Top 25 Films of the Last 25 Years

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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 armed now?

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Speaker 4: No, Look, we're going to do this thing.

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Speaker 5: We're going to have a.

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Speaker 4: Conversation from Chicago.

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Speaker 6: This is Film Spotting celebrating our twentieth year. I'm Adam Kempinar and I'm Josh Larson.

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Speaker 7: Twenty five years. That's a welleso impressive. Will you figure you sleep one third of your life? That knocks offt eight years and Maria right there, so you're you know you're down at sixteen and change, and you know you're just a teenager at marriage.

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Speaker 4: You can drive it, but you can there's still the occasional accident. According to Bill Murray's calculation, we may only be teenagers at marriage or reviewing movies, Adam. But the clock says it's been twenty five years since the dawn of the millennium, so it's time for some reflection.

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Speaker 6: And reflect we shall this week the top twenty five films of the last twenty five years. It's all ahead after the show, Josh, It's santory time.

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Speaker 4: After the show on Film Spotting.

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Speaker 8: More than this, you know, there's no thing more than this.

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Speaker 6: Welcome to Film Spotting, Josh. We just wrapped up the month's long project that is Film Spotting Madness. Our bracket style Movie Elimination Tournament. This year's theme was the best of the century so far, which means that we have been contemplating the films of the last twenty five years, weighing them against each other in high stakes matchups for weeks and weeks. Why then, was assembling a top twenty five of the last twenty five so damn hard?

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Speaker 4: Well? Probably because our votes in the tournament, Adam, are lost to history unless you and Sam have like a spreadsheet of every vote everyone made, which I wouldn't put past you guys honestly, but I think you know we can forget the poor choices we made, the mistakes we made this list, these two lists. It's going on the film spotting website. I mean, we're probably I'm going to put versions on letterbox. People are going to be able to look back at this and potentially laugh at us. That's why it was hard.

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Speaker 6: This week our top twenty five films of the century, plus the return of Massacre Theater, Let's jump right in, Josh, the top twenty five films since the year two thousand and five years before this show began. How did you set about accomplishing this feat?

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Speaker 4: I mean, you weren't kidding in this being hard, which I didn't expect. We did our Best Films of the twenty tens lists a few years ago. I thought that would be a helpful starting point. It was in a way. We just went through madness, But yeah, man, I needed a framework for actually putting together my personal list. And I'm looking at these dates thinking about this. And I did realize fairly early on that this period twenty twenty twenty five it essentially covers my professional life as a critic. So I was writing reviews before two thousand, pretty much as a freelancer. Started that in ninety four, but I became a full time movie critic for the Daily Naperville Sun in two thousand and one. I'm pretty sure it was so I've been doing this in some professional capacity at including with you since twenty twelve here on the show. During this entire period we're thinking about so, I kind of took a different approach than I did with our Best Movies of the twenty tens list, which we did. That was in February of twenty twenty. There I talked about how my list was going to be somewhere in between an annual top ten in the moment list, that annual diary, and a canon list where we've had the distance to consider inform consensus that sort of thing. We do have a little bit more distance this time. You know, we're looking back twenty five years. So I could have taken the canon approach. I think that's a legit approach, but looking over these titles, I just couldn't get away from thinking of these in parallel with my career. So basically my criteria was something like this, if I were to retire today, what movies would I choose to mark this time that I had this period I covered while working as a film critic, And that led me to think about these movies in different ways. What are the movies I still hold close, What are the movies I championed, What were the ones I enjoyed discussing, reconsidering here on the show with others online, And maybe what were the ones that challenged me as a critic and brought out the best in me. So that's a lot of factors, but in my head, it at least gave me a place to make some of those tough decisions and had in certain directions in pulling twenty five movies out of who knows how many over twenty five.

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Speaker 6: Years, any self imposed restrictions. Because you know, our producer Sam decided to partake in the fun. He posted his top twenty five already over on Letterbox. We will link to it in our show notes or you can find it on letterbox, and God bless him. Interesting list, strong list. I'm just going to say, not his top twenty five films of the last twenty five years, just by his own definition. It's not because he chose to not feature multiple films from any single director, even though by his own admission, within that list and to me privately, you know he'd have at least two Wes Anderson films on there. He'd probably have two pt Anderson films on there. So it's a really good list. But I don't think by definition it's exactly what we're partaking in.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I kind of headed that direction just instinctively. I know he proposed studying that as a rule for all of us, and I don't think there's anything wrong with including multiple films from the same director, So I didn't think we needed as a rule. But I did head that way just because again the way I was thinking about this, I did want to spread the wealth. And though it was painful when it came down to choosing, say, spoiler, which Jordan Peele movie I'm actually going to pick, I liked that challenge and feel like it helped me clarify how I was forming my list in some way. So I personally went that way. I don't sounds like you didn't, which I think is totally valid.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, and I like the thinking behind it, not only because it allows you to spread the wealth. But this is often why we are doing lists at all on this show, crystallizing why you love something. If you force yourself, for example, to only include I don't know one Cone Brothers film, it might make you realize that that film you've always had in your number two slot might actually be the one you really love the most, and then you have to really investigate why that is. And that's the whole point. So I do understand that, but I don't think it's the list. And I ended up with two directors having a pair of films in my top twenty five, one of them a bit of a surprise. Not that the films I think will be a surprise to anybody. But if you said to me at the beginning of this process, this filmmaker would be one of only two who would have two films on your list. I don't know that I would have guessed him. I didn't really have a framework. Otherwise, nothing as elaborate as you've laid out, Josh. I kind of just went with my gut. My gut mixed with the incinerator approach, meaning I thought about the films through the lens of can I imagine a world without these films existing? And that helped me think about the movies that I am the most passionate about. But I will tell you how I got there. I went to letterboxed. I looked at the films of the last twenty five years by decade, and I sorted all the movies that I had given four and a half stars or five stars to. I had a hunt hundred and sixty four, Okay, I had to get that one hundred and sixty four somehow down to twenty five. And I just went through the list and applied that incinerator mindset, pulled movies out as I went. Ultimately got it down to twenty five. So what we're going to do is we're not going to go into great detail about each one of these picks that would be an excessively long show even by film spotting standards. We are going to list them twenty five down to twenty one, then twenty down to sixteen. But we're going to stop as we go and highlight one of those picks among those five choices. Josh start us off.

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Speaker 4: Okay, a surprise inclusion for me at twenty five, which came again thinking about my career and how I engaged with these movies, what they meant to me. I have The Witch in this slot, the advent of Robert Egger's historical horror, still his most terrifying and theologically engaged work. So The Witch at twenty five. Twenty four Lovers Rock Steve McQueen's Safe Space musical drama set almost entirely in a nineteen eighty house party in London's Caribbean community. Number twenty three Aftersun Charlotte Wells heartbreaking father daughter drama Our twenty twenty two Golden Brick winner Adam and Worth noting again this lens that I've been putting on here maybe more of a personal approach, but the past twenty five years also parallel my daughter's lives. The older one being born in two thousand and two, the other two thousand and five, and here we've got this exquisite father daughter drama twenty two, The Boy and the Heron Now the consensus Miyazaki would probably be spirited away for a list like this, which I do love. But there's something about a master surprising you at the end of his career. Number twenty one, and this is the one I want to spend some more time on. Dick Johnson Is Dead from twenty to twenty. Documentarian Kirsten Johnson and Fashioning just something utterly unique here. When her father, Dick Johnson began to show very early signs of oncoming dementia, they decided together to chronicle his final days in two two creative ways, ways that allowed them to kind of laugh together in the face of mortality. So they elaborately stage these dramatizations of the ways Dick could die, falling downstairs, an air conditioning unit crashing on his head, and then they also designed these ostentatious fantasy visions of Dick's glam afterlife. I knew Dick Johnson Is Dead was something special when I first saw it. Made my twenty twenty top ten list. But man, since then, I think about this movie so often, and I think about other movies tackling this topic, and some of which can be equally moving or thought provoking, but those somehow send me back to Dick Johnson Is Dead, thinking about just the unique gem like quality this particular film has. And I did rewatch this movie just last year, posted this on letterbox. More shattering with each small loss that life brings. So yeah, at that rate Dick Johnson is Dead it might nudge its way into my top ten of the twenty first century at some point, just the more I live and the more meaning this movie takes on. For now, though I've got it at number twenty one. She kills me multiple times at the Resurrected Dad.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a really powerful film. I actually wondered if camera person was in consideration for this list. I do prefer Dick Johnson is Dead. I would have that a bit higher. And the camera is one of those tools. The medium of film art often can be a platform for us to explore topics and ideas that we otherwise wouldn't feel safe doing. And who else gets the opportunity to witness their own funeral to see how people really do about them, which is the opportunity that he gets here, but also it's that great lament something I noted back when we reviewed the film upon its release. Everyone says, when a loved one, especially a parent, dies, I wish I had said this to him. I wish I had honored him this way when he was alive. Kristin Johnson takes care of that problem with this film.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and a lot of that is done in their casual conversations which are recorded as well. So it's not only these more like set pieces which are the brilliant formal invention, but the candidness of the conversations they share also do what you're talking about.

