M:I - The Final Reckoning, Top 5 Movie Stunts

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Speaker 1: What kind of a show you guys putting on here today? You're not interested in art?

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Speaker 2: Now?

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Speaker 1: No, Look, we're going to do this thing. We're going to have a.

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Speaker 3: Conversation from Chicago. This is Film Spotting celebrating our twentieth year. I'm Adam Kempinar and.

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Speaker 1: In for Josh this week, I'm Michael Phillips. Your team has been betrayed.

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Speaker 2: Oh, your secrets compromised, everything you are, everything you've done.

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Speaker 3: Let's come to this mission impossible. The Final Reckoning is the eighth and presumably last installment of the long running franchise. Also maybe a final statement from its long running movie star, Tom Cruise.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, guy is never going to stop running at him.

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Speaker 3: Let's hope he doesn't. Our review of The Final Reckoning and our top five movie stunts ahead on Film Spotting. Welcome to Film Spotting, and welcome back Michael Phillips. I see you've Ethan hunted in from the top of the Willis Tower. You're in your home studio for this recording. Well done, Actually, Tribune Tower, you've dropped in.

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Speaker 1: Well, yeah, exactly. It looks like for those who are actually watching this, you know on the video portion the I mean it looks like I'm in a tiny, undisclosed room inside Langley Ites where a guy would get fired if he doesn't happen to see Tom Cruise on the wires coming down trying to get the floppy disc you know, going so's this is like the firing room at Langley. But yeah, no appropriate.

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Speaker 3: This week our review of Mission Impossible, the final Reckoning, and listeners answer the question who is the actor or actress of the twenty first century? A question Josh and I attempted an answer to a couple of weeks ago. We'll see Michael if you have an answer to that question this week, But first, let's ride to Valhalla, Michael with our top five movies starf This is of course a tie in with Mission Impossible, But also we thought the timing was right, as just a month or so ago, the Academy announced that the Oscars are now going to start giving an Academy Award for Achievement in Stunt Design That is going to start with the one hundredth Academy Awards the centennial starting in twenty twenty seven. So how did you even begin to narrow down this just a five?

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Speaker 1: Well, first of all, can I say about dang time to get this stunt category recognized. I mean, I mean, Hollywood's full of trades, of subtrades that you know, really do deserve as much Oscar consideration as the ones that have been mystorically nominy. But yeah, getting it down to five not easy. Not easy. And great homework, I mean talk about fun homework because I you know, there's so much I hadn't seen either since I was a kid or seeing period, and that actually a lot of brand new things to me up. Not a lot, but a couple ended up in my top five, so so much for you know, careful consideration.

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Speaker 3: It always some homework bias.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I just I just met the last week saying wow, yeah, that's excellent.

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Speaker 3: It's good when homework pays off when it's worth it.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 3: I will note that this is maybe a bad top five for radio, right because there's not usually a lot of dialogue in stunt scenes. So we'll see what Magic producer Sam can work here with this list. For me, I did try to focus on stunts versus stunt sequences, and I don't know if that's the right approach, Michael, It's just the approach I took. I was thinking about it in terms of kind of individual action. I was thinking about individuals too. It was important to me that we had a stunt man or stunt woman who was involved in a physical action, and that may not be fair. It may not be fair if we're thinking about that upcoming Academy Award Stunt Design trains trains derailing, that is a big thing to pull off. I'm sure we're going to give an Oscar for that at some point. Are there people involved in that? Necessarily No, but that is the direction I went. There had to be for me some sense of real danger or risk, which meant for me that there had to be no or very limited visual effects, and so kind of the litmus test for me or the movie that helped me wrap my head around it a little bit was that movie R R R, which had incredible action sequences and no doubt had incredible stunt design work, really intricate stunt design work. But I watched it behind the scenes featurette that Netflix put out about that bridge sequence where the two main characters meet for the first time and for like two months they're just hanging on wires and all the magic was put together, you know, in post production. Again they did a ton of work on it. I'm not saying it wasn't physically demanding, or that it wasn't an achievement in stunt design, but the magic was made in post, and so I was really thinking about scenes and stunts where I felt like the magic was captured in camera. If that makes.

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Speaker 1: Sense, Yeah, yeah, No, I think that's a good way to break it down. I did that consciously for a couple of picks, and for a couple of ones, I just blew past that idea and I did the opposite of what you're saying, yeah, which is basically take you know, a whole series of action beats and things like that. But I take your point on our film I really like, but it's the film is also it's such a frenzied stylistic, you know, mash up and you know kind of it's just pure chaos and with every possible you know, practical and digital element kind of happening at once, and it's hard to parse. I think, what the what the real you know, stand out the stunts are and something like that. When when as you say, it's not meant, you know, the whole movie is meant to not be believed as you watch it in a way you can't you can't believe what you're seeing. You know it's a way mostly, But yeah, I take your point.

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Speaker 3: The point hit us with your number five movie stunt, all right.

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Speaker 1: For example, my number five is not a moment. It doesn't really even feature you know, particular, one particular stunt, you know, team or driver or whatever. But it's Ronan for nineteen ninety eight John Frankenheimer's film, which is a film I saw once back then you saw it again a couple of nights ago, and right now I can't even winnow down at this is how frustrating I'm gonna I'm gonna make you. This is gonna be very frustrated for you. I couldn't even pick one of the two massive car chases in that there's one set in Paris and one set in Nice, which has an awful lot of weaponry and it bazookas, and I think I'm less keen on the nie chasingness. But this is just the right director John Frankenheimer, who did Grand Prix and did the Train with Lancaster and is very good at physical action, and this is the moment in film history. I think the late nineties, when you could get a medium, high budget picture with a tremendous amount of stunt work in it, and it could really beat up parts of Paris and nice. But you have like Formula One drivers designing the stunts and leading the driving team, and it's just basically a shootout between de Niro's team, Robert de Niro's team and the other folks. Jonathan Price with his incredible eyebrows in the backseat of the Bad Guys car, eyebrows absolutely made to look at these stunts, you know, in Alarm, and it's the kind of vehicular craziness and vehicular homicide really that I hate to say it thrilled me when I was three, four or five years old. I couldn't you know, you know, I couldn't get enough. I saw Grand Prix when I was five, in the front row of the rialto and re scene, and my folks were somewhere back there, and that's a three hour movie with a lot of soap opera in it, and I was just I couldn't wait for the racing scenes and all that split screen stuff with James Garner, all that and I had I got such a terrible bloodshot. Reactions I got a week off of school as a result, and that's why I fell in love with the movies. It was a week off from school. But that's that's the reason any exactly. But to see how Frankenheimer his editors and and this especially the pair of sequence, which is like driving against traffic one way, A lot of really really close calls, just in terms of stunt people almost getting creamed as they walk and then suddenly have to run across the road without a cut. You know, it's it's the kind of thing that is not done anymore, honestly in American filmmaking. I don't think so, not not not legally. And it's just not there's too much concern about safety. I'm not saying too much. There is too much, but there is much concern about safety now rightly so for the safety of these people. Too many people have died over the years of Hollywood history for just this kind of thing, but nobody died on Ronan and that scene is just thrilling, especially the Paris car chase. If you haven't seen it in a while, check it out. And it's it's like it's it's peak auto start work.

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Speaker 3: I just rewatched it in anticipation of this list hadn't seen the movie, and I haven't seen the movie in its entirety since its release. That Paras sequence is so good, and I love a couple of things about it. One, I love the de Niro actually looks terrified most of the time he's driving it, you know, like the cool gangster type character. He actually looks really scared throughout the whole thing. And my other favorite part is stellin Scarsguard is in the passenger seat of the bad guy's car or who DeNiro is chasing, and he doesn't put his seat belt on until like the four and a half minute mark, when they're finally going against traffic. Like he've done so many terrifying things, he doesn't put his seat belt on until that point. But that sequence really is a stunner. And when you think about the all time great car chases, and I did think about them for this list, you go back to Bullet even more recently, somewhat like the Borne Identity, which has the great Mini Cooper Paris car chase, and I think at least one other good one in the series, the French connection. Of course, Ronan is in there in that conversation has to be.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and Ronan's much you know, it's a generation after a French connection. But it's funny though the look in de Niro's eyes and Ronin is a variation on what Hackman's looking like behind your Wheel and fresh connection, which is just like rage and terror. I think raced free cons making him do this part at that moment, and it's just like legitimate fear for risking people's lives, you know, in a way that would never work today, and freaking what was the first to admit that? But this is how good that scene is. Ronan. In the last fifteen seconds of the chase, there's a shot, it's the only noticeable cheat. It's less than a second long, but it's a shot of the car about to kind of tumble off the end of the highway under construction, and it's a it's a it's the one clear moment of a kind of upside down car tilting, you know, terrified actors. And it's clearly that was later in studio or somewhere or something. But it's it's a half a second. That's one second out of five seven minutes. I mean, you know, so that's the kind of level of just okay, we're just gonna do this. We're not gonna you don't need anything, Thank god. This was just just before the digital wave, you know, really and the effects, although I mean Jurassic Park have been around a long you know, a few years by then, but it's just it's just great. It's to me now, rowing in from nineteen ninety eight feels almost like you're watching something closer to Stagecoach in nineteen thirty nine, do you know what I mean? Technical sort of the Yeah, amazing.

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Speaker 3: Before I get to my number five, I do want to acknowledge that there's a couple of movies you won't hear, maybe more than a couple you won't hear come up on our list because they're in the film spotting pantheon, that that hall of fame, if you will, movies that we put away. We say they're ineligible for top five consideration. One of those, Michael, I know you weren't considering, but of course I was considering the Boulder chase that begins Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Arc.

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Speaker 1: I like that scene. You know. Yeah, I'm sorry, people.

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Speaker 3: Are We don't have to litigate it now. I just really I just wanted to say it.

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Speaker 1: I just wanted to say it.

