Best Movie Scenes of 2025, Golden Brick Winner

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

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Speaker 3: You're not interested in armed?

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Speaker 2: Now?

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

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Speaker 3: We're going to have a.

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Speaker 4: Conversation from Chicago. This is film Spotting. I'm Adam Kempinar.

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Speaker 1: And I'm Josh Larson.

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Speaker 4: I know I've met Alix's father before. I'm Alex's aunt and his mom is my baby sister. Okay, so you're not as legal guardian? Well, no, that would be his parents, of course. What's a party without aunt Gladys? Josh?

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Speaker 1: Did you invite her? I didn't invite her?

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Speaker 4: A little scared.

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Speaker 1: This week it's film Spottied's annual rap Party. Our picks for the standout moments of twenty twenty five.

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Speaker 4: The funniest, the most Moving and more. Plus we bestow this year's Golden Brick Award that and more ahead on Film Spotting. Welcome to Film Spotting A year ago, Josh, we were in Chicago for the twenty twenty four wrap party. This year, I'm in Iowa City. You're not even in Saint Andrews, Scotland. You're somewhere else in the world right now.

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Speaker 1: Yes, I decided to mix it up even further and get a slight break from the gloom and rain. We're in Spain. We're going to be in Spain for a couple of weeks recording on the road. A little bit different than the usual rap party. We'll see how instead of a movie theater or a live event venue, a hotel room.

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Speaker 4: Does give it a try. I see you went hoodie instead of party dress. I mean should have maybe at least tried to class it up a little bit. But this is what you get, the rap party. This is where we share our favorite scenes of the movie year, opening scene, funniest, most moving. We like to have our music category and then the scene of the year. Also, we will get back to playing Massacre Theater will announce the seventeenth annual Golden Brick Award winner. Can you believe it?

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Speaker 1: I can't believe that, and I'm on the edge of my seat. I have no idea.

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Speaker 4: You don't know.

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Speaker 1: I've been. I've been a lot of touch traveling. I don't know who the winner is. I can't wait to find out.

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Speaker 4: I keep it so secret. The voting is so secret. I don't even tell my co host exactly. How about that? Yeah, The Golden Brick, of course, goes to our favorite film from a new or emerging director that's voted on by you, me, producer Sam, and by film Spotting listeners. Maybe I'll tell you here when we take a break between segments. A quick reminder, Film Spotting is now available as video podcast. If you're a Spotify listener, you can toggle between audio and video. You can also watch the show on YouTube, YouTube dot com slash film Spotting. For a link to all of our episodes, go to filmspotting dot net slash episodes.

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Speaker 1: But first, the twenty twenty five rap Party.

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Speaker 4: It is time Josh to share our favorite scenes of the movie movie year, and we like to get started. Why not with our favorite opening scene. I'm not sure why we like this category so much, other than the fact that great movies usually have great opening scenes. In fact, I had a hypothesis I wanted to throw out this year while I was thinking about this category. I think a bad movie can have a great opening scene, but I'm not sure a great movie can have a bad opening scene. Are you following me?

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Speaker 1: It's tough, I'm following you. I like it, it's tough to recover from a bad opening scene. As much as I think we both go into movies rooting for them to work.

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Speaker 4: Work.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, there's something magical and exciting about a film that kicks off and right away you're hooked. It doesn't have, you know, the slow burn, which can work can lead to a great movie, as you're saying, but man, if it grabs you right away. As you're saying that, sharing your theory, I'm thinking about my top ten list, and you know, as I go down the vast majority of them, of those titles, I can immediately recall the opening scene. And that's actually, you know, the case for one of my honorable mentions here.

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Speaker 4: This won't apply with this category obviously, as it's opening scene or it's opening scenes, but maybe it's still worth pointing out. And I think it is for the show as a whole that we will try to make note of when we are going to spoil something. But this is our end of year review, and some of our favorite scenes I can speak for my list anyway, are going to involve spoilers. So consider this your initial.

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Speaker 1: Warning, initial warning, but we will offer others because I have one pick from a film that's just now expanding. It's a little later in the show. When I get to that, I will be very clear about what movie it is, and those who are interested in seeing it will have a chance to, you know, plug their ears for thirty seconds or so or skip ahead. But yeah, good warning to share here at the outset.

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Speaker 4: Well, let's dig in then, too, opening scenes or if you wanted to preface your list in any way, do you have any overarching approach, overarching criteria as you did approach this rap party list.

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Speaker 1: Let's jump right in and I'm going to start with my opening scene. A couple are couple of honorable mentions here, including this first one does come from a top ten lister for me, and that is on becoming a Guinea Foul from director writer director Rungano Noni my number two film of the year. And this was one Adam where already antisated it from Nioni's previous film, liking that one, I Am Not a Witch, I was eager for this movie, and then she hits us with this dryly comic opening sequence that you don't quite know what you're supposed to make of it, you just know you're riveted. Basically, the main character, Shula played by Susan Chardi, late at night, driving back, we're assuming from a costume party. Because of this, I realized later, I think a listener pointed out, I believe it's Missy Elliott cosplay is what she's wearing. But that's just one element that makes you try trying to figure out what is she wearing? Where's she coming from? We learn later it's from this party. And yeah, she discovers on the side of the road the body of her uncle laying there. And part of what makes us unsure of what to think about this is that she doesn't have this tragic response, this immediately sorrowful response. There's there's a lot of thinking and pondering going on, and we're wondering what she's thinking about. A few comic elements come into play, so talk about setting a tricky tone for the film to follow. This absolutely manages to do that on becoming a guinea foule, so that earned it an honorable mention for me. One more honorable mention here, and this comes from Lurker. Lurker was a Golden Brick nominee, not a finalist, but a nominee, and begins with this perfectly orchestrated bait and hook scheme that is set by the main character, this La Boutique sales clerk played by Theodor Pellerin. He ends up throughout the film worming his way into the entourage of a rising pop star played by Archie Modeque, and this opening scene is his first move. The pop star comes into the boutique and Pellerin's character clocks him and comes up with this insidious plan to get under his skin right away, and watching that unfold, you know you're in for a very unsettling but captivating ride, all right. I pick is coming from a movie that I thought might have shown up more on our Top ten show, Adam, but turns out, if I'm recalling correctly, no one had it. It's Sirat and there's been some interesting pushback to this Spanish French existential parable that follow those a roaming band of ravers really across North Africa. I know there are some critics I'm aware of who it's among their first top five films of the year. Others aren't so high on it. I am a fan, and a big part of that reason is the opening scene. Exactly what you were talking about, Adam, is you knew you were in for something different and special here. Basically all we get are these shots of hands piling up an array of speakers on top of each other, and the camera pulls back and we see that it's this giant wall essentially set in the Moroccan desert. It's all distorted like misshapen wall because of how it's built, and then it's set against this backdrop of sheer cliffs. So it's this striking image just in terms of the composition. But then the music comes in and King dang Ray's score for this movie, for Surat is so crucial. It's maybe the defining trait, a thumping Raves score, and we start we get the beginning of it here and throughout this movie. I think when I did talk about it, or it came up on the show at some point. I described the music as having a metaphysical presence. Here you get the sense that it's from beyond this world, but also emanating from deep within the earth. And that's both the sound and the compositions that give you that sense. So for me, this was the year's best stage setter. The opening of Sirat, and if you're unfamiliar with it and you want to check it out, it's spelled si r At.

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Speaker 4: I am mixed on Sarat, as you know, Josh, but I'm with you completely on that opening scene. And if I remember correctly, I don't have the exact number of minutes here in front of me, but it's one of those films where we don't get the title of the film until very many minutes into the movie, right. It kind of sneaks up on you at some point, and so it builds to the title of the film, and you're right, we get that building of the speaker system and it really is pretty captivating. So I like your pick quite a bit. I for some reason have more honorable mentions or backup choices for this category than any other category. Maybe that's because it's first, Josh in my preparation, So just feel free to jump in and interrupt me or make any other comments that you want here as we go. But when I was putting together my list, I was thinking, of course, about the boldness of a couple of the bigger movies of the year, like One Battle after Another and Sinners, movies that throw you right into the action right And then it may be odd to hear this title thrown out in connection with those two. But another movie that made my top ten lists like those two movies, Vulcan Is a Door from Joel Petrichis. It is brash to me in its mixing of orchestral music with the sound and imagery of a tire repair shop arson, which you understand later, or you might understand if you actually know what Vulcan Isidora translates to, which actually is a tire repair shop. And then you get this thrash metal music as these two losers, it seems, are walking down a road like none of it really makes any sense at first, but it does. It does grab your attention, and then you get the the evocative dreaminess of train Dreams, and then you get the more deranged kind of fairy tale dreaminess of one of your favorite movies of the Year Weapons And here's a movie you like more than me as well. But I love the beginning. I know you're a fan of it as well. How about Kelly Reichert's The Mastermind, where the opening seems like this sweet family outing to the art museum, but of course she realized pretty quickly it's also a criminal casing the joint that they're looking to rob. And I don't know how intentional this was, or whether it was intended to be misdirection, or it was just me as a viewer knowing what the movie was about and making some assumptions, But I was sure watching it, Josh, that the family was in on it, right, I'm with you, okay, good, or at least the wife played by Alanaheim was in on it. Like when he drops the little figurine, he's testing the security system. He's testing himself, probably to what he's capable of, whether he can pull it off or not, And when he drops it in her purse, it seems like she's aware of it. At least it seemed that way to me. The kids are maybe purposefully causing diversions. They may not know exactly what they're doing, but they're being directed to cause those diversions, and then you realize probably later, no, no, they're just there to have that sweet family outing, and he's there for his own reasons.

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Speaker 1: I think that's part of the genius of the movie. I was tricked, if you want to put it that way, as well. I had the same initial reading. And I think that shows you a couple of things. Again. Reikert's genius in how she's going to play with our expectations and also the way most of us come into movies knowing, especially if we have an affection for the actor right playing this character, even if we know it's about a guy whose plan didn't entirely come together, we go in. I think our basic is to root for him, right, and so we're kind of seeing that well, maybe you know, maybe they're behind on their house payments, and that's why this guy, yes, and that's why his wife is helping him and the kids were told to make a ruckus. And then you realize, oh, no, this is this movie is a complete deconstruction of this guy, and that that asshole could have gotten his wife arrested. And by the end of the movie, don't you feel like if they had pulled him pulled her aside, because the stolen fig urine was in her purse, he would have just walked the other way, like, I don't know, maybe, so I'm taking the to go home.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a very good point. So my runner up. Here is a case I said recently on a show that I can't remember the last time I cheated, And here I suppose I am cheating, but it's at the behest of or I'm really being prompted by a listener. I put out these prompts Josh for the best scenes of the year on our Facebook page, and wow, did we get some great responses. And I had these two movies just as separate honorable mentions in contention for my runner up or my my winning spot. And then Jed Deering on our Facebook page, Facebook dot com slash film Spotting wrote this, this should clearly be framed as what was the best opening scene with a driver approaching a dead body? Award either the secret Agent pulling up to the gas station or you said it, Josh, Shula pulling up to her uncle's body and on becoming a guinea fowl, both unnerving in their own right, with great supporting help providing levity from the gas station attendant or Shoula's cousin, respectively. I just love the Jed link these brilliant openings and what these bodies represent for Shula repression, for Marcelo or Armando oppression. They each would prefer to drive on, just keep going and not have to reckon with the darkness that those bodies will likely invite into their lives. But they don't or or they can't. And in the case of the Secret Agent, you have Kleiber, Mendoza, Affilio the director, and with Guinea Flu you said, Rungano Nioni. They create such a sense of mystery, and more so with the Secret Agent dread by being so patient, so patient with the camera and also by withholding information. And you know Philio, we talked about this during the Top ten show, the way he manages genres in tone with that movie. Marcello's yellow Volkswagen bug pulls up to that gas station, we see the feet of that dead body sticking out from under. I think it's just some cardboard and we know everything we need to know. But as Jed noted, there's also some dark humor in the way the gas station attendant suddenly appears and assures him, No, everything's fine, there's no reason to pull away. Sure, go ahead and get some gas. He has an answer for everything that Marcello says. It makes it worse. Yeah, exactly right, it makes it worse. That's a great point. And then when other cars show up and see the body or the police once they arrive to investigate and harass Marcelo the way, the other cars immediately turn around, and Bolt is combic in its own way as well. Everybody can tell that something is off and we don't want a piece of it. But Barcelo is stuck and guineafoul Josh having no sense. That's a case where unlike The Mastermind, I really had no sense at all what the movie was about. I just knew the director and I knew their previous film. And so I'm watching Susan Chardi. I'm watching the actress in that futuristic outfit, that slick vehicle driving in the dead of night, and for a while I was questioning whether Nioni had made a sci fi movie, Like what is this movie? My bearings were completely off. We don't know what costume she's wearing or why. I'm not sure we ever actually get the answer, we just have to put those pieces together. I just loved how deliberate and how enigmatic both of those beginnings are, and they make you want to pay such close attention to both of those films.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great idea to pair those that the listener had. And I think in the case of The Secret Agent, which I was able to see, I've seen since we did our Top ten show and I hadn't had access to it yet, it's for Marcelo. It's the precursor of everything that he's going to be facing, and not necessarily because it's perfectly relayed it or logically related to his situation, but I think it also just captures and this is maybe where the Secret Agent opening is unique, is the precariousness of this time and place, and it's like this just this little, this little portrait, mini story, many narrative that captures what it might have been like to live then, and there just this random body that people are looking at fleeing, as you said, but other people are just saying, eh, I don't worry about it, as if this is not that uncommon, you know.