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Speaker 6: I said there was no framework, and that's true, but anyone who's been listening to the show for a while knows that while I don't necessarily come into the list making process with a theme or themes in mind, ones often emerge over the course of putting the list together. And what emerged for me here, Josh, were these ideas reckonings. Reckonings with this increasingly seemingly failed experiment we call America manifest destiny and all its glorious consequences. With the mysteries of love and family with art and reconciling reality and fantasy and reckoning with your mortality. Dick Johnson is dead checks off a few of these boxes.

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Speaker 4: You know.

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Speaker 6: This is a good old fashioned Team Adam list. And what's funny is I say all of that in my number twenty five. I don't think really fits into any of those boxes, at least not neatly. It might be the only film on the list that doesn't. But I was really strong ugglying to come up with a choice at number twenty five, and it's one that I imagine many will think is too low on this list.

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Speaker 4: It's mad.

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Speaker 6: Max Fury wrote George Miller five twenty four, a film I caught up with recently because I had the opportunity to interview the filmmaker at the recent Chicago International Film Festival. It was a Palm d'Or winner. I really liked it when it came out. We reviewed it very favorably on the show, but watching Shoplifters again cemented it truly as one of the best films of the last twenty five years. At number twenty three, I have one of those movies that is for me, and I don't care how anyone else feels about it. No, it's not Joe Writ's Pride and Prejudice, but it is Joe Wright's Atonement. And we're going to continue to get arty here with the next two following Atonement, Joshua Oppenheimer's The Active Killing documentary I have at number twenty two, and we're gonna have a little bit of overlap. I've got it slightly higher, Charlotte Wells Aftersun at twenty one. The movie I want to highlight is Joshua Oppenheimer's The Active Killing. I considered a few other documentaries, Grizzly Man, Man on Wire, the James marsh film from two thousand and eight. This was our Golden Brick winner from twenty thirteen, and the reason why it won the brick why it's on this list goes back to something we discussed during our review, which was that it didn't feel like any documentary we had ever seen before. Ensure there were elements of it that felt like Hertzog, felt like Errol Morris, who ended up being executive producers on the film. We reference Sarah Polly's stories we tell in their blurring of fact and fiction and documentary and narrative styles, and also how we try to make sense of our lives and process the things we've done or experience through narratives. But I don't know that we've ever met a real life character on screen, a real life monster on screen, and hopefully not in real life before. Like On War Congo, who estimates that he murdered over a thousand people as part of mass killings that occurred in Indonesia in the mid sixties. How does Oppenheimer tell his story? He decides to reenact a lot of these horrors, these killings in surrealist fashion, with these elaborate fantasy sequences inspired by Hollywood movies, which On War was, and he plays himself in these sequences, and it's just astonishing, and it's provocative and for some perhaps really troubling, especially since I believe an War remains unpunished for his deeds. Is this almost a celebration of him? Is it an exoneration? He's a collaborator in the artistic process. Why is Joshua Oppenheimer collaborating with someone who is such a monster. But it's one of those movies where going back to Hertzog and that ecstatic truth approach when you decide to eschew facts and focus on elements like how anwar sees himself. It can be really potent. How revealing is it ultimately to see this man through some of these reenactments in vision as scenario where he has victims who are thanking him as if he's sort of a god for killing them and sending them to heaven. This is the way this character is now processing his guilt, the denial, the moral compromises that he has made to go on living. And we do see a portrait of a man who we feel no sympathy for, but who Oppenheimer's intimate camera does show how that shield is starting to wear down more and more. It's not really a movie. I can play a clip from that most people would be able to follow who are listening anyway, But I mentioned Morris and Hertzog, so I wanted to play a clip Josh from an interview that Weiss did with Errol Morris and Erner Herzog talking about the film and the achievement that it is and this approach, this daring approach that Oppenheimer takes as a filmmaker.

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Speaker 4: Immediately knew I had never seen anything like that.

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Speaker 1: I'd never seen anything as powerful, as frightening.

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Speaker 4: And as surreal.

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Speaker 1: As what was on the screen, and I immediately said, this is big, This is truly, truly big.

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Speaker 6: That's Erner Herzog on the Act of Killing my number twenty two film of the last twenty five.

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Speaker 4: Years, probably in my twenty six to thirty slot. I did have this, I think we both did in our best of the twenty tens list, and yeah, one of those tough cuts for me. It's hard to imagine anyone seeing this film and thinking Oppenheimer is, you know, not even just celebrating, but being a bit at a distance about Congo and not having a point a purpose to this project. Because to me, when you use the word reckoning, it's so crucial. Here Oppenheimer is leading Congo to a reckoning, and this is a reckoning that at one point prompts literal wretching in one of just the most arresting moments in this documentary. It reminds me, you know, of something we would see a number of years later in Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest, that response to facing the horrors you are responsible for that one, you know, work of fiction, of course, and we're actually seeing the real thing in the act of killing. So so yeah, definitely one that I considered for my list as well. All Right, our next group of five, starting at number twenty, I have the Florida pro for me, the pinnacle of Sean Baker's Empathy cinema, set in a short term Florida hotel just outside of Disney World. Number nineteen Cemetery of Splendor. We are in the midst of an Andre Tarkowski marathon. Adam Stalker is up next week. I believe and I do feel that Thai filmmaker a Pichapol Rossitoku is the closest thing that we have to Tarkowski right now, just in terms of embracing the mystery of spirituality. So this is a gentle interior epic from twenty sixteen. In the eighteen slot ex Makina Alex Garland. This is the terrifying flip side for me of Steven Spielberg's AI artificial intelligence, which may come up a little bit later. Number seventeen I have Borat and number sixteen I have meeks cut off Kelly Reikert's fable of pioneers who are lost on the Oregon trail, and to your point, Adam, about you know, a national reckoning. Thinking about the last twenty five years. In that context, this to me an increasingly apt parable about the United States maybe being lost from the very beginning. But let's return to Borat on a similar theme. Borat, it's been a while. This came out in two thousand and six, so a reminder. This is British comedian Sasha Baric Cohen's tour of America in the guise of a boorish, offensive Kazakh television reporter. Much of this is in bad taste, almost all of it is hilarious. But here's what Baron Cohen, as Borat, finds. He talks to a Tennessee and who's comfortable enough once Borat reveals his bigotry to launch into a poisonous tirade. He talks to a Hummer dealer who doesn't question Borat's request for a vehicle that could easily run over a person. Oh over the days when hummers were the only ridiculously oversized vehicles on the road. Seems like we're a wash in them now. How about the crowd's response to Borat's speech at a rodeo, My.