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Speaker 3: Okay, all right, to make my list, it's in the pantheon. Do we consider what Donald O'Connor is doing and make them laugh and singing in the rain a stunt? Maybe maybe not eligible though, And there is one other titles in the pantheon, but we're just gonna sit on that for now. My number five is John McClain jumping off Nakatomi Plaza in die Hard. First off, I love die Hard, but here's why this made the cut for me. It's maybe the first stunt I thought was cool as a kid, and the first stunt where I was aware of it being a stunt, you know, a big set piece with explosions. And Bruce Willis may not have been a huge star at the time, it's the movie that helped catapult him to being a huge star. But I was pretty sure that they didn't have him jump off an La skyscraper. So how did they make me believe that he did? And director John McTiernan builds the tension really nicely. The terrorists are about to blow the roof. We've got one of the all time great bad guys. Of course, they're played by Alan Rickman. McClain is trying to get all the hostages to go back inside, so he's shooting his gun up in the air. The FBI then think that he's one of the terrorists, so then they're shooting at him, and McClain does what he's done the entire movie. He improvises. He grabs a fire hose, he ties it around his waist. There's really no good reason to believe that this fire hose is going to be enough to hold him as he jumps off this roof. But it's all he can do, and he's human, and while he's doing it, he has a sense of humor about it.

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Speaker 1: I promise, Oh, never even think about going up when it's all filled. He's all having time.

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Speaker 3: Compared to Ronan, certainly compared to pretty much every other stunt that I imagine is going to come up on our lists, it's kind of meat and potatoes. It's pretty basic. He's not Ethan Hunt, he's not whatever superheroes the Fast and Furious characters became. He's just a cop. He's tried to save his marriage at Christmas. That's fine, it works for me, and not that it really matters but is there one overhead shot of mcclean's descent where he appears to have a mane of hair as full and luscious as Fabio's. And you know, not whatever wisps Willis was hanging on to at that point, Michael, Sure, But apparently that really was Willis jumping, not off the top of the Fox Plaza, which was standing in for Nacotomi Plaza where they shot it, but he was jumping off the top of a five story parking garage. He He told Entertainment Weekly about it for an article in two thousand and seven. This is Willis And I'm up there on the roof and they're strapping the fire hose around my waist and they're slathering me up with this stuff. And I said, what's this for? And they said, that's so you don't catch on fire. See those big plastic bags of gasoline over there, We're going to blow them up when you jump. When I jumped, the force of the explosion blew me out to the very edge of the airbag I was supposed to land on. So here again, these practical effects right, not going cgi here. They have to make this work and make us believe it. In the moment. And here's the best part they shot this. This was Bruce Willis's first scene he shot for Diehard. Now, why might they have done that? Well, that's a question. Bruce Willis posed to director John McK tiernan. Why of all scenes am I shooting this on the first day? And he very soberly had to point out to Bruce Willis that, well, well, if something tragic occurred, it'd be a lot easier and cheaper to bring in a new actor now and shoot the rest of the movie as opposed to shooting most of the movie and then having to replace you later.

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Speaker 1: That's great, that's good. Yeah, that's good morale for your next thirty five days on that picture, right, my lord, that's good. I mean, that's I I gotta know. I'm going to revisit that now film. It's a film I like, I don't love it like you do. I'm a little closer to Ebert's original kind of you know. But but but again, I haven't seen it in front to back and too long.

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Speaker 3: And that's that's a case for it. That's a case for us, Michael, I'll say, Josh and I, I think we always considered ourselves fans of it, but I'm not sure either of us had seen it since the eighties, and we we revisited it and gave it a thorough consideration, and we were surprised at how well it held up, so it might be worth a revisit.

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Speaker 1: Good, I'm going to revisit it, and I'm going to check. I'm gonna watch for that hair.

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Speaker 3: Do it. Do it because something's off. Something's off. You're number four, but.

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Speaker 1: Number four is you can call it one of two things, police story three or super cop. That's one word. I believe super cop, right, super supercop. That's why. And Michelle Yo. Look, and this was my continuing ed, my continuing education for this week. I always knew that Michelle Yo was legit, and her bona fides was stunt work under Jackie Chan's work and all kinds of other things, you know, super solid and kind of amazing, But just to actually learn that her you know, death defiance in the name of making a movie was right up with Chans and it absolutely explains some of the some of the work she's done decades later where she's not doing stunts, but she just has to bring a certain intensity to just standing still and there must be something about running for your life for real on camera that makes you great in repose and later I don't know, maybe that's that's my guess. But there's a moment where Michelle yoh two things I love in that film where she's it's the motorcycle jump onto the moving train. So it's like it's a parallel two parallel lines right over the motorcycle and then onto the train, and that's that's pretty stunning. And then the fall off the train, that's you know, the train cars typically not wide, you don't have a lot of latitude for trouble. Train's not flying by, but it's moving along, you know, and you know there's a certain amount of maybe there might be some fuzing with the you know what used to be called in silent days undercranking where you're getting you know, it's looking a little faster than it was actually filmed, but it's a stunning moment and you just kind of can't believe that she did that. And then a little later there's a shot where she has to tumble off a really pretty fast moving van on a highway onto a sports car off the front of the hood and then onto the street. I mean, you just think okay, okay, you're dead, you're gonna do You're gonna kill this actress whatever, she's never gonna win her oscar all these decades later, and right just to hear her kind of talk about these things in interviews later, just about like you know, I mean, Jackie Chan knew that that was the only one who you know, could kind of keep up with them, and that was the only and and I think also, uh yeah, with the usual gender bias, I mean there was no I mean, there was like women should not, they cannot do stunts except for Michelle Yo. It was kind of the thinking and Jackie Chan filmmaking universe. But she's She's fantastic, and that those movies, if you if for those who were still especially if they have kids at home and they love kind of stunt working things like that, Jackie Chan and Michelle Yo are a great gateway drug for all kinds of cinema.

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Speaker 3: I second that, or at least it should be a gateway. It's it's a gateway. I now want to open further because this was homework for me as well. I've only seen a few Jackie Chan movies. It should probably be a film spotting marathon at some point. But this was some homework for me and it paid off. We're gonna have some nice synergy here at number four. Michael, I'd say that Yo almost steals this entire movie from Chan if Chan didn't seem so content to let her do it. He's just such a good supportive collaborator, and she is amazing in this entire end sequence that you're describing. But here's the thing. Chan's incredible as well. The fact that we have them both doing such incredible stunt work in this end sequence is what makes super Cop so good. And I'm gonna go with Chan's work at the end, hanging from a helicopter, or as I like to think of it, Jackie Chan's homage to La delce Vita. I don't know if that's actually what he has in mind, but that's how I like to think of it. Instead of a statue of Christ hanging from a helicopter flying above Rome, it's a very much alive Jackie Chan hanging from a helicopter flying above Kuala Lumpur. And this isn't a Sunday stroll through the sky. This is the baddie who's getting away in the helicopter and Chan jumps and grabs a hold of one of those flimsy ladders that we've seen in so many spy movies or whatever, and he would be trying to climb up it, except he's really just hanging on for dear life. And again they're not just out for a stroll at this point. He's being rammed into the top of a building, a billboard. They're doing circles around the city. The wind is very intense, unlike my next choice, which is admittedly a bit more intense. We'll get to that. There are no riggings. There are clearly no riggings. There's no harnesses, there are no safety nets. This is just Chan. This is just Chan and his fingers and his natural strength and his agility and stamina and determination. And he's just clinging to the rungs of this flimsy ladder that's dangling, and they are hundreds of feet in the air before he's finally deposited into a train car. And of course, because it's a Jackie Chand film, there has to be a joke, there has to be a punchline at the end of all this death defying. He's going to be deposited into a train car and he's going to land on top of it. I'm not sure what it is, but something spiky, right, And so he's going to be injured in the process, but not because of the helicopter act. It's going to be because something injures is his butt in the process. Somehow. What might be even more impressive, though, Michael, after all that, it's the feats of balance that occur on top of the train, right. He has to take on a couple of the baddies, like the helicopter pilots on the moving train, and he keeps almost being pushed off the edge of the train, and he has to execute these kind of ballet puroettes on the on the bar on just the ledge of the train to keep from going over. And you just you just sit there and marvel at that agility. How does he how does he do it? The whole the whole thing between him and Yo, that entire six to seven minute sequence, you're just kind of eyes wide open in awe of what they're doing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's amazing, and and it's uh, it will It'll never happen again. I mean, I mean it probably shouldn't, you know. And ethically every which way you want to look at it. Legally, yeah, but it's amazing and if you look at it, if you look at a scene as a film from the seventies, I liked at attended Great Train Robbery with Sean Connery and down. So it's okay really, But Michael Crichton wrote it and directed it. But the most notable thing about it is it he does his own top of the train stunts in that, and they're not particularly active, but it's shot in a way that absolutely is pointing up that we got Sean Connery on top of the train and he's going to be the one ducking down, you know, not in the Nica time, but you know, trains moving pretty good. It's hard enough to do that when you're really just hanging on for dear life, as his character is. But to be mobile and agile and as you say, it's like, you know, it's like every lesson you have and balancing coordination up there. And I think that's why I kept kind of perking up every time I saw him moving train and everything I was looking at these last weeks, from Sherlock Junior to you know, to well other things. But yeah, this is great. We're sort of in the bag for Chan, and you know, it's we're not the first two, you know, I think I think other people have noticed that they're pretty good.

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Speaker 3: But maybe so maybe so keep the train going. I think with Jackie Chan here, right, Michael, number three, my.

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Speaker 1: Number three is well again, n Jackie Chan from Police Story one, if you want to call it that, right, I mean, it's this police Story. So this was the beginning of, I guess was a kind of a ramshackle but delightful franchise. Right, And this is the scene and for once, I'm going to narrow it to one discrete stunt. Okay, inside Police Story from nineteen eighty five, plainly the pre digital age, so no Fudson in that direction. For this. This is the famous Jackie Chan pole slide down five flights inside the mall because he sees the guy he must apprehend way at the bottom of this atrium. He's standing there, he's he's crouching down. He has to leap eight feet from a railing on the fifth floor level of the atrium onto the pole. It's a pole, the aluminum, shiny aluminum pole sort of about out in the middle of the atrium. He has to slide down and you know, through all these different strong lights and then through all the incredible sugar glass. Yes it wasn't a real glass, but it was a tremendous amount of sugar glass. It's all in one staggeringly good take that they kind of repeat them quickly from different angles just because they got it. They captured it from different angles, and it's a stunner and they know it. And I love that kind of showing off.

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Speaker 3: It's like, so I show it again, I show it again.

