Oscars 2026: Sinners & One Battle After Another

Chris and Lizzie kick off the 2026 Oscars conversation by discussing the overall Hollywood landscape, followed by a deep dive on where the best picture nominees stand. This week it's Sinners and One Battle After Another. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Twelve celebrities, one Don, and cold, hard cash. From the producers of The Traitors comes The Mob, a new Hulu original series now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. In this unique new reality competition show hosted by the iconic Parker Posey, 12 celebrity contestants are about to become members of a powerful family. For two weeks in a lavish Italian villa, they'll shake down and hustle to win a share of up to $250,000. And every good mob needs a Don. Whoever they choose to lead them will have absolute power deciding who stays and who gets taken out. Who makes money and who walks away with nothing? In a game of power where loyalty and trust are the currency, will the most powerful

• 0:45Lizzie Bassett?

  reality contestant in TV history be able to keep the family happy? And if they're overthrown by the mob, who will step up and become the new Don? Let the games begin. Watch The Mob, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 1:04Chris Winterbauer?

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• 1:35Speaker 02

  And action.

• 1:40Speaker 03

  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your first annual What Went Wrong? Oscars season coverage, featuring your hosts, Chris Winterbauer and Lizzie Bassett.

• 2:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it is nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a potential Best Picture winner. As always, I am Chris Winterbauer, joined today by my co-host, Lizzie Bassett, for the first in our mini-series run of bonus episodes covering this year's Oscars race. Lizzie, how you doing this morning? And can you tell the fine folks which two films we are starting with?

• 2:30Lizzie Bassett?

  I certainly can. And before we even get into it, I just want to say, this has been an amazing year for movies.

• 2:36Chris Winterbauer?

  A great year.

• 2:37Lizzie Bassett?

  I feel like sometimes when the Best Picture nominees come out, I'm kind of like, "Ah!"

• 2:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, you're like, "Wow, they really needed to fill out 10 slots, I guess, this year."

• 2:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Not the case this year. This year is really stacked.

• 2:50Chris Winterbauer?

  In fact, we'll get to, I have some snubs. Like, I might have put them in over a film or two on this list.

• 2:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure.

• 2:57Chris Winterbauer?

  But they are not snubs in the traditional sense where I feel like they were really wronged. I just thought it was such a good year that you just couldn't get all the good movies on here.

• 3:07Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. So we are kicking off this first episode in our Best Picture Oscars coverage with two movies, and this is not going to be one versus the other. These are sort of paired thematically. We're going to discuss both. And today, we've got Sinners and One Battle After Another. I am very, very excited to talk about both of these movies with Chris. And just so you all know, this episode is going to be completely in front of the paywall. We want you all to hear what these episodes are going to be like. If you would like to hear more of them, we will be doing more of these episodes for all of the Best Picture nominees, but you will have to subscribe to hear those. You can subscribe in Apple or Spotify, or you can join our Patreon for $5 to hear the rest. All right, Chris, lead the way.

• 3:47Chris Winterbauer?

  This, as you mentioned, Lizzie, has been, in my opinion, a great year for the movies. It's been a great year for certain franchises. It has been a great year for original films. We'll discuss a couple, one in particular today that we've already mentioned, one of the subjects. But I thought it would be nice to start this whole series with a little recap of the year, both box office and critically. But if you're not interested in the current state of affairs with the studios and some Hollywood inside baseball, and you just want to hear us talking about these movies, no worries. Just go ahead and jump forward about 15 minutes. Lizzie, limiting ourselves to the 2025 receipts, the 2025 box office was a little bit unexpectedly,

• 4:30Chris Winterbauer?

  I would say dominated by Warner Brothers, the studio behind Both Sinners and One Battle After Another. Let's look at it. So globally, Disney again dominated the box office. Zootopia 2, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Lilo and Stitch. The Chinese film, Nezah 2 dominated the global charts, making over $2 billion. We're not going to be discussing that film. It's not an awards consideration. Let's talk about the domestic box office, because I think this is where things get really interesting. So if we just go 2025 receipts, domestic box office. Lizzie, are you aware of which movie was the number one movie in the United States in 2025? I don't think you saw it.

• 5:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Is it Sinners?

• 5:11Chris Winterbauer?

  No, it's not Sinners. Sinners was the only original film to make the top 10. It's a Minecraft movie.

• 5:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 5:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Which was distributed by Warner Brothers. So we have a Minecraft movie, Lilo and Stitch, Superman, which is Warner Brothers through DC, Jurassic World Rebirth, Universal, Zootopia 2, Disney, Wicked for Good, Universal, and then we have Sinners at number seven.

• 5:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Seven.

• 5:34Chris Winterbauer?

  On the domestic box office, Warner Brothers.

• 5:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Should be way higher.

• 5:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Fantastic Four: First Steps, Disney, How to Train Your Dragon, Universal, and Avatar: Fire and Ash, Disney. Now, I think that this is important to mention, and we should also flag a few outside the top 10 releases of Warner Brothers. F1: The Movie, which they did in conjunction with Apple, at 14, Conjuring: Last Rites at 15, Weapons at 16, and Final Destination: Bloodlines at 17, plus One Battle After Another at 30, which we will discuss today. So this year is kind of a rebound year for Warner Brothers. Lizzie, I'm not sure how much attention you've been paying to the studio over the last couple of years, and we can discuss some of the corporate history, but they've had a couple of costly flops, I would say, since the pandemic.

• 6:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 6:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Matrix Resurrections underperforms relative to expectations. That's in 2021. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is a franchise low for that franchise in 2022. We just discussed Don't Worry Darling, which I'm sure was intended to be a bit of an awards contender. Ultimately fizzled, although it wasn't a huge flop at the box office. I don't think it achieved the heights that folks wanted. Black Adam flopped. Bones in All, a movie I really liked, failed to generate the awards buzz that I think the studio was hoping for. 2023, a lot of the same. The DC movies are just not working. The Flash, Shazam, Fury of the Gods,

• 7:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Blue Beetle, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. By the way, I liked some of those movies. I'm just saying commercially, they didn't perform at the level that people were expecting. Color Purple, but they were some high points. Wonka, Creed 3, Evil Dead Rise, and Lizzie. Which Greta Gerwig movie back in 2023 stole the show?

• 7:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Barbie?

• 7:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Barbie. That's right. Barbie was the high point for the studio in 2023. But of course, 2024, we've got more problems with Joker, Folie à deux.

• 7:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 7:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh dear. And unfortunately, one of my favorite movies of 2024, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which I really, really loved, and it just didn't do that well at the box office.

• 7:37Lizzie Bassett?

  You did conveniently leave off the Batman, by the way, in 2022.

• 7:40Chris Winterbauer?

  You are absolutely right, and please excuse me, Mr. Robert Pattinson. That movie was extremely successful. But I don't think it changes the general trend that the studio was facing heading into 2025 or coming out of 2024. I think then in 2025, things don't seem to start off great with Mickey 17, which again is a movie I liked, but Director Bong's follow-up to Parasite is not the hit that Parasite was. And so-

• 8:05Lizzie Bassett?

  More twins, just the wrong twins.

• 8:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Right. So like Michael DeLuca and Pam Abdi, maybe a little bit in the hot seat. You have some bets on filmmakers that seem to have been placed a film too late, let's say, or a film or two too late.

• 8:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:19Chris Winterbauer?

  And then we come into this year with Sinners, which releases in March, and basically sets the world on fire, especially the United States on fire. It ends up grossing close to 400 Million dollars against a $90 million budget. But of course, Lizzie, this is all happening against a very unusual corporate landscape. And so as Warner Brothers is having this banner year, what's happening with the studio writ large under David Zaslove's stewardship?

