Top 5 Meryl Streep Scenes | #1063

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Speaker 1: Film Spotting is presented by Regal Unlimited, the all you can watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. See any standard two D movie anytime with no blackoutdates or restrictions. Sign up now on the Regal app or at the link in our description and use code film spot twenty six to receive fifteen percent off.

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Speaker 2: What kind of a show you guys putting on here today?

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Speaker 3: You're not interested in art?

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Speaker 4: Now?

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Speaker 5: No, Look, we're going to do this thing.

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Speaker 2: We're going to have a conversation from Chicago. This is film Spotting. I'm Adam Kempanar and I'm Josh Larson.

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Speaker 5: Am I having a hallucination?

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Speaker 4: Helely? You also know her?

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Speaker 5: We were a runway at the same time.

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Speaker 3: Randa, Really?

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Speaker 2: Where was that? Meryl Streep is back as Miranda Priestley and the Devil weares Prada too. What better way to pay tribute to maybe the best to ever do it than with a top five devoted exclusively to her.

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Speaker 1: How do we fit five decades of work into a single top five?

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Speaker 3: MARYL?

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Speaker 1: Streep scenes? Difficult, but not impossible. It's ahead on film Spotting.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Film Spotting. Josh, we don't confer titles in this country, but if we did, she'd almost certainly be Dame Meryl Street, don't you think?

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Speaker 3: Sure? Yeah, okay, it works.

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Speaker 2: Before we turn over the show to Dame Merrill and our top five Meryl Streep scenes, we did want to remind you that Film spotting Fest two tickets are on sale now. We've been jokingly referring to it as two Fest two film spotting but we did recently get an email from listener Chris Ostendorff who said, come on, guys, it was right there, film spotting Fest two, fully Ado. How did you blow it? Josh?

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Speaker 1: I love that, and you know why, Joker fully Ado is, Yeah, it's a better movie than Too Fast, Too Furious. I'm gonna I'm gonna say it. I think you might even say that, Adam, you might even say.

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Speaker 2: That's not saying much, Josh, is it?

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Speaker 5: Well?

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Speaker 2: Well? Split marrors here film spotting Fest two. As I said, those tickets are on sale now. It's June twenty seventh and twenty eighth in Chicago. You can get tickets at film Spottingfest dot com. We're looking forward to three movies at the Athenaeum. And then Sunday closing it out at the music Box Cleo from five to seven with Agnes Varda biographer and critic Kerrie Ricky, and then Trey Edward Schultz is going to show his movie Kresha and talk about it with us afterwards wet hot American Summer Saturday Night. And then Michael Phillips joins us at the music Box for the Royal ten and Bob's a great lineup and our family members Film Spotting Family members get a discount on their tickets and they get to be part of a meet and greet opportunity as well, Josh, so always a reason to be a family member. They can learn more at film Spotting Family dot com and passes and everything you need to know about the fest is at film spottingfest dot com.

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Speaker 1: Now, I don't want to freak you out by framing it this way, but you know, Adam, June twenty seven to twenty eight, we can say. Now we can say next month, Film Spotting Fest.

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Speaker 3: Is next month.

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Speaker 2: Taking a deep Broes.

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Speaker 1: Get those tickets while you can.

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Speaker 3: People.

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Speaker 2: A quick reminder of film Spotting is now available as a video podcast. We hope that you will watch us talk about movies over at YouTube dot com slash film spotting. For a link to all of our episodes, you can also go to film spotting dot net and click on episodes. Let's turn now to our top five Meryl Streep scenes inspired by The Devil Wears Prada, to which we did review and drop in your film Spotting feed earlier in the week. We are going to wade through. We're going to try this. I don't want to make it seem like it was a slog. It certainly wasn't. It was just difficult when looking at at all of these great performances. Now, as producer Sam wrote in the Film Spotting Family newsletter, there maybe aren't so many incredible Meryl Street movies, but there are a lot of incredible Meryl Streep performances, and we'll dig into that perhaps. But do you remember, Josh, as we get started, the first time you saw Meryl Streep on screen and what movie that might have been.

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Speaker 1: So I forget when this came up on this show, but I believe I've talked about the sleepover I had at kindergarten at a friend's house, not a ton of parental supervision, but I do remember this friend had a significantly older brother who really liked The Deer Hunter, and so wow, yeah, yeah, that's been one. I'm still working through that experience. But very early street movie and strange situation, but likely the first street movie I saw.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you shouldn't have been watching that. Mine isn't quite as bad as The Deer Hunter in terms of being a child and watching it, the material not quite being kid friendly. But certainly Kramer versus Kramer was seventy nine, right, and we would have got we would have gotten HBO around eighty two or eighty three, and Kramer versus Kramer was on HBO a lot. I watched that movie manybo.

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Speaker 1: HBO was sort of the Deer Hunter of your childhood, Adam, I've gathered over the years.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I watched HBO constantly and I definitely got my fill of Joanna Kramer Meryl Streep as Joanna Kramer in that film. Maybe that inspired at least one of my picks here, as we will get into our top five Meryl Streep scenes Josh kick us off and kick us off. However you would like what was your approach?

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Speaker 1: Did a lot of homework for this, Adam, And we'll get into this a little bit more with one of my picks. Why I had so much homework to do it is a bit of a generational thing, and maybe it's related to Sam's point in the newsletter that went out to film spotting family members, about as good as she is in so many movies, even the ones that she would win awards for, haven't really risen in cinophile circles to the level of you have to see this, which is the case as Sam lays out for some of their actors and actresses of her generation. So yeah, that was I think all three of us kind of separately came to that realization while we were thinking about Streep over the last month or so. I'd say, lays it out really well in his newsletter for family members. The other thing I would note before I get to my number five is just when I finished my list and I looked at it, I realized I didn't plan this at all, but it really did show her dominance and consistency since breaking out in the late nineteen seventies going up pretty much today. Because my list includes two picks from the eighties, one from the nineties, one from the two thousands, and one from the twenty tens, and as I said, I didn't really plan to have that sort of historical spread. I think it just speaks to how good she's been for this long and I think largely my list goes in reverse chronological order. Actually, as I'm looking at it now, we'll see if that bears out, but I am definitely starting with Yeah. Her most recent one on my list came out in twenty seventeen. It's The Post, and the scene is my decision stands. So The Post one of Steven Spielberg's history dramas. This one revisits Nixon's attempted suppression of the free press in the nineteen seventies, specifically around the publication of the Pentagon Papers. These were basically a report, this overview of the US's involvement in Vietnam that recognized the futility of the war and had been suppressed. So The Post, the movie came out in twenty seventeen. Of course, this is Trump's first term, when he was pushing back against being held accountable by the press. Of course, things are even more dire for the press now in his second term, partially because the Post of the movie, the Washington Post is owned by Trump a nailer Jeff Bezos. Now in the movie, the owner is k Graham played by Streep, newly appointed owner and publisher of the Washington Post after her husband's death, and so she's the one who has this decision, this decision of whether or not to publish articles related to the Pentagon papers. I think we reviewed this together, Adam and I probably talked then about Spielberg not being very subtle here in Champion jampaneing the press at a time was Trump, when Trump was going after the media, I was okay with that. In my review, I wrote, there are worse ways for an elder statesman of a Mayora con cinema to spend his latter days that to thumb his nose at a sitting president who's thumbed every appendage he has at American tradition and civility. Oh, if only it had stopped there. Let's get to Streep, though, she suddenly helps make this also the story of one woman's feminist awakening. As I experienced the Post, we watch Graham really rouse herself from this life of wealth, tradition, comfort, male decision making for the most part, and embraces risk, embraces purpose, embraces meaning, embraces independence, and you could go heroic with this, but I think Streep emphasizes that shift by placing hesitancy at the heart of the performance. There is more than one scene where Graham has to make a major decision. She's in a room full of men. They're technically her underlings, you know, corporate wise. They don't act like it, try to sway her, try to bully her, and she gradually finds her resolve, including this great moment when she's been pushed not to publish. When she states her decision, she still stammers, she still kind of pauses, she works her way through it.

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Speaker 3: It's like she's.

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Speaker 1: Talking herself into it, almost, and then eventually she gets there, claiming the authority she's always had, clearly declaring, my decision stands.

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Speaker 5: Can you guarantee me that we.

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Speaker 4: All right?

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Speaker 5: Then my decision stands.

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Speaker 1: And I'm going a bit very delicate work from Streep here, and it's it's one that also slyly shows what I realized watching a lot of her movies in a row is one of her key qualities. Precision. I think that's the word that ultimately came to mind for me with streep is just the precision she brings. I think this is related to the accent work. She's become known for the range of accents she's done. Part of that. The reason she's able to do that, I think is her gift for a precision. And yeah, it's at play here in my number five scene. My decision stands from the post.

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Speaker 2: How about Spielberg too. At the beginning of that scene, you mentioned that room full of men all looking to her to make a decision. It's almost like they're insisting on having power over her. Even though they're looking to her to make the tough decision, they're they're putting it on her. And the way he frames the initial few shots is it's it's this tight frame on her and she's agonizing and all the men, their heads are all in the frame over her, right and and you can feel that pressure and what it what it must have been like for her.