00:27:21
Speaker 1: You know, it's exactly the kid, and he was like, yes, one more time. And and of course this is this is the truth of all the dangers of stuntwork. I mean, what happened in that one shot that is one continuous take. He goes through the glass, he clearly has a very hard landing. He gets up in the same shot and sort of like runs after the guy because that's the next thing scripted, and then and then they cut, so you know that it's all just happened in one in one, as they say, But what happened at Chanda? I mean, I mean the guy he messed up his back in that shot. He dislocated his Pelvis. He got second degree burns because because of all the electro you know, lights smashing and all the electric lights and I mean everything is heating up burns on his hands and I mean, you know, and this is one of this is just another day at the office for Tan, right, I mean, I mean this was this was a stunter. And it's not really the kind of stunt work that has that open air sort of expanse and like momentum because it's so kind of like confined in vertical. But it is the pole slide for the ages. We'll never get another one like it. And it's and again, I just love it. It's it's this is not high polished film craft, but it is. It is. It is the essence of what makes you focus, Lets you focus on what an actor who happens to be, you know, the king of stunts essentially, you know it can do and did do.

00:28:45
Speaker 3: So.

00:28:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I love it.

00:28:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great way to frame it. Jackie Chan certainly one of those actors who has suffered for his art. And I might be moving on now to the Raining movie.

00:28:59
Speaker 1: Mark.

00:29:01
Speaker 3: I'm going to give Tom Cruise his due. I'm gonna give I'm gonna give Mission Impossible that series it's due. I certainly considered climbing the Burj Khalifa from Ghost Protocol as my pick, because each m I film has had that defining stunt, that centerpiece. But I'm going with Rogue Nation and Ethan catching a plane. I think it's maybe the platonic ideal of a cruise stunt. And here's why. I think it goes back to something you said, Michael in your review. I saw it in your Metacritic blurb for your review of the New One, which we're gonna get to here in a little bit. Your review of The Final Reckoning. You phrased it, is it about what's best for the film in terms of the editing and the pacing, or is it about risk verification? And I do think that this sequence is absolutely intended to amplify our sense of understanding the risk that's there. Ethan is just jumped on top of an airbus, a four hundred that is about to scream down a runway and take off. I'm one, open the door, get in the plane. Not in the plane. I'm behind the planet. He's standing on the fuselage. He's grabbed on to two circular notches and a panel next to the door that he's hoping Simon peggs Benji is going to be able to open sooner rather than later. In a making of video I saw Cruz talks about the crucial shot. He says this multiple times that his vision for it, he kept telling all the designers that we got to see the earth moving away as he's hanging off the plane. We have to see the earth the ground. We got to see his legs flapping in the wind. So the question is is that cruise the egomaniac wanting to make sure that audiences get it. Look at what I did for you, Look at how I put my life on the line for you. That's really me hanging onto that plane as it lifts off from the ground, higher and higher into the sky. Or is it cruise the movie producer trying to maximize the entertainment value, making sure audiences get it. Look what Ethan Hunt will do to save the world. Look how he'll put his life on the line with no safety net, no backup plan. That's really him hanging on to that plane as it lifts off from the ground, higher and higher into the sky. I think the answer is always probably some of both, but my point is that the balance in this case is tipped more in favor for me of Cruise the movie producer. The single shot or kind of the long take approach, and I'm using it in quotes here works the same way it does or can in any movie where it heightens ver similitude. It adds a real time sense of urgency. There's nice cross cutting between different angles of cruise and different shots of cruise Benji Benji's tablet, Jeremy Renner. The plane itself, it's not just about, as you said, risk verification. The stunt serves, the scene, serves the characters, serves the stakes of the story, and it's not just about that stunt. And when the plane lifts off into the air, I remember it on a big screen, seeing his legs floating in the air with the ground getting smaller and smaller in the background. It did have the effect of a roller coaster ride where it took your breath away for a second.

00:32:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, it did, it did. No, it's a great, it's a great. The whole franchise is. I think it lives on the tightrope between those two towers that you're talking about. You know what one is. It's pure ego mania and a bit of mania period without even the ego. Uh and and yes, certainly at their best, you know, they are the thing that people just crave to watch because they know, a he's fine, you know, he's ultimately and yes, well they don't really know. I think consciously is that you know, there are cables and things holding this guy in place. So it's not as nutty as it looks, but it's it's further than anybody else certainly will go and has gone in his generation, you know, in terms of a movie star is really good. All right, look this is gonna if we're gonna, you know, this is my way of saving the movies, you know. And I think Cruz, you know, everything he said, every appearance he's made when he talks about saving helping to save the motion picture experience in troubled times, you know, I think he's basically got the same intensity as Ethan Hunt talking about saving the world, you know, So it's all it's all one to him, I think. But yeah, no, it's a great scene. That's a great shot, and and we'll talk about it later. But there's the book end to that, of course, is he's hanging off a different plane in the in the latest film, and we'll talk about whether or not that scene is as effective or not.

00:34:04
Speaker 3: More memorable movie stunts to come find our top five with clips. You can watch these stunts at film spotting dot net slash lists. Listening is the number one thing you can do to support an independently produced show like Film Spotting. A couple more things you can do. Take a minute to give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It doesn't matter if you're a first time listener or have been listening for twenty years. Every new review helps us reach new listeners. Another way to support us join the Film Spotting Family at Filmspottingfamily dot com. In addition to keeping us doing what we're doing, your support comes with perks. You get to listen early and ad free. You get a weekly newsletter. You get exclusive opportunities including the Film Spotting Family discord, and monthly bonus shows. Our May Bonus show is out now. We had a draft with our Madness Bracket contest winner Ricky Kendall in the UK. This was a draft Michael five round of our all time favorite directors, but the hook was they had to be dead directors dead only directors who are no longer with us. And as I hit refresh on the poll, who won the draft?

00:35:12
Speaker 2: Oh?

00:35:12
Speaker 3: What do you know? Right now they're saying I won the poll. Listeners are saying I am in the lead currently. I had I had a pretty good draft. When the draft starts with Kubrick and Wilder, you know, yeah, you're doing you're doing pretty well.

00:35:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, huh okay.

00:35:29
Speaker 3: But but but other people had good drafts too. There's a lot of good dead directors who knew.

00:35:35
Speaker 1: There are they? A few? A few of them. I few of them had some promise. Yeah, yeah they did.

00:35:40
Speaker 3: If you would you like to hear that show and other bonus shows and be part of the film Spotting family. You can learn more at film spotting family dot com. This is usually the spot where we feature a member of the film Spotting Family. This week, instead, we're going to share a couple of messages that listeners submitted ahead of Film Spotting Fest in March, and we'll highlight some more of these over the course of our twentieth anniversary year. We offered a few potential prompts. My favorite show Memory is or the thing I really value about film Spotting is or film Spotting kind of changed my life when or you could say whatever you wanted to say. Here are a couple of longtime listeners.

00:36:17
Speaker 4: Hi film Sponning, Happy twentieth. This is Nigel Smith in Toflel Park in North London. I've been listening to the show since twenty ten and what I am most grateful to you all for is not only introducing me to films as diverse as hump Day and the Hearings of Madame Duh, but also to the wider film sponding community that has grown around the show over the years. And thanks to meetups in Chicago, New York here in London on Lockdown Trivia Spotting, I've met so many listeners become good friends with a bunch of them, and I'm really thankful to that, So thank you so much. Here is too many, many more years of the show. I will toast you with a Chicago themed mug of tea happy birthday, Hello.

00:37:11
Speaker 5: Film Spotting, and happy twentieth anniversary. This is Fern from Wimett, Illinois. I started listening in late twenty eleven, right before Josh joined the show. I was happy to find folks talking about movies in such a lively and fun way. You all conveyed what it feels like to watch movies, the thing we all love. Film Spotting changed my life because I started talking about you all the time. You know how when you meet a special someone and next thing you know, their name is peppered into all your conversations. Well, that's what happened when I met film Spotting. I'd be saying the film spotter said this, or the film spotters recommended this. I'm thinking I influenced others to listen to film spotting, at least I hope I did.

00:37:53
Speaker 2: So.

00:37:53
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for bringing me weekly entertainment, for expanding my film knowledge, for sometimes getting me to watch a really strang movie, often a baffling one. Thank you for letting me get to know you, and thank you for twenty years of shared film found him. I look forward to all that comes next.

00:38:10
Speaker 1: Cheers.

00:38:10
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for the kind words.

00:38:12
Speaker 1: Fern.

00:38:12
Speaker 3: It's been great to meet you over the years at different events, live and virtual, and Nigel mention those meetups that have been so important to the film spotting community over the years. I actually met up with Nigel and his wife recently in Rome. We just happened to be in Rome at the same time, and when we figured that out, we met up for lunch, had a nice day together. And that reference to toasting us with a Chicago theme mug of tea, which you can't see, of course, because I saw the video. You're only hearing the audio. He was holding a mug that had a painting of hoppers nighthawks, which is not itself a Chicago reference, but that painting it can see. It's hanging there at the Art Institute of Chicago. Again, our thanks to Nigel and Fern for being such great listeners and for supporting the show.

00:39:15
Speaker 1: I need you to trust me.

00:39:18
Speaker 3: One last time, one last time, Michael. Mission impossible, the Final Reckoning. The Tom Cruise mission has expanded from saving the world too, as you noted earlier, to saving the movies. That is the cruise directive. How did he do here?

