Top 10 Films of 2025 (Pt. 1) with Michael Phillips and Alison Willmore

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Speaker 1: Film Spotting is presented by Regal Unlimited, the all you can watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. Sign up now in the Regal app. We're at the link in the show description and use code film Spot twenty five. That's film Spot twenty five to receive your discount, Hey, film Spotters. Over the years, we had managed to streamline these top ten shows down to about oh three hours, three hours fifteen. We had so much fun talking to Michael Phillips and Alison Wilmore about the best films of the year. The show ended up being a little over four hours, maybe closer to four and a half hours, right, Josh. So we decided it was best to split these into two You're gonna get two parts.

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Speaker 2: The worst thing about this, Adam, is like I was all dressed up for our video version for the show proper. Now we had to jump back on to explain all this, and here I'm just wearing an old hoodie. I mean, I know, Oh okay, well, we'll manage. Here is part one of our top ten films of twenty twenty five.

00:01:02
Speaker 3: What kind of a show you guys putting on here today? You're not interested in art. Now, No, Look, we're going to do this thing.

00:01:08
Speaker 4: We're going to have a.

00:01:08
Speaker 5: Conversation from Chicago. This is Film Spotting celebrating our twentieth year. I'm Adam M. Champanard and I'm Josh Larson.

00:01:19
Speaker 2: Hey, I mean to scare you.

00:01:23
Speaker 6: Stut I don't forgot about me?

00:01:24
Speaker 5: And who call open doling on out here?

00:01:28
Speaker 3: Stay as you.

00:01:30
Speaker 5: Closes me, open the door. That ain't your brother.

00:01:36
Speaker 1: If the first half of the movie year belonged to Ryan Coogler's Sinners, the second belonged to Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle after Another, Thanks please courage.

00:01:45
Speaker 6: Bob Carriage.

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Speaker 3: It's did.

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Speaker 2: We'll see how the two fair this week on our Top ten Films of twenty twenty five, with special guests Michael Phillips and Vultures Alison Wilmar. It's all ahead on Films Spotting.

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Speaker 7: Hey, thank you, since thank you, thank you, God damn it.

00:02:15
Speaker 1: Welcome to Film Spotting and welcome to our guests. I can't believe it for the first time on one of these end of year roundtables. God knows, we've tried to make it happen in the past. From Vulture, the film critic and formerly Film Spotting SVU Alison Wilmore. Alison, thanks so much for being here.

00:02:34
Speaker 8: I am so happy to finally be here. I know Adam. Every once in a while we talked about whether we could pull this off in Iowa City, which where some of my family members live over the holidays. That has never come together someday.

00:02:45
Speaker 2: Some yes, but will all descend on Iowa City together and do it there?

00:02:51
Speaker 3: That would be one.

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Speaker 8: It is a lovely place.

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Speaker 3: It's my favorite. It's my new favorite Midwest college Stone. I mean, it's just you know it is. It's fantastic. It's great. Let's go.

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Speaker 5: I look forward to forward to that, Michael. It always has.

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Speaker 3: Let's do like six to ten here and then we'll like relocate there.

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Speaker 5: You go, Josh, can you make that happen?

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, We'll just need an eighteen hour break between sessions, but I can do it.

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Speaker 5: Okay, we might need that, We might need that. Of course.

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Speaker 1: The other voice and the other face you might see if you are watching this is Michael Phillips.

00:03:25
Speaker 5: I did the math.

00:03:26
Speaker 1: This is your nineteenth year participating in one of these top ten films of the year shows.

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Speaker 5: Can you believe it?

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Speaker 3: I just can't believe I started when I was what fifteen? I mean, I know it was one of those young prodigies.

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Speaker 9: You know.

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Speaker 5: Indeed, yeah were now.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great, you know, And I have a lot to say about all the lists I've done up till now, So if we can just make a little time for the previous years, I'd appreciate.

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Speaker 5: It, of course.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great.

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Speaker 5: Strap in.

00:03:54
Speaker 1: In addition to hearing from Alison and Michael, we will get picks from several other critic friends their choices for film of the Year, including Allison's former SVU co host Matt Singer. He does not disappoint, he never does. You'll also hear from members of our sister podcast, The Next Picture Show, and friends from NPR's pop culture Happy Hour, Letterboxed, the Unspooled podcast, The Film Cast, and many more. This is how we approach the best of your roundtable on film spotting. We take all the titles that comprise our individual top ten lists. It turns out, there, I think my math is right, twenty seven unique titles among our four lists. We look for where there's overlap and of course where there's not, and we start with those outliers and then we arrive at some consensus. We may arrive at that consensus six or seven hours from now, whatever it takes. As far as consensus, there is some This year, there are a handful of films that made two lists. There are three films that made three of our lists, and there is one film, only one movie. I'm guessing most of our listeners can guess which movie that will be one movie that made all four of those lists. Also on the show, we are going to announce the five finalists for the film Spotting Golden Brick Award.

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Speaker 5: Josh. Of course, this is the award that goes to what or to who.

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Speaker 2: I think the language we've been using lately is to a newer emerging director, so relatively new filmmaker. We also like to and this goes hand in hand. We'd like it to be an underseen film, one that at least maybe up until the end of the year folks might have missed out on, and try to shed some light towards that filmmaker and that film.

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Speaker 8: And man, do we have.

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Speaker 2: A great batch. We had a great, huge long list to choose from, and we've winnowed that down to some fantastic finalists.

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Speaker 3: We have.

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Speaker 1: Listeners will also share their film of the Year choices, and we will incorporate so of their wonderful feedback, including a title or two I don't think I even heard about this year, so that will be fun. Just a quick note upfront, As you may be listening wherever, you're listening in your car, at work, on the peloton who knows what, and you're hearing all of these titles and trying to write them down, you can go to film spotting dot Net whenever you would like. Click on lists at the top of the page. You will see all of our choices and all of our special guest number one picks as well film spotting dot Net slash lists. Okay, Michael Josh Allison. Before we get into those picks, do we want to share any thoughts about the movie year? Overall, we're not great here on Film Spotting when it comes to the business, and I don't know if there's any good news when it comes to the business of movies right now. We tend to just keep our heads down and focus on the movies themselves, the quality, if you will, and our personal reaction to those movies. But you guys are a little bit more plugged in in terms of the daily grind of covering movies in the industry, Alison, when you when you think about the totality of the year, what what stands out to you, Well.

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Speaker 8: I think maybe even more so than the last few years, I've gotten a real you know, old world is dying, New World struggles to be born. Feeling about the movies. You really get the sense that all of the old you know, monster franchises that were powering Cineplex movie going in particular for a while, like those are all so they're they're they're at the end of their kind of arcs, you know, like Marvel, I'm not sure what's going on there. DC does not seem to be like kind of built on the same with the same aims anymore. You've got you know, some of these other like Mission Impossible and things like that that are just like, you know, I've come to an end, and I think that we've had in some ways of really exciting you know, bunch of original movies Sinners and one Battle after another Weapons which all happened to be released by Warner Brothers, which got the reward of then you know, being sold off to massive companies that are both fighting over it, and I feel like neither situation bodes well for the future of movies. If you love original films, if you love going to theaters. You know, Netflix on one side, really, despite what they say, it's hard to believe that they really will commit to the theatrical experience in the same way. And then Paramount is so you know, at this point like tied into pleasing the president and pleasing and kind of like like bending ideologically that the idea of them having another major you know, media arm that will be forced to do the same is just incredibly depressing. So I feel like it's really hard to know what to think, but I do if there's any hope for me, it is just the fact that things like Centers, things like One Battle, like we're so talked about, you know, like they really have such an enormous cultural footprint, like and even something like the Minecraft movie, which I still haven't seen. So I cannot communicate with the young people because we have nothing in common. I don't know how to use their language. But you know, that was like a huge phenomenon, like kids wanted to go to a movie theater, kids wanted to like play along, you know with all of the rocky horror esque things that were traditions that got built into it. I mean, all of those feel like promising things to me, at least on the basic kind of commercial movie going standpoint. But I don't know. I keep I do not love the feeling that we are constantly pushed towards a future in which we all just sit at home watching whatever content an algorithm pushes up to us on our individual screens. That sounds of lonely and isolated and like surrendering to, you know, corporate taste, as opposed to seeking out works of art and entertainment that are a surprising and individual And so I don't know. I'm not going to sure what the future will hold in terms of the business in that way, but it's been so chaotic for so long. I also feel very comfortable just shrugging and being like, we will find out.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, Michael, where are you on that?

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Speaker 9: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I means's words, the incredibly depressing to hope or hopeful spectrum.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a really good year, you know. I mean, that's that's the short answer to all of it. And I think it was a really good year for all the reasons. Alison just said plus this, you know, what you want at the end of the year is the reminder or maybe the discovery, you know, by way of somebody else's lists or thoughts about what was happening way the hell outside the studio system. You know, films from you know, any number of markets, most of which are you know, multi multi multi hyphen co productions, basically festival material. That is, it has a hell of a hard time finding anything like a traditional theatrical release because that just doesn't you know, I mean, and it is a it is a sobering moment, certainly for distributors like a twenty four where you know, and many others, but where you pay let's say, a pretty good pre COVID level fee for a film like Sorry Baby, which I think will come up in the conversation later. And you know, like other films that had the bad luck to be released you know, early mid COVID Sing Sing for example, you know, just couldn't come close to making it back. I think that audience is not around anymore. I think the hardening thing is definitely what Allison said, to have films of the size and the artistic, the glaring artistic freedom of Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film One One Battle of for Another and Ryan Coogler's Sinners. It's great they found the Sinners in particular, found the audience it knew it would get. Even if everybody, everybody in Hollywood has this bizarre case of racist amnesia, thinking there isn't a black audience that we'll support, right, uh, you know, everybody turned out and even when the white people started going, it was like, hey, pretty good, you know, and you know, it's just like they never learned the lesson. I also, the chilling thing for me at the end of this year is to think back at what and I've quoted it before, but there was an interview in the New York Times with David zaslof you know, a couple of years ago, just after Barbie, and it was a big, you know, kind of just profile of him and what he might do, you know, in the conglomeration of everything out there. And this is ancient history now, but he just somebody pointed and the writer pointed out, well, what about Barbie? That Barbie made a Hunters is that doesn't really affect our bottom line? I mean the quote, I'm paraphrasing the quote, but It's like, Okay, when a film it made a hundred a billion and a half, more than a billion and a half doesn't affect your bottom line as a movie concern than the then it's the audience's concern, because that's you know what is there? The one thing we cannot argue with is that all this, whether it's Netflix or Paramount or just you know, Trump and Trump Junior officially buying the you know, the studio through the United States government. I don't think that's really gonna happen, but it's going to mean less films made every year and and far fewer films in theaters. And so this is the question with Netflix, are they really interested in living with the theatrical window model of like anything like you know, four weeks and up, or are they just going to dump as much as they can onto the streaming thing. One for them, one for us. Used to refer to projects, and now I just think it refers to platforms, except it's going to be three for the streamer and one for the theaters. And that's what worries me the most going into the new year.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm feeling a similar deep unease on that question.

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Speaker 3: And it's one.

00:14:21
Speaker 2: I'd sort of, you know, had a let's wait and see attitude really until this year. For some reason, I've long you know, I've long set a movie, a great movie can stand up to any viewing environment. I go back to my discovery of Hitchcock in my bedroom as a kid with the little camping TV my grandpa gave me, and I watched Hitchcock on Channel nine WGN in Chicago and fell in love. Okay, so that was like eight and a half inches by five inches that screen. That doesn't mean great movies should be watched in any viewing environment. And I'm starting to think we're getting to that place where it's no longer in option. And it is this Netflix situation with Warner Brothers, and as you both have pointed out, the unique crowd pleasing, box office busting films that we got in Sinners and one bat after another coming from Warner Brothers, and the prospect of that happening again just going away overnight is very dispiriting. I think the death of theatrical has been talked about for a long time.

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Speaker 9: This is.

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Speaker 2: This is the first time I personally have felt like I could see it or I feel it, and you know, it really does matter. Great movies do do need to be seen with others in the dark on giant screens, even though they can hold up elsewhere. It's you know, it's it's like the most amazing taco you've you can find. It's gonna taste great driving, you know, rushing to you to get an errand done in your car. It's gonna taste great. You know what, It would taste better eating it on the beach at the taco stand in Mexico. Okay, So I just still want that option for my tacos and my movies.

00:16:04
Speaker 5: I guess, yeah, I.

00:16:06
Speaker 8: Will say also to kind of to go further, Josh, I feel like for me, it's not even that the streaming experience can't be a great one. It is that I feel like the end goal of the companies behind streaming, well especially Netflix, is to be like, we would just like you to kind of neutrally absorb, you know, whatever we kick up to you. And I think, and we're going to expect you to be on your phone at the same time, you know, And I feel like, yes, that experience is just and I have done it as well, you know, But like I don't think that it is in any way you can equate it to, like, yeah, the experience of just giving your full attention to a movie or to anything, you know. I think it's telling that ultimately, like Netflix's big rival is YouTube, right, it is not actually like one of the big studios, like the studios I consider kind of already done, like they are competing for attention and for content, not competing in a film world necessarily. And I think I want a film world, yeah, I.