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Speaker 1: But the blinding, Yeah, yeah, the blocking is that throughout what you know as a talkie movie.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, yes, but you you called it out. Is that with k Graham, it's that aspect of still having a regal sort of presence, still having some authority, and she does get there and you believe her. There's a credibility to her in the decision she makes, but Streep is able to imbue it with just enough hesitancy, just enough sense that she hasn't been in a position quite like this one before. Yeah, and she knows the severity of it, she knows what's at stake. She isn't entirely sure how this is going to play out or if she's making the right call. How could she? And that that's what Streep is able to do. She's always able to play so many notes at once. And you do get that in that scene from the post. I hadn't thought Josh about trying to cover decades, And sometimes we both do that when we look at these lists, we say, Okay, if we're looking at a career, it might make sense to or especially if we're trying to decide between two scenes maybe or three scenes, maybe we'll pick the one that helps us round out a decade or a few decades and gives us an expanse of a career. I didn't do that at all, but I'm glad as I look at my list now, I too have the seventies, I've got the eighties, I've got the nineties, and I've got the two thousands. I don't have the twenty two, right, but yeah, I have the two thousands. So I've got all of those decades covered here. And I'm going to start with a movie from nineteen ninety and I'm calling this scene adoring Mommy slash. I'm still here. This is from Postcards from the Edge, which this was some homework that I had to do and it paid off. And I want to go back to something you said at the top of this segment setting it up, and I do agree ultimately with what Sam wrote, where when you look, especially at all of these OSCAR nominations, twenty three I think is the total right, twenty three Oscar nominations, Josh four for Supporting Actress, seventeen for Best Actress. And I think highly of some of these movies. I think very highly of my top four on this list, and I think Postcards from the Edge is pretty good. I definitely think it's worth seeing. So I just want to state I think the top four on my list are very good movies. But when you look at these twenty three, I can take or leave a lot of these, and the post is one of those two actually from Spielberg. The only one that I would consider potentially a masterpiece is The Deer Hunter. And that's what we're talking about, movies that you might see on a top one hundred of all time. Streep somehow doesn't have a lot of those, even though she gives these amazing performances in all of these movies. Right, So I did want to express that that I am a fan of these movies on my list, and I am a fan of Postcards from the Edge, which was homework I not only had to do for Street, but homework I long wanted to knock out for Mike Nichols as well. Screenplay by Kerrie Fisher. It's based on her nineteen eighty seven semi autobiographical novel If you know that, if you just know that Carrie Fisher wrote it, you can see where it intersects with her life all over it. It earned Meryl Street one of those Best Actress nominations. And Shirley McClain plays the mom character, her mom that is Carrie Fisher's mom. She's playing Debbie Reynolds. There is a pivotal scene Josh later in this movie that I also considered for this list. It would have been the other scene from this movie I go with it's an honorable mention that explains the dynamic that's at play in the scene I'm choosing for number five, where they finally have the true emotional heart to heart, really spill it conversation that mother and daughter should have, and daughter Suzanne that the character Street plays, says to her mother because the mom's always saying, you really shouldn't be an actress. You should be a singer. You're such a lovely singer. I love it when you sing, Suzanne says, you don't want me to be a singer. You're the singer, You're the performer. I can't possibly compete with you. What if somebody won? You want me to do well, just not better than you. In my pick, Suzanne has just gotten out of rehab after almost dying from an overdose. She's worked her first day on a movie, a crappy movie that, and she's exhausted. And what does mom do? Throw a party for her or is it a party for her? A party for mom? And inevitably she encourages, or maybe the word is forces her daughter to sing, and after enough cajoling, she gets up there and you can tell that the way Street plays her, she's never totally comfortable in her skin. Mom is even pulling some strings and choreographing from the back of the room. And despite all that streep being streep, the Suzanne character sings gorgeously. You know, though, what's going to happen next. They're going everybody in the room's gonna ask Doris Mom to sing, and she'll reluctantly. At first, she'll reluctantly, but then she'll give in a degree, and of course she's gonna kill because even then, before you've heard that conversation later, you know that Mom is not going to let her daughter beat her. She is going to make sure that everyone in the room remembers that she's the star, She's the true star, and like the song says, that she is in fact still here. Good times and bum times.

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Speaker 5: I've seen them all, and my dear, I'm still here where you are plush velvist.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes and if you watch this scene, Josh, you might think, well, wait, is this your top five Shirley McLain scenes, Because this is Shirley McClain. Almost this entire scene is Shirley McLain. It's three minute it's in fifteen seconds, and Streep might get less than thirty seconds of screen time. But the point is why it stood out to me so much is because of what Streep does with the screen time. And I won't try to break down every moment on screen here, but just Streep nonverbally. The first time we see her as Mom is singing, and it's a head nod, a little head nod and a smile that suggests both, Okay, here we go again, but also, oh boy, here we go. She's gonna do it. Mom's gonna do what mom does, and she's eager about it. And then you get the little headshake and a laugh and an eye roll, but again a nod of approval and a smile. She largely loathes her mother, and yet she is watching so admiringly, and after a few shots where you recognize that Suzanne's part of the audience and she's enjoying the performance for once, she's not just stuck in her myopic world and her mom is being her mom. She sticks the emotional dagger. She sings at one point, I got through all of last year, and when she says that line for emphasis, she steps down to touch her daughter's face. So Suzanne has to process that her mother's disappointed in her because she's the reason that she had to get through all of last year. But her mother's also kind of caressing her and saying, it's okay, we got through it. Everything's fine. Those layers again, and then the raucous, raunchy finale that leaves Suzanne Streep is literally bouncing up and down in her seat, clapping and yelling yay in the front row for her mother. And I just I was marveling, Josh watching this at how the scene demonstrates the complexity of this relationship and not how much approval daughter still needs from mother as a grown woman, but how much approval daughter is still compelled to give her mother. You can see in Streep's face what the five year old and ten year old version of her would have looked like watching Doris rehearse at home, watching her perform from the side of the stage, maybe at a live performance. And no matter how much angst has passed between them, no matter how many tough times they've had to get through together, she just like that watching her mom perform can be transported back to that little, adoring girl. That's what Streep gives us all just physically. I've run the gamut a to ze great cheers and damn it, Saila, I got through all of last year, and I'm hey, I knew the moment I watched it, I said, I can't believe. I can't believe what Streep is conveying all here with just that thirty seconds of runtime. Josh taking a cue from our friends at the next picture show. The movie I see playing at Regal Cinemas right now that I'm most eager to check out, a movie that's getting a ton of acclaim over at Rotten Tomatoes from other critics, is The Sheep Detectives and the movie that they're pairing it with is Babe Pig in the City, a beloved film by every critic I know and cinephiles alike. The Sheep Detectives is a film that you can check out now at Regal, and you might be able to see for free. I said, I was only going to mention one movie, but Josh, you know what else. Regal is doing Top Gun at forty for one week only next week for one.

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Speaker 1: At just aged aged me.

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Speaker 2: Tell me about it?

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Speaker 1: What do you do?

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Speaker 2: I could still remember sitting in the theater watching that movie twice, and Top Gun Maverick for one week only. Both of them. We talked about maybe giving Top Gun a Top Gun at forty review. Maybe maybe we should do that instead of the Tree of Life. Okay, we'll have that. We'll have that production meeting another time. You can see all of those at Regal Cinemas now, and you might just be able to see them for free. With Regal Unlimited, the all you can watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself and just two visits, Regal is offering our listeners endless movies for less. By using the code film Spot twenty six. You get to take fifteen percent off. You can see any standard two D movie anytime with no blockout dates or restrictions. And with Regal Unlimited, you won't just save money on tickets, you also save on snacks. You get to take ten percent off all non alcoholic concessions. Sign up now in the Regal app or at the link in our description, and again, don't forget that Code Film Spot twenty six to receive your discount.

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Speaker 1: Postcards sounds so great it pains me to confess this one is still a blind spot. And let me let me just be clear, I did so much homework for this list. You didn't think I watched like six films because I had a lot of ground to cover, and I probably should have prioritized that because it actually sounds right at my alley, the nonverbal stuff you talk about, Adam, that's definitely gonna come up the way she incorporates that into her performances in a pick later of mine, all right at number four. One thing I did want to make sure that I had on this list, especially after watching a few more things, was to not to her considerable musical talent. Maybe that's obvious for people who've seen everything she's done, because she's done a lot of musically inflected performances, and I wanted to recognize that with one of my picks. Could have gone with here's a bit of homework I did the opening song and dance number in Death Becomes Her. It's this extensive Broadway musical routine that she's at the center of. Obviously could have gone with Mama Mea. Could have gone with Into the Woods. She's prodigious in all of those as a musical theater talent. But I'm going to pick a scene from a movie. As we're talking about movies themselves that I actually like better than each of those, this is one that made my top ten list. I think the post might have too, So yeah, to your point, these are movies that I do really like as well. I'm going to go with to showcase Streep's musical talent. A Prairie Home Companion. This is Robert Altman's two thousand and six adaptation of the long running Garrison Keeler public radio variety show. If you've never heard of this variety show, all I can tell you is it was a staple on the radio in my house growing up. My parents love this. I think they even had cassette tapes that they brought in the car for road trips of past broadcasts of Prairie Home Companions. So I knew this material well. And in the movie version, Streep plays one of the Johnson girls. Lily Tomlin is her sister, so they're one of the performers. Basic conceit of this is that the Prairie Home Companion regulars they have come together to put on one more live show before it's likely to be yanked from the air. So from that show, my pick is the Johnson Girls performance of My Minnesota Home.

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Speaker 4: All the world is a world upriver.

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Speaker 2: Flowing to Lassie.

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Speaker 1: Streep belts it out here. I mean, Tomlin is incredible too. They're just incredible. The music talent is what I want to highlight, but I really like in this scene to Streep gets a chance to introduce this song, and her character talks about how she and her sister Tomlin, when they were young, they were inspired to sing in order to lift the spirits of their overworked mom, and how when they were singing, they'd elicit a smile from her as wide as the Mississippi.

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Speaker 2: She'd be down.

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Speaker 4: On the kitchen floor scrubbing on her knees.

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Speaker 5: But if you stood in the doorway you sang a song.

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Speaker 4: That she liked, why she would just look up and smile.

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Speaker 3: Not as she was.

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Speaker 5: It was a smile as wide as a Mississippi.

00:26:28
Speaker 4: Down at the mouth.

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Speaker 1: Now, if you're thinking I don't remember this movie at all, it kind of came and went, especially in the Altman filmography, Well here's some more reason to catch up with it. I'm gonna fill you in on the rest of the cast. Here, you've got Kevin Klein, Reuniting and Away with Streep, Woody Harrelson, John c Riley, Tommy Lee Jones, Maya Rudolph, Virginia Madison. I mean, this whole thing is is just a delight, so it's worth catching up with if you need to become an Altman completist, a Streep completest. But my pick is that's my Minnesota home from a Prairie Home companion.