00:39:37
Speaker 1: Yeah? I love your certainty Adam that it's the final reckoning. I mean it's I think we're the factors, the factors that could tip that the other way. But it's going to be tough with this one. I mean it's a four hundred million dollar movie, and I mean it costs four hundred million to make. Apparently that means it has to make pre COVID money. It has to be very close to a bill to break even. That's a lot of money. And it got off to a really good start. And nonetheless it was beaten by Lilo and Stitch, you know, in the US box office, so it's not the same audience necessarily cognoist, But how did he do? It's good? I think it's it's maddeningly uneven. I will say that, you know, and I thought Dead Reckoning the previous one was a fair bit better. But this film still has things in it that go straight to what we've been talking about with this top five, with the stunts throughout history. It's got the best action really is not just throwback sort of here's Tom Cruise risking his life again, but there's just a lot of good kinetic action in it. I think it's I think it's more sloppily written than the previous film. And what I've heard talking to my favorite sort of my vote for the MVP and this whole ensemble of Final Reckoning, Ralph Sex and what we'll talk about in a second. I talked to them the other day and just have an interview up now. In fact, that script was being rewritten constantly, constantly, and I mean the whole ending was different, you know, six months before they filmed and then they decided, I let's do something entirely different. I think you can feel a little of that stress. It's a wobbly film in a way, but I do feel like this franchise. I don't want to keep jumping off the film to talk about the franchise, but the franchise has been such a good exception to the rule for franchises. They come out in my experience, at exactly the right pace and with just enough kind of ambition that we're always seeing something new. So even with the problems, you know, I basically liked it. I hate to be kind of like that's just idiot criticism, it's not even criticism. But the final Reckoning doesn't have the same I think panache and storytelling, confidence and coherence that Rogue Nation and did a decade ago. That's still kind of a benchmark for me. Especially this is the one that began with the elaborate Vienna Opera house, you know, assassination attempt. This is with Rebecca Ferguson as the assassin, the Mi six meter sharpshooter. This film is just a lot messier, and I think Adam what weighs me down, and it started weighing me down a bit with the previous one. Is when the Steaks have gotten this high, when we're dealing with an entity called the Entity, this AI supervirus that is going to take over the world and you know, sort of selectively wipe out most of humanity, it's getting into Marvel movie sort of like end of the World stakes territory, which is in turn off for me. I think when you go back a decade, even with the Mission Impossible franchise to Rogue Nation, we're dealing with a less apocalyptic threat level. And I don't know if that's the mood of the country and my mood twenty twenty five sort of overruling other things that I just don't feel like, you know, I got enough real world worries about how we're going to get through the next three years. But I don't think that's necessarily the most creative way to up the stakes as a screenwriter or as a director, or as a movie producer and a movie start. But it's it's always the instinct, you know, how do we raise the stakes and it's always it tends to always go in this direction, and I don't know the movie has issues with that. On the other hand, the film is much better I think Final Reckoning in the second half when some of the surprises are what make it a little human you know, love I love this d tour to Saint Matthew's Island and the Bearing Sea, which is actually Norway where they filmed it. And you see my favorite character callback in modern film history, where the guy that had five lines in the first mission Apostle the Cia semi it anonymous CIA guy, William Donald five four lines of dialogue. He had. The actor named Ralph Saxon plays this guy. This is the guy who had Tom Cruise, you know, hanging by wires above him. And the guy never quite detected that there was a problem until you know, the information on the Knocilius was stolen out from underum. And then he gets banished. It's just a totally side bit this other in the first film. But he gets banished to a radar tower in Alaska. This is you know, this is this is the punishment. And then the film we see brings this guy back, and it's not just for like a joke. It could have been it could have been just that like, hey, what do you know they brought that guy back from thirty twenty nine years ago. It's a big part, and it's a very interesting part. And that whole sequence where you have this sort of semi preposterous set up where you know, Donald's found true love with the you know, with his wife up there in the tundra, and that's the kind of narrative corkscrew that I thought delightful, you know, and also just you know, it sort of like gives it a human touch because it's like, hey, what do you know, a callback you know that could have been just pure nostalgia ends up being you know, like really helping the texture of the movie and the ensemble. But there's things like that that I love about it. There's things, you know that I think are just grading in it, like if East sigh morales, you know, literally cackling like a villain out of the Silent Films, you know, over and over in the climax, the second climax of two. Film's got a lot of climaxes. Some of it's just a little cheesy in a way that I think the previous film wasn't and the best of the franchises. But but but but but but solid good? What did you think? I'm sick of me?

00:45:43
Speaker 3: I'm with you and that I think it's solid. I think it's good. I enjoyed it. It's not Roge Nation, it's not Fallout, it's not Ghost Protocol. Neither was Dead Reckoning. It's entirely possible that you're right. The Dead Reckoning is a better film from a script standpoint, from a story reconstruction standpoint. I don't know what to tell you or anyone else. I was so much more invested in this story. I cared so much more about the characters. I enjoyed all of the characters more and just overall enjoyed this film more than Dead Reckoning, which I was just more than the previous alone, which I was just sort of mild on. Despite the bloat that comes with laboring to wrap up the series in the most cathartic way possible, the filmmakers were wise to keep the outside story on hunts and cruises shoulders or legs. I just felt that all the material from other movies, in particular we'll talk about the callbacks maybe a little bit more. But all this material and you spoke to this right that that it gets a little unwieldy. The stakes maybe get even too high for the film, but they still ground it all in the weight of the choices that Ethan is made and the choices that he faces, and so there's still something somehow that feels intimate about it. It all comes down to him in a way that I thought was effective. And I think they make a smart choice early on too, which is they have him plug into the entity. So when Ethan sees how it's all apparently faded to play out, so do we Everything audacious and follows becomes a matter of how not what, Like basically the rest of the movie. We get a preview of the rest of the movie, and I remember kind of thinking, Wow, I don't see how in the next two hours and thirty minutes or whatever they're going to pull this off. I also don't know how the characters are going to pull off, you know, in the movie world, I don't know how the characters are going to pull off the things they're being asked to do. I don't know how the movie is going to jam it all in and then and then they pulled it off. But it was it was like I felt like I was I was ahead of most of the characters in the film. I knew where the movie was going. It's fun when you feel like you know you're you're a line with the main character in that way, and you kind of see where it's all going. But then you also know that you're gonna get You're gonna get some surprises. The key criticism of the film that that I've seen pop up here and there seems to be those callbacks, and that the movie is is too concerned with itself, that it is like the entity that it's that it's too self aware, perhaps, which ironically is a problem I had with with the last film. But I guess my my pushback on that it's there. Don't get me wrong, Obviously there's callbacks galore in this film, and there are and there and there are that that's the bloat I'm talking about. But in the end, you have to ask yourself what those callbacks serve, Like, what's what's the purpose is it? Usually in these types of series it comes down to maybe being about fan service. Well, that this franchise has never been about fan service, and I don't think that's what it's about here. So is it Is it really about Macquarie and Cruise just being interested in self aggrandizement. I don't know. I guess I give them too much credit as storytellers at this point. Maybe they just love these characters too much and they love this world too much. I'll go back to Don Low for a second. Did I groan a little bit when he appeared on my screen? Yes, because I thought it was going to be that type of fan service nonsense we're used to seeing. Why did it have to be him? Did it need to be him?

00:49:25
Speaker 1: We need the movie such a minor player. That's you know, That's that's the crazy thing about it.

00:49:31
Speaker 3: That's a thing about it. But like we needed that character, The story and the plot needed a character like that, Right, Why did it have to be Why couldn't they have introduced a new character? Why did they have to do the callback? But in the end he becomes an important character. His art fits in with the narrative about the choices we make and the choices we don't make. And as you said, Rolf Saxon gives a really good performance. So no, he didn't need to be the CIA analyst from the first movie. But it does work on a storytelling level, and it works on a performance level, So it's not just about the callback. I saw the callbacks as ultimately serving those stakes more than anything, and not just being about serving itself.

00:50:14
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think we agree that that particular kind of link back or call back, whatever you want to call it, is the effect that one. It's the one they treat with the most screen time. It's and it also has as you say, you know, who knew if he was any good in the first film? Really, I mean, you know, he's like fine, but the guy literally has four lines and then he throws up a couple of times and then you know, that's it. It's a purely visual performance, really, and that great scene from the first film with the heist and inside of Langley. But I think my problem with the callback methods in Final Reckoning is that it just too often becomes kind of this this blitz of just purely visual sort of like fussing around with like, you know, excerpts from so many of the previous films, and to me, that just feels like shortcut storytelling to me, not not necessarily serving the purpose of the scene, but really just trying to juice exposition. And that's I think a lot of Aqueri's writing in his best am I films really elevate the art of the necessary exposition, where you feel like, Okay, we have to get this information across as if we care, but you know, we'll find a way to kind of either try to get a dynamic going visually or just make it make make some of the writing actually worth listening to a little less so here for me, and I think it might just be, as you say, the stress of kind of okay, how do we wrap this thing up? But what people respond to it? And in the end, I do love that Tom Cruise is such a sentimental guy that he has to kind of you know, Okay, we have a massive save the World ending and then we have a much more personal one to one. I got to hang off a biplane this time, you know, you know, and that's like this is clearly a throwback, you know to the most elemental, almost silent movie era sort of appeal of like okay, one, you know, this is this is stunt work, like we used to do that exactly One movie star in the world still does, and even the things that aren't great about all the footage we see and the length of that particular sequence where it's really you know, you know, mono Amano plus the plane where I got the feeling a little bit that every single second they shot of Tom Cruise in the air, hanging in different positions, in different parts of the hanging off this plane, every second was used and what didn't necessarily get edited down to the most effective and sort of like amazing minute, it's instead it's like, we're gonna give you all three four minutes of this thing. Again, not not necessarily the best impulse for the overall quality of the film, but I think about that point, it's sort of that has they've earned in their victory lap at that point of the film.

00:53:02
Speaker 3: I think, and that I agree with you on the specific point and also the overall take. I felt that as well in the submarine sequence, where I understand what they're trying to do, or I think what they would argue they're trying to do, which is build that tension, really extend that sequence, make us understand that he is getting deeper and deeper into the bowels of this submarine. And also the bowels of the ocean and that this is going to be a long way up. It's getting more and more hazardous, more and more perilous. And I did get that, but I also felt sort of like it was similar to the airplane in a way where we were very aware it was drawing attention to the risks cruise as an actor was taking by being in that suit and the air tank and doing this dive, and it wasn't necessarily about what the best edited sequence would be. I was wondering how many more times I needed to see him go around a corner and enter a different door in the submarine, right right right?

00:54:14
Speaker 1: You know, something I shooting it has been the true throughout film history. There's always something about the difficulty of filming on or underwater, and the difficulty in pacing a scene that has any quasi reality to it. Of underwater peril is necessarily slower than any other kind of action, and it has a way of just sort of sludging things up a little bit in terms of the overall momentum. And you can't you can't fight that, you know, but yeah, I agree, it just becomes kind of a breath holding contest. You know, was he's already won because he didn't hold it. He held for six minutes. I think it's another film, right, yeah, yeah, but anyway, yeah, but you know, I look, I like that. It's a It's not just that I like that people are going to the movies. I like that people are going to the movies. But I you like that even kind of a wobbly, somewhat rickety final episode is still worth seeing. Yeah, for a lot of reasons. And it's interestingly wildly uneven this film rather than sort of an even tone, smooth, really carefully engineered thing. It's well made, god knows, you know. But it's a different kind of good movie because it's good with a lot of asterisks, but most of us were pretty happy to kind of ignore those and just, you know, take it for what it's worth, which is he saved the world for God's sake. We own that, you know.

