:57 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:45:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:45:58 Sean Fennessey? Have you seen Anora yet?
1:45:59 Speaker 03 Oh, loved it.
1:45:59 Sean Fennessey? You did?
1:46:00 Speaker 03 I think of the realistic candidates, I would love for it to win.
1:46:02 Speaker 02 Yeah. I think you have to pick like, it's like you get out of the primaries, you gotta pick the, the president that's gonna lead us all, you know?
1:46:08 Speaker 03 We're coming together as a nation to pick Anora.
1:46:11 Speaker 02 President, President Andy.
1:46:13 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. I have a theory that I'll share with you later this week on the show, and I can throw to that tease shortly, that all the best movies of the year for me are all about America. That's a very ethnocentric way of seeing things, but that they're all very much ported on to what America thinks it is versus what it actually is. And that has been the theme that has coursed through the year. Anyway, we'll get to that.
1:46:33 Speaker 03 Who's the alpha in this?
1:46:35 Sean Fennessey? Uh, my daughter, unfortunately, who is just fully dressing like Elphaba every day. Wants to go to school dressed like Elphaba.
1:46:40 Speaker 02 Congrats.
1:46:41 Sean Fennessey? Been a bit of an issue in our household. Um, Rob, thank you so much.
1:46:44 Speaker 02 Thank you.
1:46:44 Sean Fennessey? Thanks for being here. You're, you're one of the hosts of Group Chat.
1:46:47 Speaker 02 I am.
1:46:47 Sean Fennessey? You are a frequent host of the Prestige TV podcast. What other pods are you on?
1:46:51 Speaker 02 Mostly those these days.
1:46:52 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:46:52 Speaker 02 And, you know, hopefully this one.
1:46:53 Sean Fennessey? You're coming back on this one. Well, we'll save that.
1:46:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:46:56 Sean Fennessey? Well, twice this week or once? What do you think?
1:46:58 Speaker 02 We're doing a lot of taping, you know? I don't know. I don't know what's coming out when or why.
1:47:02 Sean Fennessey? Can you tape with me three times this week?
1:47:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, of course I can.
1:47:04 Sean Fennessey? Yeah?
1:47:05 Speaker 02 Why?
1:47:06 Sean Fennessey? Well, I might need you to.
1:47:08 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, I definitely, I signed up for it. I know what I'm, I'm responsible for.
1:47:12 Sean Fennessey? I don't think we've put time to the, to the third recording.
1:47:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, we have Thursday lockdown. I do not know what you want from me on Friday.
1:47:18 Sean Fennessey? Okay. On Thursday, we are...
1:47:20 Speaker 02 I may, I may have to do the FanDuel pregame show at any given moment.
1:47:24 Sean Fennessey? How did that go on Sunday? I missed it.
1:47:25 Speaker 02 I felt like I was in a little over my head as far as gambling went. I did try throw out the Panthers money line and I almost got it.
1:47:33 Sean Fennessey? Explain what that means.
1:47:34 Speaker 02 I think the money line is just like, I'm betting on the Panthers to win, but there's, I get like a spread here and odds, you know, right?
1:47:42 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, absolutely.
1:47:42 Speaker 02 Are you in crippling debt now? What's going on? No, I was just like, the Panthers have been frisky and I think the Bucks stink. So I just like take it from CR.
1:47:50 Sean Fennessey? You're on the Bryce Young train.
1:47:52 Speaker 02 I was just like, this is the kind of point in the season where teams start to give up.
1:47:56 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:47:56 Speaker 02 You know, and other teams are like, we need to play for our coach's job or our quarterback's future or whatever.
1:48:01 Sean Fennessey? So when Adam Thielen made that catch, you were like, boom, money line.
1:48:04 Speaker 02 I was like, I was literally about to hit send on like all of my like, I was like, come back for more hot picks from Chris Ryan, like to Sal and stuff and I didn't.
1:48:14 Sean Fennessey? You just forgot. CR, where can people hear you?
1:48:16 Speaker 02 Uh, the big picture.
1:48:17 Sean Fennessey? Okay. Uh, thanks, Chris. Thanks to Jack Sanders. Thanks to Bobby Wagner, our producer, for his work on this episode. And that's right, later this week, we'll be picking our top five favorite movies of the year. Chris will be here. Adam Naman will be here. Amanda won't be here or will she? We'll see. See you then.
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