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Speaker 3: Think, And I don't like a world where those of us in cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and a tiny handful of others are going to be the more protected areas in terms of like our theatrical options. I think the early predictions five or more years ago about how what's going to happen with theatrical movie going period was always that it would be winnowing down, getting rid of shaving multiplexes, you know, until we're about half the numbers we are now how many there are nationally, and they're they're bunched up in the bigger cities. I don't I don't love that, but it does. If it turns into something like that, it's more of a boutique experience. I hate that word because it just sounds it just sounds exclusionary, and it sounds undemocratic, and it owns a lot of things. But uh, it's why a lot of us wanted to live in cities like this anyway, you know. But I don't know, Josh, I have to ask you, what is your movie going option for a theater where you live, where you're staying this year in Scotland? Seriously?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's you know, the town I'm in. St. Andrews is relatively small, so there is a theater long story that's just been opened, but it's also a virtual golf venue actually owned by justin Timberlake and Tiger Woods. St Andrews is a you know, historic golf town. So so yeah, that's you know, I can walk there. But otherwise, there's a town of Dundee that I can take a bus to that has you know, the a Regal our sponsor here in film spotting, they have cinemas so you can still get that big screen experience. There is a small the DCA, the Dundee Contemporary Arts that is screening more like you know Gene Sisco Film Center type title, which is a great option, and then otherwise I have been bopping over via bus and trained to Edinburgh to see some of the stuff there because they have a great art house film option as well. But you know, I think you're right, Michael, we're going to that a sign of hope. You know, Alison, you mentioned what has given you hope is you know, you go to any of these repertory screenings, whether it is at the Cisco Film Center of the Music Box in Chicago, and they're sold out. I mean, they're just it's it's just huge attraction for audiences of all ages, and that's exciting. And I think that's becoming more of an attraction for people than it even used to be. Now to your point, Michael, is that going to be available in smaller towns. Maybe maybe the demand will become so great that this is something that a one screen theater and a smaller town can support programming older movies projected. But I don't know how confident I feel about that, And I think you're right, Michael, it's going to be more likely for the select few who get that. I'm just thinking about, you know, movies not only like Sinners, but Adam, we did an anniversary review of Back to the Future this year. Where is the populist cineplex masterpiece that the suburban kids in, you know, just some smaller state with no major city Back to the Future played there in the eighties. Where is it going to play, you know, the new back to the Future. Where is it going to play in five years. I don't know if there will be a place for something like that.

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Speaker 3: I don't want to stretch you out too much. But Allison's point about the Minecraft movie, well over a billion. It was like the old days, meaning twenty nineteen, And that happens not predictably or reliably, but it happens every year. Every year there's a film like that where it's like, okay, it's just it's ip, you know, the time seven and all. That's all it is. But and I regret to say I haven't seen it either, But I mean, they got a real director to do it, and they apparently it's got some laughs, and god knows it had the appeal. But I think with those it happens every year. So I don't think it's the folding of theatrical Is is tomorrow or next year or hopefully not even this decade? And you know it does go on, but it's going to take you know, the wherewithal and the will of whoever owns these conglomerates that are you know, that are seventeen steps above actual production, but are responsible for funding it, to believe in it and to say, yes, we still can make money, and yes theatrical can drive you know, streaming activity and popularity, just like it always has when they've co existed together. So I really hope that that they don't just listen to the last person in the room on these decisions.

00:21:53
Speaker 8: Yeah, And I think also, I mean, just to close this out, I feel like, you know, this is a conversation that's larger than us theaters of theaters is obviously something that's very important to me. It does feel like a larger conversation about public spaces and public life, you know. And I think in particular, the pandemic really disrupted so many things about like about us going outside and being around other people and doing things in kind of communal settings. And I do feel strongly that it is an important and kind of social good for us to go out and do things and be around other people and not all just kind of like default to being sealed up in our houses as much as possible, you know. And I think that movie going like the kind of collective viewing, not even in the kind of story i'd like cinema sets, but just in being like, it is so nice to be with a group of people and like to be laughing along or bored together, or you know, like rapped and wrapped by something on screen together. It does feel nice, you know, like just as a thing that you are doing in it in the in public with a group of people, like it is a different experience from just like communing with a work of art or entertainment at home on your phone or on your screens of choice.

00:23:04
Speaker 9: And I.

00:23:06
Speaker 8: Think that we are better as a society when we all go out and do things outside of our homes in addition to being home.

00:23:13
Speaker 1: Right now, my only question after all this is, Josh, how are the tacos when you're hitting a few practice rounds at the virtual golf?

00:23:21
Speaker 3: How do they.

00:23:22
Speaker 8: Game with Scotland? Scotland tacos.

00:23:24
Speaker 2: I have really fallen in love with Scotland, and I am desperate.

00:23:29
Speaker 3: For Mexican food.

00:23:31
Speaker 5: That's where that came from.

00:23:33
Speaker 2: Two things can be true.

00:23:34
Speaker 3: At the same Two things can be true at the same time.

00:23:37
Speaker 8: I think also if you see if you see a Mexican restaurant anywhere out there in the UK, don't do it. Don't do it.

00:23:44
Speaker 1: I'll add a hopeful note, which is there's a sub stack. I followed by Ted joya great, very wise critic of many things, and he talked earlier in the year about in this increasingly algorithmic world that you were talking about, Alison, he does truly believe that there will be an increased value put on finding human individual opinions that you can truly trust. And I hope as we're doing this show, I hope that's the case, and I hope that there are people out there listening that hopefully we'll value our opinions and can trust our opinions as we dive into this show, and as we're going to now transition into talking about the movies themselves. I think, Josh, that's usually the barometer for us when we're reflecting on the year. It's how hard was it to form this top ten list? How fun was it? But how hard was it to chisel down from all these titles that we thought were pretty great to actually get it down to ten. I'm guessing it was a challenge for you.

00:24:49
Speaker 5: Is that the case.

00:24:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a challenge on the back end in terms of I had a clear number one by far, I had maybe a handful after that that I knew we're real strong, and then I had maybe twenty movies that we're all just such a delight in so many different ways that my top ten ended up being a constantly evolving puzzle of which ones that I want to actually pick to represent the year. It was tough, it was, it always is, and this one I think speaks to the depth of quality. Twenty twenty five gave.

00:25:22
Speaker 1: Us movies you might be able to check out for free right now as a Regal Unlimited member. Marty Supreme number nine on Alison Wilmore's list an eleven through twenty pick for me incredible performance from Timothy Shallomey that is playing right now at Regal. And we've talked a little bit about some of these picks. We've highlighted some of these repertory movies, the limited engagements, Josh that Regal has been showing at some of their theaters and I'm looking at rgmovies dot com and they have a limited engagement right now for it's what is it? It's fortieth anniversary, It's thirtieth Okay, only thirty years. Shouldn't age it like that thirtieth anniversary of a movie? I somehow I can't believe I've admitting this. I have somehow never seen this film, despite the fact that it stars two incredible actresses, including one who I've always claimed to be a huge, huge fan of. And I may have to rectify this now by seeing it on the big screen. Getting a chance to see it on the big screen at a Regal Cinema. Sense and Sensibility.

00:26:39
Speaker 3: Angling way to do it.

00:26:40
Speaker 1: Great director too, Kate Winslett, the actress I'm referring to the great Emma Thompson. Never seen Sense and Sensibility And if you're like me, maybe you're embarrassed about it. Like me, you can check that out now at Regal Cinemas and maybe see it for free with that Regal Unlimited membership. Regal Unlimited is the all you can watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits, and Regal is offering film spotting listeners endless movies for less. All you have to do is sign up using the code film spot twenty five. That's film Spot twenty five, and you'll get ten percent off a three month subscription. It is the only truly limitless movie subscription pass. And you don't just save money on tickets, you also save on snacks. You get ten percent off all non alcoholic concessions. You can see any standard two D movie anytime, no blockout, dates or restrictions. We encourage you to sign up now in the regal app, or just click the link in this show description and use that code film Spot twenty five to receive your discount. With that, let's get into some of our choices, and we are starting with those outliers. So these are movies that only made our individual lists, and we're going to be with the outest of outliers. This doesn't mean they're crazy choices. It certainly doesn't mean they're bad choices. It just means maybe they're a little bit of a surprise movies that truly are a surprise to the people listening, or maybe many people listening just haven't even heard of these films. We'll see which case supplies here. As we get into these picks, I'm going to say, Alison, with your choice, it's the former category it's a good pick now that I've seen this movie, but it is one I did not see coming, So enlighten us.

00:28:37
Speaker 8: I don't know why you didn't see this coming. You guys hate comedy, is what you're telling about. I think that The Naked Gun is absolutely one of the best films of the year. It is certainly, I would say, the most enjoyable, like purely enjoyable theatrical experience. I had even at a press screening, which, as we all know, is filled with people who are like me, dead inside. There was a lot of laughter. There was just like a lot of just audible pleasure in just taking in this incredibly silly movie that is just jam packed with jokes. And you know what, I would nominate Liam Neeson for an oscar. I know that Best Leading Actor is like a packed category this year, but do you know what, like the incredible, like like action movie face, the dead pan that he brings to this deeply ridiculous role as the son of Frank Dremen. I think he's so good in it. I think that years of making what I believe have been described as the geriatric action movie, you know, the stage of his career in which he has played all of these deeply serious action heroes has made him just the perfect comedy hero for this movie. And I think that like the kind of the delight in just like the kind of just throwing all these jokes out there and having them just be existing in a moment, you know. I think the whole montage with the Snowman incredible. The throwaway bit where they're retrieving a car that's crashed by using a giant claw machine and everyone watches and it's like, oh when they miss, But even just like a throwaway line. I think my favorite part of the movie is a part where Liam Neeson is like muttering as he's walking through the police station, I guess you really can't fight City Hall, and Paul Walterhauser, as his uh, you know partner, says, very seriously, no, it's a building. I just I just love that. I love it so much, and I really enjoy Pamela Anderson's uh scat singing face.

00:30:38
Speaker 10: This one's for my electric new friend Richard Kane, Wow, Sassafrash Chicken and d make it extra lumpy boys.

00:30:51
Speaker 8: Peai da bim bim bid. I just I think it's great. I think Akiva Schaffer understands exactly how to get the sensibility of these films that you know, like were made in a different era of comedy, studio comedy, and I think, you know, there was an awareness of how difficult it has been to do a big studio comedy these days, to the point where they even did a PSA or Liam Neeson. You know, urge people, you have to come see this for the sake of the studio comedy. But I think that this was just a perfect, perfectly silly film. I enjoyed it so much. I want them to make a dozen more of diminishing returns until I get sick of them and let it die again. That is all I want. Bring them back, I want more.

00:31:46
Speaker 11: So.

00:31:46
Speaker 1: Some of the sequels may not appear in your top ten, but this one is it is there.

00:31:51
Speaker 8: I think, you know, there's only the proper comedy franchise arc is to just end in a place where you're like, what did I even see in this in the first place? Yeah, that's what I want from this.

00:32:02
Speaker 1: Knowing that Josh is someone who doesn't appreciate this sensibility the airplane, you know, Zucker Abram's parody sensibility. I can't wait to get him back here, back to this side of the pond and clockwork orange style, make him watch this film.

00:32:18
Speaker 5: It's gonna be great.

00:32:19
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna do it because I know you are a big fan as well, Adam, and it's good. You hinted at night come up at our rap party for you know, funniest moment picks. So I'm going to watch this and hope that here's my hope. Yeah, historically these haven't been my movies, but it's in my dna. My dad like just growing up, he loved these right Airplane Original, Naked Gone, And so I've got it somewhere inside. My hope is Adam, I've aged into it. Fifty one is when it's going to kick in, right, this this is when I will finally get these comedies.

00:32:54
Speaker 3: If you're really gonna complete the whole arc of turning into your father or your grandfather, then you'll start watching the road show version of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World, like over and over and over, you know, well in few hours. Yeah, a film I actually liked about as much as the Naked Gun remake. I really I love to laugh and I'm not quite sure why that one. I kind of just watched it like Nipper the Dog on the RCA label, kind of tilting his head waiting, you know, to me, to me, I love that first iteration of the Naked Gun Police Squad on TV. I loved it. And it was also the closest to the source material they were ripping off, like the m Squad, which nobody remembers, and you know, all the Quinn Martin cop shows, and I thought, you know, I got I got a lot of laughs out of a couple of the Naked Gun movies, but that was I kind of went through what Allison's talking about like midway through the second one. So I don't know. This one didn't seem to have the deadpan knack or interest. It was just kind of a big, broad violent action comedy with with I'm satire in it, but not enough for me, I guess. So I don't know. I just uh, I didn't hate it. But all of a sudden, I feel bad that I can't agree with you because I respect you.

00:34:09
Speaker 5: Well, it's fine, Michael, it's fine judging.

00:34:15
Speaker 1: But she doesn't need your support because fortunately, effittingly, yeah, she knows that. And also she has the support of her former film Spotting SVU co host and former IFC Films partner in crime Matt Singer, who submitted a voicemail. We asked him for his pick for his favorite film of the year, and you're going to get his actual pick for best film of the Year. But it turns out that The Naked Gun was indeed one of his favorites of the year, and he is going to proselytize for this film. And it's so appropriate for the conversation that you all were just having about how important it is to see movies in the theater. We're going to hear about Matt's communal experience, the transcendent, the spiritual experience he had watching The Naked Gun with other revelers this year.

00:35:10
Speaker 12: Hello, Film Spotting, this is your very old friend, Matt Singer, with my contribution to Film Spotting's ninety fifth annual Best Movies of the Year episode. I can't believe it's been that long. Congratulations again. Wow, what an achievement. Anyway, I'm very confident that my number one movie of the year this year, one battle after another, it's going to get more than enough love on the show. So instead of yecking on about that again, I'm going to instead stump for what I consider my single favorite theatrical experience of twenty twenty five, which was The New Naked Gun. So the Naked Gun films, all three original films are canonical texts. To me, they are as sacred as anything in the Bible or the films of mel Brooks. So personally me, I was very nervous about anyone tackling this holy work. But to my very pleasant surprise, director at Kiva Schaeffer and his team absolutely nailed how to make a Naked Gun in twenty twenty five. You just recreate the same style of NonStop nonsense from the originals. And with all due respect to the great Paul Thomas, Anderson made a fabulous movie this year. I would argue there is no scene in any film this year more sublime than Liam Neeson's Detective Frank Treben Junior chewing out Pamela Anderson's Beth Davenport for accidentally erasing his tvo filled with all the season one episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He gave it to her with specific instructions not to plug it into the Internet, and what did she do?