00:55:30
Speaker 3: And I said, I like some of the faces, so I just want to acknowledge. I like seeing PM Clement Tiefe again. I like seeing Holt mclaney pop up, Nick Offerman pop up, Hannah Wattingham, even though it seems like she's holding her jaw a certain way clenched the entire time to speak with an American accent. She's a really talented actress. I like seeing her as Admiral Neely, Angela Bassett as the President, Katie O'Brien showing up here in this film, and Trammel.

00:55:55
Speaker 1: Under mused, Hold on, Katie.

00:55:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, Katy O'Brian underused.

00:55:59
Speaker 1: I mean to talk about an action star in the making. White gotten, never quite gotten the screen time she deserves in almost anything except for love Life pleating right, But she's really good.

00:56:10
Speaker 3: I think two action films in a row, this and Twisters, she's been under used, but I still like seeing her. Trammel Tillman, who some people probably know from Severance and Sweethearts, but it's the first time I've seen him on screen. Captain Bledsoe, the submarine commander, the submarine captain. What a presence he is on screen. It was a delight every time he He's really good.

00:56:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, very good.

00:56:33
Speaker 3: With Ethan so those are some of the faces I enjoyed, and I did overall enjoy Mission Impossible, The Final Reckoning.

00:56:39
Speaker 1: I don't know why. Ralph Saxon, you know, for me, it's like Ralph Saxon, Cole and Superstar. I mean that to me, to see I have that. I love it that a guy like this, this tiny, little dinky little bit part. It's just like Rosencrans and Guildenstern are dead the Stoppward play. It's like, you know this, this basic nobody. He finally gets his own play, even if he's has it, and unlike Rosser, they figure out. He figures out his purpose in the in the overall scheme of things, and it's very satisfying this scene. So yeah, I mean, any film that takes a chance like that and has a payoffice is doing something right.

00:57:16
Speaker 3: The Final Reckoning is currently out in wide release. If you see it and agree or disagree with our thoughts, email us feedback at film spotting dot NETI Next week on the show, Josh will still be overseas, So my guest is going to be Aisha Harris from NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. That's going to be a fun one. Yeah, we're going to take a look at Amy Heckerlean's Clueless for its thirtieth anniversary, and as if, we'll totally share our top five movie quotes in our lexicon. Michael, you know I would put it's a pip in my top five. If you would just tell me what movie it's from.

00:57:54
Speaker 1: It's not like it's not from a movie.

00:57:56
Speaker 3: It's people talking.

00:57:59
Speaker 1: You know.

00:57:59
Speaker 3: What's so fun about it too. I don't remember what movie it was, but I do have a guess it's it's something in my top five. I was looking up some details about a film for my movie Stunts, an old timey movie, and and on Wikipedia in the you know, review section or the responses Variety, it was like Variety called it a pip. It was so great. I was like, people really did say that Michael's not making it up.

00:58:30
Speaker 1: This is the problem I was, you know, when I was when I was just I was still in college. I was of a stringer for Variety in the Twin Cities back in the eighties. And that was when they used to collect all the grosses for every every single theater in every market, and then they would post in the Variety how much the film made at the amc this and and you had to come up with the right adjective for the figure. In other words, if it's like, you know, tall tourer in forty seven g's or whatever. You know, but you know, and you always had to be cute about this. And the greatest one, which I totally stole from a friend of mine because we were just spitballing one night, Alma Dais comes out and it was like, oh great, okay, finally it did really well. Wolfgang Busters eighty seven g's you know, wolfgang Busters come on. Now, that's a one time. You can't use that. You can't, but I you know, you can say. You can say something's a pip, you can say it's a card, and it's a caution that all means the same thing. It's all yeah, there you go.

00:59:30
Speaker 3: You can see what's coming up on future film Spotting episodes by visiting Filmspotting dot net and clicking on episodes this week on our sister podcast, The Next Picture Show, looking at Cinemas Present via It's Past, their new pairing is Friendship with Paul Rudd and Tim Robinson and inspired pairing here as they almost always are, PTA's the master. New episodes of The Next Picture Show drop every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. You come in here out of the blue and telling me you leave me just like that, And you have the nerve to expect graciousness.

01:00:04
Speaker 1: I expect a little maturity.

01:00:06
Speaker 3: I expect you to face the situation like an adult who talk down to me. Don't you ever talk down to me? You are a movie star, nothing more. A couple of bona fide movie stars there, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Blanchette in Martin Scorcese's The Aviator from two thousand and four. Kate and Leo movie stars who are also among the best performers of the last twenty five years. A couple of weeks ago, Josh and I did our Actors of the twenty first Century draft. Blanchett was Josh's number two pick, DiCaprio my number five. They were also among the options we gave you in the Film Spotting poll, which asked who is the actor or actress of the twenty first century? You only get one. The options in addition to Kate and Leo, all of whom were selected were Daniel day Lewis, Philip sim Hoffman, Scarlett Johansson, Joaquin Phoenix or. If you didn't like those options, you could go other and write in the candidates. So, Michael, you have the results in front of you. We start at the bottom and go down the list. All the way up to the top to the winner. Would you care to do the honors?

01:01:22
Speaker 1: Yes? Are you ready?

01:01:23
Speaker 3: Yes?

01:01:24
Speaker 1: All right, here we go. Scarlett Johansson three percent, other seven percent, Joaquin Phoenix eight percent, Leonardo DiCaprio thirteen percent, Daniel D. Lewis eighteen percent. Got a problem with that, right there, Cap Lanchett twenty percent, and then by a pretty good margin, the winner, Philip Seymour Hoffman at thirty one percent.

01:01:48
Speaker 3: Okay, here's Colton Butcher. He says it makes sense. The Cape Blanchette and Philip Seymour Hoffman are at the top of this pole. It was incredibly hard to vote between the two. They are both inspiring for those wanting to pursue the craft of acting, both elevate films it would otherwise be lost to time, and both have great range. It came down to Lydiatar versus Lancaster Dodd. For me, these performances are masterclasses in acting that you could break down during a cinema interrupt us and still have more to find. I genuinely couldn't decide, so I did a coin flip and Kate got it as good a system as.

01:02:22
Speaker 1: Does Yeah Tory Lightcap says thank you for fifteen minutes of excruciating decision paralysis. Each of these possible choices is a deserving bright light of this generation, but only one is correct, Daniel day Lewis. He invests each role with an almost incandescent intensity that can only be realized by utterly inhabiting the world, life and mind of the part.

01:02:45
Speaker 3: Very well put, Yes, Bob McHugh. Daniel day Lewis's talent and selectivity made every film of his a must see event. But he was so selective his entire portfolio of this century can be watched comfortably in a day. Philip Seymore Hoffman and Kate Lynchet crafted performances at the same level, but at a higher volume. But Scarjo and Phoenix juggled interesting art house work with blockbuster juggernauts. Hmm, if only there was an actor with a list commercial appeal but also critical acclaim who worked with interesting directors but was also selective enough to make every single movie he filmed a noteworthy event. I see where you're going, Bob, It's got to be Leo.

01:03:21
Speaker 1: Uh hah okay, Darren disagrees. He says it's Joaquin Phoenix. He started the sentry with Gladiator, giving him an Oscar nomination at a box office hit, and he did it again twenty years later with Joker. In between, he gave performances that were dark, you will never really hear, funny signs, ambitious, bo was afraid, heartwarming, come On, Come On, and unforgettable The Master. He even starred in the most twenty first century movie of all, Spike Jones's Her Also, even though he was in a handful of great movies before two thousand, he is almost exclusively known for his work this century.

01:03:57
Speaker 3: All great cases so far a couple more. Mitche McGonagall says Michelle Williams going other from her all time collaborations with Kelly Reiker to her tour to Force eleven minutes of screen time in Manchester by the Sea, there are a few working actors as heartbreaking and sneakily funny. She also has excellent taste, having worked with many of the greats Spielberg, Scorsese, Venom. What more could you want from an actor?

01:04:22
Speaker 1: And Jeremy Camis says, top notch list for sure, and I think I should probably go with Cate Blanchett, But years ago I made a mental promise that Denzel would be my answer to any question about best actors. Denzel Washington, even King Kong doesn't have shit on him.

01:04:38
Speaker 3: No, he does not. As we all know, Denzel did make my draft list so real quick. I do have to say I had the chance. I had the chance of a lifetime. I could not miss the opportunity to see Denzel Washington on stage on Broadway. At helped that Jake Gillenhall was also acting opposite him in Off And I don't know. I had some people who had seen it tell me to lower my expectations. I guess they were sufficiently lowered. I don't know. Guess what Michael Othello pretty good play Shakespeare, what he was doing solid like one I had not read since I was in high school, and one somehow I had never seen produced. I've never seen it. When I studied Shakespeare in college, I studied abroad in London. We only studied plays that we could see performances of, and that fall nobody was performing Othello in London, so I had never seen it, and it felt like I was completely discovering it. Anew and what Shakespeare gets right about the nature of jealousy and so many other things ambition. It was so striking. The humor. There's a lot of humor there as well, amidst what is very much a tragedy. And I thought, I thought that the bravado, that inherent bravado that we expect from Denzel played so well because he's this confident general. It makes that fall even more tragic, and actually it helps you understand how precipitous it is. It makes you believe it even more in a way because you see how he can kind of go from zero to sixty as quickly as he does. That quality that Denzel Washington brings to the character. And with Yago, Gillenhall is such a naturally you know, we've seen him be a little slimy with a character like Nightcrawler, but he's such a naturally charming presence. Yago has to be a charming character. I think, if you play him right, he has to be a bit of a charmer because he seduces everyone. He gets away with it so easily you almost find yourself rooting for him. He's so ingenious that you find yourself rooting for him. And that's what Jillen Hall brought to it.

01:07:06
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I didn't see that production. That is a tough for some reason, that is a tough play to activate on stage. In my experience as a theater critic, I haven't seen that many productions over the years, but I think Iago just has the tendency to just overwhelm everybody's interest, you know, watching it's just he's you can't lose with that part in a way, and it's very hard to win with the fellow because he is sort of the past, you know, in a really pathetic, painful way. He's a he's a victim and a pantsy of this master manipulator. Right.