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Speaker 2: I'm sorry if I missed this. Was this homework or did you see it and review it at the time?

00:27:07
Speaker 3: No?

00:27:07
Speaker 1: No, it made my top ten list that year. Yeah, I absolutely loved it.

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Speaker 2: Reviewed here on the show, I think by myself and Sam and liked by both of us when we saw this. And I have to admit, despite being an Iowa boy through and through, never once and I still haven't ever listened to Garrison Keeler. My introduction to Garrison Keeler was watching the movie A Prairie Actually, and of course I thought it was a pure delight, especially with all of those talents. And I'm pretty sure that was when I discovered because I hadn't seen yet a movie like Postcards from the Edge or some of these other street films. I'm pretty sure That's when I discovered, Oh, Meryl Streep can do anything right with seeing her on stage belting out these tunes with that incredible voice, And what a perfect transition from my last pick, right, mother and daughter? Isn't that Lindsay Lohan's character, yea her watch it tense relationship watching from the wings, just like I was. Yeah, okay, let's go to my number four and we're gonna jump ahead two the two thousands with the Charlie Kaufman film adaptation, and the scene is the one on YouTube. It's called dial tone scene, and that's appropriate. I think. I don't know what else you would call the dial tone scene, or maybe you call it Susan Orlean gets higher than a kite. Susan Orlean gets stoned out of her mind because it's so fun to watch the journey that Susan Orlean, the character Susan Orlean, goes on. In this scene, she's in a motel room. She's been sent a package from Chris Cooper's character John Laroche. I want to just take a very quick digression, Josh, if you'll indulge me, This is all about Meryl Street. But I meant to say this very quickly during our Top five Robert Duval scenes, because I was talking about Lonesome Dove, and I didn't realize when I started watching Lonesome Dove that Chris Cooper in Lonesome Dove, and you know, has a supporting role in that Lonesome Dove. He had been in Mate Wan in nineteen eighty seven. He's kind of the lead in John Sales Mate one, but otherwise had just done a couple TV things, hadn't really had a breakout a relative breakout for Chris Cooper. Lonesome Dove is the thing that really put him on the map as an actor. And of course it's hard to say how I would have responded to him having never seen him in nineteen eighty nine, when I know now that I love Chris Cooper as an actor, and I know that he's incredibly talented and has been successful. But I'm telling you watching him on screen and trying to watch it through the eyes of someone seeing him fresh in nineteen eighty nine, it's all there on screen. He jumps off the screen in a way that a lot of those other supporting characters in the in the show simply do not. He is that good and he was that good way back in eighty nine. He's that good in this film, as as Laroche, of course. And what a pair these two, these two really are, What a couple they are. So this is more nonverbal acting, at least at first, from Meryl Streep, where she's in this motel room, and I just love the way it opens, Josh, honestly, just watching Streep as Susan contemplating taking this mind altering drug that originates from the ghost or kid. The way she just by sitting there conveys Orlean's pensiveness. How you get the sense that she is completely unmoored, like she's untethered from her reality, the everyday reality of this New Yorker or you know, high profile magazine writer and the upper class world that she is used to, and she's actually thinking about something like snorting this and going down that rabbit hole. You get that, You fully get that just by at the way she's sitting. It's in her eyes, but it's also in her posture, the way she's hunched over just a little bit, the way she has her hands in her lap. And this is a street performance too. I wonder, as we look at our list, how many characters we can say this about because she's known for this obviously, right, this is one of those characters that is kind of Beryl Streep just being Meryl Streep, just being a quote unquote normal person. There's no accessories to go into character mode with, there's no costume, really, there's no voice or accent work at play, there's no real mannerisms. She's not playing a real character now she is. She's playing Susan Orlean. But neither Susan Orlean is neither recognizable to us as viewers, nor is Streep trying to imitate Susan Orlean for real. This is just a very raw, embracingly real Meryl Streep. And watching her start then to feel the effect of the drug while brushing her teeth and then humming along with the dial tone and smiling, you fully sense from her that this is just this warming sensation that must be just going slowly through her entire body. And then the next shot is she's back on the bed and she's just staring off stoned like she may never return to reality. But then that phone rings, Josh, and it's Laro who brings her back to reality, and we get another susan Orlean. We get this playful, giggly, silly susan Orlean.

00:33:02
Speaker 5: John Johnny Hey, John, very happy now.

00:33:18
Speaker 2: And we talked about with The Devilwar's product too, about discovery and the way Streep is able to convey these moments of discovery for these characters. And I'll use your word too, precision. There's always this sense you cannot separate with Streept, the technical precision and the craft that she brings, but that's never at the expense of the pure, visceral nature of whatever the character is going through, just the pure the pureness of the emotion or the psychology of the character in that moment. And so you have something really that's so abstract, but then you have this precision of the craft with it. I think that's the magic of Meryl Streep and the discovery. Here is her face when she gets Laroche and her in perfect harmony with the hum and she says, we got it, and she is expressing Meryl Streep as Suel Roleine is expressing there and experiencing very subtly, but you see it and feel it, the sensation of just pure bliss, and that's the discovery that she's conveying with that character is just this idea of pure bliss that as a viewer you're watching thinking, I hope I can feel like that one time in my life. Whatever that character is feeling.

00:34:45
Speaker 1: You know, I have a pick coming up here where I propose it's her loosest performance. But maybe this you're describing this particular moment in this scene as her loosest moment of all.

00:34:56
Speaker 3: I think it might be.

00:34:57
Speaker 2: Let's take a moment, Josh to thank some of our Film Spotting family members for all the amazing support they give the show, and we like to highlight them and give a little background on who they are and who they are as Cinophiles.

00:35:13
Speaker 3: Indeed we do so.

00:35:14
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Family members Matt and Skokie and family plus member Seth Holloway and Charlotte North Care Carolina. They did fill out the Film Spotting Family intake form. It's optional. Don't be scared away because of that, but it sounds the two did sterile intake. We gotta change that, but these two did take the time to do it, and they gave us these thoughtful responses. Here's Matt way back in probably twenty eleven, while working long hours retouching photos in the Chicago suburbs. I googled movie podcasts, found your show, and it helped rekindle my love of cinema. I was pretty immediately hooked and began listening to a lot of the back catalog. I still love the show today. One random episode I remember was Maddie talking about the Azezel Jacob's movie Terry, Do I have that name right?

00:36:03
Speaker 2: I've not Azazel? Or yeah?

00:36:05
Speaker 3: Isazel? Okay, we'll go with it.

00:36:06
Speaker 1: It may have been on that recommendation that I went and caught the film at the Landmark Cinema in Lakeview. Took me thirteen years of listening to the show and being a Chicago now Chicago land resident, but I finally made it to my first live event with a Film Spotting Fest screened of Before Sunrise at the Music Box.

00:36:24
Speaker 3: Thank you for coming about that.

00:36:26
Speaker 2: You know what I want to say. I almost certainly saw Terry for review on Film Spotting at the Landmark Cinema in Lakeview. Had to be Seth says this. I've been listening to film podcasts for over a decade, but I've always wanted to take criticism more seriously. So when I looked into podcasts that went more in depth on the film being covered. Film spotting came up over and over again. I started by listening to the episode about Anora Heretic and Here, episode nine ninety. I was blown away by how great the conversation was. That's very nice. You were able to discuss the merits of each film to their fullest. Though maybe I'm biased since you had basically the same take as me on Anora and Sean Baker in general.

00:37:05
Speaker 3: That may have helped.

00:37:07
Speaker 1: But yeah, in depth, I think what did we go almost forty five minutes on the Devilwares prota?

00:37:11
Speaker 3: Too?

00:37:12
Speaker 1: So in depth? Is it's what you're gonna get here? Sech better or worse? Glad that you appreciate it all right, Matt had a great answer to our prompt about a favorite show segment. Your recent conversation about The Archers helped spur a mini Archers marathon my wife and I have undertaken across recent months. We watched The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, and Black Narcissus, all courtesy of the Skokey Public Library, which is an amazing resource for movie rentals in addition to books. Seriously, their collection is huge and diverse. I believe it, Matt. We always love the shout out and support for our public libraries. We want to thank Matt and Seth for being family members now if you'd like to follow both of them on Letterboxed. Matt is Matthew Joel. Seth is at Indistinct Chat. In addition to keeping us doing what we're doing, membership comes with perks. You can listen early in ad free. You'll also get Sam's weekly newsletter and exclusive opportunities like the film Spotting Family Discord. Of course, we also do put out monthly bonus shows exclusively for family members. We just recently for April show didn't ascus anything.

00:38:21
Speaker 2: Episode we did, and we are about to record as we have now turned the calendar page over into May. We're about to record in a few days as we're taping this our May bonus, which is our draft with our film Spotting Madness Winner who is not Samuel Maxton but actually Samuel Thompson. And Samuel Thompson has given us a few topics. We settled on a draft of the New Hollywood. So New Hollywood. Think about Mark Harris and pictures at a Revolution, Think about Peter Biskins's book, Easy Writers and Raging Bulls, though we're not going to go quite as far as at least Peter Biskins's book goes, we have very intentionally tried to keep this to an era that for us truly feels like the at least the first phase of the New Hollywood. So August sixty seven, the release of Bonnie and Clyde, up to, but not including June of nineteen seventy five, June twentieth, I believe, up to June twentieth, and the release of Jaws, because Jaws is then that turning point where even though there are films after that certainly qualify as quote unquote New Hollywood. And you can even argue that Spielberg and Jaws fits into that. That's fine, we can have that conversation another time. Nevertheless, the blockbuster with Jaws sort of resets everything in Hollywood. So that's our cutoff point.

00:39:49
Speaker 1: The less titles to choose from, the more fighting over the draft.