• 8:49Lizzie Bassett?

  It's potentially being absorbed into the giant black hole of Netflix.

• 8:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly. And so that didn't happen until the end of this year. But a couple of points that I think are worth rehashing as we get into this conversation, because I do think they're really important, especially when we talk about the ownership agreement that Ryan Coogler has with Sinners and the studio.

• 9:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, God, I hope he owns it all.

• 9:11Chris Winterbauer?

  He will eventually. So Warner Brothers' studio in distress for the last few years. They merged with Discovery to form Warner Brothers Discovery, which created an incredible amount of debt, $50 billion. Much of the last few years, David Zaslove and company have been attempting to reduce that debt load. And back in the spring or earlier this year, they made an announcement that they're going to separate the pay TV portion of the company from the film and television portion of the company, which was met with excitement from shareholders in theory, because they could spin off a lot of the debt with the pay TV portion, which is a business that's ultimately, even though it's making money, it will ultimately wind down over time and they can pay off that debt and then keep all the IP with the less debt burdened portion of the company.

• 9:52Chris Winterbauer?

  And this seems like a great plan, especially because the studio has these great releases this year, like Final Destination's Bloodlines, great, fun, reinvigorating franchise movie. Obviously, we mentioned Sinners, you know, Minecraft. We have one battle after another coming. Conjuring: Last Rites does great. Weapons was an absolute blast. So it seems like, oh, wow, maybe Warner Brothers has turned things around. And then there's an announcement that there has been unsolicited interests from other parties to buy the studio.

• 10:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Right? And who knows if this was truly unsolicited or not. But the two big parties, Lizzie, as you mentioned, are Netflix and Paramount.

• 10:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 10:30Chris Winterbauer?

  And so now we are in this situation where Warner Brothers has agreed to Netflix's offer, which was $83 billion. Initially, it was a cash and stock offer, but as of this week, they have Revised that to be an all cash offer to make it even more appealing over the Paramount bid. The market cap of Warner Brothers Discovery right now is about $70 billion. And then the offer from Paramount is seemingly much higher at $108 billion or $30 per share. But Lizzie, Paramount Skydance's market cap is only $13 billion.

• 11:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, where are they getting the rest of it?

• 11:04Chris Winterbauer?

  That's exactly right. So where they're getting the rest of it is from David Ellison's dad.

• 11:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Chris Winterbauer?

  So David Ellison is the billionaire nepo baby who has taken over, who owns Skydance and has subsumed Paramount. And Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, one of the richest men in the world, has personally guaranteed $40 billion in equity to help finance this deal. And it's backed by $54 billion in debt. So this is a classic leveraged buyout situation. And so the idea would be that Paramount would use Warner Brothers assets as collateral to raise this debt to buy the company. And I think the concern is that when you do that, when you do a leveraged buyout, the only way to make your investment back is to cut costs substantially within the company that you're absorbing. Let's get into that in a second.

• 11:51Chris Winterbauer?

  So we have this very unusual moment, Lizzie, where for the first time since 2012, which is the last time Warner Brothers won Best Picture. Do you remember which film it was? It was directed by Ben Affleck back in 2012.

• 12:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Argo.

• 12:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly. So that was the studio's last Best Picture Oscar. They've had not a terrible run. They've been nominated nine of the last 10 years for at least one film, but they haven't taken home the top prize. And I think there was maybe a sense that, man, we missed the opportunity with Oppenheimer. Because if you remember, Nolan made all of his movies with Warner Brothers and then switched to Universal after some brouhaha over Tenet, I believe. All brings us to the end of this year. We have Sinners and One Battle After Another. Warner Brothers, two leading films, which are crushing it in terms of the nominations with other guilds and whatnot. Both Ryan Coogler, Paul Thomas Anderson, nominated for the DGA Award for directing. Lots of SAG nominations.

• 12:47Chris Winterbauer?

  One Battle After Another set a record for SAG nominations and Sinners was right behind it. And we are now rounding out the year in this unusual situation where the studio that has arguably had the best combined year, if we were to weigh box office and prestige equally, is the studio that is not maybe really going to exist anymore at the end of 2026, at least not in the way that we've seen it. So let's get back to Sinners first. So, Lizzie, did you hear anything about the way that Sinners was acquired, one brought into Warner Brothers back in the day?

• 13:19Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 13:20Chris Winterbauer?

  So, besides Sinners, what's your favorite Ryan Coogler film? Or which films of his do you really like?

• 13:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Fruitvale Station is incredible.

• 13:27Chris Winterbauer?

  It's great. His debut feature with Michael B. Jordan.

• 13:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. Another Michael B. Jordan classic. I think Creed is phenomenal. Talk about revitalizing a franchise. That movie is wonderful. I mean, you said not Sinners, but I would put Sinners at the top of that list.

• 13:43Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm just saying, let's talk prior to Sinners to set up.

• 13:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Those two. You know, I'm gonna, I'll put myself out here and say something semi-controversial. I'm not a huge fan of the Black Panther franchise. And it's honestly, as we know, I'm just not an enormous fan of superhero movies. So out of everything he's done, that interests me the least. Doesn't mean those movies aren't good, doesn't mean those movies aren't important, and I am very glad that they exist. They're not for me in the same way that something like Sinners is. And what I think excited me most about this, I know we're gonna get into it, is seeing him getting the chance to tackle his own original IP. Because if you're looking at something like Creed, something like Black Panther, he's doing amazing work, but it is with existing IP. So there is something very exciting about what's happening in Sinners.

• 14:30Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. And so, as you mentioned, Lizzie, he comes in as a true indie darling with Fruitvale Station, which is a bootstrapped movie made for a shoestring budget with a great Michael B. Jordan performance at the center of it. And it really puts Ryan Coogler, he's in his 30s at this point, USC Film School graduate, really puts him on the map. He then moves into, you could say, studio franchise work, right? With the Creed franchise and with Black Panther, and proves he's perfectly capable of making that leap. There are some Directors who jump from indie film to studio film where it doesn't work. And Ryan Coogler clearly is very comfortable and confident scaling that quickly.

• 15:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Which is really impressive. And we've talked about this all the time where, you know, young indie directors get handed the massive, massive franchise movie. And it's not necessarily a fair position to put them in because oftentimes they just flop. Not Ryan Coogler.

• 15:23Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right. And interestingly, pretty different than Paul Thomas Anderson, right? Where Ryan Coogler goes into the studio system. Paul Thomas Anderson continues to be able to, or continues to make his kind of quirky, off the beaten path. I describe them as like comics comic movies. They're the films that all of your filmmaker friends love that maybe you didn't see. And so it's interesting that they take these kind of diverging paths. And so Coogler makes a lot of money for these studios with these films. And then Sinners is going to be his next project and it sparks a bidding war. And it's one of two bidding wars that I will end up speaking about. We're not going to dive into it because it's not nominated for best picture. But Weapons, the Zach Krieger project, also sparked a bidding war that Warner Brothers ultimately won.

• 16:08Chris Winterbauer?

  And they had the opportunity to release both films to, again, great financial success. And one of the stipulations of Sinners, the contract that Coogler signed, not only does it get a great budget, he gets a great payday. He gets a great backend participation where he doesn't have to wait for the studio to break even. Much of this was made in trades. He also gets the copyright to the film after 25 years. Which is very, very, very, very extremely rare and unusual.

• 16:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 16:36Chris Winterbauer?