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Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that.

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Speaker 1: Double picks.

00:18:33
Speaker 4: Speaking of many narratives, my winner for opening scene. This comes from another movie that you didn't have an opportunity to see before our top ten show, and it's the beginning of yokum Trier's sentimental value. I suppose you could call it a prologue that does some practical table setting, and that we meet the main character who is effectively the main character of the film, Nora. We'nada riitsvist character. We meet her sister mainly in the past, but we do meet her, We meet her father, we meet the main characters of the story. Maybe more significantly, though, we meet the house. And is cliche or as obvious as it may be to say that the house, which is the primary setting of the movie's action and where the emotional drama plays out, is another main character. I think you have to say that here. It certainly applies here because what's happening in this prologue As we hear a narrator say, the narrator tells us about how Nora. This how the movie begins.

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Speaker 2: Right.

00:19:37
Speaker 4: The opening words are about how Nora, in the sixth grade, had to write an essay as if she was an object, and she chose to write it from the point of view of this house her childhood home, So her essay and the way Trier shoots it is essentially an exercise in anthropomorphism, right, and the language here that the narrator uses that Nora used as a kid. She described how it's belly shook as she and her sister ran downstairs and out the back door, that it saw them take the shortcut through the fence and onto the road where the house no longer could see them. So when the narrator says that it saw them take the shortcut through the fence, we actually in that moment we get a cut and we see their legs take that shortcut. From the perspective of the basement. The cameras in the basement looking through these two square windows that look just like eyes, followed by two cuts through a main floor window, one inside and then one outside as the girls go through that fence, and the way the camera tracks just slightly to the right as the girl's exit to the left with the window in the background, it really does emphasize how the tree in the yard limits the view of the window. Just like if you were a person who can no longer see around that tree, it may make the house feel as though. Every window is a set of eyes, and the house is alive, and the presentation up to that point is quite stately. But that changes as life gets messier in the house, the shots get tighter, the camera gets a little bit shakier. We get these lines. She wondered if the house like to be empty and light or full and heavy, if the floors like to be trod on, if the walls were ticklish, if it ever felt pain, and all those sounds of life. Sounds of pain like a glass breaking during a fight, sounds of joy, like heels hitting the hardwood floor when people are dancing, and those neutral sounds. That's what I really love that we take for granted until a filmmaker like Trier makes us pay attention to them. A door scraping the hardwood floor as it opens, a kid's jacket scraping the wall as she walks down the hallway. We go into the past here, those who inhabited the space before her, we see them. We advance through Nora's teen years, We get into the press day and watch the home split metaphorically as the house also the home splits literally and in terms of the characters and the setting and the themes. That's all there, introducing us to it, Josh, but also it puts us into Nora's expressive, really creative, but also really fragile emotional headspace. And it does function as its own beautiful short film as well.

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Speaker 1: It does. Yeah, it is a short film that sentimental value begins with. I did get a chance to see it a sense, and it's lovely crushing in a lot of ways. And one thing Trier does in that opening with the camera, in addition to what you talked about, is the establishing shots of the house actually so not necessarily the perspective ones looking out that you've been describing.

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Speaker 4: But also stateliness. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the stateliness, but he you know, you could choose the perfect angle to provide that stateliness. But what I like is that in almost every one the camera is slightly moving. It's just drifting one way or another. And I think that connects with the quality you were talking about giving the house the sense of being, of being alive. It's the house isn't moving, but because the camera is, it feels like it is a little bit. So a lot of very sophisticated delicate we're going into making that such a captivating opening to sentimental value.

00:23:25
Speaker 4: I'm doing a series of book cradings this week. You can find me there book cradings. Yes, I write true crime novels based on fictional stories.

00:23:33
Speaker 1: That I make up.

00:23:36
Speaker 2: Yes, well, you may write about it, but I live it. Now, if you'll excuse me, we're having a birthday party and I'm the best singer in the office.

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Speaker 4: Okay, we move on now to the Funniest Movie Scenes of twenty twenty five, a category in which the differences in our respective senses of humor may be revealed. Will find so we will find out. I know there's some overlap, but we shall see.

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Speaker 1: I think that's a good way to put it. And man, this is this is what I miss not being at a live rep party because this is the most fun category to do every year. Just get the whole theater laughing at at showing these clips. But hey, we'll get back to that next year. For now, I have a couple of honorable mentions to go through printing a new Mickey from Mickey seventeen. I just, you know, love this movie to the end of the year. Even though it fell out of favor with a lot of people. It did fall just outside of my top ten list. However, I wanted to give what I think is one of its best gags a nod here, and that's when the new Mickey just comes rolling out of that clone printer and he just ends up flopping onto the ground like a dead fish, because you know, the scientists, they didn't even bother to put a gurney there to catch them. I think it's just, you know, not only silly, funny slapstick, but as this whole movie is, I think, funny commentary, bitter commentary on sort of the indifference here with which laborers are treated in the global economy. So, and of course another honorable mention, I'm gonna have to pick one from my favorite comedy of twenty twenty five, which was one of them days, and for me, it's the payday loan application. So many options to go within this movie, but it is the conversation that Sizza and Keiki Palmer's roommates have, these desperate roommates with a payday loan clerk played scene stealing one of the scene stealers of the year. I forget if we managed to include her in our poll. But Kayla Monterroso, Mahea she just couldn't give less other than anything about their predicament.

00:25:47
Speaker 5: Are you having a heart attack?

00:25:48
Speaker 2: Oh my god, mal are you okay?

00:25:50
Speaker 4: Are you never see a credit score this?

00:25:53
Speaker 3: Well?

00:25:56
Speaker 5: Well, I you know, I went to business school.

00:26:02
Speaker 4: I'm, you know, trying to figure out how to make every dang back so bad.

00:26:05
Speaker 2: It's so bad, you got problems, So you act like we in Beverly Hills or somewhere.

00:26:11
Speaker 4: Go you in a hood too.

00:26:13
Speaker 1: One more honorable mention. I called this out when we did do our long review of one battle after another. I'm still waiting to see this sign and an anti ice protest someday soon. Why is your shirt so tight?

00:26:27
Speaker 4: Why is your shirt so tight? I'm like gay, If that's what you're saying, I didn't say that.

00:26:39
Speaker 2: I'm not homosexual.

00:26:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that so much. Okay, let's get to my pick. And I think we have a listener who's going to help me set this up. Adam Ross Bratton, who he took us up on the invite actually to send in a video pick a Pioneer.

00:26:58
Speaker 4: Our first look look at Ross had to be Ross.

00:27:01
Speaker 3: Hey, Adam, Josh Sam and all the films Spotting Nation. This is Ross Bratton from New York City, a proud member of the Trivia Spotting Mafia, and the co host of the A Trip Through Comedy podcast. Since there's no live wrap party this year, I figured I would at least send in my pick for the funniest movie moment of this year, and that came from Andrew DeYoung's Friendship, starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd. There are so many great scenes to choose from, but the one that definitely stood out for me and had me laughing so much was the drug trip scene. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. And if you haven't seen it, I Am not going to spoil it because it's truly something that needs to be seen to be believed. I hope everyone had a good time at the movies this past year in twenty twenty five, and I'm hoping in twenty seventy six we get a whole bunch of great comedies and fun times. Looking forward to hopefully seeing you all at somewhere at the theater.

00:27:57
Speaker 2: All right, bye.

00:27:58
Speaker 1: I am with Ross have the same pick from Friendship as he said, this is the dark comedy, deeply weird and uncomfortable. Dark comedy starring Paul Rudd and Tim Robinson, written directed by Andrew DeYoung. They played neighbors and budding friends. But this movie, to me, it's somewhat I don't know if it loses track, but it changes direction from the notion of friendship to focus and become another Tim Robinson portrait of the contemporary American male identity crisis, a crisis of our own making, we should say now, as part of this guy's flailing and failing as a friend, as a husband, as a father, Robinson's Craig decides, Okay, what I need now to get things back on track is to accept an offer of drugs from the clerk working at the mobile phone shop played by Billy Brick. The drug in question licking an exotic toad with psychedelic properties.

00:28:55
Speaker 4: It's like ice cream on a hot summer day.

00:29:01
Speaker 1: Don't pop him, you look like pop him.

00:29:06
Speaker 2: Can you stay with me?

00:29:09
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I need to go get some rollers in a red bull.

00:29:13
Speaker 5: It's time for you to touch.

00:29:14
Speaker 1: God like Ross. I almost don't want to spoil this for those who haven't seen Friendship, but basically, you know what we get is an anti drug trip scene. It's the opposite of every wild psychedelic sequence that the movies have given us, very much to Craig's chagrin, he is quite quite disappointed. It's just perfectly played by Robinson at his probably his most illogically indignant, which he's that's a specialty of his. And Burt here brick here, I should say, is you know this brain dead straight man also perfect. We get a little nice, you know, nice bits of visual humor from Deong as well as director camera angles, especially as Craig comes in and out of his trip, just to add to why this is such a funny. So that's my pick. The toad is mysterious from Friendship.

00:30:05
Speaker 4: A scene I did not watch, Josh because I didn't get a chance to see the entire movie, and I know and I did not. I did not want to take it out of context. It did seem like one of those one of those scenes, in one of those gags I had to appreciate within the context of the entire film. And we've had listeners, we had family members certainly all all year on Discord bugging us about how we haven't or I hadn't caught up with Friendship, we hadn't reviewed it, you saw it when it came out of it Yeah, yeah, I gave it a review when it came out, and I'm glad.

00:30:39
Speaker 1: I'm glad that I didn't spoil it then. So if you ever do get around to it, you'll you'll have that pleasure.

00:30:45
Speaker 4: Okay. My first mention more love for sentimental value. And this one comes up, Josh, only because it literally just popped up in my feed on Instagram a couple hours ago. You know how the the algorithm is always listening, it's always watching. Apparently it is because it knew I was preparing for this show. And it's the moment when Gustav when stellin Scarsguard, the father, the grandfather in this case, gives his grandson, who can't be more than about ten. He gives his grandson for his birthday to DVDs, and the DVDs are Michaelanica's The Piano Teacher and Gaspar no ways irreversible. Now, I will say this though, it would be funnier if he just gave him the piano teacher or something more like the piano teacher, the piano teacher and something else like it, because I just don't believe that even Gustav and how out of touch he is would give him gaspar no ways irreversible. But the piano teacher is is beautiful.