01:07:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's an interesting, tough thing.

01:07:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's I'm glad you liked it. I know it wasn't cheap, you know, plays around Broadway.

01:07:47
Speaker 3: That's why I went on a Wednesday night. That was the only way I could go. I was not going to get a weekend ticket. But you know, you wouldn't think I'll just throw this in real quick. You wouldn't think that Denzel and Jake Gillenhall could possibly be overshadowed on that night. But I got so lucky. When I'm in New York, I always tried to go to the Comedy Cellar and I've probably been there five times previously. Usually when I go, I haven't had any big surprises. It's always just a great group of comics. You know, up in commerce. It's always a great night. But I haven't had like the big stars usually drop in, which happens. It can happen at the cellar, and that's one of the reasons you go is sometimes someone will just drop in for a spot, and you know that that's part of the allure. It can happen. So Sarah's with me and we go to the cellar and we're having a great time. Three comics come up. They're hilarious, and then the MC comes to the stage and says, ladies and gentlemen, our next comic coming to the stage Dave Chappelle. Wow, And nobody nobody clapped really, and we all just kind of looked at each other like he's joking, right, And then the next thing we knew, Dave Chappelle emerged from the doorway and came up to the stage. He was at the Knicks game and decided to pop in for a set, and he came up to the stage and did over an hour just for think. It was insane. It was It's just one of those things where you know, like you're never going to see this set again. No one, He's never going to do this comedy ever again. This was a one off thing and we were here for it, and so it was a great night. We got very lucky all around night.

01:09:26
Speaker 1: Charlie Park the Village Van exactly. That's exactly what it is.

01:09:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, can I can I play a few tunes? That's exactly what it was. So let's get back to more important matters though, Michael, you've had maybe a little bit of time to think about this. If you were going to think about the best, the definitive or just your favorite actor or actress of the last twenty five years, does the name come from any of the ones we've mentioned so far, or are you going to go off the list?

01:09:53
Speaker 1: I would say I feel very partial to the one that actually won by a good margining, just because it really is. Also it's tinged with loss, you know, in Philip Seymour Hoffen and that was hard. But I mean I think the best we've seen Daniel day Lewis do on screen is very hard to beat. There will be blood and somewhat more problematic, but still love it. Phantom Thread. That work is not really it's too good for this world. I think it's okay. It's just such a at once classically formidable, you know, just a beautifully detailed everything working. It's just great. On the other hand, the performances that the performers that I really love in this century tend to be folks who are not as stars on that level. But just I mean the you know three, I mean, just off the top of my head, I thought, Jeffrey Wright, there's a guy I just can't imagine living without as a movie goer. Lapita and Neon gave Lapita and Neong, so it's still in my view, the best performance of the century is her work in US. I mean, that is just staggering. It's the best performance to never get an Oscar nomination, I think, one of them. I mean, you name it. There's so many people that sort of available. So I guess it's a good reminder that the industry doesn't really know where it is right now. But the boy the actors are still holding.

01:11:22
Speaker 3: Up their end, so less weighty matters we're dealing with. In our next poll question, we thank everyone who voted and left a comment there. Our new pole. If you choose to vote and it ask you to pick one and only one mission impossible film here again your favorite, the best one, the definitive m I film. We're just listing all of them. I have such a hard time keeping all of these films together, Michael. I don't know which title refers to which number, or what events took place. I don't know how to separate them in my mind anymore. In this might just be a matter of, you know, reaching a certain age and we're no longer able to compartmentalize these types of things. When Dead Reckoning came out, Josh and I did go to letterboxed and create a list, create a ranking. Now, I didn't revisit all of these other films, so it's kind of meaningless. It's not like I've I've watched them all recently. I've thought about them anew and really considered them closely. I'm just going off my recollection of them and my rating or ratings of them at the time. I have Fallout as my number one. That is the sixth entry one of them Macquaries, followed by Rogue Nation the fifth entry, and it's very close. Do you know where you stand? Do you have a favorite Mission Impossible film.

01:12:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think I would probably go Rogue Nation. I think for reasons I talked about a little bit earlier. But you know, I revisiting the diploma launched to this thing, this sort of cynical swipe, the idea of a team, loyalty, and all the rest of this re orienting. The whole storyline is a sort of like, yeah, you can't really trust anybody. And I sort of loved revisiting just just what Dipama brought to it. A guy who doesn't care about the mythology at all, a total cynic directing it, but a guy was such an eye and I mean enough Dutch angles where I actually had I had actually acquired Dutch citizenship at the end of the review, I mean I which is handy for me. I think I like it in two passports. Yeah, but that's Rode Nation of Mission I Possible for very different reasons. I think, in order to just as you say, you know, you get older, you just can't even keep these things straight. But I like to kind of break these all these movies down, and just in terms of the degree of reckoning involved. I mean, the first Mission Impossible colon modest reckoning, you know, am I too? John Wu reckoning Comma with you know, things like that. So it's all about the reckoning, you know. But now that we're at the final reckoning, if we get one more, I don't know what would it be? A mission impossible? Nine colon we reckon there's more reckoning reconsidered reckoning with a little two above this. Yeah, I guess yeah. All right, so there you.

01:14:21
Speaker 3: Go that those are might love to get your vote and your thoughts. Leave a comment and vote in that poll at film spotting dot net.

01:14:32
Speaker 1: All right, I'll jump first. No, then you jump first?

01:14:37
Speaker 3: Oh, I said, what's the matter with you?

01:14:38
Speaker 1: I can't swim?

01:14:47
Speaker 3: Why are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you a little. Butch Cassidy and the sun Dance Kid. There a good stunt. Sure, definitely a great scene. We're going to get to some great stunts as we jump back into our top five all time movie stunts. I might just have a jump here, Michael at number two.

01:15:12
Speaker 1: What do you have number two? Well, so my number two I gotta go back a little further for my final two here. But my number two is from Stage Coach nineteen thirty nine and it's really just paying tribute to the incredible skill of the stunt coordinator and stuntman Yakima Canut. He was born in enosknut from Washington State. The amazing work he does in Stagecoach two very quick, remarkable horse jumps where he's doubling for John Wayne, and in one scene he's has to do it's a three horse jump to get to the front of the runaway sort of Tino horses where he just sort of can't believe that what you're seeing is again happening without any trickery. And then and there's another leap from one horse to another at a really fast clip where he's where you just it's it's it's the most old fashioned, elemental, very simple work. You know, one one man, several horses. This is at a time in movie making when horses were killed right and left filming westerns, which gives a kind of a different air of danger if you just can't get that fact out of your head. But you know, this guy was, you know, a rodeo star first. He got his nickname Yakima from the town of the Yakima, Washington, which he was misidentified in some newspaper article as the Yakima Canut and it stuck and he went to Hollywood. He met Tom Mix, He did a couple of Western stunt work as a silent film. And then this is trivia that I loved learning Canut perfected the Crupper Mount. You know what the Crupper Mount trick is crupper cru ppe er amount. It's the leap frog over the horses, rump into the saddle. Now, how famous is that? It's fantastic right when you see that, you know, actually pulled off by people. Douglas Fairbanks, you know did it too, you know. And the great thing about Cannut is that he taught John Wayne how to actually walk into a shot. He's because he Wayne took everything from Canut, and he's Wayne credited it. He says, the drawing, you know, speech, the hesitant, the hip rolling walk, he says, I spent weeks studying the way Yakima Cannut walked and talked. So we have a lot to thank Knut for and that working stage coach A film. I love a john Ford film, I really love. And that film was so influential in directors as far flung and completely disparate as orson Wells and Vincent Manelli, both coming to Hollywood around the same time, said, you know, that's the film I learned the most about cutting, pacing, framing a shot, staging action. And god knows, you don't associate Wells or Manelli with Westerns or anything else john Ford would do. But anyway that cannuts roll in that just absolutely key. And then's I love I love the simplicity of these moments.

01:18:18
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, though, yeah, the Manelli part of that is interesting. The precision of it, though, The precision of the choreography of those action sequences and the speed of those horses in that scene and those jumps, it's something.

01:18:36
Speaker 1: It's something.

01:18:37
Speaker 3: Yeah. My number two the first email we got when we announced this topic was this one. And having watched this movie just for the first time a couple of years ago as part of some homework in preparation for No Time to Die, I knew this had to be on my list. I'm gonna let Bruce can't well and producer Sam take it away. Bruce says, I remember sitting in a theater back in nineteen seventy seven watching a cheesy, unbelievable ski chase with an aging Roger Moore, as James Bond, and then the score cuts out. He skis off a cliff, dead silence in the theater. He goes into free fall, he kicks off his skis and then that's right, I'm going back to the super Spy. Well, the pre title sequence Michael to the Spy who Loved Me? It's one of the one, it's one of the more beloved. Yeah, it's one of the more beloved Roger Moore bonds. It's one of the more beloved and rightfully so, pre titled Bond sequences leading into one of the more beloved themes and title sequences. Carly Simons, nobody does it better. Nobo usually is in the top five to seven Bond theme songs when you look at various lists, and speaking of music, man, can you tell it's nineteen seventy seven from that opening bit the disco score as Roger Moore exits the little ski chalet, it's so it's so good. Roger Moore, Bruce said he was aging. I think he was forty nine at this point in nineteen seventy seven. Definitely wasn't a forty nine year old Roger Moore out there maneuvering the slopes he wasn't Jean Claude Kiel out there. The rear projection is very, very noticeable. The stunt man is Rick Sylvester. Now, this was kind of fun to read up on Rick Sylvester from Wikipedia in nineteen seventy one. This is why he was picked for this stunt. In nineteen seventy one, he skied off the top of El Capitan in California, descended approximately nine hundred and fourteen meters by parachute. At the time, it was conceived as the world's greatest ski jump. Already an expert skier, he spent three weeks learning skydiving to make that jump. He also worked on another Bond film, reportedly for Your Eyes Only, where he did the stunt when Bond falls off the side of a mountain he's climbing in Greece. I say reportedly because a citation is needed on Wikipedia for that. In nineteen seventy eight, Sylvester, along with fame mountaineer Jim Bridwell, help rescue approximately forty people trapped in a ski tram in blizzard conditions. A seventeen ton cable that supported the tram had come free and sliced through the tram. Car killing several tourists. Sylvester Bridwell and others set up a pulley system on the fly to free the survivors and lower them to safety. So this guy's a hero. This guy's a legitimate hero. And they almost didn't get the shot. It's one of those cases where you know they're waiting, they have to wait for the right whether they know they're only going to get one shot at this, so they got to set up multiple cameras. I think they had three cameras from different angles going the weather is not cooperating. They've spent something like two hundred and fifty thousand dollars just on this stunt alone, and it doesn't look like they're going to get it, and the producer is starting to look for alternatives. They're gonna have to come up with some other stunt to do. It's just not gonna happen. And then it finally clears. Sylvester does it. He nails it. The camera in the helicopter fails, doesn't get it. He jumps out of the field of vision. I think only one of the three cameras actually got the stunt. That's why we only get the one angle of it. But thank god it got it. And that's that's what we get here in the film. And you know, this goes back a little bit to my rogue nation pick and the suspension of disbelief. Not only as viewers bruce in the theater in nineteen seventy seven, Not only do we know Roger Moore didn't die filming this, right, we know they aren't going to kill off James Bond in the opening scene of the New James Bond Movie. And yet our eyes just saw him ski off a real cliff up in the air, surrounded by very real looking clouds. We don't know what's below, but there surely isn't some soft landing spot. There's no airplane or helicopter that's going to somehow come by and be able to carry him away to safety. And he's toppling head over heels. Initially to Michael, it's not like it's some graceful.

