Movie Mike’s Traumatic History of R-Rated Movies + Movie Review: Dìdi + Trailer Park: A Complete Unknown

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I am your host Movie Mike. Today we're talking about the top ten highest grossing R rated movies of all time. I'll give you what I consider the best, the worst, the first R rated movie I ever saw, Oh Boy, that was traumatizing. In the movie review, we'll be talking about d D, which is a coming of age movie set in the late two thousands in the trailer park. We'll take a look at a movie called A Complete Unknown, better known as the Bob Dylan Biopic, with Timmy tim Timothy Shallowmet playing Bob Dylan. I have a history of not enjoying biopicks because I often feel they're rushed, even more so when the person is still alive at the time the movie comes out. So not looking good for this movie as of now. But thank you for being here, Thank you for being subscribed. Shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew.

00:00:47
Speaker 2: And now let's talk movies.

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Speaker 3: In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast. A man with so much movie knowledge.

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Speaker 4: He's basically like a walking IMTB. With Glasses from the Nashville podcast network. This is Movie Mikes Movie Podcast.

00:01:13
Speaker 1: One of the biggest headlines since dead Pula Wolverine came out, all the box office records it has broken. In my opinion, the biggest record is becoming the highest grossing R rated movie in the United States, beating out The Passion of the Christ. And I want to get into this full top ten list because oddly, when looking at the top ten highest grossing R rated movies in the US, they are all pretty vastly different. And when I consider what goes into making an R rated movie, I think you would start to fall into some of the same type of genre. For me, I feel like the R rated genre is dominated by horror, especially now in today's market, where I feel like studios are hesitant to put out an R rated movie because you are limiting your audience, and you don't want to reduce your audience right now. You want as many people to go and see your movie as possible. So I think it is amazing that Deadpool and Wolverine has already crossed that mark. So we'll get into that top ten list. But my history with R rated movies, We're gonna do first, Last, regretful, worst, and greatest R rated movie of all time. The first R rated movie I ever saw. I was seven years.

00:02:26
Speaker 2: Old in nineteen ninety eight.

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Speaker 1: This movie came out in nineteen eighty eight and is regarded as the movie that almost traumatized me forever. It was child's play. The reason I watched this movie at seven years old. The reason I was really exposed to so many things so early on is because I have an older brother and an older sister who are seven and nine years older than me, so they were probably fifteen fourteen years old in that age range, and I was always exposed to things that they were exposed to just because I was around. I wanted to be with him, and my parents were okay with it for the most part. I think the problem my parents had was nudity. They could do and deal with us watching bloody and violent things. That was okay with him. They were used to that. We would even watch old school eighties Mexican movies with people getting shot and cut up, and that was fine with them. But when it came to anything showing a nipple, we were not exposed to that. And we'll get into one of the movies later on this list. That was traumatizing for everybody in that picture. But I always wanted to be just like my brother, just like my sister, and for that reason is why I was what was considered to be a lot more of a mature kid growing up. My teachers would be like, there's something about Mikey here that he just doesn't really interact with all the other kids the same way. He speaks differently. He's a little bit of an outcast and was always viewed as being much I don't want to say older and wiser, but I had an older soul just because I was used to being around two older all the time, and that probably has a lot to do with some of my trauma from my early years. But what came along with that is I watched a lot of movies I was not supposed to watch. And the way we watched Child's Play is we used to go to Walmart, and there was a video store connected to our Walmart back in the nineties. I don't even think it made it to the two thousands. It wasn't even a name brand video store like Blockbuster or anything. I really never went to Blockbuster as a kid. Their prices were astronomical for us. We never had a membership card, so I don't really get nostalgic for Blockbuster.

00:04:35
Speaker 2: The other video.

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Speaker 1: Store in town and walks of Hatchie, we had a place that was just called the video store and you could go rent movies for a dollar. They would have these little hooks on the wall with a number written on them. They were like these little coin medallion things, and you would take it off the wall on any movie you wanted to rent and then just go up to the cashier and give them all these little coins and they would go get the VHS or the DVD for you. That is was probably our primary source of video rental after the video store inside of the Walmart could put But the first time we ever went and rented a movie from this Walmart video rental place, I had my cousins in town from Memphis and we wanted to rent some movies, and that was really the only way we could convince my mom to allow us to rent something because we just never paid for that. If we were going to get a movie in any capacity, we would buy it from the flea market. That way we could keep it forever and watch it for years to come, which we did it with a lot of our vhs, but convinced her to do it. And I don't know why she let us rent Child's Play. Maybe she didn't really know what it was. Maybe it's because Chucky is on the cover and it looks like it could be a movie for kids.

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Speaker 2: There's a doll on it.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if that was really going on back in the eighties and nineties where people were confused about what Chucky was, but maybe it got past my parents. And we also rented one more VHS that night, and it was a ThunderCats VHS. I think it was just episodes of ThunderCats from the eighties, and I remember my brother being a big fan of that show, and it blew our mind that it was available to watch it home, back when you had to watch everything on regular TV. But we rent a Child's Play, watched it on a Friday night, and by late Friday night, I was traumatized. It freaked me out so bad. I thought all of my toys were going to come to life. The first kill in this movie is just burned into my head as being one of the gnarliest things I ever witnessed as a kid, and I was so freaked out by the end of this movie that I was so glad that we had also rented ThunderCats because it was kind of a palate cleanser and I still need that to this day. If I watch a really dark show, like I was just watching The Boys on Amazon, and not that that show would give you nightmares, but there are some very graphic and violent images that if I watched that show right before bed, it could creep to.