00:39:53
Speaker 2: That's right, it should be fun. You have that to look forward to in your film. Spotting Family Feed in a few weeks here in May. I don't remember the exact date we have Pegg, but yes, a couple of weeks for as little as five dollars a month, and that's discounted. If you pay annually, you get those bonus shows, you get some of the other benefits that Josh mentioned, and you get to support this show film. Spottingfamily dot Com is where you can learn more. You can also rate or review us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Josh, let's get into that top five, the meat of our Meryl Streep top five with our top three, and I would love to hear what your number three is.

00:40:38
Speaker 1: So you asked at the top about the first film that I saw which featured Meryl Streep and this pick. It's not that, but it's probably the first film that I had to seriously consider her performance, not just as an interested moviegoer, but honestly as a critic. I had started freelancing by the time I saw this movie, and so I actually had to review it, and I have this gap.

00:41:03
Speaker 3: This goes to why I had to do so much homework too.

00:41:05
Speaker 1: Adam, is that growing up in the nineteen eighties, you know, in a house we did watch the Oscars almost every year, so I mostly knew of Meryl Streep for all those nominations and wins she racked up in that decade because it was entirely in movies. I was too young to didn't have HBO, couldn't help me out there. So yeah, she was just this legend out of my reach. I mean, let's look at the stats here. Seven nominations in the nineteen eighties and two wins. You have to literally when you go on IMDb to her Oscars page, you have to like click to expand the section to see everything.

00:41:43
Speaker 3: So incredible. Run.

00:41:45
Speaker 1: I was on the outside looking in. So probably the first time I gave thoughtful consideration to one of her to one of her performances was with nineteen ninety five's The Bridges of Madison County. This was Clint Eastwood's adaptation of the hugely successful Robert James Waller novel. It traces a four day affair between a national geographic photographer on assignment played by Eastwood and an unsatisfied Iowa housewife and mother played by Streep. It's a rare middle aged romance Hollywood didn't make much of then, and I don't know if they do it all now. It's also fatalistically sad, you know, given just the pre doomed nature of this relationship. When I wrote that review, I described it as a love noir in which the heroes are conflicted and.

00:42:34
Speaker 3: No one wins in the end.

00:42:36
Speaker 1: I was very high on both Streep and the film itself back in nineteen ninety five. I have not seen it since, so I was heartened when it got a lot of support. Came up a number of times when I did ask about favorite Streep scenes on my larsen on Film Facebook page.

00:42:52
Speaker 3: In fact, a.

00:42:52
Speaker 1: Few people mentioned what is going to be my pick, the silent goodbye glances exchanged by Streeps Francesca and Eastwood's Robert near the end of the film. So we have completely nonverbal acting going on here. Basically, it starts with Francesca and her husband pulling up to this row of stores to pick up groceries and supplies. She returns first, sits in the truck to wait for him, and then she notices it's been raining this whole time. Looking out through her windshield, she notices Robert there standing across the street looking at her. So you get this long wordless sequence and the agony, little bit of ecstasy plays out across Streep's face. It's just wrenching, all the more so for this little smile she lets out, and at one point he returns it. He comes closer, standing in the middle of the street, but then then something about her expression or how she's holding herself, something stops him from coming any closer than that. And then when he turns around, gets in his truck and pulls away, then her face just you know, goes blank, It falls it. Streep does what she does, and it's devastating. Probably worth noting. Yes, this is a Streep accent role. Francesca came back from Italy with her husband who had served there in World War Two, so she's employing an accent throughout here. But my pick, I'm actually going with a no dialogue scene from the bridges of Madison County, the Goodbye Glances.

00:44:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you summed it up well, and I think what is so effective about that is not only that little smile that you get in the way she leans in as if she's entreating him forward. But then I'm going to go with the word discovery again. When the character realizes that he's not coming forward, when she realizes what this is not going to be, she then she doesn't do anything dramatic. She just pulls back slightly, and that pulling back, she's so good at small little gestures like that. I'm going to suggest that that Streep as an actress with my number two here in a little bit, and maybe even subconsciously, who knows, is able to convey with her characters through gestures like that. They're tells she gives you exactly the psychology of the characters. And it's just that that's subt a little pulling back. We know exactly what that character is thinking.

00:45:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And this is an entire scene built on those and it's part of the agony of the scene is we don't know, and neither of these characters know exactly how far the other is going to go, wants to go, who's waiting for who, who's going to take the next step? And the scene extends beyond this where you know, her husband actually drives away when he comes back and they end up following Robert's truck, and then you get that you know, great moment where she puts her hand on the door handle, and it's just it's like maybe six minutes of her going back and forth making those all those calculations in her mind that streep plays out entirely on her face.

00:46:16
Speaker 2: My number three, this line is what I'm calling the scene. It's a line of diegue directly from the scene, and it should tell you exactly what movie it comes from. I'm going back to back early two thousands picks, and I'm going back to back picks that didn't get her nominated Josh, but probably should have in my mind. Now, I want to note that's very easy for me to say when no, I did not go back and look at these years and see who was nominated and who I'd kick out. I'm just saying I love both her performance as susan Orlean an adaptation, and I love her performance here as Eleanor Prentiss Shaw. In Jonathan Demi's remake of The Manchurian Candidate from two thousand and four, the line of dialogue is the assassin always dies baby, as she is explaining to her son, the brainwashed, the lobotomized effectively character played by Leev Shreiber, her son Raymond Shaw. I believe I haven't seen this in a while, so bear with me if I don't get some of the details exactly right. But I believe it's it's election night or it's election day and the planning. If you watch the scene, it has to be, because she's talking over shots of the Secret Service checking out the building where the President elect and the VP elect and he's the VP elector going to be speaking that night, and where she has orchestrated this assassination that is supposed to take place, and the president elect is going to die, and of course her son, the VP elect, is going to become the president this scene, Josh, this is a character who falls into that character realm a little bit for Streep, not not a not an accent, but the clothes matter, the hair matters, the way, the kind of staccato way she speaks matters. She certainly plays a woman who is very aggressive in a unlike unlike Kay Graham, she would have no problem telling every man around her, and you see her in this movie do it many times, every man around her to get out of her way and do exactly what she wants them to do. She's used to being the aggressor and a lot of these situations she's very ruthless. She's machiavellian, obviously. If you know the film and what she's done to her own son. And yet in this scene, the way she says that line, the assassin always dies, baby, it's not it's impossible for me to say those words and not I mean, it's terrible coming out of my mouth, but not say it and make it sound like it's a line from like a film noir or something. It's not a film noir. She's saying that like a mother just telling her her child a universal truth of the world, like any of us would when we're reading them a bedtime story, or we're just telling them the way the world works.

00:49:18
Speaker 3: What happens to them.

00:49:21
Speaker 4: The assassin always dies, baby. It's necessary for the national healing.

00:49:27
Speaker 2: You know, we had the complexities of the mother child relationship to start my list, and now Streep is the one playing the mother with this son character. Early in the scene, you see the wounds on his back that she stops on as she's toweling him off. He's just gotten out of a bath or shower. And yes, there's some awkwardness to that. We'll touch on that in a moment. But she sees the wounds on his back that she played a role in him getting, and she pauses, and she reacts Josh like a mother, not like a ruthless mother who has long accepted this. She pauses to me like a mother with guilt, might like a mother who doesn't like seeing her son a child with wounds. That's how she feels about it, Even with all of the heinous things that she's done and is about to do, That's how she reacts to seeing those wounds on her child. And even with that line about the assassin, the coldness and the callousness to it, and these things that she clearly has come to terms with. You understand, we as viewers understand that Eleanor Shaw is a monster. But people like Eleanor Shaw in the world, and we know there are people like Eleanor Shaw in the world, they don't believe that they're monsters, and they're certainly not interesting characters if they're played like monsters. When you hear her explaining to him what she's done and why and what's going to happen, it's clear that she has come up with this character and the waystreap imparts it, she has come up with justification after justification. She is in complete denial. She has convinced herself that it was all correct. And the line Josh that slays me, or the few lines that slays me, it's the part where she says, and so I let them take you and change you a little bit, not so much that you would notice. That's where she betrays that there is this human there is the mother inside of Eleanor who sacrificed. She knows that she sacrificed her baby boy for this greater good, and who sleeps at night by telling herself that not only is it for the greater good, and that it's for him so that he can have all the advantages that she never had and that his father never had, but that he's only changed a little bit. And here's where the physicality comes into play, is that you see the sadness in her eyes when she says it. But she also that's the first time where that character in the scene loses her composure a little bit. She can't maintain her stillness, Her head shakes a little bit, and she has to force herself back into character right after that line.

00:52:21
Speaker 3: So I let them take you and change you a little bit, not so much that you would notice, but just enough to bring you back.

00:52:31
Speaker 4: To who you really are.

00:52:37
Speaker 2: And to what you will become and then I said we'd get to it. The scene does also culminate with her kissing him. I don't know how you would describe that kiss, Josh it it does certainly border on lustily. There's there's hints of an incestuousness. Whether that was always there, whether that is something that is new. I don't know that the movie ever does give us more than that, or if it's just simply to suggest another aspect in which you know she is completely controlling her her son. But the other thing about Street that I want to say, she's so good not just with the physicality in the gestures, but blocking which this could all be DEMI let me be clear, But there are stories. There are plenty of stories that actors tell about working with Meryl Streep where they talk about the way she'll position certain things or the way she'll position herself in a scene for certain reasons. And it wouldn't surprise me in this scene where if Streep had something to do with it, where when you watch how the whole scene plays out, she starts on high looking down on him as if she's in a position of authority over him as his mother, and then the scene transitions to her being more at eye level with him, as we do actually see her taking more of a motherly type of position with him, and then by the end she's down, she's down on her knee in a position that does feel both more supplicating, awkwardly supplicating, but also as if she's trying to imbue him, and she is. That's what the scene's about. She's trying to imbue that character with the power and authority that he's going to assume by the end of the night. And it's a it's just all there in the way she moved that character moves over the course of the scene. It's a chilly it's a really chilling, I should say chilling scene. And just even her voice, the way her voice belies that over the over the course of that scene is really a wonder.

