The Making of Final Destination: Bloodlines with Directors Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky + Movie Review: 28 Years Later + Trailer Park: Deliver Me from Nowhere

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I am your host movie Mike Jam packed episode for you today. First up, we're talking to the directors of Final Destination Blood Lines, Adam Stein and Zak Klapowski, all about the behind the scenes of that movie. We have some movie news because one of my favorite actors has just joined the cast of Spider Man four. In the movie review, we'll be talking about twenty eight Years Later and why it is the most beautiful horror film I've seen in a long time, and how I describe to be a butt drenching movie. And in the trailer park, we'll talk about Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in the upcoming biopic Delivered Me from Nowhere, all about the Boss. Thank you for being here, thank you for being subscribed, shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew. And now let's talk movies from the dust Trolle podcast network. And this is movie Mike Movie popas about to get into my conversation with Adam Stein and zak Lapowski. They are a directing duo. On the set, they are known as Zadam. Basically, they are two guys who can finish each other's sentences. They are that close. They first met seventeen years ago as competitors on a Steven Spielberg filmmaking reality show called On the Lot that started their long lasting friendship and filmmaking partnership. They went on to work for Disney Universal. They directed the indie sci fi movie Freaks, and now are responsible for the latest installment in the Final Destination franchise, which is a big franchise to take on. The movie is about a college student named Stephanie who is having these reoccurring nightmares and realizes there is something going wrong and that death is lurking around the corner. So she tries to track down the one person who can stop this cycle, which is her grandmother named Iris, and hopefully her grandma can save her and her entire family from death. Final Destination Bloodlines is now available on digital and will be on four k UHD on July twenty second. And let's hop into this interview now with directors Adam and Zach.

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Speaker 2: H'm Mike Form Movies Mike Movie Podcast Here.

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Speaker 1: I am so excited.

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Speaker 2: I love all yours.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I appreciate it. I'm a huge comic book nerd. I'm a huge fan of your movie. I love movies that affect my personal life. And after I finished watching Bloodlines, I was driving home, and I've never driven home more cautiously. I was paying attention to every red light. When I got out of my car, I was running inside the house because I was so worried that something was gonna go wrong. And this movie just has me even freaked out about the things inside my house. So I have to imagine when you guys are making this movie, does it start to affect your mental state of like, I'm getting a little paranoid because everything I'm seeing every day.

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Speaker 3: It's a mix of both. You're completely paranoid and looking at everything with this weird sort of like is this gonna get me type attitude, but you're also then going ooh, that's good. I could put that in the film, And so you're kind of like having this this kind of anxious perspective on the world. But it's also your muse, which is which is an interesting place to be.

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Speaker 2: I couldn't wear my wedding ring for like two years because every time I put it on it just felt a little bit too gip.

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Speaker 1: I could tell by watching this movie that you guys went back and rewatched all the movies. Do you start to assemble like this list of rules of like, Okay, this is what death can do, this is what death will do.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, we've probably dived deeper than most people have ever dove into the final destination sort of rule book. There's kind of clear things that you see from previous movies that kind of death can or can't do. But we also like built this massive spreadsheet of every different set piece from the previous movies and categorize them and like exactly how they worked, how many omens each one had, if the audience was or was aware of certain things, if the characters were aware of certain things, how long they were, and also like how they related to the different types of deaths next to each other. And by doing that huge deep dive, it really gave us a deep understanding of all the different ways you know, that death can come from people. Often people just think, oh, there's these crazy death sequences, but they're actually quite uniquely different the way that they're structured. You know, some of them happened very quickly, some of them the audience knows all this sorts of stuff, and the characters don't. Some of them, the characters know exactly what's going down, but they're trapped and so like, there's a lot of different ways that it works, and we were huge nerds on that to make sure that we kind of had one of each type.

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Speaker 2: And the producers, Craig Perry and Sheila Taylor, they were also with us, you know, for the whole three years we were making this movie, and they've made the other ones as well, so they were also like great sources of wisdom on what how death works. So it was a big collaboration with the whole team.

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Speaker 3: It's really fun as a filmmaker because death isn't personified in the movie. Most horror films or slasher films have a bad guy or a monster or a shark or whatever, and in this case, it's just the filmmaking that's creating a sense as a sense that there's a presence there that's making a beer bottle look scary or whatever it's doing. And that's so much fun as a filmmaker because it basically makes us death and so we just had so much fun building all those sequences that way.

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Speaker 1: Speaking of being a film maker, what was the first movie you watched that you saw and thought, man, that is the movie that now makes me want to be a director.

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Speaker 3: Wow. I mean, for me, there's sort of two movies that come to mind. One, I saw The Jurassic Park when I was nine years old in theaters and it was the scariest horror film I've ever seen in my life and convincement I was going to die in the theater and have kind of been chasing that feeling ever since. And then when I was thirteen, the Matrix came out, and that was when I was making movies, and every movie I made that summer was a rip off of the Matrix, and that that's kind of the movie that made me want to Then, just the feeling of watching The Matrix and then wanting to just make the Matrix over and over and over again. It's sort of been something I've been chasing ever since.

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Speaker 2: For me, it was probably Star Wars, just watching the original trilogy again and again on VHS, you know, plus all the e Walk spin offs, and you know, just like I was the biggest you know, Star Wars kid growing up, and the magic and epicness of that series was probably early inspiration.