00:31:47
Speaker 1: That's ale would I wouldn't put it past that guy.

00:31:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, and what does he say? He says something about how it'll it'll teach you everything you need to know about women and relationships or something, and it's it's it's beautiful. So who stops birthday gifts? Is my first mention here for sheer, audaciousness and insanity. Yes, I'm also going to mention chasing ant Gladys weapons. Speaking of audaciousness and insanity, I'll just say three way kill in no other choice, the latest from Channook Park. We're gonna get to our Golden Brick winner and our nominees here in a second. I'll say that there is one choice. One of the nominees is definitely more of an Atom choice than a Josh. And there's one choice that's definitely more of a Josh choice than an Atom. The one that's more of a Josh choice is Boys Go to Jupiter. But there's a line in that movie Josh that I adore, and it's when a curator says, nobody invented gatorade. It's a liquid like milk.

00:32:49
Speaker 1: Well, I think true. I'm glad it got got a chuckle from you.

00:32:54
Speaker 4: I think it's true. Actually, I do believe it's it's actually it's just an element. Gatorade at this point is an element. I'm going to go back to another Golden Brick finalist and one that you love. This one I I like considerably more Grand Theft Hamlet. And it's not from the later performances. It's when they're they're initially trying to stage. It's really they're they're in those early stages of trying to to get a production of Hamlet done. There I think they're just really playing around with the idea, even at this point of staging Hamlet, and they're at the Vinewood Bowl within Grand Theft Auto and we hear we hear one of the directors within the game say, if I could just request that you refrain from killing each other and don't kill the actors.

00:33:37
Speaker 1: Either, How does that go for them?

00:33:38
Speaker 4: It's it It does not go well because like a split second later, of course, or a split second before you know, someone of course gets gets killed. So those are some honorable mentions. A runner up for me, I am going to give a little bit more love, and I think this may end the love I'm going to give to this movie here on the Rap Party. But I'm gonna give a little bit more praise to Joel Patriychas's vulcan 'sadora. And this is a music moment contender as well. But Joel patriychas writer, director and actor, he's the star of this scene. Certainly. He plays Derek, who with his friend Marty, is clearly on some kind of mission in the Michigan Woods. Whatever they have planned, we don't know. At this point. It seems ominous, mainly because of Marty's demeanor as played by Joshua Burge, and his behavior. He is always angrily reminding Derek that nothing matters anymore. Their first night in the woods, Derek decides to how do you put it? Entertain Marty. He's got this old school disc man that I had, like in nineteen ninety five on the on the dash velkrode to the dash of my Chevy S ten Josh Potholes. He's got some speakers that he can plug into them, and he's got these green glow sticks and he's also got his I Love a Jaegermeister, and he's got this whole little performance to God Smacks Voodoo worked up, except he's changed. He's changed the words to feature his favorite liqueur, everyone's favorite liqueur, Jaegermeister. And so I'm just gonna give you a little, a little bit of the words because I don't think for copyright reasons we can play it some of the words to God Smacks Voodoo. I'm not the one who's so far away, Josh, you can sing it along with me if you want. I know, you know the.

00:35:28
Speaker 1: Words, go for it.

00:35:30
Speaker 4: This is your But I when I feel the snake bite enter my veins, never did I want to be here again? And I don't remember why I came so snake bite. You know. He's dripping then this green liquid from from the glow sticks on his bare chest, and while he's doing it, he's saying things like, oh, this is cool.

00:35:53
Speaker 1: This is so cool, dude.

00:35:54
Speaker 4: And then at one point he says something that is like the movie you talk about, just summing up the movie deeply sad and also deeply disturbing at what it hints, at what it foreshadows. He says, this is what I'm going to miss about life, and you're like, Okay, where is this going? But also if you think this is something that you're going to miss about life, I mean, I don't know if you're exactly the kind of person I want to hang out with in the woods or anywhere else.

00:36:24
Speaker 1: Definitely not in the woods at least.

00:36:25
Speaker 4: And he is so into it, and Marty couldn't be lessened to it. There is nothing even slightly cool about this performance. And just watching him dance and watching him grown and act like I don't know, he's been bitten by a snake or something. It absolutely killed me.

00:36:45
Speaker 1: It was I think at that point maybe one I was considering as scene of the ear honestly just for.

00:36:51
Speaker 4: All the levels at play, because.

00:36:54
Speaker 1: There is something almost moving about it too.

00:36:57
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yes, moving about Derek's commitment and the commitment of Joel petrekis to the character and to the performance and to that film. Vulca Disidora Okay, my winner, though maybe not a surprise because I mentioned it on our Top ten Films of the Year show and Josh, you did it you Caught Up with the Naked Gun after Alison Wilmore put it on our Top ten list, and I praised it, and your letterboxed rating did not disappoint you apparently sat there staring at it like you were at an insurance seminar. You gave the Buster Keaton face the entire time. I don't think that's what I wrote, but okay, well close enough. That's how I like to imagine you looking.

00:37:44
Speaker 1: You want to hear the real experience with naked gun. Going back to my early comment saying, you know, we go in rooting for a movie. We did the prep here, Adam, the whole family did the prep. I thought we were out for a dinner. Both daughters were in older daughter's girlfriend was with us for dinner in Saint Andrew's, enjoying the holidays, good mood, laughing. We ended it with a whiskey flight, and I just thought, this is the time, like, if the naked gun is ever going to work, Yeah, for me, it's tonight, right, it's tonight.

00:38:19
Speaker 4: Eh, you know, Okay, I.

00:38:21
Speaker 1: Think I laughed at the scene you're about to bring up. I think, okay, you know I have that, and yeah I thought for it first, well, first two or three minutes. It was amusing.

00:38:32
Speaker 4: We'll always have the snowman Menaja twelve Well, Josh, Yes, Dredben and Beth Davenport, Liam Neeson and and I can't believe I'm blanking on her name. I didn't write it down because why would I need to. I can see her plaint his day, Pamela Anderson, thank you, Josh. Yeah, they have fallen for each other. And we know that because we get the romantic montage to the tune of here's another music moment, right, we get the montage to the tune of Nothing's Gonna stop Us now by Starship. They're at a winter cabin getaway. It's this whole fantasy sequence, right, that's so magical that we get some actual magic. A snowman comes to life and starts frolicking with them outside but also inside in the bedroom, and their little trio is just going along great until Frank and Beth push him away. And when they Frank and Beth end up together in the hot tub and they're laughing facing the camera, but behind them is the snowman looking through the window with them, and it seems like the snowman's happy, because the snowman has a happy face always, right, But then the song does that macabre fade in unison with the Snowman's face turning evil, and the rest of the sequence is basically a horror montage with the cucked snowman trying to kill them. Yeah, that was my biggest laugh in that movie, and I I do think it was my biggest movie laugh of the year. Well.

00:40:03
Speaker 1: As I also said on Ladderbox, I'm very happy for the people, but many many people who feel similarly.

00:40:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, that doesn't sound condescending at all. I totally believe.

00:40:13
Speaker 1: You, Josh. We all have our senses of humor. Adam, I'm glad that's yours.

00:40:20
Speaker 6: Hey, I'll miss.

00:40:25
Speaker 2: You, but I have to go.

00:40:28
Speaker 1: You understand, I I know, I understand.

00:40:36
Speaker 2: That's good.

00:40:37
Speaker 4: Let's go now, two most moving moment. Let's go in the complete opposite direction and talk about the scenes that maybe made us well up. Josh, we'll see if we have different tastes when it comes to what really moves us emotionally. Maybe we can actually get things started with this quick note from a listener Jonathan Anderson, and send us an email. I think, well, he says, he already complained to you about it, but he emailed me as well. He says, I'm sighing in advance over Clark and pop Kent on the porch not making most moving. It's fine. Opinions are subjective. I just wish that you shared mine, because that movie did a fair bit of good for my heart this year, chiefly in that moment.

00:41:22
Speaker 1: And I feel so bad about this because what were we just saying about being happy when movies make people happy? Right?

00:41:29
Speaker 4: Yes?

00:41:29
Speaker 1: And I know Jonathan well, a veteran of many bolder meetups film spotting meetups. I have to say, though, Adam, I'm feeling pretty good, and I think you should feel pretty good, and I think producer Sam should feel pretty good. We had the trifecta on this Superman movie. Yes, supermany do you remember when it came out and it had essentially saved cinema? Mm hm, Now, Jonathan, aside your end lists, honors, awards, crickets, vacation, I think it was a movie of its moment, which again I think we said at the time we both understood why certain aspects of it were appealing to audiences where we were at the moment that it came out, and some of the you know, the good qualities about Superman that the movie tried to celebrate, but oof. I don't think that one has lasted too well in people's memories, at least by the end of the year.

00:42:25
Speaker 4: Great, more emails, Josh, We're going to get more emails now. You had to just rekandl didn't you.

00:42:31
Speaker 1: I mean, this is moving moment. We're supposed to make people feel well. Oh, I guess yeah.

00:42:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe a little different. But movement can take a lot of different forms. Tell us what moved you this year?

00:42:42
Speaker 1: All right? So I am going to share two honorable mentions. First, and my first one comes from a Golden Brick finalist. Sorry baby sharing a sandwich. This is when John carro Lynch shows up for just one scene in Ava Victor's film and essentially word's off a panic attack for Victor's Agnes with a kind word and a bite to eat. It's just an incredible moment. Another one here, Adam, I have a sentimental value pick great. It comes from that late film, relatively late film. I think conversation between the two grown sisters at this point about how they survive their childhood, and I think I have the line. The one that really sealed it for me is when the younger sister says to the older I had you so in context, man, that one really does a lot of work. So those are my two honorable mentions. Here comes my spoiler warning, my big spoiler warning for my actual pick from Hamnet, the Chloe Jow film. This is, as I said, not only a fairly recent release, but I think opening wider this weekend in some cities, and so if you are planning to see Hammett Hamnett, even think you might skip ahead a little bit while I talk about my pick. I'm calling it the laying on of hands. It's basically the ending of the film. The whole movie is features Jesse Buckley and Paul Mescal riffing on the early family life of William Shakespeare, and at this point, at the climax, it is I guess I should say it is major spoiler. When Buckley's Agnes comes to the Globe Theater to see a performance of Hamlet, not knowing anything about it. At this point, her husband's been away working on his plays, hasn't really been sharing with her what they're about. So she comes sees Hamlet and discovers there that her husband, who she feels has been refusing to grieve the death of their son, their young son earlier in the film, she discovers he's been writing Hamlet essentially to process the enormity of that loss. And so Hamlet's death at the end on stage and a little meta touch here that works beautifully. Hamlet is performed by Noah Jew, the brother of Jacobi Jew, who played their Doomed Sun off stage, So a little bit of connection there that I think you can sense and feel somehow. I actually didn't know it in the moment until after i'd seen the film and read about it. That death of Hamlet on stage, the dramatized death is shattering enough. But then you get Agnes, who is standing below the stage right at the front, watching this as we've seen it, dawning on her what all of this means her response. We're also waiting for her response, like is she going to be angry about this? Is she going to accept it? She reaches out to the actor's fallen body, and then if that's not enough, kloe Jau just keeps laying it on here, and for me it works. The entire audience in response, reaches out toward Agnes, and so it's this overwhelming note of profound communal compassion. It doesn't hurt that it reminds me of one of my favorite Wes Anderson moments everyone in the sub reaching out to Steve Zisu during his epiphany. That came to mind, and yeah, I'm not alone on this one. When I put out a call the email for favorite scenes of the year, Tony Sturgeon responded and wrote this, I could really say that any moment when Jesse Buckley is on screen watching the play in Hamnet could win the category, but specifically the moment when she reaches out to the actor plane Hamlet and then we get the overhead shot of the entire audience stretching their arms toward the stage was one I will not forget. So that's laying on of hands from Hamnet for my most moving moment.