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Speaker 2: My dreams and I have nightmares.

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Speaker 1: So sometimes I'll throw in an episode of Dragon ball Z in between, so I don't have that as the last thing I watched. But luckily we had a VHS tape of ThunderCats. I watched that after Child's Play, but Sdelle ended up having nightmares. So that was the first ever R rated movie I watched back when I was seven years old in nineteen ninety eight. Last R rated movie I watched in theaters was Deadpool in Wolverine. Streaming at home, it was probably Late Night with the Devil Love. That horror movie still in my running for the best horror movie of the year. That movie, in my mind is battling out right now with Long Legs as taking that number.

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Speaker 2: One spot.

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Speaker 1: Most regretful R rated movie I ever watched was also.

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Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety eight.

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Speaker 1: Another movie we got from the Walmart video rental store, and it was Beloved, starring Oprah and Danny Glover. I don't know what possessed my mom to want to rent this movie. This was a pick from my mom. And if you listen to this podcast, you know that my mom oddly loves horror movies. Really, the genre she leans into most is horror movies, and it doesn't matter if it's overle gory, if it's I would say she leans more towards like a possession type movie, anything related with any kind of exorcism Laorna. She loves Annabelle in the Conjuring series. She is all about the horror genre. Second favorite genre of movie for her is probably animated when it comes to Pixar movies, Coco being one of her favorite movies of all time. In that third category, it would definitely be comedies from the nineties. But for some reason she wanted to rent Beloved, And maybe it was because Oprah's talk show was much more popular in the nineties. And I don't know if she did an entire segment promoting this movie or had people on her show to talk about it. But for some reason, when this movie came out on VHS, my mom wanted to rent it. And if you've never seen Beloved, it is a very stirring and weird movie that's part drama, part fantasy horror, and we were not.

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Speaker 2: Prepared for this type of movie.

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Speaker 1: If you've ever went blind to a film, this is not one to go in blind on that you watch with your parents, and you probably have a story like this of hey, let's all go watch this movie as a family. It's our rated, but it'll be okay, and then bam, you get a wiener on the screen, you get people hooking up, you get something that is going to traumatize your experience that you were not expected to see with.

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Speaker 2: Your mom and dad. Beloved is one of them.

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Speaker 1: Again, if you're not familiar with this movie, it has full frontal nudity, and my seven year old self was exposed to that with my mom for the very first time. I think my mom gasped in sheer terror of what was happening on this screen. That paired with the fact that we didn't really understand what was going on in this movie. It was hard for us to comprehend not movie we should have watched together as a family, But that scene came out of nowhere, and I will never forget it, much like I never forgot the first time I saw Child's Play. So the one regretful R rated movie I have is beloved from nineteen eighty eight. I feel like, now, as an adult thirty three years old, I should revisit that movie to see if I understand it a little bit more. Now people say you have to read the book before watching that movie to understand it. Maybe that would have helped, but still I regret that R rated movie. The worst R rated movie I've ever seen has to go to Showgirls, and this was back when Elizabeth Berkeley was primarily known as Jesse Spanno on Saved by the Bell and a lot of actors have this journey where you get known for something so wholesome and something associated with your childhood or just a very family friendly show. You want to shake that. You want to do something different. You want to show people that I'm not that character anymore. I could do more adult, mature things. And I think that's the idea that Elizabeth Berkeley had going into Showgirls. What I don't like about R rated movies like this. It's one thing to show nudity, but when you're just showing it for the sake of showing it and making it R rated, making it raunchy and being just so shocking, it is probably the worst thing you can do. Just looking at the acting in this movie, I don't understand how at any point while filming this they actually thought it was going to be good. Elizabeth Berkeley's character in this movie is so chaotic, so overly dramatic, she makes no sense. She goes from trying to be sweet and inviting to just blowing up on people, stabbing people in the back. And on top of that, why you can't take it seriously is everybody's naked all the time. And I get it, it's a movie called Showgirls set in Vegas.

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Speaker 2: But I believe it was overly R.

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Speaker 1: Rated just for the sake of doing you can get almost got slapped with the NC seventeen rating, which is a whole other episode of this podcast. But worst R rated movie I've ever seen, Ghosts to Showgirls, greatest R rated movie I've ever seen. Mentioning earlier, I believe that the R rated category belongs to the horror film. When I thought of R rated movies I wanted to see as a kid go to the theater and experience that I couldn't get into. It was always a horror movie, with the exception of the teen comedy about people hooking up that came later in the mid two thousands. But I still feel and believe that the genre is owned by scary and horror movies because sometimes it's odd why other movies get categorized as R rated movies. And when we talk about the highest grossing R rated movies of all time, a lot of the times it is due to language, using of the F word explicitly, and then often just because you see a nipple or a butt, they throw R rating on it. For me, that doesn't really always warrant an R rating. They may have changed the guidelines a little bit, but usually you get the one F bomb, a handful of S words to keep that PG thirteen ratings, so they use them very very cautiously, but you get any amount of skin and bam R rated. So with that, I go back to a classic which actually has sub nudity, but it is Halloween, which was one of my favorite scary movies growing up and still one of my favorites of all time. Change the landscape of horror in the late seventies going into the eighties. I think other horror franchises like Friday the Thirteenth Nightmare on Elm Street greatly benefited from the success of Halloween. So that is my favorite R rated movie of all time. Getting now into the list of the top ten highest grossing R rated movies in the United States at number ten from two thousand and nine is The Hangover. I believe that this is the last R rated movie that we all experienced as a nation. Seems like there were so many in the late nineties movies like American Pie early two thousands, knocked Up, forty year old Virgin, Old School, But now those movies have kind of dried up. And I'm talking about the genre of movies that we all watched and quoted. They were in constant rotation on TBS, so you could not miss these movies. The last one, I feel had that same level of impact and that same giant footprint was The Hangover, and I believe is the only comedy I've ever seen in theaters twice. I loved it that much. That is in at number ten. At number nine is the Matrix reloaded from two thousand and three.