00:37:13
Speaker 3: She connected it to her router. Do you know what that means?

00:37:16
Speaker 6: That means gone, no ars Ago Special, no Sander, no Spike, no Cordelia Tays, no Daniels Osborne, no Willow meets her double ganger episode nothing.

00:37:29
Speaker 13: Sorry, I didn't know they were so.

00:37:33
Speaker 10: Frank.

00:37:33
Speaker 13: We're in the middle of an important conversation.

00:37:35
Speaker 6: Just stand there.

00:37:39
Speaker 12: Sitting in a crowded room of strangers collectively laughing at that scene so loud and so hard that we all missed the first couple jokes in the next scene. Was genuinely one of my big highlights of the entire year, maybe not just in movies, just highlights of my wife has pathetic as that is. It's true, and it really it serves as a reminder to me that while we are constantly told that the only thing that will bring people out to theaters, the only thing theaters are good for anymore are for quote unquote events. You know, in the right theater, in the right crowd, any great movie becomes an event anyway, have a great twenty twenty six guys.

00:38:30
Speaker 3: Thanks.

00:38:31
Speaker 1: I haven't ranked the best bits in The Naked Gun, but I think I'm willing to go on the record and say that that deadpan delivery by Liam Neeson of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TiVo bit. That is that's top three, it's maybe top two. Matt's right, So thank you, Matt Singer that thank you for supporting Allison.

00:38:53
Speaker 5: Michael. You have to go back and watch it now, I do.

00:38:57
Speaker 3: I do. I have to press laugh first.

00:39:01
Speaker 2: I know I'm not watching it with Michael when I catch up with it, that's for sure.

00:39:04
Speaker 1: No, No, you don't need that bad, those bad vibes at all jobs. Let's keep the good vibes going. You also have a off the beaten path choice here, and it's another comedy.

00:39:18
Speaker 2: Another comedy, I guess my vein of comedy. Maybe it's one of them days. All I can say is one of them days made me laugh more than anything else I saw at the theater last year, and especially just these rapid fire exchanges between Kiki Palmer and Sizz. They play La roommates who are facing unfair eviction from their apartment. You know it doesn't need more, I guess than that. To Allison's point in Alison's pick for me necessarily to put it on my top ten list, you make me laugh this hard. You've got a shot, but I do think the topicality here is to its credit as well. I mean, we are facing an avalanche of American crises this year, and you know, you could lay them all out before you probably get even to the affordable housing shortage. But it's one of them. It's important to a ton of people, and there's something exciting about a smart comedy addressing that with sharp satirical humor. I mean, hat tip to Kat Williams for those of you who've seen one of them days, as I call him, Lucky, the prophet, just standing outside of the payday loan office, warning people, warning people away, great recurring gag.

00:40:30
Speaker 8: What are the interest rates there?

00:40:34
Speaker 9: Damn?

00:40:35
Speaker 5: I thought that was the year of establishment.

00:40:38
Speaker 8: If you don't have the money this month, you're not gonna have it next month.

00:40:43
Speaker 5: Get out?

00:40:45
Speaker 8: Is he here every day?

00:40:47
Speaker 13: What the job?

00:40:48
Speaker 7: Don to this? Here?

00:40:49
Speaker 5: He is so negative?

00:40:51
Speaker 2: You know, don't discount the director here, Lawrence Lamont's work, because great comedy like this it requires smart directing and he knows how to set up and how to frame a punchline, of which there are many. In addition to that, fantastic, fantastic interplay between the two leads. So so yeah, This is my final plea. I've mentioned it a couple times on the show throughout the year, but my final plea of twenty twenty five for everyone to catch up with one of them days.

00:41:19
Speaker 3: Also, and right in line with Allison's endorsement with William Neeson in The Naked Gun, I would nominate Kicky Palmer for Best Actress. Seriously.

00:41:28
Speaker 2: I mean she's just a ballot for the Chicago Film critics.

00:41:31
Speaker 3: I mean, she rolls, so there's not a scene that she can't activate. There's I mean, some of the material is better than others in this film, I think, but she she just scores every and she has a great ear and I for how to propel every scene, Like none of the bits, none of the laft she gets stop the action at all. It's always just kind of in the service of the next beat. She's great. I mean, she's she's been on camera more of her life than not. Right, she started as a child actress and you know, big star early on in that realm, and I mean she's barely in her thirties and she has just got the wiles and the skill level of like comic screwball stars of old. She's great. So yeah, no, I I like the idea of nominating more people for comedy, for actual serious awards consideration in general, you know. And she is great.

00:42:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Josh, As you said, you put her on your Best Actress ballot for the Chicago Film Critics Association. I had her just off. She was in there for a while, and then as I saw more movies, just got bumped off into that six to ten range. But one of them Days is currently available vod You can also see it on Netflix. And before we get serious and Michael, in the case of our two picks, deadly serious, perhaps we're going to keep the laughs going here a little bit. We have a voicemail from someone our listeners should be familiar with. She's been on the show a few times as a guest host and as a voicemailer, and we know that Allison is certainly familiar with her work as well at your publication.

00:43:05
Speaker 5: This is Roxanna Hadatti.

00:43:07
Speaker 14: Hi, this is Roxanna Hadatti. I am a critic with Vulture and New York Magazine. And I'm sure that my number one movie is on this list already. Pretty much any given day, it switches between train dreams and it was just an accident. So I'm not going to talk about.

00:43:23
Speaker 8: Either of those.

00:43:24
Speaker 14: But what I am going to talk about as the movie that has stuck with me surprisingly this year is Roofman, which I was predisposed to like because I like Derek sian Franz's movies. I like Channing Tatum, I like Kirsten Dunst, I like all the pieces of the movie, and I was surprised by how it came together and that it was marketed as a comedy, which was wrong. It is being described in interviews, like when I spoke with sian Franz as a movie sort of about a father's love and what he is willing to do, and I think that is more correct and fits more within Sion France's tradition. I'm someone who loves a well done father of daughters story.

00:44:15
Speaker 5: And this is John Thorn from New York.

00:44:20
Speaker 8: Oh, New York, that's far from here.

00:44:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it.

00:44:24
Speaker 8: Well, John, he made a very generous toy donation.

00:44:28
Speaker 9: Wow, that's so kind of you.

00:44:29
Speaker 8: We couldn't have come at a better time.

00:44:32
Speaker 2: No, And really like Christmas and birthdays and just gift giving time.

00:44:37
Speaker 9: And I don't I just love kids.

00:44:39
Speaker 5: You have kids well in a family are you?

00:44:43
Speaker 14: And what I think this movie offered is a rejection of the fact that we have happy endings in our lives. I think the movie actually really demonstrates how untrue that can be. And there was some about its refusal to really stick with any genre that I still find really compelling. So that's my pick for my sort of unloved choice of the year is Rufman.

00:45:14
Speaker 1: I said we were going to keep the laughs going, but Roxanne is correct. I just caught up with Rufman because of Roxanna's recommendation and because of producer Sam Van Holgren's recommendation after he heard Roxanna's voicemail. And it is being improperly sold. It was mismarketed as a comedy. It has a few laughs in it. Channing Tatum's character is a bit of a goofball, but it's a pretty serious movie, more like you would expect.

00:45:44
Speaker 5: From Derek c in France. And it is a good movie.

00:45:47
Speaker 1: I love that Roxanna is highlighting this film, not the comedy so much that I set it up to be, or again that the marketing team behind it has made it out to be, but a good film.

00:45:58
Speaker 5: Allison, you've seen it, what do you think.

00:46:01
Speaker 8: I do not think it works, but not because it's not it's it's I mean, I would agree it's not a comedy. It does have like a few light touches, but it is much more about this guy who can't like help himself, even though he's in hiding and on the run and has broken, you know, out of jail. Can't help himself, but like just get involved with this woman and her family and just and this community. I felt I needed it for me. I wanted it to acknowledge a little bit of essentially the creepiness of what he was doing in terms of the kind of lies he was spinning, in terms of like needing to kind of love bomb everyone, to be such a kind of like people pleaser, you know, to the point where he's like he has built this whole persona up. I felt like there was a tension there that the movie never addressed because it was just too fond of that character and I answers him why. I think Chenning Tantum is very lovable in that role, as he is often you know, like it's a kind of role he's very good at. But I appreciated, like, yes, the way it started off as a bit more of a comedy and then just kind of kept this tonal tension there sure throughout, as you kind of wonder when is all of this going to fall apart.

00:47:20
Speaker 1: I think that's a fair criticism of the movie. Channing Tatum is charming in the movie, and he's playing a character who obviously gets by a lot on his charm, even as he also is a very goofy and overly goofy character in a way that does cross over into creepy at times, and he gets called out on it a little bit. And I think you do see in Kirsten Dunk's character mainly. You see it in her eyes, you see it in the way she looks at him sometimes, that tension in the way she feels about him. But the movie probably could push that a little bit more than it does. I agree that the movie seems to him maybe more than it should. I really love Roxander's point though, about the movie being ultimately a rejection of this notion that we expect from the movies too, that we're going to get these happy endings sometimes and things don't always work out that way. So an inspired pick, I'll say for Roxanna of roof Man, and then we are going to tilt things a little bit more to the serious side of the scale. Now, Michael, with your choice, which is a documentary and one that has certainly gotten some acclaim this year, but I'm not sure that many of our listeners are familiar with. Please tell us about your I believe number eight film of.

00:48:42
Speaker 3: The year yas a number apick. It's called Orwell. Two plus two equals five. This is a really good documentary from Raoul Peck, whose films include I Am Not Your Negro, The Team's Baldwin sort of exploration. He's a filmmaker who uses all these different tools of nonfiction, film and personal essay to create documentaries that are bigger and go more places while sticking to their main subject than almost anything else going right now. And this is about George Orwell in the final phase of his life as he was writing the dystopian novel nineteen eighty four on the island of Jura I think as it pronounced Jura, off the coast of Scotland. This was in the forties. The novel came out in nineteen forty nine, and that was the year before Orwell, who was born Eric Arthur Blair, died of tuberculosis, and there's a lot of correspondence of his that weaves through the documentary. It's really touching and beautifully ridden. And his life in England and in the British Empire he was born into, which formed his entire personality, is just as well dramatized as the making of that novel. It's also a film that it talks to America right here, right now in terms of truth and lies and the phrase thought criminal and thought criminality, which is Orwell's perpetually topical way of getting at not just authoritarianism or fascism, but you know how just that sort of governmental impulse can grow and take seed and mess us all up. You know the one drawback I'd say the movie, having just seen it once now don at actually the Refocused Film Festival in Iowa City this summer, which is all about different adaptations, and Peck uses a big bunch of archival footage from film and television adaptations of nineteen eighty four. It's useful footage, but you're also looking at work that isn't really terrific. No one's really made a great adaptation of nineteen eighty four yet, But pex film I would have to say even that it's not strictly at all adapting that novel. It's the best film related to what I've seen, and since we're living in a nation right now where the current administration is sort of determined to make that new math, if you want to call it that. Of the film's title, tupless two equals five the official language, it's really a film we need right now, and it's just also just an eloquent, elegant piece of nonfiction filmmaking. So seek it out when you can. Or Well, tupless two equals five.

00:51:35
Speaker 6: The very concept of objective truth is fading out of this world.

00:51:40
Speaker 8: I'm going to sut down when I can not say aloud to anyone.

00:51:45
Speaker 5: This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.

00:51:49
Speaker 1: I think you adequately explain this, Michael, but adequately more than atticate explain this, But I just want to underscore it. Having just caught up with it because it made your list, I didn't expect the extent to which this movie really uses Orwell and his work and his vision as an instrument more than anything. It's not really about Orwell. It's using Orwell as an instrument to be a polemic, to highlight this notion of fascism and to want to make a point not only about America, but about what's happening in a lot.

00:52:26
Speaker 5: Of countries at this time.

00:52:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, rollpex orwell two plus two Weekles five is also available v O D. And that brings us to my outlier, my outest of outliers, which is a movie. I put it in this category because up until a week ago, maybe ten days ago, I'm not sure I had heard of the film. It's one of those December movies. I don't know if this happens to all of you, but in this rush of trying to get prepared for the end of the year, you end up seeing movies pop up on other lists, and they are movies that sometimes flew completely under your radar going through the year, and then you see some of the acclaim and you check it out and you're blown away by it. And that's the case with the film I actually have as my number three of the year from Grasshopper Films. It's called Afternoons of Solitude. It's a documentary by director Albert Sarah, the Spanish filmmaker. He made Pascifiction in twenty twenty two, Libertay in twenty nineteen, The Death of Louis fourteen and twenty sixteen. I haven't seen any of those films, so Sarah is a new director to me. I think it got put on my radar because this was a film that made Richard Brody's list, I think at number three this year, and it was also number one on kay De Cinema's list. So Afternoons of Solitude, I'm thinking, what could this movie be. It sounds like a very intense, arty film, certainly with subtitles, it's going to be a very meditative film. And then I see that it's a documentary about a bullfighter. Not what I imagined, but I thought, I'm in I have to check this out. After I saw it and after I loved it, I was searching for some information about it in terms of its release and stuff in our inbox Josh, and back in July, we got an email about it from a listener in New York City. Zach Stetson completely overlooked it, but I'll read it now because it sets up the movie nicely. He said, would highly recommend seeking out the documentary Afternoons of Solitude by Albert Sarah. It's a fascinating hypnotic exploration of the bullfighting world and the toxic masculinity that accompanies it. All told through a distinctive queer gaze. It can be alternately quite disturbing and difficult to watch, while also being incredibly enthralling and beautifully photographed. I think it's coming to Chicago this weekend at the Gene Siscal Film Center.