  And there was much consternation behind the scenes, according to the trades, in terms of folks saying, this sets a dangerous precedent. This could be the end of the studio system, blah, blah, blah. But what I find really interesting about it is, A, that's kind of absurd. But B, Coogler, whether intentional or not, has done an incredible job protecting himself in light of the encroaching world of tech and AI and the Ellison's, et cetera, right? Because now we have a situation where, let's say Paramount were somehow to muscle their way into acquiring Warner Brothers. Brothers Discovery. The reason they're doing it is for the IP.

• 17:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 17:14Chris Winterbauer?

  And if you were to give a very cynical look at the Ellison's and their desires and their aims and their goals, and you could say, okay, well, Larry Ellison's fortune is based on the continued expansion of AI and generative AI in particular. That's why Oracle's stock has popped so much this year, although I know it's down. And if you look at a leveraged buyout and you were to say, okay, well, this LBO is really only going to yield the fruit that all of these investors seem to think that it will if they can leverage this IP at the lowest possible cost. The cynics view, or my view, is that the down the line intention would be to engage AI in harvesting all of the IP at Warner Brothers in order to

• 17:57Chris Winterbauer?

  perpetually put out Harry Potter AI slop for the masses to consume at low prices. And Ryan Coogler has, in a sense, like, long-term protected his film from that eventuality in the sense that he can regain control of it in 25 years, which is pretty cool.

• 18:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, it is cool, but explain this to me. So if it's regaining control in 25 years, then are they able to do what they want with the franchise for that quarter century before he gets it back?

• 18:26Chris Winterbauer?

  He may have right of first refusal on any sort of derivative. Those are separate stipulations in a contract. I don't know the details of his contract. It may be that sequel rights, et cetera, have to be negotiated separately with Ryan Coogler.

• 18:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I hope so.

• 18:42Chris Winterbauer?

  With the film itself, ownership and the copyright remains with Warner Brothers for 25 years and then Coogler regains it. I would assume if he was able to negotiate that, that he actually controls derivations and sequel rights, et cetera, because

• 18:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Let's hope so.

• 18:55Chris Winterbauer?

  you can control sequel rights more easily than you could get the copyright to your own film back.

• 18:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure.

• 18:59Chris Winterbauer?

  You know what I mean? After 25 years.

• 19:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 19:02Chris Winterbauer?

  So Sinners is coming into this Oscars race with more Oscar nominations than any film in history. The 16 Oscar nominations, which includes a new casting category, put it ahead of All About Eve, Titanic, La La Land, and yet it's not the frontrunner for Best Picture. So I thought what could be interesting is, before we get to one battle after another, kind of, we make the case for Sinners and talk about what's working against it. And this is where we can get into our thoughts on the film and, Lizzie, what you like about the movie, et cetera. So maybe, Lizzie, we could start with, describe what Sinners is, what it's about, and give us your thoughts, your subjective, you know, opinion. What was your reaction to the film, et cetera?

• 19:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Sinners is the story of two brothers, Smoke and Stack, returning to their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi, which is, by the way, where my cousins grew up. It is a strange place. It's a place known for the blues, and of course, it's a place known for the crossroads where Robert Johnson went down and sold his soul to the devil, allegedly. These two brothers return home from Chicago and they plan to open a juke joint back in their hometown. And they successfully do that, but the night that they do it, thanks to the music that they are producing in this juke joint, they call to themselves a deeper, or at least a different evil than what they're used to facing on a day-to-day

• 20:26Lizzie Bassett?

  basis. And that evil is in the form of a very old Irish vampire.

• 20:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Remick.

• 20:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Played with wonderful glee and a very bad manicure by Jack O'Connell. And what ensues is really, you know, a battle to stay alive until sunrise as Remick manages to sort of slowly absorb their entire community. I think this movie is amazing. I think it's fun, which I think is what's working against it, to be honest, in terms of the Best Picture nomination, is that this is a crowd pleaser. And oftentimes, those are not the ones that are celebrated in award shows like this. And I don't agree with that. I think that's They should be. I think that entertainment is at the forefront of this movie.

• 21:16Lizzie Bassett?

  And obviously, for me, this movie is working on infinite levels. I think it should win the What Went Wrong Award this year for scene that absolutely positively should not work, but somehow does for the past, present, and future musical number that occurs about a third of the way through the movie. I think the performances in this movie are incredible. And I have to be honest, the more I watch this movie, the more impressed I am with Michael B. Jordan. It is, you know, we've seen actors play opposite themselves as identical twins many times, sometimes to diminishing effect. That's not the case here. I truly forgot that it was the same actor about halfway through this movie.

• 21:57Lizzie Bassett?

  And that is just a testament to him. I know it won't be him, but to be honest, I think he deserves the Oscar for this. There's many others who will probably get it and who also deserve it. But I think his performance is potentially being overlooked just by nature of the fact that this is a blockbuster. And it's horror and it's done so well. The other thing I really love about this movie is the attention to detail that Ryan Coogler paid to the time and place. So often when we see movies set in the past, they can paint with really broad strokes. You know, we talked about this with Dances with Wolves versus The Last of the Mohicans. And something The Last of the Mohicans did really well was examining the complexities of the community

• 22:41Lizzie Bassett?

  and the economic dynamics of the community. Sinners does that. Sinners does that incredibly well with the Chinese family that runs both groceries, one for whites and one for blacks. And the way that they operate within the community is fascinating. And the fact that he's able to fold all of this into a horror movie is just so brilliant. It's so beautiful. I also want to call out the sound design in this movie. I don't know if you noticed, but one moment that I didn't catch the first time I watched this was when they're driving in the car at the beginning and Delroy Lindo is telling the story of his friend who was lynched at a train station. It's so subtle, but you can hear the sounds of the train station sort of. Underneath the sound of the car as he's talking.

• 23:24Lizzie Bassett?

  And there's so many things like that in this movie that could have been so cheesy had they been overdone. And they're just right. And that to me is what this movie does so well. I think it is pitch perfect. I think the performance by Michael B. Jordan is phenomenal. I think the performance by Hailee Steinfeld is phenomenal. Delroy Lindo absolutely deserves his nomination for this film. He brings such gravitas and weight to the world while also being, I just thought incredibly light and funny. Miles Caton, unreal singing voice. When he starts singing in the car and Michael B. Jordan looks at him with pure shock and awe. It just looks real and I believe that because he is so phenomenal.

• 24:07Lizzie Bassett?

  So I'll stop talking because I could talk about sinners forever. As you know, I love vampires. I love a southern vampire and that's what we're getting here. And, and I love that Kugler also chose to kind of build on vampiric lore in this movie. Particularly in terms of their sort of being a collective consciousness that the vampires absorb once they're turned. And of course, on top of all of this, Kugler is turning in a fascinating layered exploration of racism in the Jim Crow South. That translates perfectly into today's world as well. I just can't say enough about this. It's doing everything and it's doing, is doing it well. Chris, what do you think?

• 24:44Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm not nearly as high on sinners as consensus. And I'm also not as high on one battle after another as consensus.

• 24:50Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm not either on that one.

• 24:51Chris Winterbauer?

  But before we get into that, why don't we, because you mentioned a couple of things that are really interesting and could be perceived as headwinds and maybe very much are headwinds for sinners as it heads into the final stretch here for the Oscars. So on the one hand, as you mentioned, this movie has a horn of plenty when it comes to things working for it as subcategories. You have incredible costume design, production design, cinematography, music. Ludwig Gornson just won the Golden Globe for best original score. This film looks, sounds, feels incredible. And on the one hand, it is a genre film. It is a horror film and Lizzie only. One horror film has ever won Best Picture,

• 25:35Chris Winterbauer?

  or Horror Thriller has ever won Best Picture. You covered it on this podcast, 1991. Hello, Clarice.