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Speaker 2: Name a Bora as it's done.

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Speaker 10: Can I say, at first we support your war of terror?

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Speaker 8: May we show us support the boys in Iraq?

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Speaker 9: May you senday and kill every single terrorist.

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Speaker 4: May I judge Bush and drink the love.

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Speaker 9: Of every single man, woman and child of Iraq.

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Speaker 4: This movie showed us who the United States was in two thousand and six. And maybe then we thought it was only in a few pockets, you know, these places that Baron Cohen managed to find and expose. Maybe I don't know, maybe the Obama years seemed to cover those pockets up. And I'm speaking strictly for those of us who who don't experience the sort of you know, discriminatory ignorance on a daily basis, those of us who could turn a blind eye to this. But I don't, oh man. I think if we've learned anything in the last nine months or so, it's that what Boat showed us actually represents a huge chunk of this country. I mean, not for nothing. I came across a clip while looking for Bora at clips of Sasha Baron Cohen from his alig show where he interviewed and oblivious Donald Trump. So as for bor At itself, it still offers laughs today, but man, they are extra bitter now.

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Speaker 6: I can only imagine. I'm not sure I can bring myself to watch borat clips. Josh, We're gonna have some more crossover as we get into this next batch of five. And even though the second choice you're gonna hear the main character is a woman and the film is certainly largely told from her point of view, there is still a lot of testosterone in these first four titles. The overlap X Makina Alex Garland's film I Have at twenty, the film I was referencing a moment ago is weeks cut off.

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Speaker 4: That's the second Here we Go at nineteen.

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Speaker 6: One of our film spotting Fest titles cementing a spot on my list Take Shelter Jeth Nichols film starring Michael Shannon at eighteen at number seventeen. Maybe it was because of that conversation I just had with Violet Luca about David Cronenberg and reminding me of the power, the mythological headiness of a history of violence.

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Speaker 4: A couple of Ortenson performance.

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Speaker 6: That was my first number one film on any top ten list in the history of film spotting back in two thousand and five, that's at number seventeen, So now we're going to cut all that machismo Josh with my number sixteen choice and listen. I also think Portrait of a Lady on Fire is an incredible film. I considered it for this top twenty five, but I love the subtle, potent magic of Sealine's Siama's follow up, The Tea.

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Speaker 4: Even more. Okay.

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Speaker 6: This is a movie about an eight year old girl named Nellie who has just lost her grandmother. She's helping her parents clean out her mother's child at home. Her mother has to leave, and then Nellie encounters a girl of a similar age out in the woods as she's building a treehouse. This isn't really a spoiler. The movie isn't shying away from it. You will discover it for yourself. Fairly early into the movie. Turns out this girl is Nellie's mother. How is it that Nelly's mother has become an eight year old girl all of a sudden who's transported to this time and place. The movie doesn't address it. The movie doesn't need to. It was my number one film of twenty twenty one. I called it a little miracle. I praised its strongly defined sense of place and how the place was twofold, because it references the setting and how it uses the location, how Siama uses the setting and the woods and the houses, but also the psychological space where you are really locked into and experiencing through a particular character and in this case a particular character's perspective. It's subtle, as I said, but also really sophisticated in its camera work. It's maybe not quite as flashy as Portrait of Lady on Fire or is vivid in terms of its colors, but it's still extremely elegant and it should be. It's shot by the same cinematographer, Claire Matone. Criterion recognize the magic of the film. They release the film in an addition in twenty twenty three, and a writer name so Mayer provided the essay I want to read what she wrote, taking place over three days that blend passed in future. Petite Mama proposes a cosmic mystery that, like an acorn, you can fit in your pocket. Should the film explain how Nelly and Mary and Meat? I ask my viewing companion, Issy, aged six and a half. She shrugs. I like it when things are a mystery forever, because then one day you can work it out. The film's folding time feels familiar to her. Growing up takes forever. Then one day you work it out, and you're back in childhood through cinema. The time slip is that simple. Editing creates the illusion of the path through the woods running from future to present. Production design reinforces the sense of overlapping temporalities mid century modern wallpaper, tiles, and furniture based on Siama's memories of her grandparents' homes, queuing Nelly to recognize the house that Marian has been escaping while she awaits surgery for the same unnamed genetic condition That means Marian's mother uses a hospital bed and walks with a cane. And it really is that simple. That's what I mean by subtle but sophisticated and elegant. There's one scene, Josh, where we do transport through time with the camera just holding on Nelly's face and the woods provide this portal. It's absolutely a film like Miyazaki's work, like another film for adults and kids that we've referenced a few times on this show, and multiple people associated with our show love The Secret of Rowan Inish by John Sales. A movie you can watch with your children, but again is a movie for adults, and it is an example of that quiet kind of conflict free cinema that Siama specializes in, but not drama free, not stakes free, conflict free in the sense that she intentionally is trying to remove traditional structures and power dynamics, the distance and divide characters. It's something that she's talked about quite a bit. It's something she talked about when the movie came out in an interview with movie Here Again the movies in French, so not great for radio for me to play a clip from Petit mamm, but I will play a clip of Celine Siama talking about her approach to the film.

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Speaker 2: I wanted to depart from the duo of the mother daughter and really look at the trio which feels right, and a trio of grandmother, a mother and a daughter, and to look at that trio but also to abolish the classical yeroche that there is, and to look at it through a lens of equality between a mother and a daughter rather than some form of yerarchy. So bringing orisonality to family relationship as a twist that maybe the magic of the film. Actually maybe the magic trick of the film.

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Speaker 6: I was surprised, Josh, looking through my notes, I couldn't find my notes for this film. I think it came out in that kind of end of year limbo where I watched it for end of year planning for top ten prep. Obviously it did end up paying off as my number one film of the year, but we didn't get a chance to talk about it in depth, and it really just played on the festival circuit, getting that end of the year kind of New York LA release, so we didn't get a lot of feedback on it. I feel like it's a wildly underseen film. Everyone loves to talk about Portraital Lady on Fire, and for good reason, but man, this film is a gem.

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Speaker 4: Who was it who wrote that Criterion essay? Because Wow, an acorn you can put in your pocket?

00:31:20
Speaker 6: That's so say, is there?

00:31:23
Speaker 4: That is some fantastic writing and a great way of just, you know, capturing this little movie. You're right about the subtlety that's what makes it work, makes it so special. You could have blown this concept out in crazy ways, and Siaman does not choose to do that. To her credit. It made me think of a movie that boy was kind of in the running for this list where the Wild Things are from Spike Jones in terms of capturing a childhood experience that adults also can tap into. But yeah, I like the swerve. I like the swerve away from the canon. Pick here, So that brings us to number fifteen. All right, we're moving along. At fifteen. It's my Paul Thomas Anderson pick. Phantom Thread at fourteen is Children of Men, Alfonso Kran's dystopian drama. It was great in two thousand and six, largely hailed then I think as a masterpiece of craft, but now we're recognizing it for its social commentary and just how incisive that is has been for each passing year. Number thirteen Volvae my favorite, Pedro Almodovar, his Hitchcockian riff with just a luminous performance from Penelope Cruz at number twelve, came out in two thousand. We're going right to the first eligible year. It's bamboozled. I loved Spike Lee's hand grenade about black representation in media back then when it came out. It's only proven as well to be more biting. Sense I had to have Spike on this list and number eleven, I've got Inception. I do think this goes back to this thing you were talking about of how what is our actual best list? And I would say Dunkirk is Nolan working at the fullest extent of his powers. But Man Inception was such a thrilling leveling up from his first two Batman films, the way combined the blockbusters skills and thrills there with the brains of the Prestige and Memento. So I went with Inception. I've got it at number eleven. But let me say a few more words about Phantom Thread. Paul Thomas Anderson has gotten plenty of attention in film Spottyed Madness, you know, best of the century so far, deservedly so. I have long suspected, though, Adam, that Phantom Thread would supplant Punch Drunk Love. Actually it's my favorite Paul Thomas Anderson film. And that is what happened last December when I led a Cinema interrupt A series on Phantom Thread over the Gene Sisco Film Center. You know, interrupt us can be a gauntlet for a movie in terms of testing its greatness. You know, not every film can stand up to the scrutiny of frame by frame dissection over a number of days, and Phantom Thread is one of those that just passed with flying colors. There is we're back to the subtlety here, a subtlety to the artistry on display. We think of Paul Thomas Anderson's grand flourishes, especially in something like probably the consensus pick for this list. There will be blood which are thrilling in their own way to experience, but the subtlety he brings to Phantom Threat in terms of the camera work, the framing, and the incorporation of Johnny Greenwood's score. And then there's this endlessly mysterious romantic relationship at the movie's center between Daniel day Lewis's mid century fashion designer and Vicki Creep's model slash muse, amuse who turns the tables on him in delicious ways.