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Speaker 2: I was never too.

00:14:47
Speaker 1: Huge into all of the Matrix movies. They went a little bit over my head. When the first one came out in ninety nine, I was still eight years old. I enjoyed the parodies of the Matrix more than I enjoyed.

00:14:59
Speaker 2: The actual mo movies.

00:15:00
Speaker 1: But what I could respect is what they did for film at the turn of the century. Coming out in ninety nine, going into the two thousands, this was so influential on all different types of filmmaking, primarily in the sci fi genre, but also in action movies. This movie was so cool and futuristic. It pushed the envelope when it comes to special effects. The problem that The Matrix ended up having is the first one was so good. It was so hard to make a decent sequel.

00:15:31
Speaker 2: To these movies.

00:15:32
Speaker 1: They even tried it again back in twenty twenty one, and it wasn't that any of those sequels were inherently bad. It was almost as if the Matrix should have stood as a one and done. But obviously having that much success with the sequel from two thousand and three, making this list. You're gonna chase that money, You're gonna put Keanu Reeves.

00:15:52
Speaker 2: Back in that leather.

00:15:54
Speaker 1: So I respect this franchise for what it did, But out of every movie on this list, it is probably my lead's favorite. At number eight from twenty eighteen is Deadpool two. Out of every movie on this list, I think this one has no reason to be here. It kind of snuck in there, and it really rode the success of Deadpool One, which was so polarizing and one that wasn't expected to catch on as much as it did. But this sequel just did not live up to that. So with that said, I have more respect for the Matrix reloaded than I do Deadpool two. It is a fine movie, but easily the weakest now in that trilogy to date. But at number eight is Deadpool two. At number seven from twenty seventeen, is it This movie kind of rattled me. I think that's a little rare coming out in twenty seventeen. I was twenty six. I was pretty jaded at this point when it comes to R rated horror movies, and the original movie was always creepy to me, and I don't really have a phobia of clowns. I never found the original one to be that scary, aside from the scene wherever a Wise would open up his mouth and you'd see all the teeth and he would look real demonic. That scene got me a little bit as a kid. But I feel like Pennywise in that movie was so just felt like a birthday party clown and was so comical looking to me for the most part that I never found it to be that scary. When it came to twenty seventeen, it, oh my gosh, they turned it up so much and they were really able to make him, in my eyes, be the version he needed to be to be truly terrifying. The third act in it is one of the best third acts in any horror movie from the twenty tens. That final showdown, that final fight where Pennywise goes all out to try and kill these kids, to try and terrify them and also in turn.

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Speaker 2: Terrify you as the viewer.

00:17:52
Speaker 1: I remember getting actually heated in my seat, like physically hot, because my mind couldn't really comprehend all of these insane images with all the blood, and I thought Bill Skarsgard did a fantastic job as Penny wise, I'm glad this movie made it on this list at number seven. At number six is well before the number one movie. The latest entry from twenty twenty three is Oppenheimer. I'm still surprised by how well this movie did.

00:18:23
Speaker 2: I still really enjoyed it. In my eyes.

00:18:25
Speaker 1: I still believe it is a five out of five how I rated it last summer. I really think the reason this movie was so successful was because of the Barbenheimer promotion. That wasn't even a real promotion. It was just that hype of two very different movies coming out on the same weekend, and people just ended up watching them both. You'll never experience that again. Because I feel as good of a movie as Oppenheimer is, it wouldn't have been successful if it did not come out the same.

00:19:00
Speaker 2: Weekend as Barbie.

00:19:01
Speaker 1: It wouldn't because on paper, there is nothing that tells me that it would have the same effect if it came out on a different weekend, even a week after, much less in a different season, which it could have easily not come out in the summer and come out in the fall and really leaned into the Oscar season. But the movie is three hours long, diving into the life and the mind of a very unorthodox historical figure. But it was also the fact that I watched this movie in seventy milimeter Imax, so I was engulfed in the screen and fully had my attention on every single frame of this movie. I feel like for the people who waited and watched it at home, Oh man, I don't know if the story came across the same way, because I feel that three hour movies are a lot easier to do and take in and not be distracted if you go see them in a theater then if you see them at home. But now, rounding out the top five at number five from twenty nineteen is Joker. It's a masterpiece. Very rarely do I call a movie a masterpiece, but for the longest time, I love this movie so much After seeing it in theaters that year, which twenty nineteen one of the best years in film of all time and the last great year we've had. Twenty twenty three got really close there for a second, but then the writers an actor strike just kind of took the wind out of its sales. Twenty twenty four has been a big rebuilding year. I think twenty twenty five is going to be the only year in recent history that could rival twenty nineteen.