• 25:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Ah, The Silence of the Lambs. And that's borderline not even horror.

• 25:46Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. So on the one hand, you know, there are films nominated that are horror films, The Exorcist, Jaws, for example. But the Academy tends to snub them. And I, this year, will introduce my inaugural Tony Collette Hereditary Best Actress in a Horror Film.

• 26:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 26:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Snubbed Award. And I think I'm going to give my first presentation of this trophy. It'll either go to Amy Madigan if she gets snubbed, or it's going to go to Sally Hawkins, who didn't even get a nomination for Bring Her Back. And she's incredible in that movie, although it's a very small movie. I know not a ton of people saw it. So on the one hand, Sinners is fighting that battle. But on the other hand, as you mentioned, Lizzie, it's a period piece. And the Academy loves to reward period pieces. I did some research and the numbers are a little iffy, but roughly half of Oscar winners take place 10 years or more before the year in which the award or the movie was released. And so you could say, ah, the genre element working against it, the period piece element working for it. The blockbuster element could be seen as working against it. We have some winners in recent years.

• 26:45Chris Winterbauer?

  I would think of like Coda, for example, Moonlight, that beat out much larger blockbuster movies. But then we also have some genuine blockbusters like Oppenheimer, which won. So I think that could kind of go either way. I think that like the path I can see for Sinners, as you mentioned, Lizzie, is this is a movie that seems to be working for people as both entertainment and really interesting discourse material.

• 27:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 27:07Chris Winterbauer?

  And it is reflective of many of the things that we're discussing today as a society and trying to reckon with. And I think that, I would assume, the Academy likes to reward movies that have both broad appeal, you know, and high art appeal.

• 27:21Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't think they do, for the record.

• 27:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, I think that varies year to year. I would just imagine that would maybe be a goal. You know what I mean? And like the sweet spot.

• 27:29Lizzie Bassett?

  You think it should be, but I don't believe that it has been. But yes.

• 27:33Chris Winterbauer?

  And it is interesting, too. Like, there are some examples, you know, obviously throughout the Oscars history, though. And maybe something that's working against Sinners is when dealing with films about racial issues, the Academy Awards seem to prefer movies that are like, we solved racism. As a, you know, if you go to Driving Miss Daisy or Green Book more recently, which did beat out Black Panther and Black Klansman in 2018.

• 27:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, they also seem to reward films about racism that are not made by the parties that were experiencing the racism.

• 28:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Or Crash, right, would be another example.

• 28:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, Crash, Green Book, you just rattled off a bunch that are made by white filmmakers. And to be totally honest, I think that that is the biggest thing that's going to work against sinners, is that this is a movie made by a black filmmaker and it is coming in heavy from that perspective. I think it's wonderful. I think that's what makes it so good because of the subject matter that it's covering. But I think it makes it a bit of a more difficult pill to swallow than it may have seemed on the surface. And I do worry that that may hurt its chances with the Academy, unfortunately.

• 28:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Maybe. On the other hand, you also have movies winning in the last 10 years like Moonlight, like Everything Everywhere All at Once. That's not a movie about race, but it is a movie from at least one Asian American director about an Asian American family. Nomadland, non-white director, parasite, foreign film. I do think that the Academy is broadening somewhat its approach to what is a Best Picture winner. Of course, there are still echoes of the past with Green Book, for example, which was very much a "let's pat ourselves on the back, we did it, guys" sort of nomination and win.

• 29:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, and I want to be clear, I'm not saying that the Academy is specifically awarding white filmmakers, because that's not true. What I mean is that this movie and the perspective that Ryan Coogler brought to it and what he used the horror genre and vampires to do is more complex and more nuanced and more lived in. It's something that I think comes from more personal experience in a way that is surprising, given the packaging that this movie came in. And sometimes things that make you a little more uncomfortable and make you look in the mirror a little bit more are not the things that end up getting the awards.

• 29:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Especially if you're a vampire and don't have a reflection.

• 29:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Mr. Wonderful and Marty Supremes.

• 30:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, indeed.

• 30:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Which we'll get to later.

• 30:03Chris Winterbauer?

  We'll get to later.

• 30:03Lizzie Bassett?

  This is not the only vampire we're talking about this year.

• 30:06Chris Winterbauer?

  So with Sinners, Lizzie, we just saw the Golden Globes and Sinners did lose out at the Golden Globes, broadly speaking. It won what is called the Cinematic Box Office Achievement Award, which feels-

• 30:21Lizzie Bassett?

  That kind of makes me mad.

• 30:22Chris Winterbauer?

  It is like a participation trophy. It is-

• 30:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 30:25Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't love it as an award. It's not like they made it for Sinners. I believe the award existed for a couple of years now. Let's see, yeah, Barbie was the first year that it happened. Like Barbie won it in 2023 and then Wicked won it last year. So it reminds me of that very funny Will Ferrell and Jack Black sketch at the Oscars where they're the sad clowns decrying that the Oscars never award comedy. Our movies may make billions, but you never reward us. So Sinners does win for Best Original Score, but it loses Best Director, Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another, which we'll discuss shortly. Best Screenplay, Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another. And Hamlet, snooze fest, I'm just kidding. Hamlet steals Best Motion Picture Drama, which is the category that

• 31:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Sinners was in. And of course, One Battle After Another wins Musical Comedy. So one thing that I do think is interesting is that I'm like, should Sinners be in drama or should there be, should musical or comedy include genre in there as well? So which is-

• 31:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's a good question.

• 31:24Chris Winterbauer?

  That's an interesting conversation. But at the Critics' Choice Awards, Ryan Coogler does win Original Screenplay, even though it loses Best Picture to One Battle After Another. I do want to mention, the Golden Globes are not predictive of the eventual Academy Awards. And a couple of examples that I was able to pull, Silence of the Lambs, the best example, won only one Golden Globe, Lizzie, Jodie Foster for Best Actress, before winning the big five at the Oscars, Director, Picture, Actor, Actress, Screenplay. The Hurt Locker, lost all three Globes and then won big at the Oscars. The Godfather Part Two, The King's Speech, Spotlight, The Departed, Braveheart, Crash, lost the Golden Globe,

• 32:04Chris Winterbauer?

  won the Oscar in like a weird alternate reality that we have there. So I want to move to, I'll give my brief thought, because I know 99% of people won't agree with me and don't care about- My opinion.

• 32:16Lizzie Bassett?

  That's okay.

• 32:17Chris Winterbauer?

  And that's totally fine. So I agree with so much of the praise that has been heaped upon sinners. Big Ryan Coogler fan. He also seems like a really cool person, and I mean that from like a business perspective. The way that he operates as a director, I think is really admirable. It seems like he's built this team of people who not only deeply respect him, but he deeply respects their work and they move from movie to movie with him. So want to just clarify all of that. I completely agree. I think the attention to detail. I think the lore is interesting. I think Michael B. Jordan is phenomenal in this movie. I totally agree with you. I think he is great. I've always really liked him since, you know, The Wire way back. I actually think that this movie is hamstrung by its screenplay.

• 32:59Chris Winterbauer?

  And I love sequences. I liked that music. I loved all the musical sequences. I like the one you mentioned, the past-present. I like the Irish jig sequence, the vampire Irish jig outside. It's very fun.

• 33:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Great.

• 33:10Chris Winterbauer?

  I like the Ku Klux Klan shootout at the end, very reminiscent of Jeremy Solonay's Rebel Ridge from a year prior. And I feel that this movie is not greater than the sum of its parts for me. I think that this is a world, a wonderfully realized world, that is ultimately in search of a story. I think that this would be more effectively told as a mini-series. It feels as if the first hour of the movie is a bit of a hangout movie, which I'm all for, generally speaking. But a lot of the time spent is simply catching us up on relationships and conversations about things that happened in the recent past that we are unaware of. And then when the vampires come in, and I love Jack O'Connell and Remick is a great villain. As you mentioned, Lizzie, I liked a lot of the lore stuff.