00:54:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's like attempting a transfer of power that's not really a transfer of power, but she's trying to sell that on him in a way I really like demuse Manchurian candidate.

00:55:07
Speaker 3: It's one of.

00:55:07
Speaker 1: Those you know, you hear, why are you reheating a classic? And why is a classic? Director bothering? And then it turns out turned out like Gangbusters. So it's a really strong film and Streep maybe doing a dry run for Miranda recently here a little bit. I don't know, there's there's certainly that would be just two years later, and there are certainly some connections between those characters, all right. For number two, here's some homework that paid off for me. My pick is, well, I'm doing it from Silkwood Mike Nichols again here as director, Streep is playing Karen Silkwood, who in real life died in a one car crash while in the midst of exposing lack safety standards at the Oklahoma plutonium factory where she worked. This is maybe my favorite street performance that I watched in all my homework, Adam. This is the one I was thinking of when you were talking about that moment and adaptation where she's as loose as I've ever seen her playing Karen Silkwood. Now, obviously this is a movie that's part paranoid thriller, and as the tension rises that alters a little bit. But she retains this throughout, I think, and really has it. At the beginning when we're introduced to her, she just Karen's on the floor of this factory.

00:56:23
Speaker 3: She's joking with co workers.

00:56:25
Speaker 1: You know, she breezes into the lunch room playfully takes a bite from a coworker's sandwich, and you get a sense that she's this character, This Karen as envisioned in the movie. She's at once a breath of fresh air but also kind of annoying. Some some people think she's great. Some people are like roll their eyes. And it's such great character building because you get the sense watching this that she almost became and again, this is the movie's Karen.

00:56:53
Speaker 3: She almost became.

00:56:54
Speaker 1: An activist by accident, just on account of her instinctively iconoclastic attitude. This is just who she is, and once she gets nudged in that direction, it's where she's got to go. And then my pick, which I'll get to the moment, speaks to that. But yeah, I also want to mention man to Streep have real heat with Kurt Russell, who is great in this movie. Again, maybe people are saying duh, but first time I watched Silkwood and I've thought I think of Russell as a different sort of presence in movies, not as the you know, supporting character love interest, and here he does play Karen Silkwood's living lover. They share a number of really strong scenes, but I love her with him the most. At the very end, this is essentially they're goodbye. It's early morning, she's gotten up and she tells him she's heading out to the factory and then she's going to a union meeting that night, and he asks her, he asked her not to go. He says something like, I don't want you doing that.

00:57:59
Speaker 2: I don't know how light this body's going to go tonight.

00:58:02
Speaker 5: I don't want you doing that.

00:58:04
Speaker 2: Well, I'm doing it.

00:58:07
Speaker 5: You don't know the union anything.

00:58:10
Speaker 4: Let's not fight.

00:58:11
Speaker 5: You don't know the New York Times anything.

00:58:14
Speaker 4: Let's not have a fun now, Okay, okay.

00:58:22
Speaker 1: He just completely melts. He just melts in that moment. He half heartedly tried to play the quote unquote man Caird knew it didn't work, and then she pulls that out and he's just like, yeah, I'm helpless here. It's streep smile that really says it all again. She's not trying to be defiant, she's not trying to cause trouble.

00:58:41
Speaker 3: It's just who she is, who she is.

00:58:44
Speaker 1: Who this woman is, and Streep lets us know that through a smile. And I love throughout the movie, you know, Karen is often smiling at her own little thoughts and she doesn't share him out loud.

00:58:56
Speaker 3: And what a choice.

00:58:57
Speaker 1: Whether that's written in the script or it's something Streep chose to do. To not let the audience in has to be an enormous risk for an actor when you might think your entire job is to always give the audience access or at least a hint, a little peek into here's the word. I'm sure I've used interiority, and so often in this movie, Streep lets Karen have her own little private amusements that even we don't know what she's smiling and laughing at. And I just love that detail. Yeah, I really like this movie. Russell's great, Share Share great as their lesbian roommate. What a role, What a performance, I mean, a very complicated role that I know some people have issues with, but Share I think is really strong here and Streep just so refreshing. Maybe her least to go back to that word precise, maybe her least precise performance. But again, that's part of the magic trick, is that, of course there's precision in every choice of when to smile, when to laugh, when to look towards another character, or look away and hold that private joke. Those are all precise choices, but she makes them feel. She just makes them feel incredibly of the instant moment.

01:00:18
Speaker 2: Here they're invisible. Those choices are big. The street always yeah, yeah, it does feel that way. And Silkwood's another one of those that was on a lot when I was younger. I feel like, I've seen the entire movie, and I remember the unapologetic nature of that character and that fierceness in Streep. But when it came down to rewatching the movie, especially because she got a nomination for it, it was watching this one, or it was watching Postcards from the Edge, and I made my choice because I wanted to watch a movie that I don't know. Even though she starts off the movie almost killing herself with an overdose, I felt like it might be a little bit more fun than Silkwood. So that was my choice.

01:01:01
Speaker 1: It definitely gets intense, and then I will say, also, you know, and this is maybe to the point of Streep's movies themselves reaching limits. I do like Silkwood quite a bit. At Nicol's handling of the paranoid elements and the thriller elements which start that it gets a little rushed in the end. It's just not as Let's just say it's not as person Streep.

01:01:21
Speaker 2: Is speaking of intense and not fun. My number two choice and both my top two picks here are obvious. I'm not trying to trick anybody here. I knew they would be on my list when we decided to do our top five Merril Streep scenes. It's definitely true that I appreciate the William Steyren book Sophie's Choice more than I appreciate the Alan Pakula movie Sophie's Choice. I think the book Sophie's Choice by Styren is one of the greatest American novels that I've read. It's that rich, that incredible. I think the movies pretty good. I think, obviously Streep is incredible in it. I can't believe I rewatched for this list the choice. Do I get a metal? Do I get something for rewatching the choice? Josh? I mean you maybe we'll hear more about this. You watched this movie for the first time.

01:02:30
Speaker 3: That's right.

01:02:31
Speaker 2: I am forbidding Sam to play any audio or to show any video from this scene. I don't want anyone to relive it. I'm not going to describe it in any detail what I know about this scene or some of the lore about this scene where her character Sophie. I'll just give you the setup, right, the choice, And I remember we all have grown up hearing this term Sophie's Choice, and yet I managed to go I didn't read the book Sophie's Choice until I was I think about twenty three years old, and I managed to go twenty three years of my life and not ever know what the choice actually was. And I remember reading the book and getting to it, and Jeff slowly taking the book and putting it down and not talking to anybody or picking the book back up for a few hours. I just I was not going to process it further after experiencing that, So I didn't know. I didn't know what it was, and maybe for people that that don't know it, I don't. I don't want to spoil it. I'm not going to get into it anymore. It is the choice scene though, that I am. I'm going to go with, and there's there's lore around it that would make sense that we've heard with scenes like this that are so harrowing emotionally that it might have been shot in one take, that that when you watch it and you could believe it, because if I remember correctly, you only see Streep. The shots of Streep seem to all be just from one camera angle and and of one size, a medium close up basically or close up. So maybe they all were from one take, but I'm pretty sure. I also saw her in an AFI interview where she was talking about the filming of this scene, and the funny the payoff of the story was that it was four am or something, and she was talking about how amazing a director Alan Pacoula was, how he was so in tuned to the actors and and he cared about what she were doing so much and that was his real gift as a director. And she did a take of this scene, a close up of this scene, and there was silence, and she thought, oh wow, I just devastated him. I can't believe it. He's speechless. And then she looks over and both he and Nestor Almandrofs, the cinematographer, are just passed out asleep in their chairs. So that would suggest unless I'm they were talking about, unless she was talking about a different scene in a concentration camp. Obviously, then they shot more than one they shot more than one take. But she's also said this is a scene where she says, I didn't act. She met with the little girl that was playing her daughter for the first time earlier that day. They had this sort of bonding moment where they played together, they had fun together. It somehow then put her more. It ease actually as an actress to have that moment with her rather than just having to go then shoot the scene with her. And then her phrase was she said, I didn't act. I didn't act the scene. The scene just happened, and what I felt is what you see pouring out on screen. So what I will say about it in terms of my list, Josh, this is where I was going with the gesture part. Whether I'd love to ask obviously, I'd love to ask Meryl Streep about this and see if my theory holds any water, or if she would completely shoot all of it down or only part of it down but rewatching it. Actually a couple times for this list today, there is that moment of discovery, and the moment of discovery for this character is when the commandant the commandant has to say a few times what the choice is for it to really register with Sophie as you would imagine, right, because it's so horrific. The moment where it truly registers, where you see Streep as Sophie register what she is going to have to do, she just does this thing where she quickly nuzzles her daughter. She nuzzles her daughter, puts her nose into her daughter's cheek, and then she goes back to looking at the commandant and interacting with him. And for me watching that, that tells me that that character has processed choice she's going to have to make, and even though she's still thirty to sixty seconds away from actually making the choice, psychologically, she's actually already made the choice. She she knows. That's telling us that she's made the choice. That that that moment with her daughter is of significance. It's not just comforting, it's it's of greater significance than that that that character that, for that character, it felt like something she was compelled to do because her brain was already ahead of her her body was ahead of her brain. Actually, I would say I would say it that way. So I'm gonna be I'm gonna be vague because, like I said, even though this movie, in this book is certainly it's past the date of spoiling, I'm just gonna leave it at that, and I'm going with the choice from Sophie's choice.