00:46:35
Speaker 4: You're certainly not wrong about that in terms of it being a popular choice, because when I put it out on Facebook, we got a lot of comments and it was by far the most popular comment as well, So that scene had a profound effect on our listeners. It seems that movie seemed to have a profound effect on our listeners, and I get it, and I think for me, it's actually a little bit similar to one of your honorable mentions the sharing a sandwich scene in Sorry Baby, a movie I quite like and I like Hamdit as well, And there's something about that sandwich scene. As much as I enjoyed it in the moment, there was still a part of me that couldn't help but feel the falseness of it. And what I mean is the falseness in terms of not believing a scene like that could happen, but wanting it so desperately, wanting to believe a conversation like that could suddenly emerge between those two people in that moment, just not really believing we live in a world where it could happen.

00:47:36
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I think that's you know, I think that's what elevates it for me to be moving because it feels miraculous exactly as you're describing.

00:47:44
Speaker 4: And yeah, and I wasn't willing to go with the miracle there, and maybe that is as I'm saying something similar. There's a connection there with the end of hamd It as well, because let me be clear, wasn't cold hearted about it, didn't sit through it, resisting it. I ultimately, I ultimately did get on board with it, but found myself at the end more moved by Paul meskal As as Shakespeare in that scene in his performance, and and him and and those those silent expressions with his wife, and also Noah Jupe some of his deliveries of lines as Hamlet. There his reaction to the laying of hands moved me. He was incredibiously then he.

00:48:29
Speaker 1: Surprised and startled and yeah, yeah, something about that.

00:48:33
Speaker 4: The the the forcedness of that moment didn't quite land with me. And I think I'll share this in our in our notes, because you know, I saw it. I saw it weeks later. I couldn't help but laugh about it because it was it was similar to what I was feeling when when I was watching it someone who I I don't know otherwise it just popped up on my feet. On Instagram did a video where they said something like this is Jesse Buckley reacting at the end of Hamlet, at the end of Hamnet to Hamlet, and they basically just go over the top dramatizing how she doesn't seem to have any idea how to react to a play. She has no idea what a play is or how an audience member is supposed to react to anything. And it it's very funny. I thought it was very funny, and something about the way she enters that scene kept me kept me a little bit detached from it, Josh. But as you're going to hear in a moment, Hamnett certainly worked. It's emotional. It's emotional magic on me. I have another music moment contender, this honorable mention, and that's the final performance of the song Our Love in the Ballad of Wallace Island. Here's a spoiler warning that I'll give And actually, you know what, I should just go ahead and say here with this honorable mention, my runner up that's coming next and my winneroilers apply across the board. Okay, so just be warned. Train Dreams, when we reviewed it and we both recommended it, I said that there was a line at the end that that helped unlock the movie a little bit even more for me, or helped helped really crystallize what I was responding to. And and I'm going to give you that line. But this was another movie, Josh, that a lot of people on our Facebook page shared, maybe second to Hamden. And here's Brett Gerlt. He said the end of Train Dreams, Dennis Johnson's words cut me to the core. There's a line a little earlier that got me too, that he was only just beginning to have a faint understanding of his life. Here he's speaking about Joel Edgerton's Robert Greener, even though it was now slipping away from him. So when we reviewed it, we talked about, or I certainly talked about how I was moved by the film, but that that line that that struck me so much, Josh. And it's a case where it reinforces what the movie to me means emotionally, but also what I think it's getting at in terms of its its core idea. And and it's one that I think we have also the screenwriters Clint Bentley and Greg Queedar being a little a little clever with us as well. Do you know what the last line of spoken dialogue is in the film, because there's a couple more lines that the narrator says, but the last line of spoken dialets I've seen it, yeah, in the movie, and I only I only caught this on that second viewing Robert's in the plane and looking down on the world and having this this revelation, and the last line a character says in the movie is hey, you better hang on to something. And of course that's the pilot telling Robert to stabilize himself because in the plane she's going to do some movements in the air and he needs to to kind of brace himself a little bit. But but that's the movie, that's that's the message. It's it's what we have hang on, hang on to someone during our lives, and at the end, hang on to those memories. And that moment, actually, that line prompts the montage that ensues a split second later of Robert's life, all the connections that he's made. It culminates the movie. That line really is the prompt for it. You better hang on to something for me, It summarizes the entire movie. So that line is really one of the most moving moments of the year.

00:52:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could have gone with a couple from Train Dreams. Actually, the one I'll just throw in quickly here I didn't make an official honorable mention was what do you understand? Is that what he says to his dog at something, what do you know? Yeah, yeah, he just wheels down and looks deeply at the dog and says, what do you know? And for some reason that one probably got to me more than anything else in Train Dreams, though I agree they're a number of them you could choose from.

00:53:01
Speaker 4: So again, you and so many of our listeners. Apparently you're you're more artistically inclined than I am. Or you like to go with the less obvious moment from from Hamnet. I suppose because you picked the end scene there where we have this bit of poetry. Okay, I guess my choice is too on the nose, Josh, but I'm going with I'll be brave. I'm going with Hamnet's sacrifice, the moment that moved me the most from Hamnet. I'm just gonna lay it out there, the moment that had tears actively streaming down my face for fifteen to twenty minutes, which does not happen when I watch movies. That was the actual the death scene in this movie, and the damn was already bracing diverse. This isn't quite a spoiler, because we know that anyone going into the movie probably knows that Hamnet's going to die. But the dan was bracing to burst already. I knew this was coming. But when Jacoby Jub's Hamnet offers to go with his sister Judith so she won't have to go into death alone, puts himself up to death as well, and then we hear him say that line a couple times. I'll be brave, I'll be brave, father man. That's Josh. Where I was completely, I was gone. I was an absolute wreck. So the death scene itself is where Hamnet really really got to me. The winner for me though the scene I am ultimately going to go with, and we had some listeners who were also big proponents of this scene. Garrett Steiger on Facebook said, there's a five to ten minute stretch near the end of twenty eight years Later that absolutely wrecked me on both of my viewings. Brady Larson said, it's crazy and unexpected that the most moving scene would come from a zombie movie, but we are in the year of Sinners, and horror clearly made a huge splash in twenty twenty five. If I think of twenty twenty five moments that had my eyes leaking, nothing came close to Ray fines last fifteen minutes and twenty eight years later, his thoughts on dying and the stigma around death and the gentle, steady way find speaks wrecked me. I'm tearing up just thinking about them. I was hesitant Josh to pick a runner up and a winner that involve characters dying. It seems like pretty low hanging emotional fruit, especially when they both involve children, one dying and one one losing a parent. Here, the bravery of the children is paramount in both as well. And about twenty eight years later, I'll mention that the speed with which it all occurs, I think the word I want to use, the alacrity with which it all occurs is a bit troubling. The speed with which they go from your mother's going to die too, and now let's kill her and let you process it, Spike, it's still a bit much for me to take. I feel like it. I feel like it's a suspension of disbelief that the movie requires you to take. And I, even as I'm still wrestling with it a little bit, I was able to suspend that disbelief. And I was because of the sensitivity with which Danny Boyle ultimately handles it, and Alex Garland as a screenwriter, and certainly the performers in the scene, including Jody Comer and including Ray Fines there and with this scene in particular, even though it is a scene about death, it's not really The spirit of the scene isn't about grief and mourning loss. It is a scene about love. It is about hope, and it is a scene that offers the kind of closure that's a counter to Hamnet and that too few of us get in these types of moments. It's truly about life more than death, and I think that that's fitting too, especially with The Bone Temple coming out this weekend, a movie I am very excited to see because of this movie and because of how this movie ends, and a scene like this in particular. But one of the things we talked about is the way this film seems to be setting up a trilogy that wants I'll put this asterisk there, that wants more than other zombie movies, or with a more pointed perspective than other zombie movies that I'm familiar with, wants us to really reckon with this idea of what it means to be human and how far we're willing to go to eliminate these figures that seem less than human. It makes sense that we would have a scene like this that is about death, But like I said, is blurring that line into something that becomes transcendent, and that's why for me it became something bigger and more important than one I wanted to champion. Is my most moving moment of the year.

00:58:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, for me, that was the strongest section of twenty eight years later is that whole refined section. So many interesting things going on, dynamics at play, and definitely that moving though I would agree quite quick process that refines takes us through, but the ideas it was playing with were definitely fascinating. For sure.

00:58:35
Speaker 4: We do have more of our twenty twenty five rap party to come, our music moments and our scenes of the year, and we remind you that as always, you can see our full lists at filmspotting dot net slash lists.

00:58:49
Speaker 1: Another thing that's so fun about our live rap parties, Adam, are getting to meet and hang out and see again so many Film Spotting family members, those folks who have decided actually financially support the show and keep us going. All sorts of people come to the live shows, but I want to say at least half of those we meet are probably family members come out for the show as well. You know the discounty tickets we offer family members probably doesn't hurt. I think now might be a good time, as we're doing our rap party to thank a few of those folks, So let's do that, including Family Plus member Mona Bettancourt in Chicago, family member Sophie Belange from Quebec City, and then also Family Plus member Alexander Matthew Lesher in Seattle. Now, Alexander has been listening since two thousand and six, and that was a review, Alexander wrote here of the Three Burials of Melchiatis Estrada Strada.

00:59:50
Speaker 4: Josh, did you review that back in two thousand and six?

00:59:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, I saw it. I feel like I was positive on Yeah, Tommy Leech director, Yes, debut, I believe perhaps I don't know, I think exist on other work. Okay, Yeah. Alexander shared a bit more with us. You do not discuss that movie much on the show.

01:00:12
Speaker 4: Anymore, he says, I'm not sure it's been uttered since until now.

01:00:15
Speaker 1: That's quite possible. Alexander shared a couple of favorite moments from the show. These go way back as well. The American Dreams review with Sam Van Halgren, now producer former co host, Do you have fond memories of that one, Adam.

01:00:30
Speaker 4: Well, it was, it was confrontational. I think it was certainly a bit surreal to hear Sam praise a movie that everybody hated, it seems. I looked it up today, Josh thirty nine percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Not that that usually means anything. I'm just saying across the board, no one really liked American Dreams. I'm sure you're looking up your review right now. And I was thinking about this when I was looking this over this morning.

01:00:55
Speaker 1: I think we've done this bit on the show, Adam, I am looking it up. Yeah, three and a half out of four stars.

01:01:00
Speaker 4: Of course you did. Of course you did. You're in Sam's corner, justice.

01:01:04
Speaker 1: Sir Sam.

01:01:04
Speaker 4: What's so funny is, over the years now, we've had these moments where Sam has disliked a classic, some movie that most cinophiles think is great, and then he rewatches it in the in the years since, and he goes, oh, yeah, I was wrong, It's actually really good. I'm very curious to know what would happen if he rewatched American Dreams. Would he still be like would he reverse or would he be like, No, I was right, this is a masterpiece.

01:01:35
Speaker 1: Why are we doing boogie nights for our we were wrong once episode point onest episode for family members? Why are we going to change American dreams? Okay, good point, Let's change it out Alexander. Alexander shared another favorite moment from the show, Michael Phillips sign whenever No Country for Old Men got mentioned during the Best of two thousand and seven episode, Did.

01:01:58
Speaker 4: He really say? We have a quote here?

01:02:00
Speaker 1: Yeah? What a dumb movie named after a Yates poem. Give me a break?

01:02:03
Speaker 4: See the thing is? My initial response reading this today was just like you, did he really say that? But then I can also hear Michael Phillips saying that so clearly in my head, so I'm gonna say he probably did.

01:02:15
Speaker 1: All right, here's a movie Alexander credits would becoming a cinophile, Gary Marshall's nineteen eighty two soap opera spoof Young Doctors in Love.

01:02:25
Speaker 4: That's a first timer that's never been mentioned in twenty years on this show, Josh, until now.

01:02:30
Speaker 1: Probably we also heard about movies that caused our other family members to become cinophiles. Mona Bettencourt said, bringing up Baby that makes sense, and Sophie Belange shared two titles three titles actually nineteen ninety five's La Haine, Jim Jarmush's Ghost Dog, The Way the Samurai, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Good Stuff.