00:34:43
Speaker 7: I want you flat on your back, helpless, ten open, It's only me to help, and then I'm on his trunk. You're not going to die. You might wish you're going to die, but you're not going to. You need to settle down a little.

00:35:22
Speaker 4: So after four days of interrupt this, we still did not know exactly what to make of their dynamic. That's where the arguments of the discussions and the debates ended with no conclusion. That's all to the movie's credit. I think it's entirely purposeful on the part of Anderson and his actors. So Phantom Thread is the one I'm going with here. And by the way, stay tuned for a return of Cinema interrupt Us to the Genesisko Film Center later this summer. I'll share more details about that soon. Yeah, okay, are you.

00:35:53
Speaker 6: Going to dole out little hints on social media like you did last time?

00:35:56
Speaker 4: Maybe that was kind of fun. Yeah, okay.

00:36:00
Speaker 6: Teen through eleven, I've got a Christopher Nolan choice, but I'm going with the movie that was the film that made me discover Christopher Nolan. That is Memento at number fourteen. How do you pick a Martin Scorsese film when he's made you know, Wolf of Wall Street is a film I adore, Josh, tough choice for me to leave that off, But you've also got Killers of the Flower Moon. I could consider The Irishman too, But just a couple months ago, I was on this show singing the praises of the best Picture Winner from what year? Was it around two thousand.

00:36:38
Speaker 4: Oh Man eight ish.

00:36:41
Speaker 6: Definitely not two thousand and seven, two thousand and six.

00:36:43
Speaker 4: Perhaps The depart thousand and six, You got it.

00:36:46
Speaker 6: Yeah, The Departed is just one of my most rewatchable films. At number thirteen, another highly rewatchable film, and another one that might be a bit of a surprise for folks. I've got a Spike Lee film. It's Inside Man.

00:37:02
Speaker 4: That's a great one.

00:37:04
Speaker 6: At twelve, wonkar y in the mood for love possibly a bit low, also a bit too low, perhaps Terrence Malix The Tree of Life at eleven. The movie I want to talk a little bit about is Inside Man, because twenty fifth Hour is maybe the more fashionable choice here, Josh. Perhaps both of us are surprising people with our picks. Black Klansmen would have been a very good choice in this slot as well. I think I had that in my best films of the decade.

00:37:36
Speaker 4: Liz ch Iraq, I love Schyraq.

00:37:38
Speaker 6: Yeah, twenty twenty Shirack's very good as well. This movie could be perceived as just a heist movie, just a very good heist movie hopefully, And twenty fifth Hour is really Spikes nine to eleven movie. But how can you not think about this film and not remember Jody Foster and Denzel Washington having a conversation draped by the mayor can flag behind them on the wall, and we will never forget, and the conversations about Ben Lawden's nephew and al Qaeda and the character who I believe is Indian talking about how he gets thrown out of a bank as a hostage and he gets harassed and he goes to the airport and he can't go through security without a random selection. And what is Denzel's character, Detective Fraser say, I bet you can get a cab. Though, this is a film going back to one of my themes, Josh, It's a film fundamentally about the rich getting richer on the backs of the poor and persecuted with no repercussions except maybe we have a crew here and we don't know. This is one of the brilliant aspects of this film. We don't know really what is at the core of this heist and whether or not these bank robbers maybe they really are like Robin Hood and they're people that we ultimately are going to have some respect for, and they're trying to level playing field a little bit. Maybe only in the movies is there the possibility of justice. Otherwise, Josh, this is a film where every scene is about transactions, transactions of power. It's about leverage. It's about what can I get in exchange for helping you? What are you going to give me? How is this going to pay off for me? How is this going to serve me? If there's no benefit for me, then there's no reason for us to be talking. Think about the conversation near the end of the film, after this all sort of plays out and Frazier is talking to his captain and the captain tells him to bury it, and his line is nobody's breathing down my neck for answers. I'm not going to breathe down yours, as if that would really be the only reason to continue to follow through with this case. Doesn't matter what the detective thinks might be happening, doesn't matter what was stolen, whatever injustice could be at the core of it. We have nobody who's saying solve it, So you know what, move on, find other cases. There is a legitimately great twist to Inside Man. It's a legitimately great Denzel Washington performance with one of my favorite line readings of all time.

00:40:20
Speaker 4: Any other proposal, Oh, please do not say proposals.

00:40:23
Speaker 7: My girlfriend she wants a proposal from me.

00:40:26
Speaker 4: You think you're too young to get married? No, not too young, too broke. Maybe I should rob a bank. You love each other? Yeah, yeah we do. Money shouldn't really matter. Thank you, bank robber. I'm just saying thank you, bank robber.

00:40:46
Speaker 6: It's got one of my favorite Spike Lee double Dolly shots with Denzel and the gun shot. But every frame, every angle is purposeful. It is pure Spike Lee.

00:40:58
Speaker 4: As I said, you had to have Spike on this listen. I love that we have two different titles because it speaks to exactly what you laid out there. I think, you know, do the right thing. And Malcolm X's looms so large over his filmography that perhaps casual movie goers they think, yeah, he had that pinnacle and he's been working, but you know, nothing was close to that, and that's not the case. Like from two thousand and on, he made so many strong, incredible films. The ones you listed, the ones we picked. So yeah, this worked out really nice. I think whoever heard a bank where ib was escaping on a plane with fifty hostages. You saw a dog day afternoon. You're stolen?

00:41:36
Speaker 3: Why?

00:41:37
Speaker 4: I don't know more.

00:41:38
Speaker 6: Top twenty five of the last twenty five to come are top ten films of the two thousands ahead for our complete picks. You know, if you just can't wait, you're listening and you want to cheat, you want to jump into the future. He can go to film spotting dot net slash lists and find our choices there.

00:41:54
Speaker 4: Listening is the number one thing you can do to support an independently produced show like film Spotting. There are a couple more things you could do. You could take a minute to give us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Doesn't matter if your first time listener or have been listening for twenty years. Every new review helps us reach new listeners. Another way to support us join the Film Spotting Family at film spottingfamily dot com. We want to thank advisory board members. That's the top tier you could choose there. It's James Pickering from Chicago. Thanks James.