00:20:34
Speaker 2: But for the longest time, after.

00:20:36
Speaker 1: Watching Joker in theaters, which I believe was just one of the best experience I've had watching an R rated movie in theaters, I never wanted to watch it again. And it wasn't until recently, maybe twenty twenty one or even early twenty twenty two, that I watched it again for the second time, because I didn't want to ruin that experience. Sometimes there comes a movie where you love so much, you know if you go back and rewatch it, you're gonna point out plot holes, You're gonna find things to critique, and those will be movies that I will not go back and rewatch. And it's usually the movies I end up rating a five out of five and don't want to find those little things that I can go back and nitpick or think, oh, maybe that wasn't as good as the first time I saw it. But Joker was that for a very long time. I'm not sure.

00:21:23
Speaker 2: If Joker Too could live up to those expectations.

00:21:26
Speaker 1: They put out the latest trailer in the last two to three weeks, and I'm hoping that it's not the exact same thing as part one, which is always hard when you make a sequel. You want to give people what they loved about the first one, but also give them something that they had no idea they wanted, and that is the kiss of death when it comes to making a sequel to as beloved a movie like Joker. Although I feel like you have to be in a certain headspace to watch this movie, it's also a movie. I don't think it's for everyone. Before those people who like R rated movies that are in the comic book world, I think it's perfection. So how can Joker two still appease those fans while also giving them something different and not alienating other people from.

00:22:15
Speaker 2: Watching this movie?

00:22:16
Speaker 1: The really tough thing to do, but I think Todd Phillips, Joaquin Phoenix, and Lady Gaga can pull it off. Still super excited for Joker two, but Joker one comes in at number five at number four from twenty fourteen American Sniper. Out of all the films on this list, this one is the most surprising, and when looking at all the different genres in this top ten, you have superhero movies, you have horror movies, you have bio picks, you have horror movies again, comedy in there, but this is the only war and action movie the real life story of US Navy Seal Chris Kyle played by Bradley Cooper. And the reason I love this movie is not only did it show the dark and off full side of war, it also focused on the PTSD of war and when soldiers go fight for our country and then come back home and are expected just to click back into society. And this was the first time I saw it depicted in a way that it really registered with me. How somebody can go overseas and do something that's just so beyond what I can comprehend, and you imagine the toll it takes on your brain, on your body, seeing some of the most awful things you could see as a human being, and come back and know that people appreciate what you did, which I'll just say, shout out to our military. And even though US as civilians can sing you our praises, we just can't comprehend it because we didn't go through it. And in this movie showing his character, showing Chris Kyle having to come back and adjust the family life. Oh, the scene with him and his daughter like just him holding her in her arms, and you hear it in his head that he hears all this war going on. That is a scene that really sets in with me that you're expected to go to war and come back and just have a normal life where you're just going to the grocery store and taking away all those awful images from your head. So I love that the movie shine light on that. And it also had one of the most intense scenes where you could hear Bradley Cooper's heartbeat, and I just remember the entire theater being so silent in that moment where you could just hear the popcorn hitting the floor. So I was pleasantly surprised to see American Sniper at number four. Moving on to the top three at number three is twenty sixteen's Deadpool, an unexpected hit from a.

00:24:41
Speaker 2: Mid comic book character.

00:24:43
Speaker 1: Deadpool was by no means one of the best Marvel offerings, but that is kind of the history of the success of Marvel. After so early on they sold off all the movie rights to their best characters and had to do what really no other studio could do and build an entire billion dollar company off of their lesser known characters.

00:25:07
Speaker 2: So I'll take all the bad.

00:25:08
Speaker 1: Marvel movies we got in the early and mid two thousands, because all of those gave birth to what is known now as our MCU. But then rounding out the top two at number two is The Passion of the Christ from two thousand and four. If you missed the episode where I talked about where I watched this movie for the first time, I'll take you back to two thousand and four Janajuato, Mexico. We had just bought I think I got it for Christmas. Was our first ever portable DVD player that we all used as a family, and it wasn't a nice one. We got it from Walmart. It was probably like fifty bucks, so very bottom of the line portable DVD player. The battery life was terrible. I had to keep it on the chargers of the entire time. But we went to Mexico for Christmas in two thousand and four, went to a Mexican flea market and bought a bunch of bootleg DVDs. And bootleg DVDs in the two thousands were not straight video rips. It was somebody going into a theater and filming the entire movie on a handheld video camera and that is how I watched Passionate the Christ on a bootleg DVD. My mom had a moral dilemma with it, so eventually we ended up watching it on normal DVD.

00:26:22
Speaker 2: But she still struggles with.

00:26:23
Speaker 1: This movie because it is hard for her to see the story just unfold in an R rated fashion, and that was with even her knowing what was coming, because she read the book before watching this movie, which I think most people did right the Bible. At number one is Deadpool and Wolverine now taking that number one spot. If you missed it last week here on the feed, I put up my spoiler. Yes, the version of the review with all the spoilers talked about my favorite cameos. I feel like I've mentioned and talked about my feelings of Deadpool and Wolverine enough. But if you missed that, also, if you miss the entire breakdown I did of Robert Downey Junior coming back to the MCU as Doctor Doom, all those episodes are on the feed as well. So that is the List'll come back and give my review of d D and in the trailer part, we'll talk about the new Bob Dylan biopic with Timothy Chalomey.