01:23:48
Speaker 1: Initially spikes seconds, Yeah.

01:23:51
Speaker 3: And it is many seconds, So it feels like it feels almost like something has gone wrong. What could possibly be the plan here? You're kind of holding your breath, like, where is this going? And then the reveal of the parachute, but not just any parachute, the Union Jack Union Jack, Yeah, opening in sync with the Bond theme. Bruce unfortunately didn't finish painting the picture for us, but I have to imagine that every single person in the theater at that time immediately stood up and started cheering. Has national pride in England been as high ever since? I'm gonna guess not.

01:24:32
Speaker 1: I actually think that that shot I had hopes. I think when I watched that in the theater that that shot would somehow hold the crumbling British Empire together one more century.

01:24:45
Speaker 3: You know, it didn't work. But it didn't work, but I thought it could have as well. I mean, I didn't see it in seventy seven, but watching it now, I don't know how it didn't.

01:24:53
Speaker 1: Mike, but you know what you say about it. I didn't know about the camera failures on the other two, but that I think that's exactly why that scene has weird element of like what what what kind of It's a different kind of suspense.

01:25:03
Speaker 3: We don't Yeah, we don't get the Jackie chan like multiple cuts from different angles, no show off.

01:25:09
Speaker 1: They would not have. I don't think they would have had the confidence in the in how good that you know how good that stunt is. I think, just to hold that single shot on it, but it's great. It's no and you know, I I'm not really interested in revisiting Bond movies at this point in my life. I mean, it's just I feel like I spent my whole life as an arrested adolescent. I don't need I don't need to like go back further to adolescents and do that again. But because it is just sort of like, you know, it's there's something about the whole Bond ethos that it doesn't doesn't necessarily wear well as you get older. But but even the good ones I feel that way. But also the best ones go back to something like that. And that's the kind of that's the kind of stunt work that I just crave, you know, always always and always will.

01:25:56
Speaker 3: We are at our number one picks for movie stunts, and I think we're going to end up here with the same filmmaker at number one, as it should be.

01:26:05
Speaker 1: That's right, Guy Ritchie. No, No, it's not Guy Richie. No, good lord, No, I think it's Buster Keaton. Right, it's gotta be so, I mean, you spoiled for choice with Keaton we'll talk about the Steamboat Bill junior shot, which really is epic in a different way. But my choice is your nemesis, Adam, and that it is not just a stunt from Sherlock Jr. The nineteen twenty four forty five minute master work that I just love and always have, But it's almost basically I kind of nominate the entire film for best stunt. It's every kind of physical acrobatic and also trickery, visual trickery, because there's a lot of in camera stuff, and there's a lot of stuff that is simply like a three card monkey game about like what what what went into creating an illusion? You know? What is it? Sometimes it's as simple as the shot where he's he's parked his piny on the handlebars of this runaway motorcycle and it's hurtling toward the railroad crossing and there's a train coming and he just misses it and it's all in one shot, and he thinks, fantastic, how do they do that? It's just simple, you know, And the answer is so simple you don't even feel cheated once you hear it that there was simply a matter of we started. It was all reversed. You start as you've just the shots actually started the inaction terms just after he crosses the tracks and the train was at a standstill at that crossing, and then in reverse the train backs up, as does the motorcycle, and it's all, Yes, it's sped up, for sure, it's sped up a lot. There's a lot of playing around with different crank speeds in Sherlock Junior. That's somehow because he's such a genius as a filmmaker and as a performer. It doesn't spoil your enjoyment of it. You know, it doesn't feel like eyes cheating or it's a gimmicker. But I mean things like all the stuff on top of my favorite thing in the world, people running on top of moving trains. You know that scene where he's getting like basically drowned by this water tanks. Yep, yeah, the spot gushing water. I mean, he broke his neck on that shot. Didn't know it at the time, but they.

01:28:30
Speaker 3: Got a shot in Super Cup Jackie Chance, Yes, does something very similar on the train.

01:28:36
Speaker 1: A total you know, I mean Chance talked about Keaton as a huge how can you not but that plush little things like Keaton as in his detective mode, stalking you know, a potential criminal right who's walking along on the sidewalk right in front of him, and the guy in front of him tosses the lit cigarette up in the air, he's done with it or something, and Keaton catches it, and it's all it's it's a throwaway bit, and every time I see it, I think, wow, you know, a minute stunt or piece of physical action like that. And then something as large as this epic chase at the end, which has just got every kind of the technique and comic you know, low medium, high comic detail and flourish and Sherlock Junior, I think is intoxicating for me. And it's the film that anybody who you know, just wants a primer on Keaton, doesn't know this stuff, maybe saw something they didn't like. That's the one to check out. I think.

01:29:39
Speaker 3: I love it.

01:29:40
Speaker 1: So that's my number one, by a mile. I have to say, no, no contest.

01:29:44
Speaker 3: No qualms here. I think you you almost are required to mention the entire movie, and you didn't even mention three other parts that are maybe my favorite parts. One of them I almost consider a stunt. There's the pool scene, where he pulls off the using Billiard's tricks, which he actually just learned how to do.

01:30:03
Speaker 1: Three months practice or something.

01:30:05
Speaker 3: And then there's two different tricks he does with dresses where he jumps into dresses and animates, and one he jumps jumps through a window into a dress, and another one he jumps through someone's like mid section and then then fills up the dress and walks away.

01:30:24
Speaker 1: And it's amazing. Against Yeah, I almost and I finally learned how he did it the other day because of this, you know, because I take this podcast very seriously, Yes, of course, you know, but even learning exactly how that illusion is created, and it's a stage illusion, and that was then just simply filmed. It was not that's not film trickery really, that's just simply stagecraft and man and kind of you know, it's like a magic trick. I don't want to spoil it. You know, you can look it up if you want to learn. But even that, even knowing exactly how it's done, doesn't take it, you know, That's how good that stunt illusion is.

01:30:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sherlock Jr. Not eligible for me, though, because that's the movie I was alluding to earlier. Very recently part of our Pantheon project. Of the two movies we put into the Pantheon, they're so good Singing in the Rain and Sherlock Junior. So I had to go in a different direction. Now, there are such a wealth of options available from Keaton, and we're going to mention a few more, I'm sure as we go, But at number one, I had to think about what I truly feel outside of Sherlock Junior. What I truly feel is my favorite Keaton stunt, and I think I landed on it. It's from Our Hospitality and it's the Swinging Waterfall Rescue. It's a little bit of backstory. Keaton's Willie. He has to go from New York to Kentucky. He's inheriting a fortune. On the train, he falls in love with Virginia, who's played by Keaton's first wife, Natalie Talmage. He realizes way too late that she's the daughter of Joseph Canfield of the Canfields and McKay's. He's Willie McKays in McKay's feud that's been going on for decades. So at one point late in the film, he's trying to evade Virginia's brothers. They're out to kill him, and both Willie and Virginia end up in a river. He's ahead of her and they're about to go over a waterfall. This was part of our Buster Keaton Marathon that we did back in twenty twenty two. Danis Stevens helped us. She had just written her book, just published her book about Buster Keaton, called Cameraman, and she helped us close out that marathon with our Keaton Awards at the Music Box and we watched his movie The Cameraman. I said during that marathon that I thought this had to be, up to that point and cinema history in nineteen twenty three, one of the greatest, most thrilling action sequences ever, and it still felt that way to me in twenty twenty two. I love a few things about it. It's thrilling and daring as a stunt, but it also does, of course, rely on some illusion. It's shot on a set, there's no cliffs, there's no dangerous rocks down below. But Keaton not only uses a long shot from in front of the waterfall where we see Keaton dangling from the rope, which emphasizes the distance between him and the bottom he cuts occasionally to the opposite side a tighter shot. As Willie is hanging, he's wrapping his legs around the tree that's jutting out. And the way he uses focus Michael, combined with the mists of the water, the mist that is in the air, and the production design of the mountains in the background, it makes it seem like they are so far up in the air that this is this very ominous territory, you know, and they're very elevated. And then the build up to it, the suspense, the cross cutting. We know that Virginia is coming down the river, really knows she's coming. He's prepping, he's testing the rope, he's doing all that he can to get ready for her. We're cross cutting to her. She's trying to stop, she can't. We see what happens to the boat as it goes over. What's going to happen to her if he doesn't catch her, if he doesn't pull this off, He's only going to have one shot at this. And here's that kind of meta element that occurs with every type of great stunt sequence. We're invested in watching Keaton, the showman, the stuntman pull this off. But we're also invested in watching Willie be the hero and save the woman he loves simultaneously, and whether or not they're just going to fall into a swimming pool. Keaton still has to do this incredible stunt. The timing of it. He has to be so precise. He has to swing across and snatch her just as she comes over the edge of the waterfall and then deliver her back safely to the ledge on the other side. And when he does it, it's just so gracefully executed. It really did. When I saw it the first time, I think I said out loud, wow when I watched it.