00:42:28
Speaker 6: Hopefully James will be on our Film Spotting Advisory Board call. As we're taping this, we're two nights away from our May call. We have those quarterly with our advisory board members. A lot of fun stuff to talk about this month, James writes, I found you several years ago when I was searching for reviews of Broke Back Mountain, a movie that certainly should be in contention for our list. I am a gay man, and that was a big movie for my community because it was a gay love story in the mainstream. I loved how you reviewed it on your show and your overall support and representation of the LGBTQ I a plus community. It is very hard to find good film critics who review LGBT movies. I love your show, and I love that you're in Chicago as well. A random film or filmmaker that James loves. Meet Joe Black a movie I still have never seen in its entirety. I just I just still can't bring myself to watch that film after looking at Brad Pitt's dumbface. WHOA, Well, he's like he's always intentionally making a dumb face as the character.

00:43:28
Speaker 4: I knew this was not gonna appeal to you, but you went hard there. Yeah, I believe you'll find you'll find a glowing review of Meet Joe Black. Of course, the regional news archives if you want to track it.

00:43:41
Speaker 6: Okay, a movie James credits with becoming a cinephile like so many I'm guessing nineties kids Jurassic Park. Thank you James for joining the family and for all of those years of listening. In addition to keeping us doing what we're doing, your support comes with perks. You get to listen early in ad free. You get our weekly newsletter. You get exclusive opportunities like being part of our Film Spotting Family discord. You get monthly bonus shows like our April Bonus, ask Us anything, podcasts delivered per usual, Josh, except if you use Spotify you got the video edition. And if you went to YouTube dot com slash film Spotting or you're a subscriber there, you could watch me, you and producer Sam answer those questions, answer them talking video images, not just not just talking moving pictures.

00:44:32
Speaker 4: Moving pictures is what they call them, Adam.

00:44:34
Speaker 6: Yeah, how about that may bonus. We'll see if we do that one over video as well. We do plan to. It will be a draft with our Film Spotting Madness Bracket contest winner and yeah, that winner is once again Ricky Kendall from the UK. One film spotting madness once again. We are going to ask the advisory board to weigh in on this, maybe even give them the vote. At least that's what I was thinking we might do. I like Josh, I don't know top you.

00:45:03
Speaker 4: They'll help decide the top You.

00:45:04
Speaker 6: Have a horse in this race. Ricky gave us two options. I think I do have a clear favorite at this point. The two options were, we draft the best films me you, Sam, and Ricky. We draft the best films the top five or five rounds of movies from the cite and sound top fifty, or we do five rounds of all time movie directors, our favorite directors. Except here's the catch, they have to be deceased.

00:45:37
Speaker 4: Okay, the way you put that, I now have a clearer sense of what the second option is. Otherwise I was going to ask the advisory board to weigh in on that.

00:45:47
Speaker 6: Okay, I think pta no Wes, Yeah.

00:45:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I got it, And let me think about that. Which one I prefer? Both good topics. They will be Yeah, make for some good fighting for drafting purposes. Yeah.

00:46:03
Speaker 6: If you would like to become a Film Spotting family member, you can do that at Filmspottingfamily dot Com.

00:46:19
Speaker 4: You think this is funny?

00:46:23
Speaker 6: Producer sam Is Baiting one of us, Josh, I'm just not totally sure who Joaquin Phoenix. In twenty nineteen's Joker, Phoenix won an Oscar for his performance as Arthur Fleck. We also named him one of our top Performers of the twenty tens back in twenty twenty. He was your number three, my number one. We bring all this history up because next week on the show, we're going to continue our best of the centuries so far conversation with some performers talk a little twists there though not a top five, not a top ten or even a top twenty five.

00:46:56
Speaker 4: We're gonna draft a draft, all right, And yeah, I mean and anytime I can hear a part of that brilliant performance you're from Joker, I'm happy, So I think you're the tired get here.

00:47:07
Speaker 6: Also, next week we'll return to our Andre Tarkovsky marathon. I'm gonna get to finally cross off. You heard this if you listen to our April bonus content for film Spotting Family members, What is if not my number one, certainly one of my top three current biggest movie blind spots. It's Tarkovsky's nineteen seventy nine film Stalker, number forty three on the site and sound top one hundred. I'm going to see it, and I'm going to live to talk about it, hopefully, And I think you hope I have things to say.

00:47:38
Speaker 4: I think we have. I mean, it's dense, but even denser Tarkovsky titles ahead, this one has, for me, at least in my memory, just enough of a sci fi framework that I feel like I have better footing than in some of his So I cannot wait, cannot wait to see this again.

00:47:57
Speaker 6: I did very much love the sci fi framework of his Las Yes exactly Okay. For a schedule of future Film Spotting episodes, you can go to Film Spotting dot net and click on episodes right at the top of the page.

00:48:09
Speaker 4: This week, on our sister podcast, The Next Picture Show, looking at Cinema's Present via It's Past. It's part two of their Dead of Night pairing, which means they get to talk about Ryan Coogler Sinners. So much to say about Sinners. I feel like our review, Adam, I think we were trying not to spoil too much, so we didn't even get into the after credit scene. That sort of stuff. I'm sure they will on the Next Picture Show. Of course, they paired this with and previously discussed the nineteen ninety six Robert Rodriguez Quentin Tarantino collaboration From Dusk Till Dawn, that one starring George Clooney alongside Tarantino. New episodes of The Next Picture Show drop every Tuesday, and you can find them wherever you get your podcasts. Oh. Time now for the long awaited by Adams, long awaited by Adam, particularly so many emails return of Massacre Theater. We perform a scene and you get a chance to win a film spotting prize. Oh, it's the annual rusty Massacre Theater performance. We should say, Adam athlete. Sorry, thank you? Yeah, I mean, I don't know what it is all the other times, but right for this episode, for this edition, it is indeed.

00:49:22
Speaker 8: Tear sticks are doping for actors.

00:49:27
Speaker 4: Do you want to be the Lance Armstrong of theater?

00:49:30
Speaker 6: No, get out of the stick. We move on now to this week's edition of Massacre Theater. We'll see if you can get the connection to this week's show. Josh. The only note we are going to change a character's name try to make it. I suppose a little bit harder, and we're going to xcize a character from the scene. They're extraneous there, I said it.

00:49:53
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, I think that's fair, and let's set a low bar for ourselves. Let's just try to not both sound exactly the same. I don't know how we're going to pull that off. I had the same fear.

00:50:05
Speaker 6: I don't know if skill it's a distinguish white guides. Oh well, there's another clue party with no funny voices exactly.

00:50:15
Speaker 4: I mean, these are not bland performers either. That's no, not necessarily it's embarrassing. I mean these are two of you know, considered very charismatic performers, no matter what they're doing. M I don't know if we'll be able to capture that.

00:50:28
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm supposed to show a little bit of range here, which will be the death of me. I'm going to start it off. You're gonna give me the action, and action I believe the most likely outcome will be our collective demise.

00:50:41
Speaker 4: Not if we strictly follow the rules of time travel. That means no talking to our past selves, no betting on sports events.

00:50:48
Speaker 6: I'm going to stop you right there, Peter, Are you seriously telling me that your plan to save the universe is based on back to the future? Is it no good you had me worried there, because that'd be horseshit. That's not quantum physics works.

00:51:01
Speaker 4: I know you got a lot on the line, got a wife, a daughter, But I lost someone very important to me, A lot of people did. And now now we have a chance to bring her back, to bring everyone back, and you're telling me that you won't even.

00:51:15
Speaker 6: That's right, Peter, I won't even.

00:51:20
Speaker 11: And see, wow, the drama there at the end, they say, now hit me with that now again, now close anywhere you park.

00:51:32
Speaker 6: You're a cartoon superhero. Maybe that's appropriate.

00:51:36
Speaker 4: Interesting If you know.

00:51:38
Speaker 6: What film we just massacred email in the movie's title and your name and location to feedback at filmspotting dot net. Your deadline is Monday, May nineteenth. We'll select the winner randomly from all the correct entries and announce it in a couple of weeks.

00:51:52
Speaker 4: That your head, rest of mind left. I've got to promise you, amen, that's you.