• 33:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Lola Kirk, also great.

• 33:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Lola Kirk is very good in a bit of a small role, but she really does a lot with it. I like the inclusion of the, like the Choctaw Indians, there's like vampire hunters was a cool element.

• 34:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep.

• 34:02Chris Winterbauer?

  I wanted all of these as one hour episodes in a larger story. And so instead, I felt like, for me, the movie didn't have a singular thrust or a protagonist I was really following through it. And things started to feel a bit mechanical and arbitrary. And it devolved, in my opinion, into, although very well staged, some more generic style.

• 34:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Vampire action in the back half of the movie. And it just, it candidly, the scripts did not come together for me. From like an overall construction standpoint, similar criticism I have for one battle after another. And so, again, I am not as high on this movie and my, for me, that's actually, I think, the biggest thing holding Sinners back despite being so fantastic in all of these other categories, including direction. I think the movies, obviously, you don't get all these elements without a great director who can pull them together, as you mentioned. But I actually was surprised that it won Best Screenplay at the Critics' Choice Awards. And felt, again, I know I'm in the minority and I'm probably an idiot, but I just, it didn't quite work for me at that basic level.

• 35:11Chris Winterbauer?

  And so I remain, I guess I'm just, I'm, I'm one of the Remick vampires on the outside, not, not fully appreciating it.

• 35:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Just trying to bring us all together.

• 35:19Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm trying to bring us all together here. I'm just saying, we could all be watching Green Book right now.

• 35:24Lizzie Bassett?

  God. First of all, you're not an idiot. You're an amazing writer and I very much respect your criticism of this. I think you know better than I do, you know, in terms of structure and everything. But I don't agree in terms of the script of this movie, in terms of caring about the characters. I think the final moment when Michael B. Jordan as Smoke gets to see his daughter again is like payoff for the entire movie. I think the emotional stakes are incredible across this movie. And I'm just, I'm mad that I don't think he's going to win for this. And I, I think even for that 10 second scene alone, that he should.

• 35:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Agree to disagree. There's no one I would like clearly put above Michael B. Jordan for Best Actor, to be clear. Like, I would be very supportive of that. And his performance is as good as the other films we'll discuss. I agree completely. For me, it's more on the Best Picture side of things, I guess, than I'm talking.

• 36:14Lizzie Bassett?

  The last thing that I will say is that in the after credits sequence with Buddy Guy, which was amazing casting, and Michael B. Jordan and Hailee Steinfeld returning, I very much was willing to follow them out that door when they left. And I think that that says something for the world that Ryan Coogler built and the story that he told.

• 36:31Chris Winterbauer?

  The highs are very high with that movie, even for a hater like me. It has transcendent moments and sequences. The movie looks great. The performances are great and it will be interesting. I could foresee a world where Sinners cleans up a number of categories.

• 36:48Lizzie Bassett?

  I hope it does.

• 36:49Chris Winterbauer?

  And then loses the top prize, for example. I'm not rooting for that. I'm just saying like, I could see that. It's a weird year and I could see that, you know, happening. Because, Lizzie, much of the momentum this year, since this film was released, has seemingly been behind Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, which we did review back in the fall. I believe we've both since rewatched it. And I'm curious, with some distance and in the context of many of the other films that have been nominated for Best Picture, how do you feel about One Battle After Another now?

• 37:21Lizzie Bassett?

  You know, the more time that I sit with this movie, the less I know what to make of it, which I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's something very exciting to me about seeing a younger director or even just a less exposed director really hit their stride. You know, something like Marty Supreme feels like that moment to me for Josh Safdie. One Battle After Another, look, it's an incredibly well-made movie. The performances in this movie are wonderful. And yet it does not come anywhere close for me to striking the same nerve that something like There Will Be Blood or Phantom Thread did in terms of Paul Thomas Anderson's previous work. It's fun. It's so fun.

• 38:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Like, it's so fun. It's so well-made. I love so many elements of this. Again, Tony Goldwyn, whatever you're taking, I'll pay every dollar I have for it.

• 38:15Chris Winterbauer?

  He might be taking what Remick was taking in Sinners.

• 38:19Lizzie Bassett?

  For sure. A hundred percent. But the more time that I sit and think about it, the more I worry that this movie is more surface level than it appears. Chris, what's your take on this?

• 38:31Chris Winterbauer?

  So I agree with you that this is not an upper echelon PTA film for me.

• 38:39Chris Winterbauer?

  It's like second tier, and I think it's got some amazing elements. I kind of feel a little bit similarly as I do with Sinners, where ultimately, I think this movie feels a little disjointed, and it kind of exists in stops and starts. You've got a really dynamic opening 30 minutes or so. We're following Perfidia, primarily played by Tiana Taylor. She exits the movie effectively. And now we are with Bob and Willa. And then the movie, kind of like, in my opinion, fumbles along for a little bit, not without some really fun moments. I love the scene between Leonardo DiCaprio and Willa's teacher. I think it's a really great moment. And then it finds its footing again with Benicio del Toro's sensei character. And there's about an hour of this movie that may be like one of my favorite hours

• 39:23Chris Winterbauer?

  of a movie that I've seen in the last five years. And then the movie kind of has fits and starts again as it focuses a little bit more on Lockjaw and his relationship to Willa. And Chase Infinity is great, and Sean Penn is great. And I did see a funny tweet that was just a photo of Sean Penn at the Golden Globes, and it said, "Every year since 1981, Sean Penn has electrocuted himself on his birthday."

• 39:45Chris Winterbauer?

  And so again, I love so many of the elements, and yet it didn't come together completely in a way that left me feeling like I had watched something seamless at the end of this film.

• 39:59Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 39:59Chris Winterbauer?

  And it's interesting how it seems like in Sinners, Kugler is very much, well, my interpretation of the movie was that he is pointing out the dangers, like the seductive allure and dangers and identity-stripping nature of assimilation.

• 40:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 40:12Chris Winterbauer?

  And this idea of a, like, post-racial future is actually really terrifying, and you need to hold on to your culture and identity. And that is represented, I think, obviously through Remick's vampire, but it's also represented a little bit maybe through the church that Miles Kenton's, you know, father is a part of.

• 40:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, through Hailee Steinfeld's character as well.

• 40:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Right, who's passing as white in this movie. And then ultimately, because, you know, he follows her or he's let go by his brother. What I think is really interesting about Sinners is that, my interpretation is that the cost of assimilation is your soul, right? Which is fun. And it's true. Like, and there's interesting parallels to Marty Supreme that we can talk about later with the Mr. Wonderful character.

• 40:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 40:54Chris Winterbauer?

  And again, this is why Sinners, for me, it totally works on an intellectual level. And so I want to be clear, like, all the ideas in here, I think, are awesome. They're great.

• 41:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Big time.

• 41:01Chris Winterbauer?

  No criticism. For me, it was just, I had trouble locking in with the structure. So just qualify that.

• 41:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure.

• 41:07Chris Winterbauer?

  I just think it's really interesting how the movie ends, right? Where like Stack joins Mary in passing, but they're now passing as humans as opposed to, right? As they're vampires.

• 41:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 41:18Chris Winterbauer?