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Speaker 1: All great picks. The movie had me just sucked in from the very beginning. It was just a monstrous opening sequence and I think my favorite performance of the entire movie came in that opening sequence, and it was seventy one year old stunt performer javette Ferguson, who became has the world record now for being the oldest actor to be set on fire. Could you tell me about that that stunt and how that went down to day?

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Speaker 2: Well, we had an amazing stunt team. I mean the stunt coordinators. They're in charge of kind of you know, helping us pick the stunt people that will do specific gags. So Simon who's our stunt coordinator, and Dustin Brooks who is his co coordinator assistant coordinator, they know everyone in Vancouver, and they were kind of presenting different options and they said, what about what about.

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Speaker 1: The event here?

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Speaker 2: Like she's she's been on the older side, but would you guys be open to that? And we were like, yes, that's amazing and a event for her part. She's been a long time stunt person, but she was so excited to do it because she said, my whole family's been on fire and I've never been on fire, Like, thank you so much for giving me this opportunity, well.

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Speaker 3: She thought she would never. She thought, basically, I'm retiring and I never got lit on fire. I never because doing a full body burn for a stunt person is sort of a rites of passage. It's like they all look forward to having that opportunity because it doesn't happen that often. And so she was so grateful to get that ability. And yeah, she ran like sixty feet entirely on fire. And then what I don't think many people realize is she ran on fire through the whole restaurant and then ran into an actual propane leak that then exploded all around her with a giant fireball of propane. So like, not only was she on fire, she run it, she like lit an explosion. At the end of running on fire, they.

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Speaker 2: Cover themselves with this special gel that has been gone through very different evolution and over the years, but the latest version of it was invented basically by our stunt team, this fire protective fire gel that's flammable and also protects the stunt people somehow.

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Speaker 1: And they just want an.

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Speaker 2: Oscar, a side tech oscar for the fire jail. This year, Dustin and Colin won that oscar for the fire jel that was used in our movie.

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Speaker 1: That is so amazing. I think my second favorite kill is probably Julia in the garbage truck, and I have just questions about the difference between when to decide to make something with practical effects or when do you cgi for that scene specifically, how do you decide what are we going to do like here on set and what are we going to do in post production.

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Speaker 2: I think our approach is trying to do the practical gag as far as it will go, and then augment it with CG after capturing it. So in terms of how it's built, it's really collaboration with the team. But for each death we go, okay, so how would we do this if we were doing this back in the nineteen eighties completely practically, and the team brainstorms and figures it out. For the Julia death, in particular, they built this amazing garbage truck rig that had this metal plate with metal rods rubber tips so that it could extend into her face and hug the contours of her face looking like it's pressing in, and then in the computer after they just replaced the metal rods with a flat metal piece so it looks like it's truly going into and interacting with her face. And then we also built a makeup effects.

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Speaker 3: Fake head.

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Speaker 2: That was pretty you know, kind of molded these three D skinned on a Lauri who played Julia, and then built a fake head that we crushed for real. And then they take those two elements, the crushed head and the real on a Lauri performance, and in the computer it kind of meld them together and morphed them and stuff like that. So basically getting the practical elements and then using the computer to kind of tie it all together.

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Speaker 1: My final question is for you, Zach. I was a huge fan of Goosebumps growing up, and I it was my dream be on that show someday. But you were on an episode of Goosebumps. What was your experience like on that show?

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Speaker 3: For me, it was an incredible dream come true because I was ten or eleven at the time, so everyone in my grade was reading goose Bumps. That's all we were all doing. And then to be then it was also my first time as an actor being flown somewhere because I lived in Vancouver, but it was shooting in Toronto, and so flying to Toronto to then be in this you know, incredible kind of thing that you would read about, and r al Stein being this mythic cre you know, person that actually like created all these twisted tales, and the other fun weird thing is just for whatever reason because in the season they were kind of running behind. We would shoot all night. They would never like we were shooting nights, even though most of it was inside and like so it was like living like a vampire for like two weeks in Toronto and reclimbed the bookcase. Yeah, the first thing I had the first this is in the nineties, you know, things were just a little bit more loose back then. But yeah, the first thing that happens in that episode, if you go watch it, is like I'm trying to like climb up a bookcase looking for presents at the top of this bookcase, and then it starts to tip and I jump off and it falls and just like barely crushes me. And we just like just did that. Basically, They're just like, yeah, just climb up, and then as you're jumping down, we're just gonna push it over. And I was pret and I look back, going that was pretty weird that they just let us do that.

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Speaker 2: But safety is like so present these days. And even though we did so many things that looked like they killed people in my lascination, the same dy was like incredibly top notch. It's pretty it's pretty amazing how the team you know, keeps everyone so.

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Speaker 3: There's probably no there's probably.

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Speaker 1: No fire blasts and everything.

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Speaker 3: No worse job than head of safety on a final Destination movie. I can only imagine the anxiety.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, who knew the set of Goosebumps was more dangerous than you guys said? Well, I really appreciate the time. Thank you guys so much.

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Speaker 3: Thanks thanks much.