01:02:53
Speaker 4: We thank Sophie, Mona and Alexander for being family members and for reminding us about American Dreams and for all those years of listening. In addition to keeping us doing what we're doing, membership comes with perks. You get to listen early and ed free. You get our weekly newsletter, you get exclusive opportunities like being part of the film spotting Family Discord, and you get our monthly bonus shows. Our January bonus is coming soon. Sorry Mona, it won't be Bringing Up Baby. Sorry, Alexander and Josh. Apparently it won't be American Dreams. Bringing Up Baby was one of the we Were Wrong Once options, along with Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Knights and Michael Mann's Collateral. The Family did speak, though they voted, and the winner of the family poll was Boogie Nights. So, along with our upcoming revisit a Sacred Cow, an early Sacred Cow, look at one battle after another, We're going to have some more Pta talk. We are going to take a look at Boogie Nights. We are currently running a promotion. If you would like to join the film Spotting Family and get access to all of that, you can go to Filmspottingfamily dot com and you can get twenty percent off now through January thirty first on any subscription. All you have to do is you'd use promo code Supreme as in Marty Supreme. Use code Supreme. You can also click the link directly in these show notes. That's all you have to do. Use promo Code Supreme or click the link in the podcast description. Another way you can help us is to go ahead and rate us or leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It does help us reach new listeners. Plus, it just makes us feel good to see that high number. You know, four point seven four point eight is better than four point six. I'm not a big math guy, Josh, but try I like four point seven and four point eight better out of five. We would like to thank ham Slides and Monroe for their recent reviews on Apple podcast.

01:04:55
Speaker 1: I want nothing to do with ham Slides.

01:04:58
Speaker 6: Old Neck released his Demons unto the World of Man, and the World of Man fell before the Demons next week.

01:05:12
Speaker 4: It is our twenty twenty six movie preview. We are planning to move on. We will also have a review of a twenty twenty six film that probably would make the preview our most anticipated films of the year. I think it at least make my list if it wasn't opening this weekend, and that is The Bone Temple. Josh, are you excited? I liked the last one more than you, but are you somewhat eager to see this?

01:05:38
Speaker 1: Yeah? I still liked the previous one and Nia da Costa here taking over as director from Danny Boyle, we should say, which is part of my excitement for The Bone Temple. I'm hoping to catch it Adam at that point when it releases. I think we'll be in Sevilla, so not sure about the new release scene in Sevia Spain, but I'm gonna see if I could track it down.

01:06:03
Speaker 4: Okay. The preview will take the form of a draft. Just like last year. We did pretty well last year in terms of our prescients. Ten of the twelve films that we're mentioned, we had ten draft slots, but we each allowed ourselves one tie. So I picked Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague along with Blue Moon, and you picked Maggie Gillenhoal's The Bride along with Guermo del Toro's Frankenstein. Of course, Maggie Gillenhals The Bride might just get drafted again this year because it did not come out in twenty twenty five. Ten of the twelve films that we drafted then ended up factoring into our combined top twenty films of the year. So we were feeling the zeitgeist, if you will, at least in terms of quality, but also in terms of the films that were among the most discussed of the year and are being talked about as part of award season. That did include what was then untitled Pta Film, which was my first pick in the second overall slot. Next week we will also share our poll results. We asked you to tell us your most anticipated twenty twenty six film, but we're just giving you the first half of the year up until Memorial Day. Which one of these is your most anticipated film? Josh, will you please give our listeners the options again.

01:07:24
Speaker 1: Indeed, we have Wuthering Heights, the aforementioned The Bride Project, Hail Mary, that one with Ryan Gosling, the drama which stars and Daya and Robert Pattinson, David Lowry's pop music world drama slash horror movie Mother Mary. That one stars and Hathaway and MICHAELA. Coyle, and The Devil Wears Prada two will also give you the option of auther.

01:07:49
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, it's actually quote Wuthering Heights unquote. It's stylized, and it doesn't count unless you say it that way.

01:07:55
Speaker 1: Got it? Okay? Well remember that?

01:07:57
Speaker 4: Okay? You can vote in that poll and leave a comment at film spotting dot Net results, and your feedback will be featured next week on the show. We also wanted to give a plug to the Eastman Museum out there in the Rochester, New York area, if you are in that area. Longtime listener Jared Case is the museum's curator of film exhibitions, and he knows that Film Spotting Madness Best of the nineteen Forties is coming up, and they have a series Josh that ties in nicely with Film Spotting Madness Best of the nineteen Forties. So if you're in that area and want to seek out some of those screenings, they're watching The Naked City from Jules Dassen on January twentieth, powind Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going on thirty five millimeter, the thirty first Carol Reid's odd Man Out on thirty five millimeter January twenty eighth, so worth checking out. We'll pull the link to more details in our show notes. You can also find that on our website at filmspotting dot net. And again we want to thank Jared for being a longtime supporter of the show, and he even on the website mentions film Spotting in conjunction with this series, Josh.

01:09:09
Speaker 1: A great chance for some listeners to knock out those forties blind spots. This would be all three of these would have been blind spots except for just a few months ago. I did track down I Know Where I'm Going set in Scotland, did a little homework on that and enjoyed it quite a bit. So yeah, hopefully some folks will be able to get over there. Quick note about our sister podcast, The Next Picture Show, Looking at Cinema's present via its Past. They are still looking at twenty twenty five as we are on this show. In fact, they now have their episode on the Best of twenty twenty five So if you want to hear from the whole crew their favorite movies from last year that is out now. New episodes of The Next Picture Show do drop every Tuesday and you can find them wherever you get your podcasts.

01:09:54
Speaker 2: Emily said four words, I didn't know. Tell me if they catch brick.

01:09:59
Speaker 6: No or bad brick Nope, tug tug.

01:10:04
Speaker 4: Tug might be a drink like milk and vodka or something. Bad brick certainly not going to be one. As we announce our twenty twenty five Golden Brick winner, our seventeenth annual Golden Brick Award, it goes to our favorite film from a new or a merging director and the Golden Brick, yes was named in honor of Ryan Johnson's two thousand and six film Brick, which was a new film from him. He was a new director, and it was a film that we adored that was not playing on a ton of screens, and we recommended it a lot. We talked about it a lot. Hopefully we know at the time we got a lot more people to see it. Josh, and that's the point of the Golden Brick is to try to talk about a movie that is underseen and get more people to seek it out. We started out with fourteen films on our long list, narrowed that down to five, and we feel pretty good overall about the list of nominees. Are our list of five finalists.

01:11:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I was thinking, Adam, as you were talking. You know, back when the Golden Bricks started, we would only be discussing theatrical releases, and so a movie like Brick didn't play on a ton of screens. And I thought, Hi, I wonder if this has changed in the era of streaming, where you know, a movie like Brick, if it had come out now, would have been probably widely available via some service. Does that make it easier to find these? But then when I'm looking at the titles these finalists we're about to announce, actually, in some ways we're inundated with so many options and so many titles. We still need this championing that the Brick is all about. You know, we need to kind of sift through all that stuff that's out there, especially in the indie or smaller film landscape, and say this is one we've been able to check out. It rezes really rises to the top. It's distinctive in some way, not just newer emerging director, but I think we talk about directors who have a clear, unique vision to what they're trying to do, or a voice, a distinct voice as well. And yeah, that's out there, but in some ways in the streaming universe almost harder to find.

01:12:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you're exactly right there. Yeah, there's a bit of a contradiction there. More availability doesn't necessarily mean that more eyeballs are on it or that they feel more available, And so we do feel even more of an obligation to champion these films and get them in front of people. And we did end up with five this year of a pretty good array of movies here, even though this may be the first year where we have sixty percent of our finalists being documentaries, and those documentaries are Sam Crane and Penny Grill's Grand Theft Hamlet, David Ositz doc Predators, and Charlie Shackleton's doc Piece of Criticism, Zodiac Killer Project, Unfinished Movies Zodiac Killer Project. And then we have Julian Glanders, Boys Go to Jupiter and Eva Victor's Sorry Baby Now, Josh, I would be happy to let you do the honors here, but as you said, I haven't even shared with you who won yet. You don't know, you're you're in the dark.

01:13:17
Speaker 1: I'm in the audience. The camera's on my expectant face. So give us to us.

01:13:24
Speaker 4: I'm going to give it to you. A reminder, I voted, You voted, Sam voted. Our listeners voted, and by voting we mean we we rank the five. Our listeners only get to pick the one, but then we see how the voting comes out, and that is effectively a ranking, and we see what the average ranking is of those five, and whoever ranks the highest is the Golden Brick winner. Sometimes it doesn't happen that often. There is usually alignment. Occasionally, Josh, we do have a Listener's Choice winner that is not the same as the overall Golden Brick winner. This year there is alignment. Okay, the Listener's Choice winner is also the Golden Brick winner, and the twenty twenty five Golden Brick winner is I'm going to say, not a surprise. Eva Victor's sorry baby.

01:14:16
Speaker 1: When you said it aligned with the listeners, I thought, that's probably where we're going. And I'm really happy with this, Adam, I said a couple of times you know that in my top ten lists which Sorry Baby was on, I actually had Grand Theft Hamlet higher. And the one factor when it comes to voting for the Brick though, is looking forward to new work from the filmmaker, and I think Victor has shown they have just such a distinct balance of comedy and pathos, real genuine emotion, and they're also there's some filmmaking chops to Sorry Baby as well that we might get to perhaps in one of our other categories. So yeah, I think this is a great pick, and I do like it when the listener pick and our votes ALIGNE and we have unity here on the Golden Brick. Congratulations to Sorry Baby.

01:15:13
Speaker 4: Not a top ten for me, but a top fifteen or right around there, certainly a top twenty. And that's a really good point by you. Not only just excited based on the film Sorry Baby overall, but the total package from E the Victor as a director, as a writer, and as a performer as an actor within this movie, that's certainly something that makes you excited for the future, and their.

01:15:42
Speaker 1: Work formidable in every category based on Sorry Baby.

01:15:46
Speaker 4: The search for the twenty twenty six Golden Brick winner starts now and it starts probably where the twenty twenty five search began. The Sundance Film Festival. For us who are not attending, that means the Virtual Sundance Film Festival. That's where I saw the Zodiac Killer Project originally. It opens January twenty second, runs through February first. The festival passes are sold out, but single film tickets just went on sale earlier this week. If you would like to partake, you can do that at Sundance dot org. And we love to get recommendations. You can email us your Golden Brick recommendation feedback at film spotting dot net. And if you would like to learn more about the brick, our very loose criteria and our past nominees and winners, you can do that at film spotting dot net. Slash bricks with.

01:16:36
Speaker 1: The toss symbol. Would the tours?

01:16:41
Speaker 3: Would the tours? Says simple?

01:16:43
Speaker 1: Would the tours a sign?

01:16:44
Speaker 4: My damn point?

01:16:45
Speaker 1: Why do you say that?

01:16:46
Speaker 2: Why do you say tour?

01:16:47
Speaker 4: Will you say say it?

01:16:48
Speaker 1: Like I said, Well, it's been a good, healthy break, time to think about what we've done in the past on Massacre Theater, Adam, and now it's time to bring it into a new Age. We are return to our favorite game where Adam and I perform a scene. You get a chance to win a film spotting prize, our first Masacer of the new year. Adam, are you ready?

01:17:11
Speaker 4: No, but let's do it.

01:17:12
Speaker 1: Do you even know what scene we're doing?

01:17:16
Speaker 4: I'm aware of the scene, but I have done less than our usual prep in that I have not even watched it. And you know what, that's fine.

01:17:26
Speaker 1: You know what.

01:17:26
Speaker 4: I agree.

01:17:27
Speaker 1: Usually usually I watch it for the first time just before we are about to record, so in the midst of recording. But since I did get a chance earlier today to watch it, I'm going to say, let's not even pause. Let's just dive right in.

01:17:43
Speaker 2: Now.

01:17:43
Speaker 1: We do have to decide roles, though, and I'm going to suggest, and this is going to be a clue that I don't want to be too obvious, a clue, I would like you to play one part because of your affinity for the actor.