  And so he enters that world, whereas Smoke enters heaven, his wife and his baby, by holding on to his culture and by holding on to his music and by protecting Miles and making sure he, you know, is able to take that guitar and leave at the end of the day. Excuse me, by protecting Sammy, played by Miles Katon. And I do think it's interesting how the church is kind of also an assimilating institution, maybe like a white institution imposed upon, you know, these black people in the Mississippi Delta that his father is a part of.

• 41:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, they say that flat out versus the music. Yeah.

• 41:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Whereas what's interesting about, and somebody on our Patreon so vehemently disagreed with me, but I stand by my position. PTA, in a way, I think, is almost making like an opposite argument where he's really preaching, in my opinion, like, the conclusion of the movie seems to be resistance in moderation or like extremism is not the answer. I'm not saying that Frank Ku were saying extremism is the answer, but PTA is kind of landing in this more middle ground, in my opinion, in that movie. And maybe I'm trying to draw a comparison that doesn't exist.

• 42:18Lizzie Bassett?

  No, no, I think it does, but I would maybe modify that slightly in terms of one battle after another. And instead of him saying that extremism is not the path, I think maybe what he's doing is, to me, it didn't seem to be saying that it's not necessary, that it's sometimes even a necessary evil from what we see in the movie. But to me, it was more that it becomes a decision to turn the lens away from the firecracker, the fire starters, in this case, Prophethia Beverly Hills, to the many, many, many more people

• 42:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 42:53Lizzie Bassett?

  that you will never hear about.

• 42:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 42:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Who are quietly, you know, moving the resistance. Forward and

• 42:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Quiet revolution versus loud revolution, maybe, you know.

• 43:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, but I don't even think it was a versus. I think to me it was a celebration of those people more than it was saying that they are taking the right path versus the wrong path. And that actually may be one of my problems with the movie is that I don't actually feel like it took a particularly strong stance. And I left feeling confused.

• 43:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I think that's a strength and a weakness of the movie. I think for a lot of the movie, it's a strength in that you're just kind of along for the ride in a fun way, and it doesn't feel too pedantic or didactic as a result, but I agree then at the end, I start to get a little murky on theme, especially as we're following Chase Infinity and Eric Schreier, you know what I mean, at the very end of the film.

• 43:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 43:41Chris Winterbauer?

  And effectively, Bob, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio's character is kind of just out of the running in his bathrobe. You know, the hapless man following everybody around. It's interesting. So I feel that both movies, although I agree Sinners thematically lands the landing more.

• 43:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 43:57Chris Winterbauer?

  I didn't feel like either movie stuck the landing for me for two very separate reasons. For Sinners, I ultimately felt that the KKK showdown felt almost not necessary, but like vestigial or tacked on to the ending as opposed to, I was like, is there, and I'm being so critical because this is like a best picture, Tom, but like, was there a way where the climax could have included both the KKK and the vampires or something like that? It just, it felt like this additional reel. And then we had the additional reel, you know, with Buddy Guy at the end, and also the costume design. I was like, oh my God, Michael B. Jordan and Haley Seinfeld, you look so cool. I will never look as cool as you.

• 44:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 44:31Chris Winterbauer?

  But so as a result, the movie kind of like stutter stopped as opposed to like came to an end for me. And I kind of felt the same thing with one battle after another where that last chase scene, and then we get the lockjaw epilogue, and then we get their epilogue. And it just, I was like,

• 44:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 44:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Can we not just have an ending, you know, to this movie? And so both movies stutter, stutter, ended in a way that I just, it didn't quite work. It pushed me out of the world a little bit. With one battle, there is that middle hour.

• 44:58Lizzie Bassett?

  It's amazing.

• 44:59Chris Winterbauer?

  It's amazing.

• 45:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Look, it deserves to be nominated.

• 45:02Chris Winterbauer?

  I know, but I just kind of was like, maybe this movie should have been about Sensei. But maybe if you made a whole movie about Sensei, it wouldn't feel as special if we just get an hour about Sensei.

• 45:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Look, I think there's a version of this where you could still enter the world through Leonardo DiCaprio's Bob. I think he is a great entrance. What effectively happens over the course of the movie is that he's useless. Like, he basically steps aside and does almost nothing to move the action of the movie forward. And everyone around him are the ones who are doing that. That's an interesting device. I don't know that it works as well as it could over the course of this movie to the points that you are making. I think there's totally a world in which you could still use that as your entrance. He could still be the dude, as it were, kind of bumbling along through the middle of this. But you could spend so much more time with Sensei, with some of these, Regina Hall's character.

• 45:52Lizzie Bassett?

  There's many characters in this that I think unfortunately got underexplored just because of how much Paul Thomas Anderson was trying to tackle. That's the problem to me with this one. It's, I don't think it is equal to the sum of its parts.

• 46:05Chris Winterbauer?

  So we have similar criticisms mirroring each other on these movies.

• 46:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 46:10Chris Winterbauer?

  So let's talk about the case for One Battle After Another. The most obvious case for it for me is that it is the most obviously timely. I'm not saying it's the actual most timely of the Best Picture nominees. I'm saying it's the most obviously timely of the Best Picture nominees, just with everything that is happening in this country right now with ICE. We are recording this shortly after the murders of Renee Good and Alex Preddy in Minnesota. With everything happening in this country with the militarization of police, with the revelations that white supremacy alive and well in many ways.

• 46:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, just, I mean, Lockjaw's character in general, the like cognitive dissonance that's involved in his character. I think that's one of the things that this movie does the absolute best in terms of exploring how people are on board with this shit. And the kind of mental gymnastics that they are doing to make that okay, to become-

• 47:04Chris Winterbauer?

  A Christmas adventurer.

• 47:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Part of the Christmas adventurers, yes. That, to me, is probably the most successful thing that this movie does.

• 47:11Chris Winterbauer?

  I think it does a great job of showing how people can become so warped in the thrall of bad ideas.

• 47:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 47:17Chris Winterbauer?

  And so I think that it is the most obvious- Prescient film of the year in so many ways. It could also be perceived as a correcting Oscar for Paul Thomas Anderson.

• 47:32Lizzie Bassett?

  A hundred percent. That is the biggest thing.

• 47:35Chris Winterbauer?

  So, Lizzie, you mentioned Phantom Thread, which was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director in 2018. And it lost, do you remember which film it lost to?

• 47:44Lizzie Bassett?

  No, what did it lose to?

• 47:46Chris Winterbauer?

  It lost to The Shape of Water. So that year, it was, to be clear, Shape of Water, Calling By Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Post, and Three Billboards. Good year.

• 47:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, Get Out deserved that Oscar, but-

• 47:58Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. So my personal criteria, or like the way that I like to think of Best Picture, is I would want to pick the movie that I am thinking in 10 years, that's going to be the movie we remember this year for.

• 48:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep.

• 48:11Chris Winterbauer?

  I think that proved to be Get Out, at least on this podcast.

• 48:14Lizzie Bassett?

  100%.

• 48:16Chris Winterbauer?

  So he loses that one, and I think I would give it to Get Out over Phantom Thread, so, fine. He also lost in 2008-

• 48:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 48:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Best Picture and Director. He had done There Will Be Blood, and do you remember which film beat him out that year?

• 48:30Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 48:31Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a similar film by the Coen Brothers, and by similar, I just mean, I guess, some of the settings.

• 48:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, No Country for Old Men.

• 48:37Chris Winterbauer?

  No Country for Old Men. I love There Will Be Blood. I think I would give it to No Country for Old Men, just me personally.

• 48:43Lizzie Bassett?

  I do not agree.

• 48:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Lizzie's face suggests I should stick my head in a bucket and not take it out until I pass out.

• 48:50Lizzie Bassett?

  I am fully team. I abandoned my boy!

• 48:53Chris Winterbauer?

  This here is a family business!