01:08:15
Speaker 1: Well, I'm at my number one and I've got Sophie's choice at number one. Adam, It's not this actual moment, though it definitely obviously had to give it as much consideration as you did. And to your point, to your description of it, you know it happened so quickly, was my shock. And as you said, watching this the first time, the whole sequence, knowing of it as its legendary reputation, this is what the movie is. I expected it to be this drawn out, agonizing sequence, and it all rushes by so quickly. Yet streap, to your point, makes the decisions and the choices within this tight time frame to give it so many layers of terror and somehow feel impulsive. That's what it struck me is that it felt to me like Sophie, this woman, it was just her final decision kind of just burst out of her almost instinctively, and revealed things to her about her relationships to her children. She didn't even know perhaps, And I love your point about the body being ahead of the mind, where the body might have known those things, right. So yeah, it's just you know, it's one of those legendary scenes by reputation that absolutely holds up. The reason I didn't go there, though, is related to my overall impression of Sophie's Choice, which, again, very good movie. I believe you that the Styren novel is better because it feels a little overpacked and in some ways disjointed, and it felt like an adaptation of a massive piece of literature.

01:10:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, watching it.

01:10:02
Speaker 1: Still a good movie. Though, still a very good movie. But anyway, I think I want a different direction because that moment works. The choice works for me for all the reasons we just talked about, but also because of the two plus hours of groundwork Streep has laid in creating this character for before we get to that point, because thanks to it, thanks to all of that, Sophie is not just a victim of circumstance when.

01:10:28
Speaker 3: We get here.

01:10:29
Speaker 1: She is a pre complicated woman who comes to the moment already with all sorts of guilt and conflicting loyalties and compromises. She has made in a way this sounds awful, but her life has horribly rehearsed her for this moment already, and so one of those places we see this ground being laid is the scene I'm picking. I'm gonna call it. I don't even know what is the truth, because it's how she kind of kicks off going into this confession slash memory. This is earlier in the movie, but later in Sophie's life, so it's earlier in the film we're watching, but comes way after the choice scene. Actually, Kronel logically in her life. This is in post war Brooklyn, and she's trying to flee the ghosts of her past by starting this new life with this erratic Jewish lover played by Kevin Klein, and their downstairs neighbor played by Peter McNichol, an aspiring Southern writer who I'm assuming is the Styren stand.

01:11:39
Speaker 3: In in the movie.

01:11:41
Speaker 1: So he is this character, the neighbor Stingo. He's been the recipient of a few confessions from Sophie over the course of the movie, including her choice the scene you just talked about, and I'm going to go with an earlier confessional conversation they have and This is where she starts telling Stingo about her father, who previously, I think one of the first scenes they met, she talks about how much she deeply loves her father. Here, however, she reveals to him that actually he was a prominent anti Semite in Poland who called in public speeches for the extermination of the Jewish population. Now you mentioned Pacula director and cinematographer Nest Almendros. As she talks about her part in all of that. In this scene, they shoot her in a largely uninterrupted take. It's almost like an Ingmar Bergmann style portrait shot. It has these deep blacks surrounding her face and she's looking. As many times as I've watched this and stared at stills, I'm still not certain if she's looking slightly off camera or into the camera. It's it's somehow Streep has found this middle space.

01:12:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's so unnerving.

01:12:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a little uncanny valley ish almost a little bit. Yeah.

01:12:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it works because what she's what she's holding here is a vacant, haunted stare, and she holds that throughout and the feeling I had it's as if Sophie exists in two eras at the same time, it's as it's as if she's she's left the time space continuum in an awful way to live in the past. As she's recalling it, she's ostensibly looking at Stingo, but it just feels like she's looking so at us and just through everything. She's just looking through everything. So yeah, that's where I ultimately landed after watching this movie for the first time. I'm gonna go with basically one of her one of her confessions. I don't even know what is the truth.

01:13:37
Speaker 2: What's interesting, Josh, is I might have actually gone with that scene instead of the choice because that image, that haunting image that you described is the image from Sophie's Choice that lingers with me the most. But it's been so long since I've seen Sophie's Choice that I didn't remember the context for it, and I couldn't find it. I was googling random things trying to find that moment, and until complicated, until you posted it, I couldn't. I couldn't find it.

01:14:08
Speaker 1: It's complicated because, as I said, she has these series of confessions and she kind of moves and opens up more and more with Stingo, and so yeah, yeah, it's definitely a journey that, as I said at the top, like Streep is doing and the screenplay, you know, in the direction they're doing this work so that that moment that you chose hits as powerfully as it does.

01:14:31
Speaker 2: So this is this is true of especially any top five like this where you're talking about acting and you're trying to describe this ineffable quality of the best performers, and you really just want to say, just watch the scene. Why are we trying to describe this thing they're doing and break it down in a sort of technical way when when it's there, And I especially feel that way about my Number one, which is the I'm leaving you see from Kramer versus Kramer. But this is another one of those journeys. And I'm sure it's there on the page because it is. It is there on the page. Surely the script contains this this character's arc simply from it's a literal journey from apartment inside the apartment, door to hallway to elevator right, and from marriage to just outside the marriage to out of the marriage. It's all of those things. But watching how Streep as Joanna processes all of that for me is something every time I watch it, and it's the anxiety that you sense right away as she's watching Dustin Hoffman being Ted, being this character that he always is. You know, he's on the phone, he's talking about his day, and he's really not paying her any attention at all, And she's being silent mostly early on in the scene, right but you still see in her face, and you see in her chest the way she's breathing just a little extra heavy, that she's very anxious. Of course she is. She's about to tell her husband something she's never said to him before, something momentous, that she's leaving. But it's been a long time here again since I've seen Kramer versus Kramer, but this comes as a bombshell. I don't think he has any sense that there's really any problems in their marriage. You watched it more recently, Is there any sense that there's really a struggle for him for him?

01:16:39
Speaker 1: No, I mean, that's part of the character, is how oblivious he's bad exactly.

01:16:42
Speaker 2: So it's it is going to be a huge bomb for her to drop, not only for her as a character to say it out loud, but for this character Ted to have it delivered to him of course she's anxious. But then you see it. You see the way Streep just a little bit. The more he is showing how oblivious he is, the more she hardens just a little bit, that she gets a little bit of resolve. Her words and her actions then become just a little bit swifter. It reinforces that she's making the right choice. And you see it even though she's not saying anything. And then she does start to to let it out finally, what what she's going to do. The moment for me is the beat right after Ted says, where he's now trying to process what's really happening, and he says, sorry, I was late, but I was busy making a living, right come on, okay? Can we can we stop now? And here's that that moment that Streep just sits in that long pause, and and her response when she speaks it isn't it seems like it's not to him. It's it's completely internal. It's it's an utterance to herself, but out loud, it's a reckoning with herself that she is, she's resolved, she's really doing it. She grabs her purse and she she looks down to the right and then she picks her head up, and what does she say. She says, so.

01:18:15
Speaker 3: Can we stop now?

01:18:16
Speaker 2: So that's everything, Like she's gonna say something more, but they and she clips herself off, and what does she say? That's everything. That's everything, that's everything she needs to tell him about what's going to happen next. She's told them about the bills and the dry cleaning, and how much money she took from their bank account. That's all settled, all those details that she, as the wife has to take care of in this marriage. But that's also everything for this marriage, for this relationship. She's saying, that's everything. It's a rap. It's a rap on this marriage. And everything about the departure. The way he grabs her. He grabs her bag as she tries to exit the door. So what does she do? She just goes without it. She has to. Now that she's finally set it and she's resolved to do it, she can't go back in. And so if he's gonna grab the bag, right, he's just gonna you know, she's finally going to just go. He's already dragged her back in once. So then once she heads out the door, he she just lets him take the bag and the way she breaks down in the hallway, Josh, because she's shown this resolve, she's been assertive here, but that doesn't change the fact that she understands the severity of this moment, that she is ending her marriage, that she is walking out on her son. She doesn't know what the future is going to bring, and so and she even still she even still feels the need to comply in a way with him and diffuse the situation because when he presses her on it, what does she say. It's not you, it's me. It's my fault. That's her, that's her answer. So you get you get those layers of assertedness, like I said, But also she is still so fragile, and that's that street in that scene, through both the nonverbal parts and the verbal parts, playing so many different layers in Johanna, what are you doing? Where are you going? Come on, just tell me what I just tell me what I did.

01:20:21
Speaker 5: It's me, it's my fault. You just married the wrong person.

01:20:26
Speaker 3: That's Joanne. Please, I'm sorry.

01:20:35
Speaker 1: No, no, don't don't make me go in there.

01:20:37
Speaker 2: Please, please don't make me go in Don't.

01:20:39
Speaker 5: Make me go in there.

01:20:40
Speaker 1: She is so good in this scene, and she creates such a full person in these few opening moments. Is it possible she's too good? I'm sure. I'm sure. This is, you know, a standard complaint that's been brushed aside for Kramer versus Kramer, don't criticize the movie you wanted, criticize the one you were given. But the fact that Joanna comes so fully to life. I really had trouble with the movie sidelining her. And again, I know it's supposed to be his story for so much of its running time. She's great again when she appears later on the stand and when they talk, I think in the lot, you know, but it's yeah, this is my probably my number six Maynorer Rold mention. I almost went with it because she's so good, as you described, Adam, but I struggled. Here's another street movie that I liked but had some reservations about. And for me, it was just the man. What if this had been a fifty to fifty movie of both of these incredibly rich, conflicted, complicated, conflicting characters, what might we have gotten? And I just felt for the next what forty maybe fifty an hour, I felt Joanna missing from Gramer versus Kramer, and it's it's it's to her credit. Let's say for a top five Streep scenes, let's say she did that to the movie. She was too good, Adam, she was too good.

01:22:14
Speaker 2: It's not shocking that we both love this scene. And I think it's a fairly famous scene in her filmography. And yet more often than not, when you look at reviews of her movies and famous scenes, the stand scene is the one that's shut up more often.

01:22:32
Speaker 1: But that's the Oscar moment, but it is.

01:22:34
Speaker 2: But this scene is the one that for me always hits me harder.

01:22:38
Speaker 1: There's a lot more going on here, for sure.