01:17:58
Speaker 4: I had a feeling you were going to go there, because I don't have any idea who the other character is in the actor playing them. Now that said, you know that I am still just going to play myself, right, m No.

01:18:13
Speaker 1: No, no, no, you you can't hear that is the extent of my range.

01:18:18
Speaker 4: Josh, you know this actor's work very well.

01:18:20
Speaker 1: You are a huge admirer of this performance in particular. Yeah, and so I think you can. You can channel something other than Adam company are.

01:18:29
Speaker 4: It's not like this actor, though, has a very distinct presence.

01:18:37
Speaker 1: Here's another clue. I would disagree and say he does okay, and yet in this performance it's something different than what we usually see him doing. Okay, enough clues, enough, clues enough, lawful.

01:18:56
Speaker 4: All I know is you're going to be highly critical of my performance when this is over. As a direct everyone everyone can enjoy that. When it's done, I'm up first. Yes, so I will give you the action, please and action?

01:19:13
Speaker 1: Are you a drinking man, Reverend?

01:19:15
Speaker 4: It doesn't help, Nah, I suppose not.

01:19:21
Speaker 1: Can God forgive us for what we've done to this world?

01:19:30
Speaker 4: I don't. I don't know who can know the mind of God. But we can choose a righteous life. Believe forgiveness, grace covers us all. I believe that. And scene.

01:19:49
Speaker 1: I think I think you got close at the close of that last line. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the beginning of the last line, you were doing the actor as I think he's commonly perceived, then you should okay along the way and you got closer to the other side. So yeah, nice work. Nice work for being a little rusty.

01:20:07
Speaker 4: I'll take whatever I can get. If you know a film we just massacred email the movies title, your name and location feedback. Filmspotting dot net is the email. Your deadline is Monday, January twenty sixth, and we will select the winner randomly from all the correct entries and announce it in a couple of weeks.

01:20:25
Speaker 1: You don't want a big event, ton.

01:20:29
Speaker 4: Your money up, All money coma blow baby. Two more categories to go in our twenty twenty five rap party. Before our scenes of the year, we have our favorite music moment of the year. Josh, what do you have?

01:20:48
Speaker 1: All right? I have three honorable mentions for you before I get to my pick. The first is the appearance by the Eddie Palmiery Salsa Orchestra in Spike Lee's Highest to Lowest. I think it anchors the movie's best sequence, the money Drop, so had to consider it here. I have another one. This comes from HEADA. It's oh so quiet now to my mind. The b York cover is the definitive one of this mid century number, but it does get a rousing rendition here. It's for a dance scene in Nia Dacasa's head to And what I also like about it, even though it's kind of where the music cuts short. I love how it's this over the top, movingly choreographed and performed musical number, and then it just gets cut short, magisterially cut short by the appearance of Nina Haas's Eileen as soon as she comes on screen. So going with It's oh so quiet from HEADA for an honorable mention, and this last honorable mention, I'm just gonna hint at. I don't want to spoil it. Adam, you like this movie even more than I do, and so you should get to picket. So I'm gonna save that and move on to my actual pick. And this is where I'm going with Train Dreams. As I said, said, thought about it for the moving moment category, and went with it for music because I really love what I'm going to call Arn's Lullaby. This is an extended scene that is actually bookended by two musical pieces, and both of them come from William H. Macy's Arn The grizzled veteran lagger. So it's the end of a workday and Arn's tent is next to that of the movie's main character, Joel Edgerton's Granger. Iron is singing a song that he's made up, but it's one that embodies the mystical but reverent perspective that his character, I think shares with the movie itself. Other Laggers tell Arn to shut up, and that leads him and Granger to have this quiet conversation about the song. They talk about mortality, morality, and America. Granger eventually asks him to sing again, but Arn decides a harmonica might be better received instead. There's something fitting I think about pure instrumentation taking over at this point. So much of Train Dreams is about what we don't know or can't understand regarding the vast universe. It leaves us speechless, but we still long to connect with it in some way, and you know, when words fail or a stifled music can also often step in. I think that this quiet bit of musicality and Train Dreams does sum up a lot of what the movie's all about. And so, yeah, that's my music moment of the year.

01:23:50
Speaker 4: It's an inspired choice because I think it's a sneaky pick in that it's not one that I'm guessing you're going to find on any other lists of the scenes of the year, and it's one I didn't think about at all when I started thinking about my favorite moments from Train Dreams. And yet I love every moment that William H. Macy is in. There is so much truth in every moment he is on screen, and that's absolutely one of them. So I'm really glad that you brought that up and allowed me to reflect on some more William H. Macy from that movie. I've got a few honorable mentions, only a couple here, though, And this is a movie that everybody thought or there was a lot of buzz coming out of Toronto. I think it was Toronto. This was a film that there was going to be in the Best picture conversation, and there's going to be a lot of buzz about maybe end of year top ten list talk, and it certainly didn't come up at all for us on our show, Josh. But both dance scenes in the Life of Chuck are pretty good as music moments. I do like the first one. I prefer that one to the second one. Even though I like the second one too, but I really like the first one with Tom Hittleston and his dance number out out on that street with the drummer performing, that really catches you off guard there. Kyle Bailey, a listener on Facebook, said, most of the Testament of Ann Lee, and he's right. We mentioned during our Top ten show how so much of that film is music. It is effectively a musical, So you could go with a lot of different choices. But if I was going to pick one, it's All is Summer. All is Summer is the boat montage when they're coming over to America, and how that sequence is edited and performed is really something. My other choice is one, Josh that you mentioned as an honorable mention for you, and that's Puerto Rico Eddie Polmieri the Orchestra Highest to Lowest from the Spike Lee movie. Everything about how the music is used there, diegetic music is used there is so great. My runner up, though, is from a documentary of sorts made by Alex Ross Perry, and it's the documentary Pavements. I'm gonna call it Major Leagues, but as I'll get to in a moment, it's not just the song Major Leagues. And when I recommended this documentary about the nineties indie rock band, I said this, I can't speak with any authority about the group. I've never really listened to them. I wasn't a fan, but I wasn't not a fan. I just didn't listen to them in the nineties. And I've been struck as I have have heard them a little bit more, certainly heard them in the film. Been struck by how Riley detached, they seem, perhaps even cynical, they and their music seem yet how heart felt an earnest the music can be. And the documentary is this perfect encapsulation of that, because it's both a genuine retrospective of the band and a documentary. It's it's this film that has within it a jukebox musical that's called named after one of their songs, Slanted and Chanted. And the musical is not it's not real. It's staged for the movie. But if you have music, and you have choreography, and you have performers that you've cast and they're singing their guts out, well, then isn't it Isn't it real? And what's more heartfelt? And what's more earnest than musical theater. The last I don't know five to eight minutes of this movie of the documentary is this musical performance that we've seen rehearsals for. It starts out with this song called Spit on a Stranger that morphs into major Leagues, and then we also get some of the song called here and Alex ross Perry is cross cutting that performance with band performance from today but also from the past and interview remarks from and it concludes the film, but it also it functions as the finale of the musical and it really adds some emotional weight to the band's reflections and to the band's the resilience that you get. You get the sense of the band's resilience having watched this film, and the fact that they're all they're all still friends and they've got their families now, and the perspective that they have on their on their lives and on the band and their music. And when Michael esper who is a real legitimate Broadway you know, stage performer who's portraying Stephen Malkmus in the musical version, when he starts belting out I was dressed for success the first this line he's singing over the chorus of singers who were singing bring on the major leagues, and then he intones his final phrase and he's all alone in the dark. Just a spot on him on the stage. I could throw this one back into the mix, Josh, of most moving moments. I guess I'm just a sucker for the sincerity of me musical theater, because again, as a as a culmination of the entire film it it did really move me. I like it so much. I like the music so much, this amalgam of these three songs as as musical theater that I'm actually afraid to listen to Pavements version or their versions of those songs. I'm sure I'd like them, but I also kind of feel like, how could they be better than what I just heard in the musical. That's what I want to hang on to, And I haven't listened to the full versions of those songs yet, So I love I love the Pavements versions of those tunes. And that's my runner up for music moment of the Year. But I think the one you were alluding to earlier when you said the no brainer music moment of the Year, but also your honorable mention, Josh, or a runner up for you certainly is is the juke Joint dance or I lied to you from Ryan Kugler's Sinners. Yes, this was like Hamnett on Facebook for moving moment. This is the one for Scene of the Year, but also music moment that came up most often from all.

01:30:12
Speaker 1: The scene of the year candidate.

01:30:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure, yeah, from our audience. And I'm just gonna mention one listener here. This is Sean Stranglin, who said, I think it's that one hundred and thirty seven minutes stretch from when Sinners began to win Sinners ends. You could just go with that as your music moment. We're going to single out here the juke Joint dance sequence. It starts very grounded and ends in the stars. Literally, you have this moment or you have the staging of it. Our friend Mikado Murphy at the New York Times did an anatomy of a scene with it, Josh that I just watched today with Koogler's That's a very fun watch, and he talks about establishing the stakes of the scene because you have Smoke and Stack who have different differing opinions about how successful this night's going to be and Sammy's role in it in the music, and so he triangulates them where one is on each side of Sammy with him in the middle. But if you watch you also see the Delta Slim Delroy Lindo's character who is supporting him, is behind him in the scene. And the music is original music by Ludwig Gorns and the composer, but also Rafael Sadik who's an Oakland musician and writer. And the voiceover where we hear one naming with Saku's character Annie. She says that the music that's there are legends of people born with a gift of making music so true it can pierce the veil between life and death, conjuring spirits from the past in the future. In Africa, they're called grios. And it makes me think about the movie Lone Star, which I talked about recently on the show, where you have a movie that's con the past, and you have the past and the present intersecting with each other. And even though they're very different films and using different techniques here, one thing they're doing similarly with the past and the present is that they are interacting with each other seamlessly. We have this use of the long take here in this scene, so there's no editing, and we have these ancestors, these musical ancestors, interacting. Sammy doesn't know he's interacting with him, but we know that he is. In this sequence and the way the music and the sound design and the camera all start to swirl together and it culminates in literally blowing the roof off of the juke joint. It was one of those moments we said, I remember when we reviewed it, you knew, you knew then. This felt important, This felt like one of the This had to be one of the scenes of the year at the time. And the reason why is because it's a showcase for Bravura filmmaking. But it's that, and it encompasses and expresses some of the most potent ideas even at that point in the film. It comes I think at about the halfway point. You know, it's expressing those potent ideas that the film is exploring the ownership of black culture and identity in particular, and it's one of those defining scenes in one of the defining movies of the year. And with that in mind, it had to be for me the music moment of the year. And that's true, Josh, despite the fact I will say this, despite the fact that I do wish I do wish that Googler didn't repeat Annie's narration from the opening of the movie. We hear her voice over again, and I wish that that was something that we as viewers just got to piece together for ourselves from the beginning of the film to that moment, rather than needing it to remind us. But that is a small quibble with a moment. Otherwise it is mind blowing.

01:34:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's willingness to trust your audience to not double up on that. But one of the amazing things about this just I remember watching it, and it's the ability to sustain it because you pick up fairly early on. Oh, I see what he's going to try to do here, you know, and then it keeps going and it keeps getting more interesting. Yes, and it doesn't lose itself in trying to pull off the quote unquote trick.

01:34:33
Speaker 4: You know.

01:34:33
Speaker 1: It's this, it's of a hole, the pieces of a whole. It's a sustained movement. It works as a piece of musicality, and yeah, it's absolutely one of the defining moments. I'm glad glad we could market here on our rap party show.

01:34:47
Speaker 4: That was a great transition because we have to now get to our scenes of the year. We just said this was a perfect candidate for it. But really, when you have four other categories and all of these honorable mentions and runners up and choices, they're all scenes of the year, essentially among your favorite scenes of the year, and yet we are giving ourselves the task of picking out just one or two or a few more actual scenes of the year. So how did it play out for you, Josh?