• 48:57Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm an oil man. Quentin Tarantino's wrong.

• 48:59Chris Winterbauer?

  That's true.

• 49:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Which, by the way, we haven't talked about it, but that's the most bizarre-

• 49:03Chris Winterbauer?

  It's so weird. I just-

• 49:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Online feud. This is so strange. Shut your mouth.

• 49:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Quentin Tarantino publicly taking dumps on Paul Dano for no reason.

• 49:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Paul Dano? Leave him alone.

• 49:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Just the nicest fella. He'd already got his head beat in with a bowling pin. What are you doing to him?

• 49:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 49:17Chris Winterbauer?

  So he was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay in 1998 for Boogie Nights, and in 2000 for Magnolia. And then 2022, Licorice Pizza did get three nominations, but Lizzie and I, I think, would both agree that that was not- One of his best films.

• 49:31Lizzie Bassett?

  It is not very good.

• 49:33Chris Winterbauer?

  So I think the case could be made, okay, this is a magnum opus in terms of its scope and its scale, in terms of the subject matter that it's tackling. It has great performances, as you mentioned, Lizzie, has great set pieces. Paul Thomas Anderson can do action. It's got a great Leonardo DiCaprio performance, one of the most famous men in the world. This is his Oscar year. It's also not competing with Sinners for screenplay because adapted screenplay for One Battle After Another versus original. And so it's really just best picture, best director, right? Where they're going up against each other. I think the thing that's working against this movie, in a sense, is the fact that the Leo campaign for best actor is not

• 50:14Chris Winterbauer?

  obvious or a clear cut winner. And Timmy Chalamet is marching down the field, seemingly ready to take that Oscar.

• 50:23Lizzie Bassett?

  I think he will.

• 50:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Won the Golden Globe, great performance in Marty Supreme. And what's interesting is Timothy Chalamet is very much the heir apparent to a Leonardo DiCaprio type.

• 50:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 50:33Chris Winterbauer?

  And so, in a sense, this is a changing of the guard, you know what I'm saying, from, or could be perceived that way narratively, from Leo to Timmy. So I would argue that I think Michael B. Jordan has a better chance because voters that would either go for Leo or Marty might cancel each other out a little bit, you know what I'm saying? Whereas B. Jordan is offering a very different performance in Sinners.

• 50:55Lizzie Bassett?

  I would be very happy with Timothy Chalamet or Michael B. Jordan. And we'll do a separate episode that will cover Marty Supreme. Spoiler alert, I loved it. But yeah, either of them, I think it's extremely deserved. It would make me very happy. I think One Battle After Another will almost certainly take best picture. And I think that it is a corrective Oscar because there's so many that Paul Thomas Anderson should have won that he didn't. And the Academy does this all the time. They did it with Leonardo DiCaprio and The Revenant. I wish they wouldn't. I wish they would just award the people that deserve the awards when they deserve the awards. Because when you keep doing this, you're going to keep snubbing people who should have gotten the awards. And you're going to keep having to do these stupid corrective Oscars. And they make me so mad.

• 51:36Chris Winterbauer?

  It is interesting how this, at least is the perception. Whether it's the truth, we don't know. We are not Academy voters. But there is the sense of some sort of rolling deficit that we seem to always create through these awards and nominations and victories at the end of the day.

• 51:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, stop doing it.

• 51:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it is interesting. I do think if Ryan Coogler misses out this year, it will eventually happen with him. Because he's obviously going to be here for a long time, making great movies, and he will be nominated many, many more times. I am certain of that fact. But the one thing I appreciate about both Coogler and Paul Thomas Anderson, I'm sure that they both care. I'm sure they would both like it if they won an award. They are both very reserved, especially Mr. Coogler. Pumble, just, you know, they want to make their movies. They're here for the work. They are not campaigning. Timothy Chalamet is campaigning.

• 52:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Good for him. Do it.

• 52:30Chris Winterbauer?

  I know. And I'm also like, go for it by all means. But I do appreciate kind of the quiet humility of both of these directors, especially Ryan Coogler.

• 52:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure.

• 52:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Who turned down an opportunity to be a voting member of the Academy a few years ago, not because he doesn't like the Academy. He's just like, I don't like voting on other people's movies. It's not, you know, what I'm interested in doing.

• 52:47Lizzie Bassett?

  You know, this movie is called One Battle After Another. Obviously, that is an accurate depiction of what happens in the movie. But in terms of a movie that I think more successfully maintains an unbelievably stressful tension across what could also be described as one battle after another over and over and over again, is not, in fact, this movie, but is Marty Supreme. And I know we're going to get there, but like, I actually think Marty Supreme is more successful at some things that One Battle After Another is trying to do than One Battle After Another is. And it's a movie, at least on the surface, about ping pong. So I think PTA was doing too much with this one.

• 53:26Lizzie Bassett?

  And I think he does better when there is more of a grounding, when there's more of a phantom thread, as it were, running through the central story of the film.

• 53:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Very well put, Lizzie. We will get to Marty Supreme. As you mentioned, it is a film driven by the increasingly poor decisions of a singular character. I do think one of the reasons structurally, although I do have my criticisms of that film as well, structurally, that movie does really work for me. For me, Neither Sinners nor One Battle After Another works quite as well is because we have a clear point of view and we are watching the falling dominoes of one or more series of decisions as opposed to a more tableau style of filmmaking that we've seen with both of these movies.

• 54:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, there's just a clear point of focus. And for me, Sinners did have that. I know it didn't have that for you. I think that's totally fair criticism. In One Battle After Another, I absolutely don't have that. I feel more at sea than I think he intended the viewer to feel. Not to say you shouldn't or can't make ensemble pieces. You absolutely should and you can, but there needs to be something for the audience to hold on to as you slosh them around in the sea of the story. And I didn't have that in this.

• 54:35Chris Winterbauer?

  I generally agree. It sounds like I probably liked One Battle a little more than you did.

• 54:40Lizzie Bassett?

  I liked it. I want to be clear. I really enjoyed it.

• 54:42Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I know. Yeah. But I'm just saying, I'm not as high as, you know, one best film of the year for a lot of critics lists that we will get to. My favorite film of the year was not either of these movies and we'll get to it. It was nominated.

• 54:54Lizzie Bassett?

  I think we may have the same favorite. We'll find out.

• 54:57Chris Winterbauer?

  I do want to shout out a couple of Warner Brothers films that were not nominated, but that I thought were excellent, since this is kind of our Warner Brothers episode. So Final Destination: Bloodlines.

• 55:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Pretty fun.

• 55:08Chris Winterbauer?

  That was never going to get nominated. I just want to say, great time at the theater. I never thought another Final Destination movie could be that good. So I just want to shout it out.

• 55:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Don't you drop that penny, you piece of shit kid. That's all I got to say about that.

• 55:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Well done. I'm very impressed. And that was a fun time at the box office. The Conjuring Last Rites, I'm good.

• 55:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Let's not do any more of those.

• 55:30Chris Winterbauer?

  It was fun. I think we're good. That's why we called it Last Rites.

• 55:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Think we've been good.

• 55:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Let's keep on keeping on. And then I would like to give a special shout out to Weapons.

• 55:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, Weapons is great.

• 55:42Chris Winterbauer?

  I loved Weapons. I think this movie is the most Most interesting movie from a screenwriting perspective of the year. A lot of people have spent a lot of time pointing out plot holes in the film. I get it. I think this movie did something extremely fun with an elliptical structure that is rarely seen today. It's not exactly a Magnolia or something like that, although I know Zach Krieger has used that as a reference. And I thought it was a great way of using, we talked about using editing as a theme, Lizzie and Memento, using editing to explore how memories work. And I thought Weapons did a great job of using screenwriting to explore how disorienting addiction can be.