00:11:58
Speaker 1: Before we get into this week's review, how about some movie news because one of my favorite pieces of movie news came out last week. I was so excited John Burnhal's Punisher will appear in Spider Man Brand New Day. That is really exciting to me. I think the Punisher is one of the most underutilized characters in the MCU. I mean, even if you go back to the two thousand and four Punisher movie, which at that time I don't really hold anything against Marvel, they were trying anything with the characters they had the rights to. That movie's not a good movie. But what John Burnhal has done with the character. I think has done what Robert Downey Junior did to Iron Man. Where before iron Man with Robert Downey Jr. In two thousand and eight, that wasn't one of Marvel's most popular characters at all. You probably before that didn't even know his origin story if you weren't a mega comic book fan. But now what John Burenthal and his series that first came out on netfl which was darker and grittier, he is now that character. There are very few people in the MCU that cannot be recast. I think John Bernenthal as Punisher is one of them. Obviously Robert Downey Junior as iron Man, and the third would have to be Hugh Jackman as Spider Man. Well, even though Thomas Jane did play the Punisher in two thousand and four, so there has been two Punishers at least on screen. But John Burenthal hasn't been in a movie as the Punisher yet. And now the plot of Brand New Day is still pretty much a known but No Way Home ended on a cliffhanger, and now Spider Man is dealing with a lot of things and this is gonna be the first time any actor who has played Spider Man is getting a fourth film. Even though Toby maguire was supposed to get a fourth film it was on Sody's slate. There's an old tweet that resurfaces about once a year of them announcing Spider Man for and that never came to be. So I have to imagine that this is going to be it for Tom Holland. I don't know so far. He's not attached to any of the Avengers movies coming out, but that could happen later. Whenever they did the chair reveal, I believe his name was not on any of those chairs of the cast announced for those movies. So not a whole lot of details on the plot. We know John Burnhalt is going to be a part of it. We know Sadie Sink is going to be a part of it, which at the time of recording this, her role in that movie has still not been released. Is she gonna be a Gwen Stacy? Is she gonna be a villain? How is she going to fit into the storyline? The movie has a fantastic cast, and my hopes for this movie. We've had one, two, and three in this series that have been so attached to what is going on in the MCU. I want this one to be completely separate. And when I look at my favorite characters in the MCU and the stories, I gravitate towards more. They are the darker, street level superheroes, and we had that in this last season of Daredevil Born Again. I think you have to bring in Charlie Cox in this in some way. If you have Punisher there, you gotta have Daredevil two. And I think that is a fantastic theme. I think Spider Man needs to go back to fighting crime in New York City. If they could take the tone and style of Daredevil and push it into the world of Spider Man, I think that would be amazing. Some people are even speculating that Spider Man for is going to be R rated. I don't think that's going to be the case, just because the character of Spider Man has such a wide appeal as a lot of young fans, I think by making it R rated, you're probably going to alienate a big portion of the audience. And I just don't think an R rated movie is in Spider Man's DNA. But me selfishly, as an adult, I would love to see that to see bloodshed in a Spider Man movie, I think would be amazing. So I'm curious to see how The Punisher is going to fit into the story. I can't imagine Frank Castle liking Spider Man because him and daredeb will barely get along. They kind of like each other. They work together, but ultimately their egos just don't work well together where they can be friends in some situations, but he's also an anti hero, so they're not always eye to eye. I look at Frank Castle and I look at Peter Parker, and I see two people who are not going to get along. So I have to imagine he's gonna be kind of a villain in the story, an anti hero at least where he might help Spider Man out a little bit. But could you imagine the Punisher going toe to toe with Spider Man. I can't wait to see it again. It's not coming out till July thirty first, twenty twenty six. Myself, I kind of forget what year it is. We are in twenty twenty five. I was like, I don't want to have to wait two years for another Spider Man movie. But next year, hopefully, Although I have to imagine just the way things have gone for me when it comes to movies being released, it's gonna get pushed. So in my head, it's coming out not in the summer, but they're gonna push it, probably to fall an inevitably winter. It's inevitably to me. I'm placing it as another December release for Spider Man. But yeah, no way, this movie is gonna be R rated. Next up in movie news as story number two of three, Ryan Kugler Sinner starring Michael B. Jordan, is coming out on Max this Friday, July fourth. What says America in freedom like Sinners and Vampires and one of the most I don't think it's an unexpected hit of the year because Ryan Kugler is such a just renowned director, But I don't think people expected it to do as well as it did because Sinners has now become one of the top ten highest grossing R rated horror films of all time Domestically, this movie has been a force to be reckoned with. And I knew I was gonna like it just because it's Ryan Coogler and I am just instantly drawn to his work. I would probably put him. I don't know if my top five directors right now, but easily top ten. I think with Sinners, he probably squeaks into my top five now. But this is a movie I would say, if you haven't seen an original movie in a while, and maybe you are on the fence of wanting to go see it in theaters, well now's your chance. Even though MAX is one of the most expensive of the streaming services, I think the quality is always there. So if you already have MAX, it is a no brainer. Give it a watch this weekend or the next coming weeks. I think you will enjoy it. Even if you're not super into horror films but can handle a little bit of blood, a little bit of violence, and just want to see a really great original story. I say check out Sinners. But even if you don't have MAX, it is one of the more expensive streaming services, but I think the quality is there as far as just for movies with new original movies that come out in theaters. But speaking of original movies, in my final story in Movie News, Dakota Johnson says that Hollywood is a mess right now because studios just want to keep remaking the same thing. And I quote she says, when something does well, studios want to keep that going, so they remake the same things, but humans don't want that. She was out doing interviews for Material List, and she basically said that Hollywood is a bit of a mess. She went on to say, I think it's hard when creative decisions are made by a committee, and it's hard when creative decisions are made by people who don't really watch movies or know anything about them. And that tends to be what is occurring a lot. That is a spicy take there, Dakota Johnson essentially saying the people making these decisions don't care about art, don't care about creativity. They just see numbers, they see risks. And I can see that to a degree because it is the movie business. It is an industry that needs profits to continue. And if you look at a movie just by the numbers, you start thinking in a way that is so analytical that takes all the heart out of it. And this is in response to in recent years Hollywood, just in the last five years specifically, which you could say this has gone on for more than five years, they have entered into an ip frenzy. And why do they do that. It's because those movies are easier to market, and marketing is expensive. So if you make a movie about something that already has a built in audience, it's gonna be easier to make. It's gonna be easier to get that McDonald's happy Meal