01:35:08
Speaker 1: I saw the first time I saw I was at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis in the eighties and a great live accompaniment on piano and that full house, and that was the biggest audience response I had ever heard in the theater up to that point. At the just the embrace of that moment and that had stunt. I mean, it was just like literal not just applause, but like cheers, like it was like the ninth inning Cubs victory or something. I mean, it was, you know, it was incredible, and yeah, it's great, and yeah, like you say, you break it down, you see, Okay, well, you know the risks were what they were, not quite what they seemed, you know, and the and the and the visual illusion is very crafty, no different really than another film that year from twenty three Safety Last Harold Lloyd hanging off the clock. Well, you know, we all know that shot and maybe the sequence qualifies as a stunt, maybe it doesn't. But when you see, you know how they actually filmed that, and you know he really didn't have you know, he had about eight feet to fall, you know, they in reality onto a rooftop. It was just a matter of angling the camera correctly and building a false piece of scenery, you know, kind of a false front. Whatever, it doesn't, that's that. That's the kind of practical trickery that an illusion making. That that I respect, that can still respect.

01:36:33
Speaker 3: So those are our top five movie stunts. To see our picks, along with some clips, visit film spotting dot net slash lists Michael any honorable mentions, including probably a few more Keaton honorable.

01:36:48
Speaker 1: I'll just stick with one Keten the shot that's the most famous, and it's blood curdling, really is that? Is that wonderful climax? From Steamboat Build Junior, where you know, dealing with you know, cyclones and tornados and incredible sort of wind effects that again are real. I mean he's really getting blown around at high speed because he had like it was like I think it was aircraft, you know, sort of engine fans going to create that amazing amount of actual wind. But when he's standing still and then the entire side of the house falls down on him, we know this shot is very famous. It's the most it's the modernist version of amazing stone work because he is standing completely still, if he moved, if he was misplaced by even just two inches one way or the other. And what I didn't know Adham until just this week is the sort of the backstory about everything Keaton was dealing with at that point in his life. A miserable marriage. I mean, he was a real melancholic, depressive of serious alcoholic that was getting worse and worse. And he has intimated in interviews that he was ready to die at that point in his life. And there's the knowledge that other people have also commented on this who are involved with the making of it, that he really didn't care maybe if he lived or died filming that shot and he lived.

01:38:17
Speaker 3: You watch it. When you watch it, he's just slightly off center and that that facade comes down and you see it kind of clip his shoulder like another half an inch and he's dead right right.

01:38:30
Speaker 1: But there's something about, yeah, this is where the sort of what was going on none of what you see on camera, of course, but what was going on in the mind and the maybe the soul the filmmaker at that point and the performer obviously is all in one. It just gives it another dimension of It's a chilling laugh, you know what I mean, and very fine, and it's not like an epic climax to anything like the waterfall stuff, which is amazing, you know, or other things. It's just one of many things going on in this scene. But it's it is a stunner and it also excerpts you know, it was the meme before its time, right, I mean that shot is so even just the five seconds is a killer or something.

01:39:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my definitely thought about the falling House. I also thought about clearing the railroad ties in the general. I love that. I think that's a really kind of underrated almost because it doesn't seem maybe as difficult as it as it really is. I did think about the car chase in Tarantino's Death Proof, and that one fit the bill for me, because even though it may seem like it's part of a larger sequence, it really is just one stunt Zoe Bell just hanging onto that roof for the entire time. I'm going to rattle off a few here, but just if I was going broader and thinking about bigger extended sequences, that French Connection car chase, the Boorn Ultimatum, Tangier rooftop chase. You gotta look at that inception rotating hallway fight that Nolan pulled off, which is all practical, really right, there's no cgi in that they invented those rotating you know, centrifugal force creating hallways. It really is something. I couldn't put Raiders of the Lost Ark in here, but I could put the tank battle from Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade, And of course George Miller gave us some incredible stuff. It's so hard to pick. What's my stock? What do you pick? What do you pick from Fury Road? How do you isolate a sequence?

01:40:27
Speaker 2: Right?

01:40:28
Speaker 3: I know some people the polls right, the poll attack from Furiosa, the war rig, but even the war rig is you know, fifteen twenty minutes an extended kind of sequence, but all incredible. This is the last one. A question that came in from our film spotting family discord, someone named awa was aw A Z said, do stunts and docks qualify? I held my breath for most of Skywalker's a love story. Those are some stunts with real steaks, And Devin replied, I mean Man on Wire for that man and and I haven't seen it, but have to imagine Free Solo does as well. You know this, Michael, I am a huge fan of the documentary Man on Wire, and I almost answered this question in the affirmative and put Man on Wire on my list. In the end, I couldn't go there. But certainly what Felip Petit did on that day, and I believe nineteen seventy four was a stunt. It it wasn't a movie stunt. We didn't get to watch it play out on screen. Unfortunately, we could only see see pictures of it. And it wasn't done for cinema. I couldn't. I couldn't actually say that it was a movie stunt. But it's a it's a fun question.

01:41:41
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. I couldn't help but think of Man on a Wire too, And I mean, I love that film, and I just the fact that Petit actually got off the wire by friend and thought to himself and this is true. You know, the only thing that could make this high last a little long as if I had sex with a groupie and he did that morning.

01:42:04
Speaker 3: I did know that part.

01:42:06
Speaker 1: That's a documentary. Yeah, yeah, well there it is, so that to me, that's that's the bonussume.

01:42:12
Speaker 3: Congratulations Philip. Again, those are our top five movie sunts. You can see those picks and our clips at film spotting dot net slash list, and you can send your picks or any other comments about the show to feedback at film spotting dot net. That's our show. Find me and the show on Instagram and Facebook and letterboxed at film spotting. You can find josh at Larson on film on those platforms. Michael, we can find you on some of those social platforms. You're at Phillips Tribune.

01:42:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, here and there on the former Twitter, still on there for my sins. Phillips Tribune. You can check out Blue Sky occasionally, but I would point you to my interview with mister Ralph Saxon from Mission Impossible, and it was a delightful series of anecdotes about what it was like to come back after a four line bit part that he thought he was going to get fired off of. He had a great story about working with the Palm and thinking he was about to get fired at any second to this amazing comeback that he makes in this greatly expanded role in the new Rules Impossible.

01:43:13
Speaker 3: I hope you'll share a link with us that we can put in the show notes on the website and in the episode. I shall so our listeners can find that Film Spotting is independently produced and listener supported. Support the show by joining the film Spotting Family at filmspottingfamily dot com. You can listen early in ad free, plus get a weekly newsletter, monthly bonus episodes, and access to the entire show archive. For show t shirts and other merch go to film spotting dot net slash shop in the Film Spotting Archive. We've reviewed a few Missions Impossible three number one hundred, that was our one hundredth episode, Ghost Protocol number four. We didn't review that for some reason. We did talk about Roade Nation on five forty eight, Fallout on six ninety one, Dead Reckoning nine to twenty eight outstreaming this weekend or on vod Andrew Dominic directs Bono Stories of Surrender, the film adaptation of the YouTube front Man's twenty twenty three solo stage show, part concert, part autobiography that's on Apple TV plus. Mountainhead is out on Max. This is about a group of billionaires who get together against the backdrop of an international crisis, with Jason Schwartzman, Steve Carell, Corey Michael Smith, and Raymie Yusef. In limited release, you can see Sister Midnight, an arranged marriage brings an oddball couple together in a Mumbai shack. Our friend and colleague Isaac Feldberg says, this a surreal, strange, crepuscular fable that doesn't move, look, sound, or feel like anything else you'll see this year, completely its own, wild, weird thing, but all the more delightful for it. Well if, Isaac says, so, I'll believe him. And just in case you need it, crepuscular of resembling or relating to Twilight, Well done.

01:44:58
Speaker 1: Isaac, excellent, Ye great, he's great.

01:45:00
Speaker 3: He is in wide release bring Her Back. From the directors of twenty twenty two's Monkeys Pa horror movie Talk to Me. A brother and sister are placed with foster mother, Sally Hawkins. I'm just reading this for the first time. Sam has in my notes foster mother Sally Hawkins, who is bat shit nuts. I think probably accurate, but I don't think that's in the official plot synopsis. Karate Kid Legends, Speaking of Jackie Chan, he stars as Sense and Ralph Macchio returns as Daniel LaRusso Machio, currently a decade older than Pat Morita was in the original Karate Kid. Do with that information whatever you will. Next week, Clueless is thirty, we'll share our top five movie quotes, not the all time movie quotes, but our favorite movie quotes that we actually weirdly find ways to work into our everyday conversation. Still. That will be with Ayisha Harris from NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Film Spotting is produced by Golden Joe to So and Sam van Holgren. Without Sam and Golden Joe, the show wouldn't go. Our production assistant is Sophie Kempinar and special thanks to everyone at wb Eazy Chicago. More information is available at wbez dot org. Of course, special thanks as well to Michael Phillips for joining me this week and for having so much fun with me. At least it was fun on my end talking about movie stunts and mission impossible. I hope it was fun for you.

01:46:27
Speaker 1: It really was. It was a card and.

01:46:30
Speaker 3: Could be a card, a caution, a pip again, Michael, it's the barrier. That's a new one. Okay. Look for Michael at Phillips Tribune, Chicago Tribune dot com, slash movies.

01:46:44
Speaker 1: Yes, that's it. That's it and got it.

01:46:46
Speaker 3: And look for him to come back on Film Spotting sometime soon.

01:46:49
Speaker 1: Now and then here and there. Yeah, I'd love to. Yeah. No, it was great. It was a great I really the research, this is great. Fun to watch it, and I I am so glad you're putting all the links to the stuff we have described.

01:47:00
Speaker 3: We will do that with words.

01:47:02
Speaker 1: Yes, they get to see in moving pictures talking some of them are talking pictures.

01:47:09
Speaker 3: Yes, for film spotting. I'm Adam Kimbadar. Thanks for listening.

01:47:13
Speaker 1: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore, but.

01:47:17
Speaker 3: Fine film Spotting. As listeners supported, join the film Spotting family. At film spotting Family dot com and get access to ad free episodes, monthly bonus shows, our weekly newsletter, and, for the first time, all in one place, the entire film spotting archive going back to two thousand and five. That's a film spotting Family dot com panically