00:54:50
Speaker 5: Hope you check it out and maybe give it a mention on the show.

00:54:53
Speaker 1: Obviously did not check it out that weekend at the Gene Siskal Film Center and did not mention it on the show. Just now saw it and I knew this was going to be one of my favorite films of the year. Six minutes in to this movie, Sarah's camera observes the subject, this bullfighter andres Rocca Ray in his hotel room after a fight. His back is to the camera. He's wearing his white trahe de luches the suit of lights after a fight. He's just robing with the help of a personal attendant. He needs help getting out of it, he needs help getting into it. You see both of those activities. We see some blood spatter, but as he turns to the camera, you see that his beautiful white suit is completely covered in blood along his abdomen and thighs, and it's just one of the most arresting cinematic images of the year. Roca's slender, regal, almost saintly figure. It's like he's just suffered for our sins. That's how I felt looking at him bathed in this amber glow of this hotel room light, with the bright red spatters of blood and the crimson red of his tie and the belt that he's wearing. And Zach said it that scene the movie itself, it's beautiful, it's disturbing. The talk when another man enters the room is of a surgeon that he needs to meet with, and the wound, and the whole time Roka is just going about his postgame routine, if you will. And the conceit of the film, or the formal approach that Sarah takes, is he confines all the filming, or most of it, he confines to the ring, the hotel room, and the shuttle or the van that transports Roca to and from the ring. He's either arriving in full regalia or he's departing, usually in medical scrubs, and the camera is just fixed to the seat in front of him unobtrusively, so we sit with him and have to content how he is possibly, how he is possibly contemplating the battle that either awaits him or that he just experienced. There's no talking heads, there's no history lessons, there's no voice over. It's it's just pure observation. And if you struggle watching any animals suffer it's a brutal sport, you probably shouldn't watch this movie. The bulls are put in the ring to be taunted and killed, and I don't want to romanticize it, and I don't think Sarah romanticizes it. He certainly doesn't want to let us avoid seeing that brutality. We watch the agonizing deaths of the bulls. I watched in horror for a lot of this movie, but I also watched in awe of I'm going to borrow the words of the men who are part of his team, Roca's immense balls. That word comes up a lot. Masculinity is a key theme of this movie. How closely to the bulls he operates, that's the expectation. How closely he cheats death again and again, that moment you anticipate and sometimes get where total control devolves into total chaos and the craft of the bullfighter, the technical and physical precision that Sarah captures with his camera. For me, there was something profound in Roca's solitude, the solitude of the title. He's surrounded by thousands of people in the arena, He's supported by this team that's always around him in the ring and in the van and sometimes in his hotel room, but in the arena it's just his will versus the bulls. It's only his life that's on the line. And even thinking about it in cinematic terms, you have a system that makes.

00:58:43
Speaker 5: It all go.

00:58:44
Speaker 1: You've got a hostile media, a fickle audience.

00:58:47
Speaker 5: This is all.

00:58:48
Speaker 1: This is all mentioned in the movie or you observe it, and Roca's in the middle of it. He's the star in the classical sense, and none of it works without him. It's such a purely cinematic experience. And it does also this movie lets me establish my theme for my list. I always end up seeing a connection between my picks once I get them all on paper, as if there was something sort of subconsciously guiding my choices. And this year, boy, twenty twenty five, what a year this is gonna be such a cheery list. I was drawn to characters from different parts of the world, different cultures, different worldviews, customs, you name it, but all it seems locked in a struggle between past and present, and usually marked by some form of trauma. In afternoons of solitudes quiet frames, this archaic ritual clashes with modernity, evolving into an elegy for men like Roca who choose to dance with death. It stunned me, and it caught me completely by surprise. It's it's available on movie but some other VOD platforms as well.

00:59:56
Speaker 5: With a subscription.

00:59:58
Speaker 3: I can't wait to see they have seen it.

01:00:00
Speaker 8: Oh no, I haven't seen it.

01:00:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, Adam. These are the ones that we'll get to one like this later on my list that you know only vaguely aware of. But you see it in this rush, and I think it's more of a testament to the power of movie that can do to you what you just described in this season, right when maybe it's even the second film you're watching in a day. It's not the pristine always viewing theatrical experience we talked about the start of the show. But if it grabs you within this own chaos or experiencing. Then there's it's extra credit. There's something extra special going on there.

01:00:33
Speaker 1: Before we get to our next set of outlier picks, we do want to share another special guest voicemail. This is from our friend Mitchell Beauprey from over at Letterboxed.

01:00:46
Speaker 15: Hello, film spotting, family and friends. This is Mitchell Beauprey, head of editorial over at Letterbox. So my number one favorite film of the year is Clint Bentley's Train Dreams. But since that's gotten a lot of love in various year end wrap ups, I wanted to take a moment to shout out my second favorite of twenty twenty five, Kayoshi Kurasawa's masterful Cloud. Whether it's in the slow burn, eerie atmosphere and introspective interrogation of twenty first century commerce and capitalism in Cloud's first half, or the market shift into a balls to the wall action thriller in the second half, Kurisawa had me on the edge of my seat with a movie that feels like it's constantly reinventing itself. The filmmaker trades on themes he's explored in the past, and films like Cure and pulse while bringing them into a new more chronically online than ever age a five star picture start to finish.

01:01:43
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Mitchell, and of course thank you to Letterboxed for just being letterboxed. We need Letterboxed in our lives always. And I'm going to vow. Maybe I shouldn't vow because sometimes I can't deliver on my New Year's resolutions, but I'm going to I'm going to throw out a New Year's resolution anyway, and suggests that in twenty twenty six, I'm going to try to finally see a Kiyoshi Kurosavo movie. I haven't seen any A Marathon, maybe Allison, perhaps, Michael, anybody, Josh, any of these films that that you know for sure other than Cloud, that I should see.

01:02:21
Speaker 8: Oh God, I yeah, that's I mean, I feel like you have to see the kind of Jay horror adjacent ones, right like he But I mean they all kind of I think fit together.

01:02:36
Speaker 9: But I.

01:02:39
Speaker 7: Cure.

01:02:39
Speaker 8: Maybe maybe you should start with Cure.

01:02:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems to be the popular choice, at least in the little bit of research that I've done.

01:02:47
Speaker 8: I mean, like Paul's I think is his maybe like considered like his most widely known one here maybe, and I think paulse is great, but maybe starting with Cure is the good way.

01:02:58
Speaker 1: If you want to start with Cloud. It's currently available on the Criterion Channel and also some other VOD platforms. Next up, we are ready for our next set of outlier picks. These are maybe more obvious. These are titles that all have, or almost all of them, have some pretty major Oscar heat behind them. And Alison, you are up first. This is a movie that not many have had a chance to see it. I believe it comes out Christmas Day, very much though in the Oscar Conversation, especially for its lead performance.

01:03:32
Speaker 5: And I think it's your number nine of the year.

01:03:35
Speaker 8: Yeah. I think that Marty's Supreme is just a spectacularly entertaining, chaotic, stressful, wonderful experience. You know, I was very curious when the Saftie brothers split and went their separate ways to each direct their own movie what that was going to be, like, you know, the way that the Coen Brothers split. And then you're like, oh, suddenly, I see what each of you which bringing to this like group package. You know, You're like Joel's kind of bringing the purgatorial sensibility, and Ethan was like doing the funny stuff, and now separately, you're just doing that and I don't like it as much. But I feel like Marty Supreme suggests that a lot of what I have associated with the Safty sensibility, the Safti Brothers sensibility, is still rooted in Josh in particular that desire to center movies on characters who are basically addicted to writing on the edge of chaos and like, just like courting disaster almost compulsively, what you're doing to me. One of the things that Marty Supreme does so well is take this very Safty esque hero and use him Marty Marty Mauser, who considers himself to be a kind of almost like chosen one of table tennis talent, someone who has a calling, someone who can't help but just pursue, has a duty to pursue his talent, even though there is no money in it and there is no real way for him to achieve the greatness he thinks he can achieve in the United States at least, But just to use that character as this representation of the American dream in all of its compelling and repellent, you know, best and worst. And I do think that this is the best role that Timothy Shalamy has done so far in that you understand why people agree to keep saying yes to him despite the fact that it always ends badly for basically everyone he ever meets, because he is so convinced that he is on the right path, and he is so convinced that he needs to be helped, and he is charismatic. He is also just so irritating, and he is also just like so destructive. This movie like brings like genuine destruction lives in passing. But I just I enjoyed it so much. I think that like it beyond just the kind of thrill of watching this character Kareem on these different adventures, basically in his attempt to get to the table Tennis World Championships in Tokyo, despite having done a lot to just self sabotage of his attempts his ability to get there. I just I feel like it offers a lot of layers about how like Americans have self mythologized. You know, this like individual this idea of individual success, this idea of like being an underdog, the idea of like needing to win against all odds and needing to do it on your own. Even if you're not actually doing it on your own, you're doing it by stepping on a lot of people. I think the ways in which it manages to be have this character be both so appealing and so kind of awful is an incredible art. And I think like it also just creates this like sense of like visual and oral texture and chaos. You know, it summons a nineteen fifty two that feels entirely lived in and with like none of the kind of distance or cipiotone nostalgia that we often see it like sometimes inadvertently attached to depictions of the past. Whenever you put it on screen, it feels entirely alive and lived in in ways that I thought were incredible. It has such an array of great faces in like cameo roles in the background. You can do a deep dive into the cast list of this and be like, David Mammott, where was David Mannett? You know, Isaac's still right, he's the theater director.

01:07:41
Speaker 5: Of course.

01:07:42
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's a yeah, But it does have an incredible array of faces. It has some very famous ones, including Gwyneth Paltrow who has been lured out of semi retirement to play a retired screen star. I think she's great in this You've got you know, Abel Ferrara, who if it got like applause when when I saw this film a surprise screening at the New York Film Festival, there's the room erupted in applause the first time he walks on, And then you absolutely understand that even though Abel Ferrara was making movies long before Josh Safti was born, that he was always a safty character also somehow before such a thing even existed. I mean, this is a movie that casts fran Dresser and Sandra Bernhard together and scenes together like the power of that. I just found it so alive, you know, And I think like there are a lot of ways in which this movie has things in common with Uncut Gems, which was I loved Uncut Gems, and I loved the just enormous the understanding it has for those characters who, yes, like thrive on chaos and thrive on the idea that thing could fall apart. But I think it it feels more mature than that. And I think I've seen it twice now and I appreciated it even more the second time, in just the ways in which it grapples with, Yes, a character who is so certain that he knows what he's doing and that he knows the path to greatness. And I do not want to spoil the end in any way, but I think it ends in this perfect note that balances the sweet and sour so incredibly and in particular really calls into question the idea of who the underdog is, you know, and the kind of compulsive way we always tend to see ourselves as underdogs, even when we are very clearly not. And Yeah, I just think this is a really great movie, I think, And it made me think that also, Yes, a lot of what I have loved about the kind of Safty brother sensibility also like lies not just in Josh, but in Ronald Bronstein, who is has been the co writer on all of these movies and is a co writer here and is I think he and Josh Shafty seem to have a real kind of like chaotic mind melds together when they're making these movies. So he is, I guess, sort of the third Safty Brother. Howited third Safty Brother, But I think he does a lot to bring to these movies, something that I find key.

01:10:07
Speaker 2: I was just going to say in the terms of Bronstein works as editor for for both of them, on Uncut Gems and here on Marty Supreme, and you're point, Alison about the chaos and the propulsiveness and being carried along through that. It's it's due to the writing, the performances, but the editing as well.

01:10:21
Speaker 3: So he's great. If you haven't seen Frownland, Bronstein's film Frownland, I mean that's a great kind of introduction to the sort of itchy, scratchy, you know, comedy of panic that that both Safti's and like that whole world, that whole sort of like loose conglomerate of filmmakers and collaborators they all tend to work with each other get at and it really is that sort of it's the humor of the self inflicted wound, you know, and and you know that that's kind of what I get from the other films I've seen, and I this is the film I didn't see, the one that hangs heavy. I did not quite at the time to see this, so I can't wait to see it else. And it just from the trailers, I see what you mean about it looking like in ways beyond how it's lit and framed, but it just looks like in Artifact of nineteen fifty two in the best.

01:11:16
Speaker 1: One production design, costuming, everything well and the mustag yeah little.

01:11:22
Speaker 8: It's shot by Darius Kanji, who is obviously like an enormous talent, but I think like brings. Yeah, this really kind of like rich look to to nineteen fifty two that I loved.

01:11:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, m hm, Yeah, this is a movie, Josh, we may discuss in full after the New Year, one of those Christmas releases that we end up talking about later, so probably don't want to say too much. But you know, we've talked a little bit this year about my focus on sports movies, teaching a class about it, and as a Pingpong film. I mean, Allison, it's like she wrote my syllabus for me, right, talking about the American dream, underdog stories, inspiration and the repellent side of that, the awful or the downside of that. It is all there, certainly in this character and in this movie. And I'm sure we will get into how if you had any doubts that this was going to be a Saftie Brothers movie in the vein of Uncut Gems. Even though it doesn't mimic the same style of Uncut Gems, He's absolutely a Saftian hero in the vein of Howard Rattner and some others that.

01:12:26
Speaker 5: We have seen.