deal. It's gonna be easier to get a Crispy Kreme donut collab. It's gonna be easier to get a Cup at seven to eleven to promote that movie. So it comes down to it being easier to market a minecraft movie than it is. The movie we were just about. Sinner Sinners didn't have any fancy collabse. You couldn't go get the Sinner's Meals somewhere. You also didn't really have that movie shoved in your face every single time you turned on a screen or were scrolling through your phone. But that movie has been so impactful, and I'm so glad it has done so well because hopefully that's getting through to some people saying we can make movies on original stories. We just have to find really great directors like Ryan Coogler, which are like one in a million sometimes. And also speaking on that recently, it was Amanda Seifred who kind of talked smack about Hollywood too, and their addiction to sequels, which she said, it's not very brave to do sequels. It's just for money and it's frustrating, which is interesting for her to say, and I know where the sentiment is. But if you look at her career, she was in Mom and Mia, Here we Go Again, she was in Ted two. She's also currently in talks to make a Jennifer's Bar, so her career has benefited from some sequels. She even poked fun at some of the movies coming out this summer, calling them Fantastic super Park, four Super Parks, four Dinosaurs, four Super Dinosaurs. I don't know, she said, I will say there is a little bit of fatigue with sequels. I want original content. I think it's really scary and brave to do it. It's not scary and brave to do the sequels. It's just for money and it's frustrating. Then again, I do Mama Mia three in a heartbeat. I feel a little bit like that takes away from the impact of what she is saying, because she just contradicted herself and made the point for the other side of the argument, saying, I'm so tired of sequels. I want to see something new. But if you're gonna throw a pile of cash on my table, I'm gonna take it to do another Mama Mia three. That also just adds to the point of actors just need to work and they wanted take movies that are gonna be good for their career, that are gonna make them money. I think sometimes too, we think that every actor is just a crazy millionaire, and that is not the case when you look at the breakdown of who they have to pay, how much they actually take away from a role like a MoMA Mea three. They have to keep working. So it'd be easy to say I only want to do new, original movies for the rest of my career, but also when you start to look at the numbers, you have to do what is smart for you. So again, it is a business. And as much as I want to romanticize my love of film and say that everything should be new and fresh, I also think about the people who I've learned from doing this podcast, maybe only go to the movies once or twice a year. And I think to those people who aren't as tuned in as some of us here who listen to this podcast, you see the movies that are fed to you, that are shown to you through commercials and ads on the radio and social media. And it is those movies with the big ip that are gonna be pushed down your throat the most. And I can see where that sentiment comes of, oh, everything is just a sequel to remake, because they're trying to get to you. They're trying to get to the people who do know those originals, who have a relationship with them, and that is gonna be what you're fed. You're not seeing the movies going under the radar. You're not getting the Ballot of Wallace Island. You're getting less of the new Wes Anderson film thrown at you and more of whatever the Rock is remaking at the moment. So while myself, I do want fresh stories, I do want creative freedom, I do want to have new experiences in the theater. I also see a movie like Elio come out that is providing that, even though I don't think what happened with that movie is all due to the fact that people don't want to support new original movies. I think Pixar needs a little bit of a refresh when it comes to their character design, their storytelling. I ultimately think that is what is going on there right now. But also with Elio, I remember seeing the poster and the quick teaser probably a year ago, and then didn't hear that much about it until maybe a week before its release. So to some people, that movie just came out of nowhere. So again it comes down to them not putting the money in the marketing. And when we talk about remakes versus new original content, I really think we're really arguing hardcore fans versus more casual fans. Hardcore fans are always gonna want the new, fresh thing that's not attached to any ip even though me like I would consider myself a hardcore fan, but I also have an attachment to a lot of franchises, and I don't mind sequels and remakes all the time because I still get really excited for those. And then to a more casual person, they want to go see something that feels familiar, and that is why those movies end up in the top five grossing movies of the year every single year. So maybe it's just a chicken or the egg situation. All right, Well, come back and I'll give my spoiler free review of twenty eight years later. Speaking of franchises, two words to describe twenty eight years later butt drenching. This is my spoiler free review of twenty eight years later. Why do I call it butt drenching Because I had so much anxiety watching this movie. It built up so much tension that I was sweating from the top of my head all the way profusely down my body and left my seat soaked metaphorically, because this was unlike the two previous entries in twenty eight years later, much more sophisticated. Even when the trailer dropped earlier this year, I declared it Trailer of the Year because just the visuals, the sound, and the trailer alone, I knew I was in for something special. And I think because I have such an attachment to this franchise, because how groundbreaking it was when it came out. Because if you look at history now, you think, oh, we've had zombie movies since seventies eighties, talking about Romero and all of the greats who have handled the genre and really made it what it is. But when twenty eight Days Later came out and where it started, where you had this group of scientists working on chimps, chimps went crazy, killed some people. They throw up blood on other people, and that's how it spreads. And what made those movies different is the zombies weren't your typical walking around brain zombies. They were rage filled because that's what it was, the rage virus, and they would go around mashing people's faces, throwing up on them, and they'd infect another person, and they ran quickly, and that was something at the time we hadn't really seen before. Some would argue somebody else did it before, but that was groundbreaking to see a zombie not moving slowly, but to be able to chase you down, to turn you into a zombie. And it's not even like your traditional zombie because they don't act the same way. They are quicker, faster, and smarter. And that was even back in twenty eight days later, which the first one takes place in two thousand and six, twenty eight weeks later took place in two thousand and seven, and now with twenty eight years later, we are looking at twenty thirty five. The zombies have now mutated again, where you have these alphas that are even bigger and stronger and faster and smarter and are so sinister like, and what this movie focuses on is you have a group of people who have moved out to this small island where for the most part, they are protected and they are connected to the mainland through this little strip of land that when the tide is low, they are able to walk from their island to the mainland to go and find you know, wood to burn fires, food, hunt, and also kill some of the rage filled people who are living on that island as well. And that is how they get by because they go, bring their supplies, come back, and they are able to guard their community on this island by keeping that border secure. The dad is played by Aaron Taylor Johnson, who I think is a really good actor. He was a great and no swarato. Was he the best in Craven the Hunter. No, But that wasn't really his fault. I think he did what he was supposed to do. That