01:35:18
Speaker 1: It played out pretty easy when it came down to it. And I'm going to keep my honorable mentions quick because I have a lot to say about my actual pick. So here's three quick ones. Dinner party, black Bag, the incident. That's what I'm going to call this sequence in Sorry Baby. This is the Bravia filmmaking choices made there. And third one haircut in Weapons. Those who've seen it know what I mean, the haircut scene. My pick, though, my clear scene of the year for twenty twenty five is will You Pray for Me? From Wake Up Dead Man. I don't know how this came up, on the Facebook page you've been mentioning if it did at all, Adam, But I don't know if I noticed as soon as Wake Up dead Man started playing in theaters, then definitely when it hit Netflix. I don't know if I've noticed any other scene from last year, maybe the Sinner sequence, but one that is mentioned so often in reviews and on social media than this one. This is the mid movie interruption that writer director Ryan Johnson gives us in the latest Knives Out Mystery. It seems like too obvious of a pick, maybe, as we were talking about with Sinners, to put it here as seen of the year, but I'm still going to go with it because i do have some personal reasons for choosing it, which I'll get to now. At this point in the movie, Josh O'Connor's father Judd and Daniel Craig's Benoa Bloch they formed something of a Holmes and Watson bond in the movie's murder investigation, and they believe this phone call that father Jud's going to make to a construction company could help them find a crucial clue that might unravel the whole case. Bridget Everetts Louise answers the call, but she doesn't have the information. So Father Judd wants to quickly move on, but she has a request.

01:37:07
Speaker 5: Hey father something, Yeah, it's though, I mean, if you can make it quick, this is this is a priority for us.

01:37:20
Speaker 2: Louise.

01:37:22
Speaker 5: Oh God, Louise, will you pray for me?

01:37:32
Speaker 1: Uh?

01:37:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course? Can I ask what for?

01:37:38
Speaker 2: It's my mother?

01:37:43
Speaker 1: Will you pray for me? This stops Father Judd and the movie dead in their tracks, and honestly, it shocked me as well. I mean it shouldn't have, because this farnt of the movie, there was already some intriguing theological imagery, some conversations, so it's not like it completely came out of nowhere. But I didn't know until that point that Ryan Johnson was going to make religion, indeed theology, the central theme of Wake Up Dead Man. And honestly, Adam, I feel like he's been holding holding out on me. You and I have. We've interviewed him a couple of times, we've hung out around film spotting events. I had no idea he had this level of interest and thoughtfulness on stuff like this, and I think this prayer request moment is when I realized, Wow, this is really what this knive's out in my history is going to be about now just on its own terms. It is so beautifully written and constructed and performed. Noticing the scene, how how father Judd, you know, when he initially wants to move on from Louise, he says, if you can make it quick when she asks, can I ask you something? And then we even get this sense of Block's presence in the room. He's waving his hand at Judd, you know, like, and I think we hear him say something like maybe she can call you back, you know, like of her, get rid of her. Both of them are so eager to move on when she hasn't been proven to have the clue. And then when Louise unburdens herself, it dawns on father Judd that this is his place, this is what he was called for. Andy responds, The downshift in energy here is astonishing. I don't know of another movie that functions in exactly the same way, the downshift and energy and performance in camera work. Judd slowly goes into the other room. He gently closes the door on Bloc to take the call in private, and then Johnson cuts to the room that Blanc is still in and we see it's dark out now it's been raining to show that Jud's been on the call for a long time and Blanc's been impatiently waiting. It's as if the silly world has stopped spinning for a moment and we've become attuned to what matters being there for someone in distress, and in this case, it's something as every day but also as overwhelming as an ailing mother and a fraud relationship, which is what Louise describes. And I do want to call out Bridget Everett's performance here too. Johnson doesn't cut to her face until Louise starts breaking down about the fight with her mother. Before that, we just hear her voice, But when the camera finds her, Everett just steps up to the plate and hits it out of the park.

01:40:21
Speaker 3: Father.

01:40:22
Speaker 2: I I'm feeling pretty alone right now. I'm so sorry, Louis, You're not alone.

01:40:39
Speaker 4: I'm right here.

01:40:41
Speaker 1: I'm here. There's a meta element here too. Everett starred in the recent HBO series Somebody Somewhere, and I only saw a few episodes of it, kind of watched it over Debbie's shoulder because she watched the whole thing, and I know from that that that series offered the same sort of honest portrait of complicated faith in America that that I think Johnson is exploring here with Wake Up dead Man. So the casting is perfect on every front. And I want to share a comment here from Devin super actually on Everett's performance. He shared this with our scenestealer pole that we put out a while back. I want to throw my weight behind Bridget Everett and Wake Up dead Man. I was on board with the movie before she showed up, but she instantly grabs attention and reveals the film's beating heart. It's a small demonstration of what she does so well on HBO somebody somewhere, pivoting from broad comedy to heart wrenching drama without breaking a sweat. Honestly, it's miraculous. All right. So I'm almost done here. But here's why I had to elevate this scene I had initially when I first watched the movie, Adam, I thought, oh, most moving moment, this is it, And then watch the movie again, thought about it some more, and yeah, scene of the year one year ago. So last January, I was, like so many of us here in the US, facing the prospect of another administration, and I posted something on social media, more of a reminder to myself, just thinking about the year ahead than anything else. I just said, what will your resistance look like? I will not become complacent, but I will also not become consumed, and I'll do what I can in my local context to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly. It was a struggle to do that in twenty twenty five, especially especially to not be consumed, and especially as the year war on and the cruelty violence from the White House became worse than even I could have imagined. And I'm a pessimist on these things, believe me. Then this scene came around in Wake Up Dead Man, and it came to me, and it reminded me of that pledge I made to myself, you know, like Judge Judd, that I need to be to be snapped out of my misplaced fervor in cases and just reoriented toward toward ways I'm best suited to help hold out against despair. It's safe to say there's more to spare now the start of twenty twenty six, that there was a start twenty twenty five. Pick your outrageous abuse, But I think I'm going to keep the scene in mind and keep it in the back of my pocket and think about, you know, as long as I remember to take the call when it comes from someone else or I don't know, trust someone will be there to take my call at some point, that we might actually be okay. So this is kind of a scene that was a scene of the year, the scene that I needed, which is why I had to have it as my last and final pick. Will you Pray for Me? From Wake Up Dead Man?

01:43:31
Speaker 4: Wonderful choice, and it will be interesting to see just how closely the two of us are aligned when we get to my choice here in a moment. And about that scene, which I agree is a very startling scene and a moving scene. What is so startling about it is not that you doubt ever or I don't doubt Ryan Johnson's intelligence or thoughtfulness as a filmmaker, but even within the context of this movie, that's when you realize his full conviction on this topic and the full conviction of his thoughtfulness on this topic, and that this this isn't going to be a punchline, and religion here certainly isn't going to be a punchline. But it's also where you understand the conviction of Father jud not that you doubt him at this point in the movie. I think we do understand that he is fundamentally a man of action over words, that he is a man of deed, that he understands his calling. But that is the scene where we absolutely there's no there's no denying it. There's no way you could you could ever question it after this moment. There's certainly no no way that Benoi Blanc could ever question. I think it's a transformative scene for his character as well, observing Father Judd.

01:44:54
Speaker 1: That's a good point. Yeah, And you know, and Judd himself discovers it. That's part of the wonder of the scene, is like it's it's something that you know he had to be jolted towards. But yeah, I like your note about Blanc too, because I think it's true we see that in his response as well.

01:45:08
Speaker 4: You mentioned the dinner party in Black Bag. I'm going to mention the polygraph scene in Black Bag, which is my favorite from that film. It's very hard to not single out something from one battle after another, I know, the film of the year, especially when it was my number two and the number one for you and Alison and Michael. But I did say this to you and Sam via Slack. In terms of scenes of the year, I really consider moments. They aren't moments moments like the chase the underground railroad, They're sequences. I can't pinpoint those downs down two scenes now, that said our friend Mariah Gates on the film Spotting facebook page said, in answer to the prompt about scene of the year, Benicio keeping is cool as he runs his Latino Harriet Tubman escape for his community members while simultaneously helping Leo as he flails about trying to contact the French seventy five. If I had to narrow it down to just a portion of that, it would be something in that hallway as he is navigating that, and the and the the calmness with which he does that. I do think that that sequence is maybe the filmmaking sequence of the year.

01:46:20
Speaker 1: And you know what that's and that's the one I'm going to carry in my other back pocket to get you. I need you, brother s, s s, please courage, Bob Carriage, It's it.

01:46:34
Speaker 4: Court. Yeah, thank you, Hey, thank you, since thank you, Sinse, thank you God, damn it. I want to get to my very brief I'm just going to list it my runner up and then I'm going to get to where we really are connected on my pick for Scene of the Year, and so I'm going to I'm going to breeze past this one because we don't see it. Turns out, after reading your letterbox review, we don't see eye to eye on this movie, even though I would love and we're we're long enough into this show that that I don't think we need to get into it. But for people who have seen it, and I think you, you, even Josh, even though we see this movie differently and we see this scene differently, I think when I say it, you'll understand. You you probably do understand why. I see this moment as a fascinating one from the year, and it's from the documentary Predators, one of our Golden Brick nominees, and it's it's specifically the moment though it's the it's the ending of a of a scene that is crucial, and the context is crucial, but it's it's the line delivery when this character who is a character, a man who is playing the role of a Chris Hansen impersonator essentially on the Internet, a YouTube creation who calls himself Skeet Hanson, who, like Chris Hansen, he and his crew do actual legitimate work of catching predators, setting up these sting operations. And in the movie Predators, we see as they set up a sting, they get a man. I think he's a younger man. It's been a long time since I've seen it, but someone in his twenties maybe, who shows up at this motel room. And the thing about this scene is that the police don't show up right away, so then things get really messy. The humanity that's on display gets really messy, messy enough that even Skeet Hanson has to confront the messiness. And by the end of the scene he still has to Josh apparently deliver for himself and for his viewers and get the click and get the video. And he still has to deliver his catchphrase. He has to say, you've just been skeated, except he can't say it. He can't deliver it with the gusto that he normally says it because he just he can't even bring himself to do it. He can't get fully into character. And that that half hearted delivery and the blank stare with which he says it as he obliges himself and his audience that that, for me is the movie that that's the movie in a nutshell? Is that that that kind of despair and that conundrum and and so I think I think there's a lot going on in that You've just been skeeded line line delivery. And maybe we'll just leave it there that that's my last honorable mention unless you want want to get into any conversation about that movie.

01:49:41
Speaker 1: Josh, Yeah, we need to discuss Predators at some point. We've we've kind of very briefly done it on my letterboxed review. But yeah, I know you have a lot more thoughts on it, and I don't know what context will be able to do that. Maybe it'll just have to be offline with each other.