01:12:28
Speaker 1: It will be a fun one to discuss in more detail if we get that opportunity. It comes out Christmas Day. See if you can an eleventh through twenty pick for me. Absolutely, and we're highlighting Timothy Shallow May seems like a locke for a Best Actor nomination. So let's move to another voicemail pick for a film of the year that's going to highlight a favorite performance of the year for this voicemailer. And this actress also seems like someone who's going to be in contention for Best Actress at the eye. This is our friend Melissa Tamanja from Bellingham, Washington.

01:13:04
Speaker 8: Hey, Adam and Josh.

01:13:05
Speaker 16: As I reflect on what movies find their way most deeply into my heart each year, I think it's often the films that impact me in ways I can't quite trace or move me for reasons I don't initially understand, so that I'm feeling a flood of emotions, but my brain is still kind of scrambling to catch up. And the Testament of ann Lee from writer director monofast Fold was a film like that. And part of what I loved about the experience of ann Lee was I was not at all sure initially I'd be able to get on board with the film, even though I love musicals. I had this, oh, this is a musical moment that quickly morphed to Holy hell, what kind of music musical is this? And is that the kind of dancing they're going to be doing the whole time?

01:13:55
Speaker 10: All this suffered on al journey we have made, and to sacrifice this to see the greatest love that one can experience.

01:14:09
Speaker 16: So I think it was perhaps my very resistance in the beginning that made the surrender by the end of the film so intense, because by the end I was certainly completely in the film's grasp. And I honestly still don't know why a film about the founder of the Shakers, something I know or care little about, got me so deeply. It certainly could be something to do with my own background, growing up in a charismatic church, always being a little scared of the weird and dangerous fanaticism, but being drawn to it and fascinated by it too. I mean, it might be something to do with the socio political, religious residences, and the American landscape today. It might be something to do with, for better or for worse, the fact that musicals always do move me, that sort of peculiar expression of song and dance that we really don't see anywhere else in life. And it might be something to do with the portrayal of a woman leader like Ann Lee. It's so vulnerable and so powerful at the same time. How often do we see portrayals like that? And maybe it's something to do with Amanda's save Reed, an utterly transformative performance. I don't know if it's any of that, or all of that or something else, but I do know it moved me and provoked me like no other film this year and left me kind of ragged and raw and also well ecstatic about the power of cinema. So the Testament of Ann Lee movie of the year for me, Thanks guys.

01:15:39
Speaker 1: Our, thanks to Melissa. Amanda Safreed's performance is another one that I was very fond of this year, and Mona fest Folds direction. This is a movie that seems very much of a piece with the Brutalists from last year in many ways. The direction that film she co wrote, of course, but the direction the subject matter. It's heroin tying to the he of that film as well, even though the subject matter seems like it couldn't be more different. And yes, I had no idea. This is the benefit of watching a film coming in. I think it's the benefit of coming into films as I often do, knowing absolutely nothing about them except that it was based on a religious figure and the Shakers. I did not know that it had any kind of musical leaning whatsoever, and this film is pretty much a musical. And those dance scenes, the choreography of those scenes, the camera work, and the editing of those scenes are a wonder That's the reason, the biggest reason for me to see The Testament of Amily.

01:16:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a bold choice to do a religious biopick essentially that way outam and I think for the most part, I agree it works that they pull it off.

01:16:51
Speaker 8: The idea of also just being like, how do you represent an ecstatic experience? You know, it is something that is largely internal, So the idea of then channeling it out into a choreographed these strange and beautiful choreograph numbers I think is really effective.

01:17:08
Speaker 1: That comes out in limited release on Christmas Day, supposed to expand to more theaters in January and maybe even on into February. So look for the Testament of Ann Lee. Josh, You're going to now take us to a movie that's getting a lot of acclaim for a key supporting performance. And it's your number four film.

01:17:28
Speaker 3: Of the year.

01:17:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, Weapons number four, And you know Amy Madigan's turn here has ant gladys It isn't even one of my favorite things about weapons. She's to be clear, she's a hoot. But for me, it was a lot of the other stuff going on in this bizonkers movie from Zach Kreiger's let me just list them here, the very concept. You know, I was hooked the moment I heard about this, this idea that every child in this third grade class except for one, runs from their homes at two seventeen am, the same warning. No one knows why or where they went. The filmmaking here is just so assured and in control. From the imagery of those kids running down the suburban streets, you know, their arms out to their sides to the shocking set pieces, there are at least three that I don't think I'll ever forget. And speaking of at the top of this show, when we talked about theatrical experiences and being with people. You want to do that for comedy, you want to do that for horror. And there is a moment here I think that were bottom dropped out on our theater, just like the floor disappeared, and everyone just simultaneously had that sense of just being outside of themselves, which the best horror horror can do. At the same time, this is a very serious movie I found it to be. I think it has a lot of potency as a Pied Piper inspired school shooting allegory and speaking of American crises, getting them weekly, we just had another instance of this, right, it's relevant again this week, so weapons for me, at least, I think it was this expert horror movie that tapped into that impotent rage that were so many of us are feeling right now once again when more American children or young people are being sacrificed at the idle of firearms. So add all those up and yes, that Amy Madigan supporting turn which kind of shows up and grabs the movie by the throat. I'm always looking for an excuse to add a horror movie to my top ten list, and Weapons more than filled the bill this year.

01:19:36
Speaker 3: I paid off a great amount the second time too, which certainly is not true of all even really effective horror films, because the contraptions sprung and you know what's coming or whatever. But there's something about the way this thing zigzags and then makes this insane and completely successful leap into basically the most violent slapstick you can possibly get away. I mean, the fact that it turns kind of screwball, you know, slapsticker comedy in the last fifteen minutes and pulls it off is just sort of a tonal feat that is, you know, it's it's actually this sort of thing I love. And there are films other films this year that that sort of made similar mashup choices between like completely contrasting genres that pays off at great and I think, I really can't wait to see what that filmmaker does next. But this is a this is a really strong movie.

01:20:32
Speaker 8: Yeah, this just missed my top ten. I thought it was terrific and I thought it was such a wildly unpredictable mix of really effective creepy scenes, a few well placed jump scares, but also yeah, some like just outrageously funny aspects as well. I think, you know, this has a great ending. I just like I remember seeing it, you know, at a press greening and a front of fine like punched another friend just in delight, just like what happens at the ending. And I do I understand the read of it as being you know, as you put Josh about being about a mass shooting. Though I also feel like one of the things I enjoyed about it was that it felt like it evaded anything any kind of like easy allegory, you know, I think that even the the shootings one is like glandsdt at, but then also there's something weirder going on, and I think for me, ultimately, like what was so successful about this film is also that it felt like it was grappling with a general sense of suburban disconnect, you know, like when we do finally learn what has been happening, in part it is enabled by the thing that allows you know, like this is a just a kind of a typical small town, you know, like in Pennsylvania, but where everyone just goes home to their houses at night, and you know, I think that that is something that lot of us due but also because of that, like being kind of together, but also in isolation, you have like this kind of terrible thing that's happening in the middle of the community that the only person who really notices it is the unhoused drug user who just happens to be outside the community and actually pays attention to, you know, newspapers piling up outside of this like neglected house. Everyone else's eyes just glide over it. And I think there is something that it gets at about the kind of loneliness of a lot of its characters because they are living in a community but not they don't really have closeness, you know, including the teacher who it starts with, you know, Julia Garner's character who you start off and you think you know exactly what this character is going to be. She's going to be, you know, made into a scapegoat by this community, and that happens, but also she just is much more chaotic herself than you would ever dream And I just I love the ways in which the movie surprises you that way, Hey, I.

01:22:56
Speaker 3: Want to talk to you.

01:22:57
Speaker 14: I don't think we have anything to say to each other.

01:22:59
Speaker 17: I think you have a lot to say you.

01:23:01
Speaker 8: And every other person in the city.

01:23:03
Speaker 9: Believe me, the message is loud and clear.

01:23:05
Speaker 14: I'm the problem, got.

01:23:06
Speaker 17: It, you know what. I think that's the first honest thing I've heard. You say you are the problem.

01:23:10
Speaker 5: But you want to get in my face, you want to threaten me.

01:23:13
Speaker 17: Nobody's threatening you right now, the wrong tree. I have this whole victim persona that you're taking on. It might happen.

01:23:20
Speaker 3: That was such a plus to have the to have a character written and beautifully performed that that doesn't kind of isn't just there for sort of the audience identification figure or any of that. It's a much it's a much flintier sort of portrayal of somebody who's just kind of like, you know, kind of bumper carring our way through our own life inside this crazy scenario. And it's it's great, and it's great to have a performance and a performer that doesn't doesn't sort of like seek the audience sympathy first.

01:23:50
Speaker 8: Yeah, And I will say also, I want to shout out to benetticgu Wang, who is at the center of I think one of the most probably the most disturbing scene in the movie for me, and what happens in the bright light of day.

01:24:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just when the bottom dropped out on our theater upsetting. Also to your point else and I'm glad you said that about the allegory, because you're right, it is there if you look for it. But I would hate for someone listening who you know, hasn't seen weapons and it's like, well, I don't want to go see a school shooting allegory. It's it's just available. And I think if it had been more explicit, I would not have responded as much to the movie. There's one image I think that pushes you in that direction. That's maybe you know, it's been debatable the whether that was a worthwhile image to include. But yeah, your description is is apt where it opens itself up to that, but doesn't necessarily have to be about it. It can be about many, many unsettling things.

01:24:45
Speaker 1: Well, it's a film that came up in our opening discussion for a reason as one of the key original films of the year, right, And you mentioned it, Josh, and we talked about it during our review when it came out. Some of the most arresting images of the year in any genre, but not only that within the horror genre, one or two images that are now just part of the cannon when you think of great images. And to this discussion about what it all means, how much fun is it when you have a film like this. I don't think there was any movie. I'm pretty sure there was no movie all year. And maybe we can go back a couple of years, Josh, where we got more email about a film and what it meant and what it meant personally to people right that we got to respond to on the show than this film. And it's great when a film gives you that much to dig into, and there is that much to dig into with Zach Craiger's weapons. So I'm glad that it made your list. A very good film from twenty twenty five. Here's how good I think twenty twenty five is. Richard link Later, one of my favorite filmmakers, made two movies I loved this year, and I could only find a spot for one of them in my top ten. And you know, somehow I still have this reputation as a cheater. You even get to hear it, I'm sure later in the show, even though I defy listeners to find the last time I cheated.

01:26:15
Speaker 5: Here's a prime opportunity. Did I cheat?

01:26:18
Speaker 1: No nouvelle vague, guess what? Eleven through twenty, I'm just going with Blue Moon, and I am putting Blue Moon all the way up at number four on my list. I talked about my theme for this year, the past Rogers and Hart including Blue Moon, my Funny Valentine, Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered, what a great song, The present and future Rogers and Hammerstein including Oklahoma exclamation point, Sardine's the night the entire movie takes place. The date I think is March thirty first, nineteen forty three. This is the nexus with Ethan Hawks Lorenz Heart struggling to come to terms with his identity in this new reality and the trauma stemming from his alcoholism and at attempts to go sober. This split, this fracture from Rogers and the heights that he clearly knows are inevitable for this new team for Rogers without him. But one of the strengths of the film, and I touch on this during our review, is that the pain extends to Rogers as well, and you see his sincere attempts to reunite Rogers and Heart, whether it's out of pity for him because of where Heart is at in his life and career, whether it's out of nostalgia, whether it is out of love for him, or all of the above. You see the crushing defeat that Andrew Scott as Richard Rodgers continually shows in his performance. With every Heart misstep, and there are lots of Heart missteps, it makes him. It makes Rogers almost a tragic figure. And all of this too. And about Hawk, Yes, Robert Caplo the screenwriter and link later, they give him a lot of fun dialogue to spit out. But I'm going to say they don't make it easy on Hawk. They give us the audience those opening contrasting quotes Hammerstein set of Heart that he was alert and dynamic and fun to be around, and then we get Cabaret star Mabel Mercer, who said he was the saddest man I ever knew. They set the audience expectations that Hawk has to then fully embody that contradiction. And I was thinking back on our discussion about movie Josh, and I get why you compared him to Jesse from before sunrise. I think I might have even said it was a good comp I'm going to at least disagree with myself.

01:28:55
Speaker 5: Anyway.

01:28:56
Speaker 1: They talk a lot, they philosophize. There's there's a grandiloquence about both of them, I suppose, but they really couldn't be more different people, or very different or more different performances. Part of that's just due to the volume of words and the pace, but I also want to be clear. My point here is to underscore how much depth I think Hawk brings to this performance. Jesse is young and smart enough to know that he doesn't understand that much about the world, or as much about the world as he liked to think. He knows. He's a questioner. Heart, I think is like Holly Hunter's character in Broadcast News. You know that great scene where the network exec says it must be nice to always know or always believe you know better to always think you're the smartest person in the room. And what does Jane say back, No, it's awful. I'm not sure Heart, who is always the smartest person in the room, would ever admit that it's awful. But I also don't think he has two Because we feel, we feel the torment. We sense it in every Bravura turn a phrase, in every brilliant jab that he gets in, and he gets in a lot of both. I think there's so much radiance in Heart, but there's also a lot of desperation and watching their minds at work, Heart's mind and Hawk's mind at work. That was one of my greatest movie joys of the year.

01:30:29
Speaker 8: They should put my picture on that bottle, the whiskey that made Lorenz Heart unemployable.

01:30:37
Speaker 1: It remains that much of a great movie going experience, and that's why it's so high for me at number four.

01:30:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, he Hawk is very very good here. I mean for my CFCA ballot, just on the outside. So the level of dexterity at work is incredibly impressive.

01:30:53
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think he's great. And I think also there are ways in which this scenario, the scenario of the film could feel unbearably contrived.