was just a bad movie all the way around, and he probably saw that as Hey, I'm finally getting a leading role in a movie here, I'm gonna take it, much like Dakota Johnson probably did with Madame Webb. Alfie Williams plays his son Spike, which I think it is really his movie. If you look at twenty eight years later, it is really a coming of age story because he plays a twelve year old kid who he's at that age where he's still a little bit too young to go venture to this island to kill the infected, but his dad thinks he's ready. He's really pushing him. He wants them to be what essentially he is, be the hero of the town, and this kid is scared. This kid is not ready for it. And it starts with their journey into the mainland for his son to get his first kill, and it's really focusing on him developing as a human, where I haven't really seen that in a zombie movie. And I think the fact that it takes place in twenty thirty five, so long after the outbreak, is what makes this really impactful and what really sets itself apart, because you start to think, like, how really would this change humanity? How would us as people adapt to this? You kind of revert back to the very early days of just building a society of you have people in these roles. You have hunters, you have gatherers, you have fishermen, all these really essential roles. And something that was stated in the very first twenty eight Days Later movie was really impactful to me, and I rewatched both of the movies leading up to this to get me in that mindset, and I got really hype going into this one. But there's a line in the first movie where they talk about how are we going to build a world back after this, Like how far away are we to getting things back to how they were? And somebody makes the point of humans have only existed on this planet for a very very small time, and I think I looked it up, and the world's billions and billions of years old, and the amount of times that humans have been here is like point zero five percent of the lifespan of the Earth. And in that first movie they say, well, really, if things were going back to normal, it would be us being gone from this planet for how little we have been here, And that stuck with me because in that movie they're just trying to get back to the way things were before the outbreak, get electricity back, get humans just back living normal daily lives. And when you think about it, really having all those things taken away from us and the Earth just being this place filled with nature and some other life form inhabiting it that can survive like that would be the Earth reverting back to normal. And this movie is kind of going back to the very early stages of humanity where it almost feels like it takes place way back in the day, but really it's twenty thirty five. We would have to go back and literally start all the way over. And I think in doing that and how this movie starts to set this whole new stage, which it like a totally fresh chapter. And the thing about twenty eight years later is even if you didn't watch the first one, didn't watch the second one, which is also fantastic, which is also fantastic, It has Jeremy Renner in one of his best roles that kind of goes unnoticed. Sometimes you have rose Byrn in there as well, and that one's about asymptomatic survivor and their kids who try to get saved by Rose Byrn and Jeremy Renner. But even if you hadn't seen part one or Part two, you could just watch this one and those other two now kind of service prequels, because I think they're resetting this entire world, and the new franchise kind of starts here again because you have director Danny boyleback, you have writer Alex Garland back, who did not write or direct the second one. But this is kind of the new starting point where they're gonna make more movies. I hope they bring back a lot of these people because I really got invested in these characters. Ray Fines is just incredible to have an actor who is so next level to be in a movie like this. It made it one of the most beautiful horror movies I've ever seen, because just watching it was a visual treat where you see this movie filmed on location, this beautiful countryside, and then these really vicious and heinous things happening, and there's this big juxtaposition of like, look how beautiful the scenery is. Look how beautiful of the beach and the water is. But then you have this alpha running at full speed wanting to eat your brains out, especially early on in the movie where when they're first walking to that mainland, it's almost like this witch enticing you with a spell to bring you in. And if you watch just the trailer alone, you might have heard this poem that's being spoken over it that's just so haunting and sinister. It's a poem called Boots, which was all about British infantrymen, where it's this really repetitive sound and you hear the boots marching, and then it gets a little bit more intense, a little bit more intense, a little bit louder now, a little bit louder now, and then it is just all out freaky as crap. That is how the first act of this movie just kind of entices you and brings you into it, and it makes you feel this terror that you don't really know where it's coming from, because overall this movie is less violent. I would say the thing that I didn't like about it, if there was one thing, is I wanted there to be more action. But that was only because I was basically it on the first two movies. If I'd only watched this movie and I hadn't watched the other two, I would think it's a perfect movie. But I think how it fits in the franchise, knowing that the first two are just more action filled. The first one is essentially a road trip movie where they go and try to find this military base after hearing a message with just the hope of finding somebody who has a cure, and then in the second one, where the outbreak happens again, where they think they're safe and then they're on the run again. You're not really on the run in this movie, so it's not so much about trying to escape and away from all of the infected. It's just how are you going to exist in this world now? So overall, the story just doesn't have that same level of action that I feel like the twenty eight franchise has kind of branded itself with. But it's evolved so much where it's taking on something maybe not entirely new, but it's not just one of the best horror films of the year. It is just one of the best films and it's really starting to set itself apart. Now, would a horror movie like this ever be nominated for Best Picture? No, And that is a travesty because it is that good. Just because it's a part of a franchise, just because it's coming out in the summer, and because it's going to be successful, it doesn't really check all the boxes of oh, this could be nominated for Best Picture. Ray find should be nominated for Best Supporting Actor. He just should because he is that good of an actor and is that impactful in this movie that it takes it next level. This was one of the rare movies that I've seen this year that left me wanting more. Where I knew it was starting to get to the final act, I knew it was about an end, and I thought, I just need to see more. It is a great reset. Also just a great introduction if you hadn't seen any of these movies, which is a really rare thing. In part three, normally it's so attached to what has come before it, but for it being what I would consider to be the first zombie coming of age movie, for it not only having great visuals but also great sound design. I just want to pull the sound file from this movie and drive around in my car and listen to it like a podcast, because I think just the sound is terrifying in itself. And I've listened to some horror podcasts, and I think you could pull the audio from this and also make a horror podcast like that. I also just love anything that's filmed on location. I'm a sucker for the countryside at dawn and dusk in a movie. I just think that is the best time of day to film a movie like this. So for twenty eight years later. I give it a four point five out of five rage viruses, and that is exactly what I would rate. Probably all the movies in this franchise, Part one, Part two, and now Part three are all four point five at of fives.