01:22:40
Speaker 2: I think so too. Those are our top five Meryl Streep scenes. We'd love to hear your thoughts, your favorites, email us feedback at film spotting dot com or dot net. I'm sure you have, Josh, some honorable mentions. You said, what your number six was, it's this one. It's my number one. What are some others that might have major list if it was a top ten or that you considered.

01:23:05
Speaker 1: I mean, death becomes her as worth checking out if you haven't seen it. She's having a ton of fun there and that opening musical number is really something. The French Lieutenants Woman is another film I did for my homework. I was kind of hoping you picked it, Adam.

01:23:18
Speaker 2: Because I almost did.

01:23:20
Speaker 1: I'm still processing that what that movie is doing. But she has an early instance. She's basically playing an actress who's in a period movie that takes place on an English coastal town, and she has an early moment where this woman who's in distress is at the end of us pier in the middle of a storm, and she looks back at a character. I almost considered that look alone.

01:23:45
Speaker 2: For that's the shot, right. Yeah, it's incredible. It's so funny that you say that, because it's the image. I think most people immediately associate with that film for good reason. This will come up when we talk about Rome Open City too. What is it about? Why is it that there are certain shots that can just be so captivating and can just stay in your memory. There's something about the combination obviously of the shot choice in this case is close up, but the lighting, everything about the choice. I mean, that's an outdoor shot, but the lens choice that just your brain cannot let it go and it's that shot and yet when I watched it, I didn't think. I didn't think, oh I should put that on my list because all Streep is doing is looking at the camera for a few seconds.

01:24:38
Speaker 1: But we've yeah, I think as we've covered like sometimes that's all she needs in some of our picks. So yeah, I'm glad I got a chance to see that. And then looking back at other Street films you know I have seen over the years, I considered some scenes from Out of Africa. I think I alluded to this when we did our Redford Top five scenes or movies. Adams, she she kind of really out acts him out of Africa. She has some great moments, and she's wonderful in these titles, The Iron Lady, Into the Woods, The River Wild, The Hours, a movie probably people don't remember a lot Evening which she has some great moments in. And then you know, mo, sure she's the best thing about Mama and MEA let me say that.

01:25:25
Speaker 2: Okay, probably not too bold of a statement. I really do like her in The Hours. I couldn't I couldn't pick an individual scene of hers, though I know there are some standouts. I like her in Defending Your Life, the Albert Brooks movie, I could have found a scene from that Little Women, one of my favorite movies of the last ten years, and there's a montage. I'll link to it. I'll put it on the list page with this top five. There's a montage of every because she's a supporting character, there's a montage of all of her scenes and guess what, every single one of them is gold. Every scene that Meryl Streep is in in Little Women is fantastic. So I'll now move into actual individual scenes The Deer Hunter. The scene where de Niro's Michael does come home and she has set up this party and he's intentionally skipped it because he just can't be around people and doesn't want to be around people. He really just wants to be alone with her, and that that reunion and just the tenderness of that relationship. I do really like that scene, so I'm mentioning it. But even better than that scene is the one that follows where they have finally gotten a little closer and more intimate with each other, and when she says to him, can can we just comfort each other? And they spend they spend a night in bed and holding each other, and just the way she delivers that line is really the moment, the moment for me the French Lieutenant's Woman. Other than that shot, the scene I was thinking of was the French Lieutenant's Whore, the scene where she tells the story, the story within a story within a story, where where she that character is revealing to Jeremy Iron's character, her her backstory and how she became so shame. But the way the precision is all over that scene and the way the way Josh that she leans into the pronunciation of horror is just so delicious at the end of it.

01:27:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's related to my question about that movie, but we'll have to save that for another time.

01:27:38
Speaker 2: Okay, I didn't know that we would ever get into the French Lieutenant's Woman on this show, but I did go through I did go through a phase where I thought, not Meryl Streep. I thought Jeremy Irons was the greatest actor on the planet. That was. That was maybe thirty years ago, but so be it again our favorite Meryl Streep scenes. We would love to hear your picks feedback at film spotting Dot.

01:27:59
Speaker 3: Come.

01:28:04
Speaker 4: There are two ways through life, the way of nature the way of grace. We have to choose which one you follow.

01:28:18
Speaker 2: A few weeks ago, Josh, we knocked out a big Pantheon project title, maybe none bigger Citizen Kane, the very first title actually added to the film, spotting Pantheon, yes, twenty plus years ago. Because of that, never really been talked about in the history of the show, and it turned eighty five. So despite or even with the Pantheon Project, that was another reason why we felt like we finally had to give this movie it's due, even though surely it's been talked about to death, we'd never talked about it. We had fun discussing Citizens Oh do.

01:28:56
Speaker 1: You feel Yeah, it sounds like you're happy with it. To get that clean monkey off your back. You know, it's been intimidating to have to actually have this review. We did it. I think it worked out well. Of course, we put it against Casablanca, so we kind of we cheated maybe a little bit with that conversation.

01:29:14
Speaker 2: Next week, we're going to go from one of the oldest films, not the oldest, but one of the oldest films in the Pantheon two, what is the youngest? The youngest is a little bit of trivia for you here. Terrence Malicks, The Tree of Life. It's the baby realize that at fifteen. Wow, unless we're wrong, because we're usually wrong about our own pantheon.

01:29:36
Speaker 1: It's possible this is true. Details are of I mean, we're it does a little stingy about putting newer movies in there. I think I'm gonna say it previous Star review. I still feel pretty good about having Tree of Life in the film spotting Pantheon.

01:29:54
Speaker 2: I do as well. We reviewed it. This was just pre you joining the show in twenty eleven, but did get a review when it came out in twenty eleven. You obviously reviewed it. In fact, I do believe I'm correct in saying that even though you would not join the show when this movie came out, you would join the show when we did our top ten films of that year, and you and I both named the Tree of Life. See, we knew we would get along great in that fifteen sixteen years later whatever, we'd still be doing this. We named The Tree of Life our number one film of that year.

01:30:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really I really pulled the fast one on you, Adam. You know, I was like, if I'm going to get this show to you know, to pick me to join m I'm just gonna have to agree with their favorite film of the year, and so I put Tree of Life at number one.

01:30:48
Speaker 3: It's time. I feel like I'm safe enough.

01:30:49
Speaker 1: Now I can tell you I actually really hate the film and it was that was all just a gambit.

01:30:53
Speaker 2: Okay, what film from your list? Look back at it and tell me what really was number one? Impress the Tree of Life?

01:31:01
Speaker 3: It was a Tree of Life.

01:31:02
Speaker 2: Are you okay?

01:31:03
Speaker 1: Maybe thinking of Cedar Rapids, which was See I.

01:31:05
Speaker 2: Want you to play along. I wanted you to play along and tell me that there was some other twenty eleven film that you know I would hate or think is not worthy, and it was your real number one.

01:31:15
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think Cedar Rapids would be an excuse for you to say we we can't touch this guy with a ten foot pole.

01:31:23
Speaker 2: Was that your number two? Was that twenty eleven number two? Okay? See, that would have been gold. You're true number one, and you just were trying to trick everyone that you were a real a serious movie watcher and critic with the Tree of Life. Have you revisited The Tree of Life at all since twenty eleven? I have not.

01:31:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, at least three times. I just a month ago, now, maybe a month and a half ago, for one of my courses here in the Theology in the Arts program. So yeah, I will try not to bring too much of that master's intense thinking to our conversation, but there may be a few things that will be worth touching on.

01:32:03
Speaker 2: Do you just want to go solo on this? I can sit it out. You have nothing to say.

01:32:08
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody wants that, but I am. I did not shockingly find a few things new and interesting, which happens when a movie is this good.

01:32:20
Speaker 2: Okay, The Tree of Life is available VOD on most platforms. I don't know that you need to watch it three times like Josh has, but it probably wouldn't hurt either. Also, next week we will have the latest results of our current deeply flawed film spotting poll, asking you to choose one and only one Summer twenty twenty six movie You can go with Christopher Nolans The Odyssey or anything else. It's Nolan versus the field. And what's good about this is we will tell you that currently Christopher Nolan is winning, but he's not running away with it. Lots of great others being suggested it's a lot closer than we might have predicted, So there's still time to vote. There's still time to make your pick. Tell us what other twenty twenty six summer movie you are looking forward to more than The Odyssey. You can vote and leave a comment at film spotting dot net. Also coming to you soon will be the second film in our Dissident Cinema marathon, Roberto Rossellini's Rome Opens. I think we're going to put that in the feed on Monday, just like we dropped The Great Dictator in your feed on Monday. And I have no idea. I don't know what your rating or review is, but I'm still going to go out on a limb and say that we are continuing our good start.

01:33:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fair to say, Yes, Okay.

01:33:40
Speaker 2: We will also share with you that if you recall, we had announced the winner of our film Spotting Madness nineteen forties contest, but we hadn't officially updated the bracket at that point because there was still some hours left in the voting. Sam Thompson in LA we noted it too many Hitchcocks was his bracket name. He's the one that got to pick our Madness draft we're going to do the New Hollywood Draft coming up. It's for the internal bracket competition between me and you and Sam and Mike Merrigan. Well, I thought there was a chance. Maybe I had a chance, but probably not because I was the only one who picked Citizen came to beat Casablanca, and Casablanca won, so you were far enough back. I thought maybe I'd still finish third and not fourth. But that was not the case, Josh, Sam Sam jumped all the way up to eleventh overall out of the several hundred. Mike Marrigan twenty fifth. Josh, how about you maybe your first top one hundred finish seventy fourth? Sure, Okay, maybe not? Yeah, maybe not. I don't know. We don't keep meticulous records around here. I unfortunately dropped too. I was ninth, I was ninth, and I dropped all the way down to one hundred and fifteenth. But what matters most is that I am fourth out of four in this competition.

01:35:11
Speaker 1: And it was a tortoise and hair scenario there. Yes, with you and me, Adam, I just had to hold out I'd get there eventually.