01:49:59
Speaker 4: May so my runner up this would be very brief because I'm literally just going to say one word. This is a case where I don't want to spoil it for people who may still be catching up with the movie. I named my number one film of the year. Yes, actually just ahead of one battle after another from it was just an accident. Jafar Panahi I'm just going to say footsteps, and I'm going to leave it there. My winner, my scene of the Year. And I do want to stress to people, and I hope people by now, especially people who have listened to the show for a while, believe and understand our sincerity and our conviction Josh that this isn't remotely by design, but it is fitting that as we close out our twentieth year of doing this show, a year in which we were able to celebrate that anniversary with Film Spotting Fest, an amazing opportunity to get together with our community of listeners, an event. There was headline by Koganata and by Ryan Johnson that we ended up being each so captivated by and really, I don't know what better word to use by moments that were so provocative to us emotionally, intellectually different moments, but different moments from the same movie, and they even made us think along similar lines. And the movie is Wake Up Dead Man. My moment though, and spoilers, I'm throwing out the spoilers. If you haven't seen it, you need to stop. You need to go watch Wake Up Dead Man. If you have not seen it yet, it's on Netflix. During our review I said that I was surprised. The moment I'm going with is I'm calling it absolution. It's the confession scene. It's Martha Glenn Close her confession scene. She's in the arms of father Judd and confessing her role in three deaths that she is confessing to in this moment. And I said during the review that I didn't expect to feel so moved during a murderer's confession in it who done it? And I want to be clear, I do feel some compassion for Martha there in her dying moments, despite all of the evil she's done, because she has confessed it and she's doing it with such clarity. But that isn't really what I was trying to describe, or saying I was moved is barely sufficient because it is a lot more than that. And I could even pinpoint it down to a specific moment within this scene where you know how we say or people sometimes use that cliche they say I got chills or it gives me chills. No, I mean I actually got chills. I actually got a chill watching it for the first time, and every single time I've watched it since. Josh pulling the scene for this show and rewatching it and preparing my thoughts on it, I get that same little I don't know what other word to describe it other than a chill watching this scene. And it's the kind of chill you get where you're marveling at how something all comes together when an artistic moment all comes together, emotionally, intellectually, the filmmaking, the acting, it's just all there. She's confessing her sins, She's going to her death. I don't know what Father Judd is going to say, but my only thought is that he's going to comfort her. Right, He's there to comfort her. That's his role there in this moment, and so we're going to get this lovely, redemptive moment where she receives grace despite all that she's done. The last thing that I imagine him doing is challenging her. He's not going to do that. That's never going to happen. You said something, Josh talking about your scene about feeling shocked even though you shouldn't, and I'll use the word surprise. This is the first surprise for me. What does he say after she rattles off the names of all the men who have died because of her, he says, and Grace, he asks, except it's not a question, he goes there. He is going to force her to confront her role in Grace's tragic downfall on her deathbed as she's confessing her sins. That's surprise number one. Surprise number two, this is the moment that really gets me. Glenn Close's response. Honestly, the fact that I left her off my favorite supporting performances of the year is criminal. Her face, her immediate resistance, not that the reaction is surprising for her character, but the portrayal of it, the actual acting. The reaction is such an expression of hatred and anger. The way she hardens and clenches is just a kick. And he tells her to let it go. And that's then. Surprise number three is watching Martha soften and say and this is all happening in a matter of like ten seconds, right, That's the beauty of it. Three surprises like this, Three little revelations in ten to fifteen seconds of screen time, her softening and saying, yes, I see it now, that poor girl, and asking for forgiveness for Grace, Grace.

01:55:31
Speaker 2: I've seen it now forgive me, Chris.

01:55:37
Speaker 4: I understand the confession. I understand what it's supposed to be, and I think it is and what I don't think it usually is. But I think what we see here is what it is supposed to be, Josh, It's not supposed to be what it usually is, which is I did these bad things, and here I'm admitting them. So tell me what penance I should serve, and then I'll be absolved of those. The priest is there to be a mediator. He's supposed to be an instrument of God's mercy. It's called the sacrament of reconciliation. It's an opportunity for healing, and even in a moment like this, it's a moment of guidance. And that is as I said, that's what I think we actually get in these fleeting moments. And what's notable about the scene, too, is that when I talked about that clenching of her face, what does Ryan do? What does Ryan Johnson do? He gives us insert shots, two notable insert shots of her hands, her face and her hands clenching. The way she resists, man does she harden? She does not want to let go of that anger and hatred, right, and then she does when she does let go. Her hands, Her hands let go, mirroring father jud and his hands. When he talks about how he faces the world when he faced the world as a boxer, he faced the world with his hands up, clenched, his fists, ready to fight the world, versus how he faces the world now with his hands out, ready to be more inviting and accept people in. I don't think it's by accident that he cuts to those insert insert shots of her hands clenching and then finally her hands releasing, and that here, here's where we're going to completely intersect, not just on the movie, but in terms of our frame frames of mind. That scene has been in my mind a lot, not just because of this show, but because right this second. Over the past three or four days as we're taping this especially, it's become increasingly harder for me to think about facing the world with my hands out. I'm I'm as angry as I've ever been. I've been able to I've been I will say this, I've been privileged enough to not be consumed by it, to use your word, up until now, I've been able to let it not distract me as much as I as it should. And and the recent events in in Minneapolis have have have forced me to confront it in a way that have forced me to confront it in a way that have caused that anger to rise. And I don't think the takeaway from this scene or from Wake Up Dead Man is necessarily that we should all let that anger go or that that anger isn't valid. I do think it's certainly a reminder for acceptance, or that it's a reminder that we should we should be approaching the world that way first and foremost. But I do think it's it's a reminder that we should be open, we should be open to the idea of reconciliation. But I do think there's also a key part of that Josh, which is open to reconciliation if those who have sinned are repentant. M I think that's an important component of that as well.

01:59:16
Speaker 1: Essial and justice comes first exactly.

01:59:20
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's no no scene. It's my number one scene of the year, not because of recent events. Recent events tacked on to its its relevance to me and why it's why it's so important to me. But no moment impacted me more watching it as I as I took it in that than that scene, that absolution scene from Wake Up dead Men.

01:59:49
Speaker 1: And we've talked about both of our scenes in terms of being surprised and unexpected, and I think that, you know, the ultimate magic trick of Wake Up dead Man being this murder mystery is that it does have those twists. It does have those surprises in terms of the plot, the mystery plot. But we've been talking about different ones. We've been talking about next level like provocative surprises that Ryan Johnson wove into this movie, even beyond the ones that I thought for sure we were just going to get going in the movie. I just thought this was going to be yes, the background, you know, the glass onion was the island, and you know, it was the family home and the first knives out you could say, and then this was this church in this community was going to be the background, and man movie made.

02:00:41
Speaker 4: It so much more. The layers, the layers there, and the different the different emotional notes, the complexity of that final scene for me and your scene as well, is what elevates this film. We're already talking about spoilers, so it shouldn't matter, but I'm going to say it again, have you heard or have you been thinking about it all the Have you heard any theories about this film in terms of the character of Grace and something that Benoit Blanc may or may not reveal about the nature of what happened to Grace near the end of this film, But is it's not something that Ryan Johnson like draws a sign and with an arrow pointing to have you heard anything about that?

02:01:28
Speaker 1: No, I haven't, but I'm sure. I'm sure there's something planted and planned there.

02:01:35
Speaker 4: Well, so I'll just tell you briefly. It's really interesting because in the scene where he is doing his his reveal, the pre reveal, and then of course he gets stymied, right is he He is explaining that he had to think about it in terms of the myth, right, he had to think about it from a storytelling perspective. And these are his words, not to solve whether it was real or not, but to feel in my soul the essence of that which it strove to convey. Now, listen to this line. A holy priest struck down by no man, but by the hand of Satan, himself, laid to rest in the sealed tomb of his father, but then risen by the will of God. As you listen to that. Anything strike you as off or incorrect about that last sentence.

02:02:30
Speaker 1: No, you're just gonna have to give it to me. It's too late here, And.

02:02:33
Speaker 4: I'm with you. I even knew this and read it again last night and confused myself. A holy priest struck down by no man. The holy priest is Jefferson Wicks. Of course, Josh Brolin's character right, struck down by no man, but by the hand of Satan. Himself laid to rest in the sealed tomb of his father. He's laid to rest in the sealed tomb of his grandfather, the Reverend Prentice. That's not the sealed tomb of his father, unless he is actually the son of his father, because Reverend Prentice Wicks is also the father of he's the grandson, and he's the father of Jefferson because he had a sexual relationship with his daughter. And that's the explanation for the hatred. And actually, Josh, that the reason why that resonates with me so much, and it should resonate, honestly with I think everybody listening is because I do remember in the moment watching the movie and feeling, why are we buying Martha's portrayal of the Harlot Horror. Why would Grace what reason would Grace have? Why are we believing that she was just born evil and hates her father and wants to away, yeah, and has such feelings of avarice and Greek. No, No, she was probably abused. She was probably abused and can't wait for the man to die and just wants his money and to get out of town. Okay, And is it possible that Benoi Blanc is actually dropping he know, he figured that out and is dropping that into that revelation. But just like us right now, nobody, nobody here, nobody puts it together when he says.

02:04:24
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, yeah, it's it's certainly possible. I'm thinking about it in terms of the movie's themes and and your pick in particular.

02:04:35
Speaker 4: Yes, I see it now, I see now that poor girl forgive me Grace.

02:04:41
Speaker 1: That's what she sees, right, And I guess what I now. That's where That's where I was going. Is like, it doesn't because then you're talking about even if Grace had been the grace that Martha thinks, yes, she still needs to confess for what she did to her and let it go.

02:05:03
Speaker 4: It works on either level, she still needs to let it go. But if she is actually seeing it now, that poor girl takes on different meaning.

02:05:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fast. I think you know, I think jud in his position, we get a sense that he has even if he doesn't know what you just piece together, he still gets a sense that Grace is someone that needs to be understood fully right beyond and how she's been depicted, and that that's like how he allows Martha to get down that path so.

02:05:36
Speaker 4: Well, and what you what you just said is actually a perfect way to sum up what we were just speaking to. Benois Blanc understands it on the level of Grace, that poor girl who was abused, perhaps father jud understands it simply on the level of she didn't deserve.

02:05:56
Speaker 1: That, exactly, exactly.

02:05:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, okay, that is our twenty twenty five rap party, our scenes of the year. And well that was fun, even if we got into some relatively heavy territory there.

02:06:12
Speaker 1: At the end.

02:06:13
Speaker 4: But that's what the movies are all about, Josh. It's not always a party.

02:06:16
Speaker 1: I mean, see, if we had a live audience, we wouldn't have we wouldn't have gotten into all of this, right, we wouldn't have laid this on a live.

02:06:23
Speaker 4: Group, so next year, a little lighter, I would have had a whiskey flight in front of me and played more scenes from the Naked Gun exactly. All right, that's our show.

02:06:33
Speaker 1: If you want to connect with Adaman the show on social media, you can find them on Instagram, Facebook, letterbox, and YouTube. At film spotting, I'm at all those places. As Larsen on film we are independently produced and listeners supported. You can support the show by joining the film Spotting Family at film spottingfamily dot com. You can listen early in ad free. You'll also get a weekly newsletter, monthly bonus episodes, and access to the entire show archive. For show t shirts another merch, go to filmspotting dot net slash shop.

02:07:03
Speaker 4: In that archive, you can find full reviews of many of the films we've talked about this week as part of the Rap Party. Also reviews of all of our Golden Brick finalists and long listers. Out streaming this weekend. The new one from Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. They are Miami Cops mixed up in a Joe Carnahan directed Dirty Cops kind of thing. It's called The Rip. It's on Netflix in limited release. Expanding is Gus van Zant's dead Man's Wire. I recommended that on last week's show. And expanding a movie that we gave some love to this week Hamnet winner of the Golden Globe for Best Drama and Best Actress. That went to Jesse Buckley in wide release Charlie the Wonderdog tagline He's a good boy most of the time. It's an animated film featuring the talents of Owen Wilson and out twenty eight years later, The Bone Temple. But Josh, if I heard you're right, possibly you're not going to get to it.

02:07:57
Speaker 1: We'll see if it's playing near me wherever I happen.

02:07:59
Speaker 4: To be okay, and if it has English subtitles wherever you may be playing, or.

02:08:05
Speaker 1: However that one points, I haven't thought of that yet.

02:08:08
Speaker 4: Next week one of us may be talking about The Bone Temple and we will have our twenty twenty six movie preview.

02:08:16
Speaker 1: Film Spotting is produced by Golden Joe Desso and Sam van Halgren. Without Sam and Golden Joe, this show wouldn't go. Our production assistant is Sophie Kempinar special thanks to everyone at wbeazy Chicago. More information is available at wbez dot org. For film spotting, I'm Josh Larson.

02:08:33
Speaker 4: And I'm Adam Kempinar. Thanks for listening.

02:08:35
Speaker 3: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. The burn.

02:08:48
Speaker 4: Film Spotting is listener supported. Join the film Spotting family at filmspottingfamily dot com and get access to ad free episodes, monthly bonus shows, our weekly newsletter, and, for the first time, all in one place, the entire film spotting archive going back to two thousand and five. That's a film Spotting Family dot com pannably