00:37:04
Speaker 2: It's time to head down to movie Mike Traylor Paul.

00:37:08
Speaker 1: In this year is edition of an actor going for an oscar by playing a musician in a biopick. We have Jeremy Allen White who will play the boss Bruce Springsteen and deliver me from Nowhere. It is not a complete biopick, which I like. We saw this last year with Timothy Shallo May playing Bob Dylan, and that was just a small portion of his life based on a book, and we kind of have the same deal here. The movie is about the making of his nineteen eighty two album Nebraska. It is also based on a book. And the reason I like it when they decide to focus on a small part of their life that is very significant is because a music biopick is a big thing to take on, and oftentimes directors and writers bite off more than they can chew because you have these really iconic people from musicians we've seen have biopics recently, from Queen to Bob Dylan to Bob Marley to Amy Winehouse. The list goes on and on, and they do these so frequently because when you think about making movies with IP, you think about Fast and the Furious, you think about Jurassic Park, you think about the mcu well. Musicians and famous people are kind of like that because you put this movie out and people know and love them. Therefore they're already attached to it, and you have a built in audience. So it's a different form of IP. I feel. But when you try to make a movie about somebody's entire life, it is way too much to cram into a two, sometimes two and a half sometimes three hour movie. So I instead like it when they focus on this small little segment of their life to really represent these people at a very pivotal point in their career, which we saw with The Complete Unknown last year, and which is what we're gonna see with Bruce Springsteen here, because it's after he's had some major success, it's before he has an even bigger success. Because if you look at his albums, the one I know primarily is Born to Run, which came out in nineteen seventy five. This one is about Nebraska, which came out in nineteen eighty two, and Born in the USA was the follow up from that, which came out in nineteen eighty four. So you're getting mostly young Bruce here. Alongside Jeremy Ellen White as Bruce Springsteen, you also have Jeremy Strong from Succession playing his manager, Steven Graham, who will play his dad. Paul Walter Hausa, who I really enjoy as an actor. You might remember him as Richard Jewel. He's also done a lot of stuff recently, like Cruella. He's also going to be Chris Farley in the upcoming bio Pick. He plays his recording engineer. The movie is coming out in theaters on October twenty fourth. Before we talk more about this movie, here's just a little bit of the Deliver Me from Nowhere trailer.