00:27:19
Speaker 2: Let's get into It Now. A spoiler free movie review of Dedi.

00:27:23
Speaker 1: It is a coming of age story of a thirteen year old and his last summer before starting high school. Dedy is a movie for anybody who has ever been a teenager, simple as that. I love coming of age movies, and there's a very delicate line you need to walk to tell a story about a thirteen year old. We've all been there, we've all been teenagers. We know what the experience is like. You're very angsty, you want to lash out against your parents, You're navigating all these feelings, relationships, all these things you're experiencing for the first time. For me is getting a lot of hair, starting to smell weird, all those things that go along with being thirteen years old. The line you have to walk while making a movie about this is do you want to make it appeal to thirteen year olds or do you want to make it appeal to the adult to look back and remember on what it's like being thirteen. In the case of Diti, it is making that experience feel very adult, taking everything into consideration of what you experienced to that time and validating it, not making it feel less than just very much giving an adult perspective on what it was like being thirteen. Because if you think back on that time, you in your head when you were thirteen saw things as I'm now older, this is affecting me. Nobody understands me. You felt in that moment that you were an adult. You look back later when you're eighteen, twenty, whatever, thirty, and you think, oh, I was just a dumb kid, But in that moment, you believe like this is your whole world. Nobody understands you, your parents don't get you. So I really love that perspective from this thirteen year old who isn't a bad kid, but he's not the best kid. He'd gets into some trouble. And I very much identified with DEDI in this movie. Oh, because there were so many aspects of this movie. The very first thing I want to talk about is I love that this movie was set in two thousand and eight. I've talked about on this podcast how I feel my best year was two thousand and nine, and I would say my best school year was my senior year, which was eight to nine. And the reason that is it's because that was a time in my life where I had the least amount of responsibility and the most freedom. Senior year, I could drive. My classes in high school were very laid back. In my senior year, I had like half days, so I was looking ahead to college, but I knew this was the time in my life that I was just gonna enjoy it, go do things with my friends, not take things so seriously, because I knew once college started, then okay, to get to work. Then it's time for me to start thinking about my future more. Not that I wasn't thinking about it in high school, but I allowed myself to be fully engaged in those summer activities, and that, I believe was that last time I felt alive in some aspects. And you know, my life is good now. I just that is a time that I feel was just so great. And obviously I'm biased because the mid to late two thousands is where I experienced a lot of things, But I think that was the best decade to grow up in and be young, and d D is a great example of that. It took me back to things I haven't thought about in ten years, the MySpace era, which in this movie, DD is friending people on MySpace, looking up their profiles, At the very start of the movie, there is a girl he has a crush on. He goes through MySpace page to learn things about her. He finds her profile song, which is a hello goodbye song, takes that song and makes it his phone ring tone, which that even brought back memories of how important it was to me to pick the right ring tone. For me, it was probably like Alkaline Trio, maybe ransid Newfound Glory, and that was a thing. Callback tones were a thing. And I also think that was the best time to be a teenager because for millennials, we got to experience the early stages of the Internet where nothing was really that serious. Yet we were still navigating social media. I had a Zanga page, I had MySpace, I had Facebook, but at that time, nobody took it that seriously.

00:31:30
Speaker 2: There weren't influencers and it was kind of.

00:31:33
Speaker 1: The wild West on what went into creating your page and just friending people. We had a top eight which were so brutal and was something also shown in this movie of how you would rank your friends, and I remember the ultimate thing for me growing up was like making my crushes top eight and I was like, how did I get in there?

00:31:53
Speaker 2: What did I do.

00:31:54
Speaker 1: My life is going to change forever because I made it in their top eight, But it was a brutal thing, and a lot of what happens in DD has to do with the technology at that time, very early filmmaking, because he starts filming with these skateboarders, so it's very much the introduction of the Internet. But it was almost like we were all putting on a front at that time to create these awesome social media profiles via Facebook and MySpace, which I guess we all kind of do that now, but I just remembered how important that was as a teenager to be friends with your crush on Facebook or MySpace, and just all the politics that went into that. So I very much felt nostalogic connecting to DD's story. The other thing that really struck me just on a personal level, even more so than the MySpace and the music during that time, which I would say was my Space core, but also very much Warped Tour core, where my entire summer was based around how good of experience I was going to have at warp Tour. But the soundtrack just kind of mirrored that and was very much a reflection of two thousand and eight and two thousand and nine. But the family aspect in this movie because Dedi is a first generation American. He is from a Taiwanese family, and he lives with his mom and his grandma, who is very traditional. They take schoolwork very seriously because if you don't do good in school, you won't get into a good college. If you don't get into a good college, you won't get a good job. If you don't get a good job, you won't find a good partner. And a lot of those pressures that not only his mom and his grandma put on him in this movie are what he's kind of rebelling against. And I got that a little bit in my family, because my parents did want me to go to college, being a first generation American myself, and it wasn't so much that there was this pressure that they could show me off to like my family, which was a thing in this movie. They wanted to impress their aunts, their uncles, everybody else in their family. It was just wanted me to have a better life than they did. So I identified more with the relationship he had with his mom, who his dad in this movie really isn't in the picture. He is working back in their native country to try to make money to send back to them so they can live their life. But it was this unique relationship he had with his mom who was just trying to do her best, trying to raise her two kids and feeling like she failed. And it reminded me of a conversation I had with my mom fairly recently where she felt bad for what kind of mom she was growing up to us. And my mom did it finish. I don't even think she finished elementary school, never made it to middle school. She came to the United States as a teenager and did a lot of things just to make ends meet. One of those beings, she got a job when I started, probably first or second grade, at Taco Bell and she's been there ever since. And she told me she felt like she failed as a mom because she couldn't provide more for us, because she felt like, I'm just somebody working at Taco Bell and hearing my mom have these really human experiences kind of feeling the way that I feel at times, feeling I failed them. I never really heard my mom speak in that way where I always just saw her as my mom, person who did everything for us. She was kind of like a superhero in my eyes, and realizing that she was probably the age I am now at that time when I was, you know, starting school and she went to go do that job that I just thought, man like, we're just humans. We're just trying to survive. And even somebody like your parents, who you think have it all figured out, they don't.