00:52:03
Speaker 6: We're sharing our top twenty five films of the last twenty five years. We have ten more to go the top ten, and we just heard a clip from Moonlight. Josh, I imagine that was one it was tough to leave off. I in fact assumed it would be on your list.

00:52:20
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:52:20
Speaker 4: I think we're both unfortunately leaving Moonlight off, and it was in that next group the honorable mentions lists. And I don't have a good defense. Honestly, it's a movie I love. I guess maybe having not revisited recently, it strikes me as it strikes me as a cultural moment. And I'm trying not to downgrade the movie itself in any way, because I do greatly admire it, but I think back of it as a cultural moment with the oscars and everything. Then a movie that could just squeak onto that top twenty five for me.

00:52:51
Speaker 6: Okay, let's hear you're ten through six.

00:52:53
Speaker 4: Okay, I've got a movie at number ten here that we have already heard another clip from Lost in Translation. I'm sucker for Sofia Coppola's sensory Cinema. When we did our best of the twenty tens a list, I had the bling ring on that one, but here Lost in Translation gets the nod because I still think it's her best film. Number nine, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. So glad we did that Sacred Cow review last year, Adam, to affirm its brilliance, its emotional power. Number eight, Finding Nemo had to have Pixar represented here, and this is my favorite Pixar film. I didn't try to complicate things went with Finding Nemo at number eight. Number seven is AI artificial Intelligence. It is number three in my Spielberg rankings, and as its reputation continues to rise, it might it would maybe rise in those rankings except for you know, a couple movies like Jaws and et number six. And I got to explain this one a little bit, probably because it's my unlikely Cohen Brothers pick. Let's talk Cohen's Adam. I know they got a lot of attention film Spotted Madness, but I do think it's okay to give them some more time because my pick didn't come up. Did True Grit make the bracket? I can't remember it did not. Did not. Yeah, as much as I admire No Country for old Men, for me, this actually came down to Hail Caesar or True Grit, Hail Caesar was on my list of the Best of the twenty tens when we did that, But for this list, I did find myself gravitating towards True Grit, which is the Coen Brothers' remake of a John Wayne Western, this time starring Jeff Bridges, Hailey Steinfeld, and Matt Damon. I've spent a lot of time over the years with True Grit. I wrote about it in Movies Our Prayers as a prayer of confession. Back when we were still doing the Think Christian Movie Club. The Coen Brothers were the subject of our first series. We considered a handful of their films. Both True Grit and No Country for Old Men were part of that, so yeah, really dug into those movies. Then over the years, though True Grit, it just kept offering more and more rewards. Carter Brewell score, which riffs on religious standards. The writing this both the dialogue and then the construction just so crisp. This has also some of the Cohen's most poetic imagery, evoking ideas about confession, vengeance, failure, forgiveness, and of course you have bridges richly tragic comic performance.

00:55:26
Speaker 3: I'm a foolish old man who has been drawn into a wild goose take by a harpie and browsers and a nankom poop Uh, mister lebeef, he can wander the chalk domination for as long as he latch rapped the local engines from take him in. Lonna Is gibbering by making him cheap. You, sister, like go where you lack. Our engagement is terminated.

00:55:57
Speaker 6: By so.

00:55:59
Speaker 4: Thinking about True In terms of my other coent options for this list, I liked how it has a nice balance also of No Country's fatalism and Hail Caesar' zaniness. So that's where I landed True Grit at number six.

00:56:11
Speaker 6: True Grit is still a film that I have only seen one time when it came out. Liked it, But remember, and I know I've said this before on the show, maybe multiple times, Remember feeling underwhelmed in the wake of No Country for Old Men, Remember feeling like it was a bit of a disappointment. But as I reflect on it, you're right, not only Bridges, but Hailey Steinfeld, the movie that introduced us to her, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, the Burwell score. As you said, I know I need to revisit that film badly, a film that we revisited fairly recently on the show and it definitely held up. It's our Film Spotting Madness winner. Film Spotting listeners said this was the best film of the last twenty five years. I've got it at number ten, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood at number nine. Here's my second. Christopher Nolan picked Josh, No, it's not Inception, of course, it's Interstellar.

00:57:09
Speaker 4: I thought we were going with this earlier. But yeah, I forgot. You're you have the multiple film by a director that's okay with you? So God, that's right.

00:57:16
Speaker 6: I had Memento earlier. Yeah, I've got intertellar, what were you saying about Inception? The combination of the the brains but the brawn, that kind of the blockbusters of the gold blockbuster. Yeah, well you also have with Interstellar. Me bawling. I'll throw in that B word every time I see it.

00:57:34
Speaker 4: At number eight.

00:57:35
Speaker 6: Overlap in this section for US Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind number seven. Greta gerwigs Little Women at number six. Here we are sort of in lockstep the aforementioned No Country for Old Men. The Cone Brothers, a movie that I thought for sure I would have in my top five when this process began, ended up bumping it.

00:57:59
Speaker 4: Down to six.

00:58:01
Speaker 6: So we'll say just a few words about Gretigreway was Little Women. And the only reason I'm going to say just a few words, Josh, is I haven't seen it in quite some time, and I don't really know where to start with it. I looked back at my notes for this film, Josh. I did see it twice when it came out, loved it so much the first time I had to go back and see it again. I think I had it as my number two film of its year. I open my Google doc. I have headers and a bunch of bullet points underneath for bold strokes, great camera, great dialogue, and random stuff I love. And that all starts on page three. What is Tracy Let's publisher character say in the film? I love it. It's romantic, it's very moving. That's very emotional. That's what he says describing Joe Marsch's book. And that's a pretty good summation for me of how I feel about Little Women. I'm going to confess to something, or reconfess to something I said at the time. I'm a little embarrassed about it. Of course, certainly as an English major as well.

00:59:04
Speaker 4: But it is what it is.

00:59:06
Speaker 6: As I say all the time here, we all have blind spots, whether they be movies or books. I've never read the story. I've also never seen the nineteen ninety four version of the movie, so I really can't compare it. My point, though, is I have no attachment to these characters, and this movie made me love every single character in this universe, every single person in that March household or adjacent to it. I looked at letterboxed I mentioned that I saw the movie twice, and I mentioned as well that our producer Sam has already posted his top twenty five films of the century so far. Josh, we share two films in the top ten. One of them hasn't been mentioned yet. The other one is Little Women. He has it at number four. Do you know how many times Sam has seen and I'm going to assume the number of t times does correspond to the number of times he's logged it on letterbox how many times he's logged it oo.

01:00:05
Speaker 4: I know Sam is a rewatcher of movies, and this is one that could be It's a great annual Christmas movie as well, so and that's when he watches it. Oh, okay, So I can't beyond those years. Maybe eight.

01:00:21
Speaker 6: I think it's seven. He has seen it at least seven times, so you're very close. But I love the audaciousness of Gerwig's direction of the screenplay. I know some of the choices she's made in terms of the adaptation, the confidence that she has to adapt this material, including the nonlinear structure, which is something that stands out right away if you look at the screenplay. There's a note on an early page that says when the text is in red, it indicates that it's the past timeline, which begins in winter of eighteen sixty one. When the text is in black, it indicates that it's the present timeline, which begins in fall of eighteen sixty eight. Both timelines move forward from their origin point, like Gerwig is making Christopher Nolan's Memento or something. And she said in a New York Times article back when the film came out, as a child, my hero was Joe marsh but as an adult it's Louisa may Alcott. And so you've got these meta narrative elements to it that can greatly inform if you're aware of those things can greatly inform your appreciation and understanding the film. Or if you're like me and you know nothing about it, you can still love this film, and you can love the agency that she gives to characters. You can love the updating that she does to a character like Joe, and some of the choices that her character makes that still doesn't feel anachronistic or doesn't feel like I imagine it's compromising the original source material. At least that's the feeling I get from people who love very much that original Louisa may Alcott book, and that performance from Sirsha Ronan really did cement her as one of our best actresses. You know, I just feel I just feel like women.