00:39:48
Speaker 3: So three oh five v eight never owned a new car before. It's awfully fitting for handsome devil rock style.

00:39:56
Speaker 4: I do know who you are.

00:39:58
Speaker 1: Well, that makes one of.

00:39:59
Speaker 3: Us and boss, can you do Mike Chuck?

00:40:09
Speaker 1: That's trolling out.

00:40:11
Speaker 4: Here's what I want you to understand. This is not about either one of us. This is not about the charts. This is about Bruce Springsteen.

00:40:23
Speaker 1: A lot too Unpacking this trailer. The only thing I fear so far is that it looks a little bit and sounds a little bit too over dramatic. You hear it there where you see Bruce Springsteen going to buy his first new car. He's talking to the salesman and he's like, uh, maybe you know better than me. It just feels very like this forced epic noss that you always find in music biopics that I just I can't stand it because they're trying to make all these little details about them, and these little actions throughout their lives seem so significant and so impactful, where maybe this was a big thing. It's like buying this car and then him struggling with the idea of knowing himself and not knowing himself. It just feels overly dramatic, a little mellow dramatic, and it always just comes across as them trying too hard. But I think that is just the nature of a music biopick. They all do it. But I hope through his performance through the entire movie that I'm not focused on those little moments entirely. That's probably just what they decided to put in the trailer, and hopefully there's more to it than that, because if it's that level of acting and that level of this is so important and significant. Right now we're talking about the boss here, I think we're gonna have a bad time. What excites me about this movie is possibly what is deterring some people from really buying into it, is the fact that Jeremy Allen White doesn't look like Bruce Springsteen. He just doesn't look like him. If you just showed me this trailer and you took out his name and you took out the music, I would not know what musical figure he is portraying up until about the last thirty seconds when he's actually on stage and you kind of see some of his stage mannerisms, which I think he has really great stage presence. And Jeremy Allen White was hands selected by Bruce Springsteen himself. He said, I like this guy. He studied all of Jeremy Allen White's work, probably watched a lot of Bear, maybe some Shameless back in the day. Maybe he's seen some of his most recent movies, like The Ironclaw, which I'm getting pretty big iron Claw vibes from this trailer, which I really enjoy. I don't know if that's just the Jeremy Allen White thing. I'm into that. And if Bruce Springsteen himself said I want this guy to play me, that tells me that he probably sees a little bit of himself in Jeremy Allen White. He thinks it's the right decision. And I don't always think that the person has to look exactly like who they are portraying. I care more about their acting abilities. Can they portray these emotions? Can they really fit into this character and make me believe their story? That is more important to me. If I look back on some of my favorite music biopics, it's not the people who look exactly like them. It's movies like Walk the Line with Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash. Does he look entirely like Johnny Cash? No, I don't think so at all. If you get too focused on the way that they look, you're going to miss the big picture here and not find somebody who can actually portray them. Sometimes you do get the best of both worlds, like in Bohemian Rhapsody, wherever Remy Malik had the teeth put into his mouth to look like Freddie Mercury, which for that movie they did use some of Ramy Mallik's voice. They also used old recordings and original recordings from Freddie Mercury, and the person who supplemented all the other parts was a guy named Mark Mattel, who just sounds exactly like Freddy Mercury. So I'm not entirely sure how much of Remy Mallick's voice they actually use. It could have been like a few words, a few little portions that they put in there just so they could say, oh, you actually hear some of his voice in this movie. But not the case with the Bruce Springsteen movie, because Jeremy Allen White says, that's me, I'm singing in this movie. Here's the interview he did earlier this year with et.

00:44:13
Speaker 2: I'm done singing all the movie songs or I sang everything everything's in the movie.