00:35:47
Speaker 2: So it made me feel a.

00:35:49
Speaker 1: Little bit better about where I am in life, thinking that my mom didn't know that she was making the right choice or not. Back when you know, my oldest brother and older sister were already you.

00:36:01
Speaker 2: Know, on the path that they were on.

00:36:03
Speaker 1: They were all good, but still making sure that I had what I needed to survive. And I think she feels bad about sometimes the way we grew up that we didn't have a whole lot, and I never really saw it as like, oh man, it sucked being poor. At the time, I feel like not having a lot growing up, you know, it made me appreciate more of what I have.

00:36:24
Speaker 2: And it was.

00:36:25
Speaker 1: Watching d D that brought all those kind of emotions up of what it's like to have parents who immigrate from another country and come here without a whole lot, trying to keep your heritage alive, but also adapt to American society, which is what Dedi is trying to do in this movie, and it's so hard.

00:36:45
Speaker 2: Even his name.

00:36:46
Speaker 1: His family calls him Dedi, but to everybody else at school, he goes by Chris or another nickname. That was kind of what I experienced too growing up, because Mike's not my real name and I never really used my full lead name in school, just because I kind of wanted to blend in a little bit more. Also, how deed he did of the music he's into. He's into the skateboard culture, which was also what I was into growing up, and being Mexican, people assume that I wouldn't be into that. So there's a line in this movie that I won't ruin because it kind of hit me right in the cut, and I'll let you experience it. But it was a reference to his race in a moment where he thought he was just being a peer, maybe a love interest, that he was almost reduced to nothing because they pinpointed what he was based on his race. And I felt that because sometimes people have told me, hey, you're not really Mexican, You're kind of white, and I don't even know what that means just because I have sometimes nerdier tendencies, sometimes because I lean towards liking punk rock and things that aren't traditionally Mexican. What is even tradition Mexican. I always was into what I was into. I don't feel like I based it around my race. It was just what I was exposed to and what I liked. But I was viewed as being different because I wasn't into traditional things that a person of my race should be into. So there were just a lot of parallels between how I felt I grew up, the past I had to navigate, and what deed had to felt growing up, which I feel was good for me to see to know that it you know, it is kind of you. There are things that are unique to growing up Mexican American, but I feel like there are a lot of just parallels with anybody who immigrates from another country to the United States. So it was cool seeing that I could identify with somebody else from a different country and know that we kind of went through those same things. So if you are like that too, this is definitely a movie you have to see, especially if you grew up in the mid to late two thousands, because it's going to feel like a huge nostalgia trip. They also use AOL a lot in this movie, which I hadn't thought about in a really long time. Just those sounds of like sending messages, adding people, blocking people, sending an away message.

00:39:11
Speaker 2: That brought back a lot of memories.

00:39:13
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I got an AOL account, I was Alkaline Punk thirteen. Because my favorite band growing up was Alkaline Trio. I was like, yeah, let's throw punkin there. Cool number thirteen. I just remember getting on their messaging people. How much of a thrill that was. I could crush hours on a dial up connection on AOL. That was very much a very two thousand and eight experience. This movie is right under ninety minutes, so if you're somebody who likes a shorter movie, this is perfect for you.

00:39:43
Speaker 2: At the very start of.

00:39:44
Speaker 1: This movie, I thought it was just gonna be kind of a coming of age story that I'd already seen before. But once you really get into it, you start seeing the dynamic he has with his sister, with his family, and the fact that a lot happens to DDI in this life last summer before high school. By that third act, you are all in invested emotionally and you want to see more of his story, And by the time it was over, I was like, oh man, I gotta know what happens in high school. So this movie only gets better as it goes along. I easily give it four out of five friend requests. I think if I put in my bias of being a first generation Mexican American and identifying with what DD goes through, I'd probably put in a point five bias, But I feel good at giving it a four out of five. That is a strong four out of five, And I would also put this in my top five coming of age movies in the last ten years.

00:40:42
Speaker 2: Really enjoyed this movie.

00:40:43
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be a movie that I keep revisiting, especially once it hits streaming. So if you're looking for some coming of age movies, definitely check out DD.

00:40:55
Speaker 3: It's time to head down to movie Mike Traylor Paul him.

00:41:00
Speaker 2: At the challow May trying to win his first oscar.

00:41:03
Speaker 1: After watching the trailer to the New Bob Dylan Biopick called a complete unknown.

00:41:08
Speaker 2: That is how I'm feeling.

00:41:10
Speaker 1: There are a lot of recipes on not recipes, a lot of ingredients to this recipe inside of this trailer that are all the makings of what I believe is what we.