01:35:19
Speaker 2: I'm reading for the first time here, I'm learning that the booby prize is I'm going to have to watch daughter of Adam Sandler, Sadie Sandler in the new Netflix comedy Roommates. Oh that's what I'm being told. My punishment is.

01:35:36
Speaker 1: I thought, now, wait a minute, now, wait a minute. I thought we dropped this a year or two ago.

01:35:40
Speaker 2: The loser.

01:35:43
Speaker 1: This isn't this isn't the year for me to bring this up. Actually, but since since you've been honorable enough to actually report on your loss, you could have just let this out of the show. Yeah, I thought we talked about maybe even like granting the winner something. I mean, look at Sam at eleven. Is that now here's some for the stats for the records. Has any of the three of us, Mike, you know, godfather, he might have done better than eleventh at some point?

01:36:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, you won it. He won it once. I believe. There you go, like the entire competition, have you.

01:36:17
Speaker 3: Me or Sam?

01:36:18
Speaker 1: I mean, I know, I haven't has any placed higher than eleven.

01:36:22
Speaker 2: I don't believe so other than Mike, I don't think so.

01:36:25
Speaker 3: So Sam deserves it.

01:36:27
Speaker 2: You know, he deserves a prize.

01:36:29
Speaker 1: Sam is not only producing film spotting SVU. I've learned now that I'm catching up on episodes. He's like on air doing it like he's in this twents season. He's talented, and yeah, he he needs a day off. We need he definitely, we need day off the internal bracket. We need to give Sam.

01:36:47
Speaker 3: A day off.

01:36:47
Speaker 2: Well, I wasn't prepared to give him a day off, but Sam, check your mailbox, tote bag, film spotting tote bag, and also tell me what sized T shirt you wear.

01:37:02
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I can try a lot harder next year.

01:37:04
Speaker 2: I can.

01:37:04
Speaker 3: You know that.

01:37:07
Speaker 2: We mentioned it last week that Madness is coming soon sooner for family members because we do have our thirty two film twenties and thirties Madness coming this summer. The results of that will feed into and factor into Super Madness next year. The Elite eight from every decade nineteen twenties through the twenty tens will be included in Super Madness next year. Now, Josh, I do want to just say one quick thing about that, because there was a little bit and it might have only been one person. I'm not going to call that person out, but I want to make sure that there's no confusion about this because it would make for an incredibly boring film Spotting madness. If this was the case. When we say we're taking the elite eight from every one of these decades and throwing them into a pool of seventy two and then we'll get it down to sixty four for a tournament, we don't mean we're doing like real March madness does. Our bracket doesn't do that anyway, where you can put films in different regions and we're gonna seed and have like the nineteen eighties here and the seventies here and sixties here, and then the number at dolls are gonna meet. No, the whole point is, we know how those have already played out. We've done those decades. We know what the number one film is. The whole point is is that we want to see how the number four seeded film, or how the number four finisher from the nineteen eighties will do against the number two film from the nineteen thirties.

01:38:36
Speaker 3: Mark.

01:38:37
Speaker 2: So it's about chaos with the best films according to Film Spotting listeners of the past eighty ninety years. That's the point of super Madness.

01:38:48
Speaker 3: Got it.

01:38:48
Speaker 2: I think it'll be a.

01:38:49
Speaker 1: Right should should be a lot of chaotic fun. I know everyone's chomping at the bit for us to get to Massacre theater. But let me give a very quick thanks to the folks who came out recently to our meetup in Edinburgh. We had a good time. We talked, Yeah, we had talked streep a little bit around the group. There was every opinion you could imagine on Mother Mary, which makes makes sense, from loving it to really not liking it and everywhere in between. We had two family members there, so we talked a little bit about out the bonus content we offer and what their experience has been as family members. Actually, one of them Kyle Adam. You know, Kyle just wrote in when we did our bonus episode for April to Ask Us Anything episode. Kyle was the person who wrote in about how to watch movies as a young parent, how do you fit them in? So so he was there. We got to talk a little bit more about that. Steven O your.

01:39:45
Speaker 2: Kids, that was my advice.

01:39:48
Speaker 3: I didn't give him that advice, okay.

01:39:50
Speaker 4: No.

01:39:51
Speaker 1: Stephen is another family member. He's been listening since cynecast and recently joined the family. So thank you Stephen for your loyalty and joining. Micah and Elizabeth were there as well, so it was a really great time. That's it, Adam. The expense accounts. You'll be happy. The overseas meetups are done. Next up Chicago. I'll be back in Chicago in June and there for Film Spotting Fest two.

01:40:20
Speaker 2: I saw the bill. I saw the bill for Berlin. Josh, yeah, that's it there.

01:40:28
Speaker 1: Well, I usually, you know, usually it's beer. H Berlin was cocktails.

01:40:34
Speaker 2: Sorry it must have been. I don't know, maybe maybe a dish or too, but you know what, they deserve it, especially with one listener traveling many hours to come to that meetup. I'm running out of synonyms. I'm gonna go with the Edinburgh Alliance. I like that what it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we can call an alliance absolutely. All Right, it is now time for the return of Massacre Theater. It's been so long I probably need to remind you. This is where Adam and I perform a scene you get a chance to win a film Spotting prize. All right, Adam, are you ready? Have you prepared?

01:41:14
Speaker 1: Have you been what's the term in NBA circles? You know, when a player comes back from a breaker an injury, they're ramped. Have you been ramping up for that not at all.

01:41:24
Speaker 2: Definitely not. Did people think I finally killed this segment off? No, it just it just goes on hiatus and we have madness.

01:41:32
Speaker 1: Right and it always comes back. You can't kill it.

01:41:35
Speaker 2: No.

01:41:36
Speaker 4: With the symbol, would they would?

01:41:42
Speaker 3: The simple would?

01:41:43
Speaker 2: The was the same?

01:41:45
Speaker 3: Why do you say that? Why do you say?

01:41:47
Speaker 2: Will you say?

01:41:48
Speaker 3: Say it?

01:41:48
Speaker 2: Like I said, I would make some comments here, Josh, and probably give away a few hints, But I think even changing a word or two the dialogue itself is more than enough for our audience, don't you think.

01:42:03
Speaker 3: Probably.

01:42:04
Speaker 1: I hope there will be a lot of entries because I think people will get this. Now you're you're playing you usually play the woman's part. Is that is that still the case? Here is the female part. I think it qualifies, It qualifies. Okay, yeah, so you'll be in your comfort zone.

01:42:23
Speaker 2: I should be not British, though we'll see if I give her a British accent. That's true, even though I'm not intentionally doing so. Are you ready? You started off and action.

01:42:36
Speaker 1: I think it's time for me to give us a pep talk and explain some things a very long time ago.

01:42:41
Speaker 2: May I have a word with you privately, well or in a hole here where just on the other side of this mineral deposit. Follow me, I'm going to lose my temper now.

01:42:55
Speaker 3: When right now, well, when.

01:43:03
Speaker 2: Twelve years ago you made a promise to me, well we were caged inside that trap that if we survived, you would never steal another chicken, turkey, goose, duck, or squab, whatever they are. And I believed you. Why Why did you lie to me?

01:43:19
Speaker 3: Because I'm a wild animal.

01:43:22
Speaker 2: And in scene scene I think you didn't connect a vengeance.

01:43:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were good little hint of British at some point, but it's not a bad thing.

01:43:34
Speaker 2: I did put you the same voice. I put on the same voice all the time. I think I'm I think I'm one dimensional. What can I say? If you know what film we just mass, could email the movie's title, your name, and your location to feedback at film spotting dot com. The deadline is Monday, May eighteenth. We'll select the winner randomly from all the correct entries and announce it in a couple of weeks. Josh, that is our show.

01:44:00
Speaker 1: If you want to connect with us on social media, find Adam and the show on Instagram, Facebook, letterboxed, and YouTube at film Spotting. You can find me there at Larsen on Film. Actually, you can also find us both on Blue Sky. Come on over try Blue Sky. We are independently produced and listener supported. You can support the show by joining the film Spotting Family at film spottingfamily dot com. You can listen early and ad free. You'll also get monthly bonus episodes, a weekly newsletter, and access to the entire show archive. For show t shirts and other merch go to film Spotting dot dot slash Shop.

01:44:38
Speaker 2: Out in limited release, Josh, I don't know if this was on your radar during your research for our summer movie draft, but I considered it. Lucretia Martel Our Land, Yeah, a documentary. Look forward to this one, a two thousand and nine murder that took place in an Argentine indigenous community. I believe that it is Martel's first documentary, and we did include Martel in our twenty seventeen New Argentine Cinema marathon. The Headless Woman Las Sienega, so one that we are definitely planning to see out in wide release, you can see Mortal Kombat two. You can see Billie Eilish Hit Me Hard, and soft. That tour is in three D. You can also see Huge Jackman, Emma Thompson, and some farm animals in the Sheep Detectives. My notes tell me that it has a ninety five percent fresh on rotten tomatoes.

01:45:30
Speaker 3: You go, She's Detectives.

01:45:32
Speaker 4: You go.

01:45:32
Speaker 2: Next week. In the Film Spotting Feed, you will get Rome Open City from our Dissident Cinema Marathon, you'll get Film Spotting SVU, where Matt and Jordan will review Netflix's four part Lord of the Fly series. Not aware of this and this is why again broken record. We have Matt and Jordan to tell us about these things. It's right that we should be aware of or maybe we should continue being oblivious to listen to them and find out. Indeed, Friday's show, our big episode will be the Tree of Life at fifteen years old.

01:46:06
Speaker 1: Film Spotting is produced by Golden Joe Deso and Sam van Halgren. Without Sam and Golden Joe, this show wouldn't go. Our production assistant is Sophie Kempenar Special thanks to everyone at wbe Zy Chicago. More information is available at w easy dot org. For Film Spotting, I'm Josh Larson and.

01:46:25
Speaker 2: I'm Adam kempinar. Thanks for listening.

01:46:27
Speaker 5: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore, but fine.