00:44:19
Speaker 1: It's done. No more prep, no more vocal lessons. I did it. So that is exciting to me, although I'm not the biggest Bruce Springsteen fan, and maybe the same thing will happen with me. After I watched Bohemian Rhapsody, as I was so inspired by that movie, I went back and discovered their music. And now I wouldn't call myself a Queen fan. Before a brief period of time when that movie came out, I did listen to a lot of Queen. My Bruce Springsteen knowledge of his music is really basic. If I made a top three Bruce Springsteen songs of mine, it's so basic, I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, because they're probably everybody's favorite Bruce Springsteen songs at three, Dancing in the Dark, at two Born in the USA, and at one Board to Run, which is actually a song I will seek out to listen to oftentimes. When I'm sitting here in the studio editing stuff, working on other projects or other work, I always have music playing, and that is a song I go to a lot just because it makes me feel good. I love the guitars and that the instrumentation. That is my favorite song of his. But again, that is so basic. But you do hear Jeremy Allen White singing that song in the trailer, and I had to go and actually look and research and find that clip of him saying that that was him singing in this movie because it sounded so much like the recording that paired with his performance on stage in that scene, I thought, clearly they just pulled the original song and put it over the footage and slapped it on the trailer and got it out there. Not the case. So that is so much more exciting to me that we're actually going to not only see him as Bruce Springsteen, but hear his rendition of his songs. Now are they duping a song? Did they just tell them say that? And they kind of did what they did with Bohemian Rhapsody and just work in some of his vocals because I don't really know him to be a singer, but it looks like he went through that process and did it for this film. So that is dedication, and that is what I'm saying. You need an actor who is going to go to those links to take on a role and not just show up like an Austen Butler and just look like the person and try to embody them by changing their accent. I feel like he is still being himself while being Bruce Springsteen, and I think that is going to make this story and this movie really resonate with audiences. Will it get him an oscar though, It's a great question because last year. I think a lot of people thought Timothy Chalomeay was really a shoe in to get the nomination. I thought that was a no brainer. I wasn't going out on a limb predicting that when I first saw that trailer. Here we are again with this biopick. But I just think overall, his performance wasn't the strongest and he didn't really deserve the Oscar. Jeremy ellen White, I feel it's just on the cusp. This would be at a great point in his career to be nominated for an Oscar and to win, because after getting snubbed for The Ironclaw, and how much just great movies and TV shows he's been putting out recently. I could see that just in his career happening for him. With this movie coming out in October, right before Oscar season, I still think it would be fresh on people's minds. And if the movie is successful, I think that would add to the conversation as well. And who knows, if this movie is successful, Like I was just saying, maybe they start teaming up some of these musicians, because we have Timothy Shalloway as Bob Dylan, we have Harris Dickerson, Paul Meskal, Barry Keegan, and Joseph Quinn as the Beatles. They are each getting their own Beatles movie, and now we have Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen. Maybe they form like an Avengers of musicians and we get like an ultimate movie where they all come together and create some fictional concert that never really happened. But could you imagine that like a connection between all of these storylines. We need cinematic universes everywhere. Why not with real life biopicks, you have them crossing over into each other. So if one actor plays a musician in one movie, they're just set. They're going to play them in any appearance in any biopick that comes out after it. My other big concern, not only with this biopick, but with any biopick, if it comes out when that person is still alive, that person is probably going to have some influence on the story. In this case, Bruce Springsteen worked with Jeremy Allen White on set. He got to talk to him a lot, got to get inside of his brain, talk to him about some of the things in the movie, how he would do these things. And Bruce Springsteen was very generous with his time providing that information. But I think also in doing that him still being alive and having that influence, even with him signing off on Jeremy Allen White to play him, he could have some infla. It's the other way of what he wants to include, what he doesn't like in the movie. Maybe I don't want to show that part of my life, and I feel like that changes it because that causes the film not to have the right perspective if there is that influence. I was pleasantly surprised, though, with a Bob Dylan movie that it did show his darker side, his mean streak, and didn't always portray him in the best light. So it can be done. But I have a feeling that there were much more darker things that Bob Dylan was experiencing during that time that we did not get. So again, I'm not the biggest Bruce Springsteen fan. I don't know the lore of his music and his life. I don't really know how he has inspired so many people, why he has become as big of an icon as he is. But I'm willing to learn, and I think this movie is gonna be the one to do it for me. So I'm excited for this biopic, Deliver Me from Nowhere, comes out in theaters on October twenty fourth.

00:49:57
Speaker 3: Gaid that was.

00:49:58
Speaker 1: This week's edition of Movie B Frame or Bar and that is gonna do it for another episode here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta give my listeners shout out of the week. This week, I'm going over to TikTok. I've been posting more clips over there. I've been getting very strategic with what I post from the podcast. So if you are a listener of this podcast and you also want to see well me actually in this studio recording things from it, you can follow me on socials. You can always find those links in the episode notes, or you can go over to my YouTube channel where I post individual movie reviews. Recently, I've been getting hit a lot about what was that movie you talked about that gave you nightmares? That was Bring Her Back, one of my favorite horror films of the year. So if you just want to go find that specific review, go over to my YouTube channel, YouTube dot com, slash Mike d shro, hit subscribe, hit the bell, comment that you're a listener of the podcast as well. Do all that over there, But if you just want clips, I highly encourage you to follow me on TikTok, which just go to the link of my profile because my username is still messed up over there after I got hacked, so I think if you search TikTok dot com slash Mike Destro, my profile still comes up, but it still has a weird username, So just click the link in the episode notes. But this week I'm going over to my comments on TikTok and shouting out stay gold x Darling who commented on my review of The Materialists and said, yes, they don't quite make them like they used to anymore. In regard to me being like, why don't they have rom coms with really great movie quotes anymore? There was a big discussion online in my comments of a lot of people don't even consider Materialists to be a rom com. I do. I still think it falls into the category. I think that's how it was marketed towards us. So if somebody declares themselves in a genre, I am going to be respectful of that. Somebody puts out a song and says this is a country song, I'm not going to be like, well, really, it feels like a pop song. If you declare the genre you want a movie to be in, I am going to abide by that, and I'm gonna find those elements in the movie that backs up your claim. I think it's much more evolved. I think it is probably more into the romance side, so I feel like maybe to most it comes off as a little bit more of a drama and the comedy is very subdued, not like it was in the two thousands, where I think most people think like, oh, that's a rock coming to two thousands where things are very wacky. I think this is the genre evolving. So there's a whole lot of discussion on that. There's a lot of discussion on movie quotes. So thank you guys for always being a part of the conversation. That's why I love doing this podcast, So I appreciate that. And if you're super old school and you want to email me your thoughts, Moviemike dat gmail dot com. And until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you where