01:02:11
Speaker 10: They they have minds, and they have souls as well as just hearts, and they've got ambition, and they've got talent as well as just beauty. And I'm so sick of people saying that that love is just.

01:02:27
Speaker 4: All a woman is fit for.

01:02:28
Speaker 7: I'm so sick of it.

01:02:31
Speaker 4: But I'm so lonely. Little Women to me is Gretiger Wwigg's best. And I also don't think she's missed yet. So incredibly strong film, and it really is among all the things you were talking about. When you touch on as a work of adaptation, it's so deaft and so clever. How it balances that that tricky thing of not being slavish to the material but not you know, going off in a complete contrary direction to what the original novel was interested in. So yeah, on top of all of it's just standing on its own merits as a great movie. It manages that as well. Okay, we're down to our top five, and as I look at my titles here, I'm realizing now that I had to make some tough choices because I did limit myself to one film per director here, So at number five my Jordan peel Pick I went with us. At number four, oh man, this one gave me fits for Wes Anderson. I went with the Royal ten Inbounds, and I didn't really want to go chalk here. Isle of Dogs was on my best of the twenty ten. I was leaning that way, but I do have Royal ten in Bounds ranked higher, and I just rewatched this adam for our Gene Hackman top five. It made the greatness of Wes Anderson's third feature just undeniable. So number four the Royal Ten inbounds number three. This was tough for me in terms of a director choice. Here's where I've got mad Max Fury Road. It tumbled for you, I think, from our best of the twenty tens, but for me it held strong, not quite as high as I had it there but at number three, and I did really like Furiosa, so that that gave me pause. But I went with this action masterpiece here at number three. Tree of Life. I've got this as well, very high. Could have gone with other Malick pictures, I guess, but I've got the Tree of Life at number two because I do think it's Malick's career achievement. And number one. I mean, if I have a movie as on my top ten of all time list and it happened to come out in the last twenty five years, yes it's going to be at the top of this list. It is in the mood for love wankhar wise definitive unrequited love story. I always described this as watching it as watching two halves of a broken heart throb. It is just no movie feels the way this film feels, even though so many have explored similar emotions. I feel quite comfortable having in the mood for love at number one. But let me talk some more about that Jordan Peel decision, because I do think US is probably a bit of a swerve similar to your Patima mon pick and get Out is where I could have been made, maybe should have gone. I think it maybe represents this era better and certainly had a bigger impact, you know, announcing Peel as this voice. But when I think more about it, US is not only, to my mind, the more intricately crafted film, but I do think it also represents the era from a wider angle. It not only considers race, but also considers class and consumerism, partly how those things are intertwined, partly how they're not. These are universal concerns as well. US just details how when we make affluence our ultimate goal, it comes not only at the cost of others, what we take from others, but also the risk of losing ourselves. Are very identities, and you have in this movie also that incredible double lead performance from Lupita Young.

01:06:14
Speaker 2: Though we don't have anything here, these are summer home we just got in today's ones.

01:06:25
Speaker 8: Oh ah, there was a girl.

01:06:38
Speaker 3: And the girl.

01:06:41
Speaker 4: USh again get Out so galvanizing. Maybe the right pick, but I probably spent more time excavating us. I've got a video essay out there somewhere on its use of Jeremiah eleven eleven. I just found so much to explore in this film. It's also one that kept open up to me the more I spend time with it.

01:07:02
Speaker 6: So at number five for me, I think that's a great choice, and I understand it, maybe if I can briefly connect it back to what I was just talking about with Greta Gerwig. You know how strongly I feel about Ladybird, another film I considered for this list. Almost put two Greta Gerwig films on, but I do think that Little Women is the greater achievement. I think there is more to excavate there, to use your word, certainly in terms of the filmmaking, and that makes sense. Sometimes filmmakers come out of the gate with amazing first films, as both Gerwig and Peel did, but then they build off that they get even more ambitious with those second films. My top five films of the last twenty five years, Josh, I'm going to give you another swerve at number five. The rest will absolutely be chock. You probably could have predicted them my number five will be a bit of a surprise, And I was going to say that it might be the only film on either of our lists that the other gave a negative review too.

01:08:07
Speaker 4: Oh boy, now, oh Wolf of wall Street.

01:08:10
Speaker 6: It's not the Wolf of Wall Street.

01:08:11
Speaker 4: No, okay.

01:08:12
Speaker 6: I don't know, of course, whether or not, looking back on the other twenty films I've mentioned, if any of those are movies you have felt negatively about, I don't think so. Until this choice. Now with your choices, it turns out I was mixed on The Witch, as I am on Robert Acres. I was kind of mixed on Borat. I think I gave it three stars. I did not go for Bamboozled the way you did. I think that's yeah.

01:08:40
Speaker 4: Not many people did then either, though.

01:08:43
Speaker 6: That's another one I need to revisit. So we're gonna play a little game. We're gonna see if you can guess the film. I went to Larson on film dot com two stars for Josh Larson has the stale, stifling air of a hospital waiting room.

01:09:00
Speaker 4: Yikes.

01:09:01
Speaker 6: Blank captures the boredom of a hospital waiting room, but misses out on another quality that is far more dramatic, the excruciating tension.

01:09:11
Speaker 4: Any ideas yet, man, sounds like I was having a bad day. I can tell you that. We'll see if you can figure it out from this.

01:09:19
Speaker 6: At its best, Blank echoes the spookiness of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Yet, like so many reverent movies based on acclaimed books, it's lifeless.

01:09:29
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, this is one I do need to revisit. The name is escaping Me I Andrew Garfield. Wait, I'm falling asleep.

01:09:41
Speaker 8: No, are you?

01:09:42
Speaker 3: Never?

01:09:42
Speaker 4: Let never let me go go.

01:09:44
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:09:44
Speaker 4: I've always felt a little bad about this one because you have talked about it over the years and I haven't taken the time to revisit. But you know I said what I said.

01:09:54
Speaker 6: You did, you put it in writing. It's there forever. That is my number five. We'll come back to that in a moment.

01:10:00
Speaker 4: A number four.

01:10:00
Speaker 6: I too, have the Royal ten and bobs at number three. That Sam Van Holgren exercise of contemplating only putting one film from a director on a list did make me realize the damn it inside. Lewin Davis is my favorite Coen Brothers film. It's the one I most cannot live without. That's why no country got bumped out of the top five. Inside Lewin Davis is a three, number two Richard Link Later Before Sunset, and number one is the movie I voted for the movie I predicted. Turns out I was wrong. I was inaccurate. The movie I thought might actually win film Spotting Madness, but it lost in the final to There Will Be Blood David Lynch's mule Holland Drive. I know everybody says this when they put almost any kind of list together. Oh, the top few are interchangeable. But Josh, I'm telling you, I stared at those top four today, Mulholland Before Sunset, side Lewin Davis and The Royal Tenant Bobs, and at different points in the day contemplated making the case for each one of them as my number one. That's how strongly I feel about each one of those films.

01:11:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say my top couple fell in pretty easily. Just again, as I said, when it's in the best of all time, that's an milk rainer. So yes, so it worked out a little easier for me. Obviously.

01:11:23
Speaker 6: I want to talk about Never Let Me Go, because that is the outlier choice here. And you said you have felt like you need to revisit it. Well, turns out it's celebrating its fifteenth anniversary. Maybe a bit of we were wrong once perhaps on the show, perhaps for bonus content. Alex Gartlan that yeah, making his second appearance on my list of course as a writer. This is the Garland film, The Garland penned film that's an adaptation of the Kazuo Ishie Guru novel starring Kerrie Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Kieran Knightley. They grow up together at a boarding school and we come to realize spoilers that they are clones and they're created for one purpose, which is to have their organs harvested and serve the population of I suppose normies. I don't know what they call them or if they have a name for them in the film, Josh, I think you may have read the book if I read your review correct.