01:31:02
Speaker 17: You know.

01:31:02
Speaker 8: I've talked to people who didn't like it as much, who are like, well, it's just a play, and I felt like, sure, I can see that, except that I feel like the ways in which it tries to just kind of look at this entire life through this particular this lens and this you know, fictional essentially like fictional you know, night in which which he is watching everyone in his life essentially move on without him and understands that's happening. But I think it does it so well. And I think this is also like a theatrical person, you know, the idea, like of him having an almost self aware night, like a bleak night of the soul, in which he is watching he knows all of this is happening. And I think one of the things that is so wonderful about Hawk's performance is that he plays his character as though he is. The talking is his way to kind of keep weaving this protective self mythologizing shield around himself. But he keeps like kind of like running out, like you, he can sense that he's like his ability to maintain that is running out, you know. And then as soon as like he he kind of stops, you can see the tragedy that he knows is there under.

01:32:07
Speaker 1: If he if he doesn't, if if he stops talking, it's somehow the spell it's gonna it's gonna end. Reality is going to set in and and he can't have that happen. That's why he just keeps talking. And keeps talking as fast.

01:32:20
Speaker 5: As he is.

01:32:20
Speaker 1: That's the desperation that I that I sense in a way, And I'm glad you said that, because I do feel about the movie and the staging. It just doesn't feel and here again I'm I'm in the bag for link Later, but watching that film, I never sense that confinement. I think there is a I don't think that gives link Later near enough credit in terms of the cinematography and the editing, how they use that space, how they how they block where all the characters are in that space, how every time Ethan Hawk, how how Heart turns there. There is a motivation to every single edit and every single opposition. How that space is used within Sardi's I think it's I think it's a very sophisticated use of that space, even though it's a single spot or a single space movie, if you will. So I'm going to praise link Later and how he uses it, even though Michael, I don't. I don't think you're as big a fan.

01:33:19
Speaker 3: It was a little cooler on it, and I like lincol Later a lot. I do think though, one of the best scenes of the year easily is that extended conversation on the stairway on the staircase after the opening eye crowd from Oklahoma's kind of been you know, ushered in and it's just obviously a monster success and will change everything which heart neew going in and new coming out. And that scene between Andrew Scott as Rogers, who was a very bloodless character in real life, a pretty a pretty steely cold fish, and you get elements of that, but you do get that sort of that melancholy farewell quality to that, and that he knows there won't be many more conversations like this because this man will be dead soon. So Dwight Wyman and I'd be talking about bringing back a Connecticut yankie terrific. Yeah, I'm thinking of asking Vivian s going, oh my god, it's going longer than Oklahoma.

01:34:19
Speaker 5: I'll buy fifty seats myself.

01:34:21
Speaker 3: I've got a new title, Oh, Camelot. Well, i think we're gonna stick with Connecticut yanking Camelot exclamation point. Okay, come on, I've been serious. Yeah, I'm always serious. That's why people find me so funny. So I was thinking, if you feel up to working, then maybe.

01:34:36
Speaker 8: I've never found that relation.

01:34:38
Speaker 3: I think that's kind of the feeling you get. But that's and certainly Hawk has a lot to play of all that going on, but there's just a lot going on sort of externally and under the surface, and it's like it's it's a wonderful five seven minutes, and there's a lot I like Hawk, you know, I have I have that slight issue where I just feel that he is, you know. In an interview, he talked about working with Philip Seymour Hoffman and he said that on the Lamette film Before the Devil Knows, You're Dead right, and Hawk said that his whole impulse and the performance was on his work and it was just a simply sort of show off to his the co stars he was working with that he revered kind of just to impress. And I don't know what it takes for him to lose that impulse. Even now, all these decades into his career. He's wonderful, but I feel that it's a bit of a trap playing this sort of garrulous and NonStop a character. He doesn't really quite sense when to deliver one hundred percent instead of one hundred and fifteen. And I even link later you know who he's obviously you know, they have such a comfort level and he's so you know, he's wonderful in Boyhood Hawk and he's been wonderful, lots of things great and first reformed, you know, really having to tamp down every actor's instinct. He has to play a guy that buttoned down in the Paul Schrader film. But it's it's it's my slight issue with Hawk, and I think it's more me than him. So just disregard, disregard my opinion.

01:36:20
Speaker 1: I already forgot what you said. Disregard strongly. Also Also, I will say I've seen a lot of conversations about Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and and comments that Hawk has made over the years. And one thing he said about shooting that film is that Lumette was one of those directors and lots of directors have done this over the years, especially when you have heavyweights like Hawk, but especially Philip seymore Hoffman, and and they have a lot of scenes together like that is he pitted them against her.

01:36:52
Speaker 5: Every day.

01:36:52
Speaker 13: Every day.

01:36:53
Speaker 1: It was can you believe what Philip Seymour Hoffman is doing? Look at what he did yesterday? Can you match that?

01:36:58
Speaker 5: Ethan?

01:36:59
Speaker 1: You know, it was every thing was about trying to get him up to one hundred and fifteen percent to match what Philip seymore Hoffmann was doing. So I don't know, maybe I'll cut him a little bit of slack for that. But Blue Moon, if you haven't seen it yet, it is available to rant. It's one of the more expensive movies right now. It's nineteen ninety nine, but you can't see it on most platforms. We have one more no, we actually have two more outlier picks here before we get into some titles that made a couple of our lists, and we're going to throw it back to you, Alison, a film that you have at number three. Actually, up until the last minute, this this was a movie that was on two lists. Michael jettisoned it for another movie.

01:37:37
Speaker 5: But we know that you're expand it.

01:37:39
Speaker 1: Actually, I know that all four of us are big fans of this movie. It just turns out that Allison, you're the only one that made room for it on your top ten.

01:37:47
Speaker 8: And it's one of the convictions.

01:37:48
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know.

01:37:49
Speaker 1: It turns out Richard link Later made two pretty darn good movies this year. Steven Soderberg, I think made two pretty darn good movies this year, which one of those two made the cut for you?

01:37:59
Speaker 8: I well, as much as I loved Presence, his unusual ghost story movie from the start of the year, Black Bag, his espionage dinner party thriller slash Salute to a Marriage, I think is like one of the most underrated films of the year. I you know, it's one of those movies. And I do feel like this year maybe I waited the just the kind of the delight I took in the just like the the the actual stuff of movies a bit more this year, maybe because also it has felt, i don't know, like something that has felt more important to me lately, just the sheer pleasure of a movie going experience. But I also, like, you know, Stodiberg, he makes a lot of these like really kind of like almost experiments of movies, these doodles of movies that are usually based around one particular star and have like one big idea to them, either stylistically or in terms of concept. And so to watch him do something bigger, even though this is not an enormous it is certainly a kind of larger film than he's made in a while, has just been such a wonderful reminder that I think there is almost there's maybe no one better working today who knows how to appreciate movie star quality in his cast. You know, I think, like Out of Sight Aaron Brockovich, The Oceans movies are all just tributes to people on screen looking just like like Demi gods gone to come down to, you know, like just like more beautiful and more charismatic, more compelling than the average human being, and just like reveling in those qualities on screen. And I think this movie does that again. And to watch him like kind of take that back up and just to prove that he can do it so effortlessly when he wants to, I just I appreciated so much, you know. I think, in particular Kate Lanchet and Michael Fasbender as these married despies who have come up with, you know, particular rules about how that can work when they have to keep enormous secrets from one another. But they are also just like unbearably hot. You know. They live in this incredible London town house that becomes the scenes of two very tense, funny, thrilling dinner parties, one of which they drug. They drug people to to try and get a secret out of them. But I think just like the ways in which this is also uh a Jean Lacery and John lacaray riff, that is like, what if George Smiley were actually in a great marriage? You know, what if? What if it's you know, it's so explicitly trying to play off of the idea of George Smiley, but to be like, yes, what if him being a wife guy wasn't this kind of sad uh like funny aspect of his character, but actually part of like this is the kind of like defining quality of his life, uh and and his surprisingly happy home life. I just I think that this movie just moves along so well and so wonderfully. It really is just so pleasurable to watch, and it has this great supporting cast. Marissa Abela I think is like a particular.

01:40:56
Speaker 5: Delight uh incredible.

01:40:58
Speaker 8: But like Tom Burke, Naomi Harris, rage on page appears Brosnan as a higher up, this is kind of a nefarious higher up. I just I think it's just such a good time in just like in a lot of the basic things that we just like look for in a movie going, which is to say, like larger than life stars like twists and thrills and humor and sexiness, and it offered all of those things. Maybe so sad that it did not become an enormous hit. It's one of those movies that I think will eventually like end up on Netflix and then people will make it their whole personality. But as is, it kind of came and went in theaters, and I think the people who did see it. I feel like most people I talked to loved it, which it made me. Said that it wasn't able to catch on more. I think it's great.

01:41:47
Speaker 1: I was.

01:41:47
Speaker 3: I was puzzled too that it wasn't a bigger hit. I really enjoyed it, and it's my number eleven now as of this morning, as Adam can tell you. But I finally saw a different one than I wanted to sleep. Eh. It's when a David is that how you Pronunce's industry, or when Kep and Soderberg get together as they did with KIMMI. You know the film for me from the COVID the worst of the COVID years. I mean, it's such a that is such a great, bracing, zingy sort of variation on a rear window a little bit, and when they are just magic together, when they just kind of have have this sort of pleasure principle foremost in their mind. It's just a relief too, from so much blockbuster viewing that we've kind of had in our lives, where the stakes are always universe ender, you know, scenarios, the marvel in, the marvel around particularly, but just to see a film that has sort of sort of the right size and an amount of tension and conflict it's not and it's it's witty first and it's action oriented second. And maybe that's what didn't attract the audience. People I think are just kind of inured the you know, they come to expect a certain amount of wrote casual sadism on the fly, and that the film is not really about that. It's about higher things. I love it. I mean it was an easy second to watch too, So yeah.

01:43:19
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, you're right. I do think like also the ways of which it outsources. Instead of having a major action set piece, it has like a verbal set piece, right, Like it's a joust over a dinner party table.

01:43:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, dinner parties. Yeah, those are absolutely the highlights. I had a similar journey to you, Michael. With Black Bag in and out of my top ten list as we approached the end of the year, here I thought, you know, I'm a fan of Soderberg, but not the champion that so many other people are. And I thought, oh, finally I get to have a Soderberg film on a top ten list, because it just feels like something I should have at some point. But you know what, as I said, this just turned out to be a great movie year. The more movies you saw, and and so that's sort of what happened with Black Bag. I did give it a nod because I think to your point about the dinner parties house, and you know, the secret ingredient to Black Bag is the editing, which is Soda Bird doing that as well, and that first dinner party sequence is just a masterclass in the art form of editing. You could just show that and be like, this is how deciding when to cut and what to cut to and how long to hold something can communicate everything you need to communicate in a scene. I mean, there's a lot more going on there than that, but to me, that's the crucial element. So a huge fan of Black Bag as well.

01:44:38
Speaker 1: A great scene with Marissa Bayla, who I've championed throughout this entire year. That scene where there is some actual espionage going on, there's this whole satellite thing and Fastbender and Kate Blanchett, but it's still really just a dialogue scene. It's mostly verbal. We're seeing the espionage part is occurring over footage, and all of the tension, all of the real action is what's just happening in the room between two people there. And that's what all of the good action in that film is either happening between characters and what they're saying or between the words of what they're saying and everything. Allison, you articulated in terms of the dynamic between the married couple here. What's still so fun about this movie is because it's a really smartly written espionage film, is that we know that everything is up for grabs, that we can't trust their spies, we can't trust anybody. We there's double crosses and triple cross crosses and maybe quadruple crosses, and so we never have our bearing and we're constantly grasping, and just when we think we may understand the dynamic of a relationship, we never know quite what we can believe. And that's the fun of this film, right, is that the way it just sort of leads us along constantly hoping for some solid ground.

01:46:02
Speaker 5: And I agree.

01:46:03
Speaker 1: Black Bag is one of the highlights of the year eleven through twenty for me, but didn't quite make the cut. That brings us two though, I'll mention on Prime Video and other VOD platforms if you haven't seen Black Bag yet. That brings us to our last outlier pick. It's the number two film of the year for Michael Phillips, but I think appropriate for this title. I'm going to let a woman do the honors here, Michael, and jump in ahead of you. Let's hear from Amy Nicholson, Hey.

01:46:33
Speaker 4: Film spotters, Amy Nicholson here from the Los Angeles Times. You don't need me to go on about why Centners is the best movie of the year, so I said, let me gush about my number two. Nieta Costa is headed starrying Tessa Thompson as a hell of a good head of gabbler. If you've seen the Ibsen Play any of its versions, its starred Ingrid Bergman, Kate Blanchett, Rosmond Pike, Maggie Smith, g Linda Jackson. You already know why this role is held up as the female hamlet. Well, Nita cost is brilliant adaptation showcases ever everything that this mean, nasty story already is, and she adds to it. She's got these smart casting staging tweaks that somehow, please do not hant me on this Heinrich Ibsen, somehow make this Head to feel even more pleasurable, even more alive.

01:47:15
Speaker 16: Edge.

01:47:16
Speaker 8: Hey up, darling, what she wants you you'll see? Oh you'll not leave me?

01:47:21
Speaker 10: No best to assist temptation.

01:47:23
Speaker 13: Oh, come on, Eileen, You're stronger than that.

01:47:31
Speaker 10: Sometimes I can't help myself. Jesus, these people.

01:47:36
Speaker 4: This movie is fun, It's gorgeous. It has so much to talk about afterwards, including reaving about the costumes, the cinematography, the supporting performances Benita, Hassen, Image and Boots. If you are still finalizing your top ten, you gotta make time for Head.