• 56:22Chris Winterbauer?

  And so I would just like to give out a special shout out to Weapons, which was one of my favorite times at the theaters this year. No, I don't think it should win Best Picture, but I did think it was great.

• 56:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Agreed.

• 56:32Chris Winterbauer?

  And I look forward to Zach Krieger's Raccoon City set Resident Evil film.

• 56:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 56:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Whenever it shall come out as he jumps into the franchise machine.

• 56:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Very briefly, you mentioned plot holes. I just want to say I don't actually care that much about plot holes. If I'm enjoying the movie, I-

• 56:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it don't bother me.

• 56:49Lizzie Bassett?

  No, I don't care. I'm pretty forgiving of it.

• 56:51Chris Winterbauer?

  There are plot holes in, in all these movies. There's, you know, you could find them in Sinners or One Battle or whatever. And again, as long as I'm having a good time.

• 56:59Lizzie Bassett?

  That's the thing.

• 57:00Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm fine. So they don't bother me that much either. All right, Lizzie, any final thoughts on these two Best Picture nominees? Before we inevitably tip the scales in one direction or another-

• 57:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Of course.

• 57:13Chris Winterbauer?

  As hordes of Academy voters listen to this episode. And glean nothing.

• 57:18Lizzie Bassett?

  I mean, I think that my thoughts and feelings are pretty clear. You know, I go back and listen to our review of one battle after another. We did really enjoy it. It is a really good movie. Is it a great movie? Honestly, I don't think so. And that's okay.

• 57:32Chris Winterbauer?

  I thought it was a great theatrical experience and I do agree it didn't hold up as well when I rewatched it at home.

• 57:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 57:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Just by myself. So I agree, there was a bit of a step down with it there.

• 57:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. And you know, that's fine for things to play better in theater than they do at home. I still, I think it absolutely deserves to be nominated. Do I think it is the best picture of the year? No, I don't. Do I think it'll win? Yes, I think it probably will. I know that I have waxed poetic on Sinners for most of this episode. I think that this movie is remarkable. I certainly would not be mad if it won Best Picture. There are some other movies as well that I would not be mad if they won Best Picture.

• 58:10Chris Winterbauer?

  I think there are a lot of great movies.

• 58:11Lizzie Bassett?

  A lot of good ones. A lot of good ones. And I know we're not doing a versus, but between these two, if I were picking on a 50/50, I would go with Sinners, just in terms of how successful it was as an overall art piece. I know I am, I'm certainly the minority on that.

• 58:28Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know. I think we're gonna wait and see. It seems like it right now for Best Picture. You know what I mean? But I could see, like, there is so much momentum behind so many categories for Sinners that I wouldn't be shocked. I think it's, I agree it's not likely, but I wouldn't be shocked.

• 58:43Lizzie Bassett?

  I will say this. Sinners is in a category of maybe three or four movies that are on this list that I would be perfectly happy if it won. I don't believe there's anything that is like a clear standout in terms of the Best Picture this year. I think Sinners, for me, comes as close as it could with one or two other exceptions that we will talk about. One battle after another is not in that top tier for me, and yet I think it is what will win.

• 59:09Chris Winterbauer?

  I would not put either of these in my top, top tier. Like, if I were to pick a top three, but they would be in that middle. Somewhere around there. We'll see.

• 59:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Don't listen to Chris.

• 59:20Chris Winterbauer?

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't listen to me. I look forward to seeing whichever one takes home the gold. And you can watch both on HBO Max right now, if you guys would like, prior to the awards ceremony. With that, we will conclude our first episode of our Oscars coverage. We hope that you enjoyed this conversation. As always, this is a podcast about celebrating movies, about celebrating the people that make them. As we've discussed, there are so many incredibly talented people on these movies, all the way below the line. I would just like to shout out a couple of names that We didn't mention in the episode proper, just because their work was and remains so good. On Sinners, I just want to give a couple of special shout outs.

• 1:00:06Chris Winterbauer?

  The cinematography by Autumn Derald Arcapah is amazing.

• 1:00:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 1:00:12Chris Winterbauer?

  The music, I agree, Lizzie, is incredible. There's a lot of great music this year, and this one really stands out. Ludwig Gorenson and the way that he synthesizes elements of music over many, many years.

• 1:00:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Chris Winterbauer?

  And seamlessly within the story, diegetically, non-diegetically, it's really incredible.

• 1:00:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, you mentioned the two, obviously, there is the scene that very explicitly does it, the past, present, and future one. But I think that what he does musically with that rocky road to Dublin sequence is so cool.

• 1:00:44Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. It's great. Even the joke of they whip their little guitars out and they start playing Pick Poor Robin Clean. Is so well done. It's so funny. It's like uses music to such humor and disarming effects. And so music is used so well in that movie. The production design by Hannah Beetsler and of course, the costumes by

• 1:01:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Ruth Carter.

• 1:01:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Iconic Ruth Carter. And I just would like to say to the whole makeup team and department for the special effects makeup that's done on this movie. Just really, really well done. And then on One Battle After Another, I just want to shout out, obviously, Johnny Greenwood's music. Cinematography by Michael Baumann. I do think the editing on One Battle After Another is really exceptional. Andy Jurgensen.

• 1:01:24Lizzie Bassett?

  It's great.

• 1:01:25Chris Winterbauer?

  And production design by Florencia Martin and the costumes by Colleen Atwood are, I mean, just how many people are going to go as Bob? In the bathrobe, you know, for Halloween next year.

• 1:01:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, they already went this year.

• 1:01:38Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right. They went this year already. Yeah, with the wraparound shades and that costume. So again, really amazing work. Up and down the line on these movies and I'm such deserving winners in so many categories. And I'm excited to see who takes it home and what they do next.

• 1:01:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Me too. All right. If you're enjoying this episode, we will be doing them for all of the Best Picture nominees. In two weeks, we're tackling A24's, Oscars, hopefuls, Hamnet, and Begonia. Can't think Of two more different movies, but from here on out, they will be for our subscribers only. There are a few easy ways to listen. You can subscribe in Apple or Spotify and you will get all of these Oscars episodes, plus at least one bonus episode every month going forward, or you can join our Patreon. For a flat fee of $5 per month, you get access to all bonus content, plus an ad-free feed, musings, mostly from Chris, and more. So make sure you subscribe to keep listening and come back next time for Hamnet and Begonia.

• 1:02:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Very excited to talk about those films with you guys. We also will be doing a special review of Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights.

• 1:02:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I can't wait. I can't wait.

• 1:02:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Very excited about that. I'm rereading Wuthering Heights now to get ready for it.

• 1:02:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Ooh.

• 1:02:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Spooky scary.

• 1:02:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Carmel and I were talking about it, and she said first, she said, "It's not really romantic."

• 1:02:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Not at all. That's what I've been saying.

• 1:03:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, so we'll see.

• 1:03:02Lizzie Bassett?

  It's a ghost story.

• 1:03:02Chris Winterbauer?

  I know.

• 1:03:03Lizzie Bassett?

  It's a weird creepy, maybe a little incestuous ghost story.

• 1:03:06Chris Winterbauer?

  So I'm very excited about that as well. So if you guys are interested, head to our Patreon or subscribe through Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

• 1:03:13Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. All right. We will see you wherever we see you. Got a lot of content going on right now. Hope you're enjoying it.

• 1:03:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Talk to you guys soon.

• 1:03:21Speaker 03

  Go to patreon.com/whatwentwrongpodcast to support What Went Wrong and check out our website at whatwentwrongpod.com. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom Podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman.

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