01:12:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm wondering if that was part of my issue too, you know, in terms of expectations.

01:12:32
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it's so high on this list for me because all of the ideas I mentioned that kind of drove my list. The movies that ended up really resonating with me. The most and the ideas that I wrestled with. That's what this movie is about, all of them, mortality denying and then ultimately accepting this idea of completing hoping that you can transcend your mortality through art. Andrew Garfield's character Tommy with his drawings, and Charlotte Rampling plays the head mistress at the school who uses art to try to prove that these children have souls, that they are children who have souls and they should be treated with more care and respect. The Mysteries of Love, my Gosh, that love triangle Kathy, Tommy and Ruth, who are also like a korat a family in a way. They don't choose to be put together, but they do choose to stay together and ultimately to come back together. And I won't strain Josh to relate a movie that takes place in England to America except to say that it is very much a movie about society seeking a better life, a more comfortable way of life through technological means, without fully being able to even comprehend the moral, ethical, or spiritual costs attached to it. And you lamented that you didn't feel like there was that much tension to it, and there certainly isn't traditional tension or dread, but there is a sort of inevitability. There is a sense of futility to them pushing back, which for me makes it all the more poignant. And I love this answer. I came across a while back that Isha Guru gave to some criticism that was given to the book. He said, lots of people raise this, and what was so fascinating about it, Josh Not only was ultimately his very profound, I think, answer, but the fact that he admitted that he was kind of hurt by it. He thought, maybe this is a flaw of the book.

01:14:43
Speaker 4: What did I do? What did I do wrong?

01:14:45
Speaker 6: It was people saying, well, they clearly are living in this dystopia, and once they realize what they're there for, why wouldn't they run, Why wouldn't they try to do something different? Why do they just kind of accept their fate? And this was his response. The fascinating thing for me is the way people respond to being dealt a really bad hand. If that's all you know, if that's the world you've grown up in, you cannot see the boundaries for which you have to run, You cannot see what you have to rebel against and instead you just try, sometimes heroically, to find love, friendship, something meaningful and decent within the horrific fate you've been given. This movie just hit me like a sledgehammer, Josh when I saw it back in twenty ten. And that's why it's here at number five.

01:15:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, and like the very setting, I mean, it's why I read the book like this is like catnip for me, this sort of setting, an idea and things it wants to explore. So and the performers, I mean, I do know Garfield jumped out at me right away. And to see the others in the cast that they've got to be giving things I possibly miss that first time around. The excerpts you read that sounded like a Josh bad day to be for sure.

01:15:58
Speaker 6: We'll see if we could play that game again. And sometime on the show that's kind of fun read really negative lines to each other and see if we can guess the movie that we were just tearing apart.

01:16:08
Speaker 4: I like do that.

01:16:09
Speaker 6: We probably don't do that enough on the show.

01:16:12
Speaker 4: You go into the lars On Film archives in the n say, you'll find, Yeah, you had to see a lot of posturing along those lines.

01:16:21
Speaker 6: Posturing good word for it. For our complete top twenty five, visit film spotting dot net slash list. Next week we'll continue looking back at the last twenty five years with our favorite performers of the century so far. We're going to fight that out. We're going to draft our favorite actors and actresses. If there are any names you would love for us to not overlook who should be our first overall choice, let us know. Feedback at film spotting dot net. That's also where you can send any other comments about the show, because that is our show.

01:16:53
Speaker 4: If you want to connect with us on social you can find Adam and the show on Instagram and Facebook and letterbox. He's at film spotting. I'm also at those places as Larsen on film We are independently produced and listener support it. 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 a weekly newsletter from producer Sam, monthly bonus episodes, and access to the entire show archive. For show t shirts, film spotting fest posters, or other merch go to film spotting dot net slash shop.

01:17:27
Speaker 6: In those film Spotting Archives. You can find many of the titles that made our top twenty five outstreaming or on vod this weekend. Nana's Vince Vaughan risks everything by honoring his late mother by opening a restaurant with Nana's grandmothers as chefs with Susan Sarandon, Lorraine Rocco and Talia Shire in wide release Clown in a Cornfield Josh, here's the description. A sinister, grinning figure emerges from the cornfields to cleanse the town of Kettle Springs of its burdens. I volunteer here is tribute. Could I have my burdens cleansed?

01:18:04
Speaker 4: Please?

01:18:05
Speaker 6: We're gonna get to a fun game here. In a second proposed by producer Sam, I think our listeners may know where this is going. Shadow Force, a bounty is put out for Kerrie Washington and Omar Sai when they break the rules of the Multinational Special Forces unit they belong to. Their crime. Falling in Love directed by Joe Carnahan who made Nark and the Gray, and finally Fight or Flight Mercenary Josh Hartnett tracks down a target on a plane that's the flight of the title, but ends up protecting her when they're surrounded by people trying to kill both of them. That's the fight of the title. So so it's bounting it should really be fight and flight. Yeah, it probably should take that up with somebody, including Nanas. You can only choose one. In fact, you have to choose one.

01:18:54
Speaker 4: Which one is one? You have to go to a movie. This have to see one of these. Yeah, and it has to be one of these.

01:19:00
Speaker 7: Ye.

01:19:00
Speaker 4: Well, I've I've already pointed out the fatal flaw of fight or Flight, so it's not going to be that. Yeah, I mean, narc was really good, and I also liked The Gray from Joe Carnahan. So do I do Shadow Force? No, I don't. I do Namas, of course not. It sounds delightful.

01:19:19
Speaker 6: Come on, I mean Lorraine Virocco, Taliya Shire, Susans Randon.

01:19:23
Speaker 4: And surrounded by that. Yeah, I mean, come on, I'll.

01:19:27
Speaker 6: Go see Shadow Force because I also really liked The Gray and I did finally catch up with Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag.

01:19:35
Speaker 4: What a delight.

01:19:36
Speaker 6: I can compare that to Shadow Force, two movies about special forces and breaking the rules and couples in love. We'll see which one's better.

01:19:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, please don't know. Don't hold it up to black Bag one of the best of the year.

01:19:50
Speaker 6: Come on, Yeah, it is out in limited release. We didn't include this one. You can see April an Obgyn faces accusations after a newborn's death. David Erlik says, there is isn't a horror director alive who wouldn't killed to create frames as tense, ominous, and viscerally captivating as those of Georgian filmmaker.

01:20:07
Speaker 4: And here's the fun part.

01:20:08
Speaker 6: Sam spelled this out phonetically for me, Josh, But it's one of those cases where it's actually so much easier if you just read it the way it looks and don't try to do the phonetics at all for it.

01:20:20
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm going to say it, dia.

01:20:24
Speaker 6: Kuluum bega sivly nice kulom bega shfeely close, close enough.

01:20:32
Speaker 4: I think we'll get there.

01:20:33
Speaker 6: That's at the Siskel Film Center in Chicago next week. In addition to our Actors of the Century draft, we will have the next installment in our Andre Tarkowsky Marathon Stalker.

01:20:45
Speaker 4: Film Spotting is produced by Golden, Joe Desso and Sam Van Halgren. Without Sam and Golden Joe, this show wouldn't go. Our production assistant is Sophie Kempenard Special thanks to everyone at WB easy Chicago. Board information is available at wb easy dot or for films Spotty. I'm Josh Larson and I'm Adam Kempinar. Thanks for listening.

01:21:05
Speaker 7: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore.

01:21:08
Speaker 4: Good fine.

01:21:26
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01:21:58
Speaker 1: Panoply