01:47:49
Speaker 3: I tried like hell to match it, to match Amy on this. I mean, I really want I saw I had a very late and this has been sort of my peculiar year that you know, I left the Tribune in August. I didn't see a lot of these movies that turn out to be many of the best twenty I saw this year. I didn't see them in the usual pace. I saw them in great gobs of viewing in the last couple three four weeks maybe four, probably two or three. And to see all this quality was almost a disorienting for me, frankly, and had just I thought it was just ripping, you know. I mean, I can't really weigh in on whether or not that is going to work for anybody if they're not a little familiar with the Henri Kipson play, which is driven by sexual blackmail, which is a good start, you know, forgetting your interest, I think. But it's, you know, as Amy sort of sort of alluded to, it's about the trophy wife of the world's dullest academic and her incurable itch for this secret love from her past.

01:48:54
Speaker 5: Right.

01:48:54
Speaker 3: But I can tell you this, I've never seen a stage or a film version of this play. Half a Juicy is what Neodacosta has come up with here, starring Tessa Thompson, And you know, it's just a great wholesale reinvention of this eighteen ninety one play as a nineteen thirties summerset mom type period piece. But that's really just in setting only. But because it's just just this genuinely thirsty romantic tragedy the way it's handled here, and it opens up to all kinds of issues, really dramatically vital issues of sexism, racism, queer sensuality, black accommodations of the white stocracy, we'll call it. That could drive a woman just about anything. And I've always been really transfixed by this play. Even if I haven't seen great productions of it. People have been debating what makes this character of had To so memorable is because it's not it's you know, and yet people were always perplexed by it. Every every back in eighteen ninety one, it was people were like, what is she? Is she supposed to be sympathetic? Is she a monster? Is she a victim? Predator? What is she? And even Henry James, you know, a pretty good writer, actually did a little criticism and he was intrigued by the play, but said, I don't know what type of woman this is supposed to be. And that's the kind of stupid response that is limited people's pacific ideas about how to activate this this character and this material. But I'll tell you. No one has figured it out better than Nea the Costa, because it's not one type. It's seventeen fast, it's going on at once, it's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's in every scene between Thompson and Nina hauss Image and Poots fantastic, Catherine Hunter is great, it's it's just alive with electricity. And it's also Dacosta's most fluid direction of the day. She's always been a good director, but this is the most I think enveloping work I've seen from her. Really wanted to give it number one tried, but it's my number two.

01:51:08
Speaker 8: I like this from a lot, and I really I appreciate your insights into the ways in which that character has been received or baffled people over the years. Something I really loved about Dacosta's interpretation is that it suggests almost like this character is just like waging this kind of capricious war of destruction, almost just because she's so kind of dynamic and smart and has no outlet. She is bubbling over with just like all of this potential that she sees no way of like channeling into anything other than this life. Yeah, and so it almost overflows into a desire to destroy the things around her, including this woman she loves, you know, like just out of a need to mark the world in some way.

01:51:55
Speaker 3: And I loved that love it and it's Ibsen may not have been that much more enlightened than Henry James, but he said, I think I think this character has poetry deep down. That was that was the way you phrased it. And it cannot nobody can really see it or and she can't get it up because society is not there yet, uh, you know, is not ready for that. And just the way the cost is kind of re reoriented the entire sexual energy of the piece to make this mysterious character from the past I love or females that are male and uh somehow moving moving the setting up a few decades. I did the trick, you know, and it's not just a gimmick. And I think anybody who does know the play and just doesn't really quite like this adaptation because it changed too much. I don't know, I've seen too many adaptations of great plays and great everything that just you know, got into trouble and ended up being dull because they didn't change enough. So anyway, hats often you know, the cost of for making it the way she wanted to make it.

01:53:02
Speaker 2: And in all that scrambling you've been describing, which makes this endlessly interesting. There there's another element she threw in, you know. Having done that the other Candyman film, I detected this flare of horror going on in the depiction of Heda. This is like an infernal heada heada and a lot of the imagery emphasizes that. The costuming emphasizes that there are moments where one thing you ask the many things you ask about this character, is she demon possessed? She downright demonic? I mean, like, where are some of these choices coming from? And there are a lot of motivations we've already touched on, and I would just throw that in because visually that's a choice that DaCosta I think is making here as well, which is also fascinating.

01:53:43
Speaker 3: It's actually got more use to the color crimson red than like a geartoral film.

01:53:48
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, I love that insight though, Michael, from you from Ibsen, because even that informs the notion or it allows me to understand without necessarily sympathizing with her any more than anybody else watching the film. We understand that it isn't any one thing or two things or three things that's driving her. She's she is potentially just this missed bit. There is something fundamentally broken within her because of the way she can't interact with society. There there is there's something missing. Perhaps, I think in the way you were describing what there's some disconnection and that that is interesting, That that's a that's a fascinating idea, and you're right about you know, this is a movie that in the in the hands of other filmmakers, you would imagine it being like her husband, like her husband, stuffy, very stuffy, and there's there's nothing I love. The words that you were using, like ripping and alive, electric that is, those are all terms that apply to this film and the direction of this film, the costume choices, the the editing, the cinematography.

01:54:55
Speaker 3: It is.

01:54:55
Speaker 1: It is one of those films that you know, Josh, as you were saying earlier, my reaction to even film like Afternoons of Solitude. You're watching so many films, Michael, this is one for you as well. You're cramming in so many movies. A lot of them start to all blend together head is one of those movies eleven to twenty for me. You put in and it stands out immediately because of these choices that we're talking about in the performances as well. You know something special is happening with this film, So definitely seek out Nia da Costa's Head if you haven't seen it. It's streaming exclusively on Prime Video. We do have a few more outliers we have to hit before we get into our shared picks. We're gonna go through this fairly quickly. But there are some movies here, Josh, among our Golden Brick finalists, a lot of them in fact, that actually made top ten lists.

01:55:47
Speaker 5: That usually happens. I don't know if we've ever.

01:55:50
Speaker 1: Had quite this many, and you're mainly the one responsible. We'll all get to that. The film Spotting Golden Bricks. This is actually our seven teenth annual commemoration. We're we're doing this for the seventeenth time. The film Spotting Golden Brick Award. This is our film of the Year by a new or emerging director. We did pretty well last year. Gave it to Pyle Capatia for all we imagine as light A lot of it was my number maybe my number one of the year. Okay, so yeah, we do often have some crossover here. In twenty twenty five, we had fourteen films that made the Golden Brick long list, and we have narrowed that down now to five finalists, and three of those finalists made your Top ten. One of them also made Michael's list, and Michael's going to do the honors in a second of telling us more about that choice. But we're going to go through these, and Josh, you're going to start us off because one of these Golden Brick nominees is your number five film of the year.

01:56:52
Speaker 2: Boys, go to Jupiter. This is my you know, Heda was for Michael maybe, and Afternoons of Solitude was for you, Adam. It sounds silly because this movie came out in the summer, I believe, but it's the movie I'm the most excited about right now at this moment, having just seen it. It was just a thrill. Listeners can go back to our previous episode. I mentioned it briefly and we did run down that long list of Golden Brick titles. So if you're curious about what else has been in the mix this year previous to these finalists go back and listen to that show. I think I was kind of babbling because I hadn't written down any thoughts. I was just kind of in a giddy aw of the experience. But this is from writer director Julian Glander, and he brings this lo fi animated esthetic to a pretty simple story. But also this has a lot of a humor that's very beguiling, as the movie is following a group of teenagers in suburban Florida basically hanging out. I described it on that show Adam a kinder, gentler South Park, and I think that holds up after a little more thought. Part of that comparison is the social commentary that's going on here. Very lightly. It mostly centers on one of these kids, Billy, who spends his days speeding around on a hoverboard delivering food for a service called Grubster. His goal in life is to save up enough money enough cash to move out of his older sister's garage. So this is very much low key about the economic despair of America's youth, but it's hilarious with just so many funny asides, too many to keep up with their comic absurdities thrown in all over and this treasure trove of clever mini songs, these stripped down electronica compositions that Glander did as well. I didn't mention the vocal work before, so I want to be sure to do that too, because that's part of what makes this such a treasure. You've got Sarah Sherman, Cola Scola, Jujulio torres Ava, Victor Janine Garoffalo, They're all in it. The standout, though, is NPR Planet Money's personality Jack Corbett as Billy, the main character here.

01:59:04
Speaker 6: Man.

01:59:04
Speaker 2: He balances this self awareness teenage self awareness but also like a lingering naivete. That's oddly touching for this character. Corbett also sings a few of those songs. This is especially the case he has to toss off after every delivery, this corporate mandated sign off have a grubby day. And there's something about the sad enthusiasm that Corbett delivers to that there's just enough earnestness as if he thinks it might matter, it might get him three more cents if he actually acts like he means it. That makes the whole thing even sadder but still incredibly funny. So I think this is one that could be like a perfect time capsule movie esthetically and thematically for right now. And it looks like it looks like a mobile game Billy would play while zooming around on that hoverboard, not paying attention to it.

02:00:00
Speaker 3: He's going.

02:00:01
Speaker 2: So it completely works with what this is trying to do. If you missed Voice go to Jupiter, you know, first time around, like me, just go check it out, absolutely, especially if you plan on voting for the Golden Brick, as listeners also have a chance to do.

02:00:14
Speaker 1: I love Josh that you encourage listeners to go back and listener re listen to our previous show. But you know, they can also just go to filmspoting, dot net, slash bricks if they'd like to see the long list and these finalists.

02:00:27
Speaker 5: We'll make it trasy on them.

02:00:29
Speaker 2: That's true.

02:00:29
Speaker 1: They can check out all of these titles there. Boys, go to Jupiter the first one that we are singling out. The next pick we will highlight is a documentary called Predators that is directed by David osit And this is a documentary that chronicles the arc of the NBC show To Catch a Predator that ran. I can't believe this is it true? It only ran from two thousand and four to two thousand and seven. It somehow feels you bicks in our culture for like two decades. And I know that as the movie does showcase, it has spawned so many versions that now exist on YouTube, and there are still some versions that Chris Hansen is producing himself, the famous host of To Catch a Predator. We talked about this a little bit. Joshua I nominated it. It's a documentary that really challenges our comfort level with punishment as entertainment. It seems like a lot of us are very comfortable with that. It's overwhelmingly compassionate and humanistic in its approach, but will still make you. Certainly made me question your individual capacity for empathy when it comes to people who commit or attempt to commit these acts. And I still have not been able to have a converseation with anybody yet about the ending of this film, about the documentary ethics of the ending of this film, which is it's entirely possible I'm completely over analyzing. Maybe I am interpreting the ending and the formal approach to the ending of this film incorrectly. I don't know, because again I haven't been able to really have a thorough conversation about it with anyone. I'm looking forward to that possibility. I do know that Predators was one of the most provocative films I saw this year, and for that reason it is among our Golden Brick nominees.

02:02:35
Speaker 3: I saw it a true false. I think it was the world premiere. No, maybe not.

02:02:39
Speaker 5: It might have been a sun Dance actually, ok.

02:02:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And it does bring up all these ethical questions about what, you know, what what do you overlook or sort of endorse in the name of of of you know, indicting and confronting you know, these these sexual predators or worse.

02:03:01
Speaker 5: And or those who covered them.

02:03:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, right exactly, and and or played played the role of the bait essentially for on behalf of NBC's advertisers. You know, yeah, really I thought of what people were in a very queasy state of suspense when I enhained that audience. And again I wouldn't have had like we're talking about earlier. I would not have had that collective experience of several hundred people kind of just sort of wondering where this thing is going to go if we hadn't seen it in those conditions. So yeah, no, it's an eleven through twenty for.

02:03:34
Speaker 1: Me all the way me as well, And there is there is some suspense and that there is a showdown that the movie seems inevitably to be leading to that the movie would feel incomplete without it, and I'll just leave it. I'll leave it there. You'll have to You'll have to see the movie for yourself in order to determine whether or not it offers that to you. But I will note that's also part of my little that part of how that's portrayed is also where some of my unease comes from. So a good movie to have a discussion about. Again, that's Predators. And that brings us to another documentary, Josh, and you have this one even higher on your list.

02:04:16
Speaker 2: Grand Theft Hamlet is at number three. I'll be brief on this because I've been touting this one since I saw it at the very beginning of the year and nominated for a Golden Brick. Yeah, it's at the top of my list now. Basically, if it still is new to you, here's the idea. It's yeah documentary consisting entirely of footage from inside the video game Grand Theft Auto Online. Basically two out of work actors the United Kingdom during COVID they tried to put on a version of Shakespeare's Hamlet within the game. They held audians, they led rehearsals, and they ultimately did stage a complete performance. The results are very funny along the way, But what puts it on my list is because this is incredibly moved and touching in ways you would never expect that are completely authentic and real world. And it's a bizarre movie that bizarrely renews your faith in humanity. I mean, if you can find humanity in this sort of scenario, you might be able to find it anywhere, and the filmmakers absolutely do so that's grand. Theft Hamlet another Golden Brick title to be sure to catch up with.

02:05:23
Speaker 8: I am also a big fan of this one, and I will say, yes, it has been a big year of Hamlet, but I do feel like it may be the most illuminating riff on Hamlet is in this movie for me. When a character delivers one of the most famous speeches in Hamlet on a beach to a random guy who keeps trying to cute him, that's true as happened in the game, and is just it's such a great moment and actually a very moving moment, even though I've just made it so un hilarious, which it also is.

02:05:56
Speaker 2: And the way those things else and they'll actually interweave with themes of Hamlet in ways that you know, these guys couldn't have anticipated, right and just trying to stage this, so it's it's like the art shines through no matter what.

02:06:10
Speaker 8: As well, thank you for coming see our performance.