00:41:21
Speaker 2: Would call Oscar bait. And it's all right.

00:41:24
Speaker 1: Rommi Mallick did it back in twenty nineteen, playing Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody got his first Academy Award. Timothy Shallo mag still a young actor, but I feel the reason you take on a role like this with a movie coming out in December, with a director who also.

00:41:43
Speaker 2: Did walk the line Ford V.

00:41:45
Speaker 1: Ferrari, very familiar with the biopic genre, that to me is saying that Timothy shallow May wants to win an Oscar and while watching this trailer, I don't feel it so far.

00:41:56
Speaker 2: I feel like.

00:41:56
Speaker 1: All the statistics that go along with this movie, cast of characters, the director, those make me think this is going for being nominated for Best Picture, him being nominated for Best Actor. But just by the look of it, ooh, I'm not buying into it just yet, because when he is in the sunglasses on a stage with the guitar and the clode, you could convince me that it looks like Bob Dylan. However, in the moments in this trailer when he's not wearing sunglasses, I can't help but see Willy Wanka in there, which leads me to believe that it is so important what roles actors take on when because really, for me, even more so than Dune Part two, I'm starting to associate him with Willy Wonka, which he did very well also singing that movie. In this biopic, it is him singing these Bob Dylan songs. I'm sure he worked with a vocal coach, and I don't think it's that big of a stretch for him because he grew up in musical theater. You can go watch videos of him on YouTube. Belting is little hard out singing these songs, so it's not unusual for an actor at this level to take on the actual singing. I'm sure probably like they did with Bohemian Rhapsody, they bring somebody in to patch things in. So maybe it's not him one hundred percent of the time, maybe eighty percent of the time. So I feel like for those reasons, you have all the ingredients here of somebody baking up a cake to win a Best Oscar, not even just to get nominated. I think he is trying to win and I will call it just by after watching this trailer that he will get a nomination. I won't say anything until I actually see the movie, but I don't have any reason to deny that this movie is going to be not good.

00:43:35
Speaker 2: Just with my.

00:43:37
Speaker 1: Experience with biopics, I always feel like they are a little bit rushed. I don't love it when they come out when the person being portrayed is still alive, because I feel that that person could have a lot of influence on the movie. I don't think that is the case here. It was the case with the Queen movie. Although Freddie Mercury wasn't alive, the guys from the band was still alive and they were trying to have so much input in that movie. Sasha Bara Cohen, who was Borat, was initially supposed to play Freddy Mercury, and he dropped out because the band wanted him to die halfway through the movie, and the rest of that film to be about how they recovered after the loss of Freddy Mercury would have been a terrible movie. So oftentimes you have the estate or maybe a daughter some relative kind of calling some of the shots on how they depict the story. That is why I don't like it when the person is still alive for that reason, and I also just believe it is so hard to take somebody's entire life story who is so impactful on a genre, on a movement, which is especially what Bob Dylan was with the protest songs in the sixties, and put it all into a two to two and a half hour movie.

00:44:49
Speaker 2: It is really tough to do.

00:44:51
Speaker 1: So I feel like the task is so hard to be taken on that you're setting yourself up for disaster, for disappointment. For me, just not enjoying it. Not that I don't like music. I'm a huge fan of everybody loves music. Saying you don't like music is like saying you don't like to breathe. Music in movies, for the most part, go hand in hand. But I just don't go into a biopic thinking, ah, this is gonna be the one where they truly get it. But before I get into more of my thoughts, we'll look at the impressive filmography of the director, James Mangold. This movie doesn't have an official release date yet, it's just coming out in December. I would assume maybe they queue it up a little bit before the Christmas run, because we have some heavy hitters coming out in December, so maybe that's when they decide to put out this movie right in time for Oscar season. But here's just a little bit of the trailer of a Complete Unknown.

00:45:42
Speaker 2: I want to tell you a little story.

00:45:43
Speaker 5: A few months back, my friend Woody Guthrie and I we met a young man. He dropped in on us out of nowhere, and he played us a song. In that moment, we got a feeling. We were definite a glimpse.

00:45:56
Speaker 2: So the future. That's all I got so far. Good start.

00:46:06
Speaker 1: So the movie is set in New York nineteen sixties. You have a nineteen year old Bob Dylan from Minnesota. He arrives in the West Village. Looks like he is discovered. In that trailer, you heard the one and only Edward Norton, who is a great actor. He is playing fellow folk singer Pete Seeger. You also have El Fanning in this movie playing Sylvia Russo, who was inspired by Bob Dylan's real life ex girlfriend, Susie Rotolo. If you are familiar with this album The Free Wheeland, which has a very iconic cover, she is the one featured in that picture. You also have Boyd Holbrook, who I just saw in The Bike Riders playing Johnny Cash, so pretty decent cast here. I would say Timothy Shallow may probably getting paid the majority of the money. He is in that place of his career where he can take on any role, and I have to imagine this is a pretty iconic role for him as as if this movie is successful, this could be a movie that people associate with him throughout the rest of his career, because for me, I keep thinking of him as Willy Wonka, as I was mentioning earlier. I still don't feel like the Dune franchise has really attached itself to him. I think it's just hard for me to differentiate the goofy guy that he is on SNEL and also see him as this very serious actor, even though that's really where he got to start early on. But I think it's once you start taking on those big blockbusters that more and more people are seeing. Those are the ones that people are really going to start associating you with. So this movie is successful, if he gets nominated or if he ends up winning for Best Actor, this could be a real career defining movie.