02:06:16
Speaker 11: It's nice to have an audience, even if there's just one, right, Okay, oh look.

02:06:21
Speaker 5: We got another audience member.

02:06:22
Speaker 8: Is this is Hamlet William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

02:06:25
Speaker 11: I believe this is the first time it's.

02:06:27
Speaker 8: Ever been performed at the Vinewood Bowl.

02:06:31
Speaker 11: If I could just request that you refrain from killing each other.

02:06:36
Speaker 8: Oh and don't kill the actors.

02:06:38
Speaker 1: Either, just to make sure people know. Boys Go to Jupiter is currently available vod Predators, vod In Paramount plus Grand Theft Hamlet is exclusively available on movie right now. So, Josh, you have another Golden Brick finalists that is on your top ten list, and it is at number nine. Phillips, you have it even higher, and we're gonna get to you and allow you to divulge where it fell on your list, how high, and explain a little bit of your reasoning behind it. But here again we're going to let someone else steal a little bit of your thunder. It's an annual tradition here on Film Spotting that we hear from this listener this time of year. Longtime listener going back to I don't know, he might have been about nine years old when he started listening to this show. All the way from Brooklyn, New York. It is Josh Youngerman in this movie is his number one of the year.

02:07:36
Speaker 9: Hey, Joshed Adam, it's Skosh Youngerman following from Brooklyn, New York because not their film.

02:07:41
Speaker 3: Will be here.

02:07:43
Speaker 9: My favorite movie of the year is even Victor, Sorry Baby.

02:07:46
Speaker 7: I think films a lot about this topic are usually not as messy in a good way and emotionally raw and also funny as even Victor Sorry Baby.

02:07:58
Speaker 13: Here's some ways people treat you like you're a person who lives and breathe thinks for themselves, and then some ways people treat you or not.

02:08:11
Speaker 7: That way, And I think it really captures the sort of I guess MESSI at space. I think a lot of survivors go through after an event that, like the movie portrays, happens.

02:08:24
Speaker 9: But I think more so than that, I think the film isn't just about sexual assault. I think it's about one person's coming EVAs in terms of discovering their you know, gender identity and sort of coming to grips with sort of the person that they really are. And I think it's just remarkable and a perfect film and my favorite have a great rest of twenty twenty five and a beautiful twenty twenty six.

02:08:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a great assessment from Josh. I'm sorry, baby, it was my number three of the year. There was a time when Eva Victor's writing and directing feature debut, in which she's also the star, would have found the theatrical audience that deserve. But you know, I think this is just how where we are now. A lot of excellent films are just going to have to be discovered and chanced on by way of you know, other means a little later. But I just I just think this is a really compelling example of how and why traumas of any sort deserve more emotionally complicated stories than we usually get from how it's handled. Because this is anything but a one issue movie. I think. I think the great strength of Victor as a writer is that you know she she is, She is not afraid of her own incredible sense of humor, very witty both as an actor and a writer. And the way her character Agnes deals with all of this, what happened then to her as a student with the professor, how she feels about it now, how she wields that wit as a defense mechanism in various kind of stages of emotional crisis in the movie's present tense. It all kind of adds up to more than a story of one pretty awful incident, And so it's not an issue movie for me. It's just really it's really just a great indication of a of a new talent, you know, accomplished actress, but a new directorial talent who really really knows how to hit two three notes at once. And it sounds simple, but it's the damn Herd and a great supporting cast and Naomi Aki, who can do no wrong. I think, Lucas Hedges, John Carroll, Lynch, everybody's good inness. But it is ava victory Show. And if you haven't seen, sorry Baby, see it. Yeah, it's that one really stuck with me. Yeah.

02:10:51
Speaker 2: I had a chance to see it at the Chicago Critics Film Festival, and you know, this is the lowest ranking of the three Golden Brick finalist my top ten lists. But I might have to vote for it when I get to that point. It's just one of the factors we do consider, is you know, anticipating future work from a filmmaker, what that might look like, what this film points to and man Victor, to your point, Michael, such a multiple threat that I'm tempted that I might just have to go that way with the Golden Brick vote. But irregardless of that, just excellent, excellent film on all those counts.

02:11:28
Speaker 1: Am I remembering something correctly? And maybe maybe Allison just wanted to stay quiet. I think you may not be a fan of this film.

02:11:36
Speaker 8: I don't think it works. Yeah, it's because I hate women.

02:11:40
Speaker 2: Of course, you got to believe the readers, you know, Yeah, this is interesting, though, tell me tell us more.

02:11:48
Speaker 8: I just feel like it leans really hard on talking around things in a way that just felt to me like a shortcut to allow, like like kind of creating blanks to which the audience would kind of project more I think emotional complexity. Then I felt like the film actually summons for me on screen. You know, I do feel like it is a film about I mean, it's about the language we use for trauma, it's about the language we use in general. Like the main character is an English professor, you know, the movie is very careful about. For instance, in that one scene which he first goes to the to see a doctor, you know, and the doctor comes in and it was like, do you were raped? And like and they both like hear and a friend both flinch and you know where like that's you like this. We like the words we would use for this are more complicated for a lot of reasons. But I also feel like it kind of hides behind that as well, Like there are a lot of scenes in which I don't think it's just humor for deflecting. I think in some ways it kind of it talks around things because it kind of like it uses the talking around as a way of of yes, like I think generating or or or kind of try to summon a feeling of more emotional weight than it actually ever manages. And I found the very frustrating. As much as I like to act, these performance a lot in particular, But yeah, I found this so frustrating film that I just didn't connect with.

02:13:13
Speaker 3: And not alone, I mean, I mean some of the best writers in America, incuding yourself. I mean on film, I think we're very conflicted, mixed at best, you know, about about It's more than just tonal shifts or things like that. It's more just about what's in there. And I think I think I found that what I really loved in the scene that everybody sort of wrote about in detail about where the camera is and the duration it sits there on the sidewalk, still waiting for her to tumble out of the front door after you know, after whatever. You know, we learned what happens or what happened later. But to me, that felt like sort of inspired in direction, and I thought a lot of the verbal facility of the film and that character and Victor, just I think is a writer period, you know, kind of followed the same path. And I found that very fruitful and kind of telling. But other people, I think, you know.

02:14:08
Speaker 8: I found it a little precious appreciation.

02:14:11
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, right, yeah, So I mean it's a it's a good debating point and uh yeah.

02:14:17
Speaker 8: Then I also feel yeah, you know, I don't. I mean not that I think that you should have to baby a film, but also I think part of the reason I don't want to come in and smite this film from above is also it is the work of someone who is it is a first film. It is coming from someone who I think will have a fruitful career, So I feel mindful of that as well well.

02:14:35
Speaker 1: The opinion of decidedly not one of the best film writers on cinema in America, mine is. I think it's a pretty good movie. It's in my eleven through twenty. I'm more with Josh and Michael. And I didn't know for sure what scene you were going to mention. It's been a long time since I've seen it. Now that you you talk about it, Michael, the street scene, I know exactly what you're referring to, the one that may come up later in the year for us still, Josh, when it comes to our party, the scene I can't shake in terms of performance, but direction, editing, cinematography even and it speaks to what you were saying, Michael about hitting more more than one note at once. It's that it's the scene in the car, it's the processing Eva Victor post this event when when the camera we have to just sit and observe as she processes that moment. I think is the really powerful moment for me, where a lot of that movie fully fully clicked. So I'm glad to see Sorry Baby, another one that's eleven through twenty for me. I know it sounds like I must have fifty movies.

02:15:42
Speaker 5: No, I'm not cheating.

02:15:43
Speaker 1: We haven't gotten to all ten of my eleven through twenty yet. Sorry Baby is our fourth Golden Brick nominee. We do have one more, and it's another documentary. It is Charlie Shackleton's Zodiac Killer Project. Now, this is one I'm guessing most people listening, or a good chunk of people listening, haven't had a chance to see. It's still playing in very limited release. It does come to VOD on January sixth. We're not ready to throw out exactly what the closing voting date is for the Golden Brick, but I can tell you it will be.

02:16:17
Speaker 5: After January sixth. So if you.

02:16:20
Speaker 1: Want to be a good, dutiful voter and make sure that you see all of the candidates, then go ahead and wait. You'll have time. I promise you you'll have multiple days to vote. Give yourself a chance to see Zodiac Killer Project. If you can't see it in the theater, wait for it to come out VOD on January sixth. This is a movie that Josh, you saw, I think at that Critics Film Festival as well.

02:16:45
Speaker 5: Yep, is that right?

02:16:46
Speaker 1: Right?

02:16:46
Speaker 5: Yeah?

02:16:47
Speaker 1: And I saw Sundance on demand. It was a Sundance movie that I was able to see at home, but it played at the Refocus Film Festival here in Iowa City as well. And sometimes during this top ten show, Josh, we like to work in quotes from some of our favorite veteran critics. I thought, how about some rookies can I be? Can I be kind of a proud dad for a second? Because one of the assignments, and Michael, Michael knows how proud I am of my students. He's interacted with these very smart producing film criticism students. One of their assignments was to cover the Refocused Film Festival in pairs. They had to choose a movie, then they had to come and record a twenty to thirty minute podcast about it and produce a podcast not unlike a film spotting episode and a few pairs covered this film, Zodiac Killer Project, and listening and grading those episodes was so fun and so rewarding, and they had such great insights about the movie, which I'm going to give a few of them to you now without spoiling anything. Hopefully we'll just entice listening to seek out Zodiac Killer Project.

02:18:02
Speaker 5: They talked about how.

02:18:03
Speaker 1: Active a viewing experience it is, that it's a collaborative experience between the director, Charlie Shackleton, who you're hearing his voice over the entire time, the collaboration between him as the narrator and filmmaker and the audience. One of my students talked about how we see him talking and hear him eventually we see him in a recording studio, we see his reflection in the glass, and they noted how the cleverer coincidence. It is a clever coincidence that he's reflecting on these films and his experience with the genre, the true crime genre, as he's literally reflecting in the glass. Some people have criticized this film for being better suited perhaps as a podcast, as an audio podcast, and a student noted a couple of students noted that no actually it needs to be a film. It's much better as a film because theyton takes advantage of visual techniques like the use of still shots, and you can't imagine this film being the subject matter being as effective as it is without the use of the zoom ins that he heavily relies on, again, the static shots, the empty space that I mentioned as well. They talked about things like the distinction between entertainment with this genre and when something's entertaining versus engrossing versus sensationalized, which the nuances of that I found really interesting. And then they talked about with true crime and especially this particular project and the Zodiac Killer, how you think about closure and the lack thereof sometimes and overall with this genre, its flaws that Shackleton as a filmmaker certainly touches on and is critical of, but also shares some of his own appreciation for he is clearly a fan of the genre, as critical of it as he is. And some of the students talked about why we are as a culture, and some of them as students even are obsessed and are passionate about the true crime genre. I found it illuminating. I found the film as a piece of criticism illuminating, and that's why it's among our Golden Brick finalists.

02:20:20
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that note about the film techniques employed is a very important one, Adam, because for me, that's what stood out the most is Shackleton not only reusing the cliches but recycling them in different ways and in some shots finding his way towards new techniques that he might, you imagine, have employed if he had gotten to make the film. So just on that cinematic level, it would be Yeah. I would not be fair to disregard Zodiac Killer project because it shouldn't be a documentary.

02:20:58
Speaker 11: But working in documentary these days, true crime just has this sort of gravitational pull. After the project fell apart, I just kept replaying all these scenes in my head. Scenes I'd never get to shoot mysteries. I'd never have a chance to unravel.

02:21:24
Speaker 5: Allison, what about this one? Have you seen it?

02:21:26
Speaker 1: Can you shoot this one down? Or do you like it?

02:21:28
Speaker 9: Oh?

02:21:28
Speaker 8: No, I'm a fan of this one. I do feel like the reason it wasn't like hot like in my Top twenty I think was I did feel like it was a little slighter in terms of just scope though I think it's really witty. I think it is very clever in terms as a piece of like media criticism that also is very honest about being like, yeah, it's so it's we know that this kind of like this particular technique, this particular turn is like what they always do, and yet it's so compelling, isn't it? Like it's so compelling? What is it about the genre that we find so compelling?

02:22:04
Speaker 9: Yeah?

02:22:04
Speaker 8: I just I found it a really enjoyable, clever film.

02:22:07
Speaker 5: What happens now?

02:22:08
Speaker 1: We have those five movies, Boys go to Jupiter, Predators, Grand Theft, Hamlet, Sorry Baby, Zodiac Killer Project, a formidable lineup. You, the listeners, do, get to help choose a winner. You can vote in the Golden Brick poll right now, if you've seen all five or if you just can't wait, you can vote now at film spotting dot Net. Will rank our picks, Producer Sam gets to rank his picks, and we will announce the Golden Brick winner at our year end rap party right now. We don't have a live show plan. It's going to be an in studio year end rap party. It's not going to be as festive, will it, Josh? I mean, will you bring, I don't know, a party hat or something.

02:22:44
Speaker 2: Crackers, Adam, we do. We do crackers over here, you know, you just we haven't actually done one yet, but you like, wow, both ends, I understand, and it kind of explodes.

02:22:53
Speaker 8: So yeah, and then you get a paper crown inside or you don't have to wear it, you're legally required.

02:22:59
Speaker 2: So the day YouTube viewers, that's what you'll get to see for the rap party, me wearing a paper crown apparently.

02:23:07
Speaker 1: Okay, everybody tune in for that. More on the Golden Bricks at film spotting dot net slash bricks still to come, our consensus Films of the Year picks, and our number one films of the year.

02:23:21
Speaker 6: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore.

02:23:25
Speaker 10: The fine.

02:23:34
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