00:47:48
Speaker 2: For him.

00:47:48
Speaker 1: The movie is directed by James Mangold, who most recent film includes Indiana Jones and The Dialogue Destiny, which I actually believe was a pretty good movie that the box office did a little dirty, primarily because nobody really asked for the continuation and the finale of Indiana Jones. But if you have Disney Plus and haven't seen it yet looking for something to watch over a weekend, and you're a fan of Harrison Ford and maybe you'll like the early on Indiana Jones movies. I still think it is a fun time. It just came out at a really weird kind of cross pass between a lot of good summer movies. Last year, James Mangold also did Four to Be Ferrari, fantastic movie, but I mean anything with Matt Damon and Christian Vale is going to be great. My favorite credit of his is he directed Logan with Hugh Jackman, what I believe is a top five comic book movie of all time. He also did The Wolverine and before that did Walk the Line, one of the best music bio picks of all time, easily top three for me, and I think if it wasn't for the fact that at Mexican and La Bamba and Selina will always outrank everything on my list. It would probably be number one, but it would go La Bamba Selena and then Walk the Line because I love that movie so much. And if you look at a movie like Walk the Line with Joaquin Phoenix, who also did a lot of the singing in that movie, and see how well James Mangole told Johnny Cash's story in that, I think if he can take that same formula and adapt it to Bob Dylan's life, then this is going to be a home run hit. The thing is, I don't really know a whole lot about all of the hardships and just career ups and downs that Bob Dylan went through. When you look at Johnny Cash and Walk the Line, dude had a lot of demons starting out from his childhood, his battle with drugs, leaven his wife, all the pills, the music playing in prisons. There are so many just polarizing things about Johnny Cash's career. After watching a complete Unknowns trailer, I don't know what the means of this story is going to be. So I'm wondering what the meat of this story is going to be. By the description of the movie, it says it'll focus on his early rise to fame, his infamous performance at the Newport Folk Festival, and the aftermath of that. But it is based on the twenty fifteen book Dylan Goes Electric, which is about the controversy surrounding the switch to electrically amplified instrumentation by Bob Dylan. If I had to list my top three Bob Dylan songs of all time, you might want to get out the basic B meter because I'm not too familiar with his music. I honestly know it primarily from watching movies. I can tell anytime it is his voice on a movie soundtrack. I was also in high school in an indie band where I played drums and my friend and lead singer and songwriter in that band, we were called Lynn Haven. We were mildly popular in high school. But he was so almost like a Bob Dylan Stan heavy inspiration on his Songwride, his singing style, he had the harmonica and everything, so from him. I was exposed to some of Bob Dylan's music, but it really hasn't been until I think it was I was rewatching The Watchmen and I heard a Bob Dylan song in that that maybe want to go listen to some of his music. This was just a few months ago, So my top three Bob Dylan songs would be at number three, blowing in the Wind. I know these are also basically his biggest hits that he's ever had. At number two would be Like a Rolling Stone, and at number one would be The Times They are a change in which if you go watch The Watchman, which is Zack Snyder's best movie and the only reason he really continues to make movies is because everybody remembers The Watchmen in probably three hundred but at the start of that movie, in the opening credits, they're showing all of this protest footage and how the Watchmen superheroes were connected to that, and they were playing that song over the top of it, and I thought that was a really great use of music and opening credits, something that doesn't really happen a whole lot anymore. So I think his music is just associated with that kind of imagery, maybe even been overused just a little bit. So again I'm hesitant about this because biopics have never been my favorite. It is hard for me to see Timothy Chalomey and a more serious role right now, and that's probably unfair, but I still like him as an actor, I like him as a person, and I'm a pretty big fan of James Mangold again. That movie is coming out this December.

00:52:28
Speaker 3: Jeez.

00:52:28
Speaker 4: And that was this week's edition of movie Line Tramer Bar and.

00:52:33
Speaker 1: That is gonna do it for another episode here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta give my listener shout out of the week. How do you get a listener shout out of the week? Well, all you have to do is comment on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook x Instagram. Let me know how you felt about that week's episode. You can send me a suggestion of a topic you think I should cover, a movie you think I should watch. And if you listen on Monday, which is released, a post a little screenshot, maybe take a picture of your car radio of you listening to that week's episode, Tag me in it. I'll repost you on my Instagram story and then give you a shout out the following week. But for this week's listener shout out, we're going over to Facebook and it goes to Ashley B who wrote Kelsey the Simpsons is the absolute worst ride from motion sickness. I'm sure you know now lol. So thank you, actually B for validating Kelsey and what we were talking about last week of how I drug her to California to get on the Simpsons ride even though she didn't want to, and it was in that moment and also us taking a picture with Bart and Lisa at least two people dressed as Bart Lisa in big costumes that.

00:53:45
Speaker 2: I realized, Oh, this girl is the one.

00:53:46
Speaker 1: She's down for Simpsons, which is one of my favorite shows of all time. That means she can now enter my life and I knew she was the one. So thank you, actually B for that comment. For listening to last week's episode, Thank you right now listening in your car, listening in your earbuds wherever this episode may find you.

00:54:04
Speaker 2: Thank you for being subscribed, Thank you

00:54:06
Speaker 1: For telling a friend, And until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later