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Speaker 2: The film board gathers. The Gang of Thugs is here
Speaker 2: to take on a movie currently in theaters and this month.
Speaker 2: What if someone you loved became something else? What if
Speaker 2: that loved one became something else? After locking you all
Speaker 2: in Oregon together? Forget full moons and silver bullets. Lee
Speaker 2: one LL's latest Universal remake, wolf Man, is a story
Speaker 2: of family drama, generational trauma, and oh yeah, turning into
Speaker 2: a terrifying Wolfman monster thing. It's part horror, part body horror,
Speaker 2: part marriage horror, and part parenting horror. All of it's
Speaker 2: gone horribly horribly wrong.
Speaker 1: Hello, could anyone hear me?
Speaker 2: WHOA, we were in an accident.
Speaker 3: Daddy, we're gonna die. No, it's my job to protect.
Speaker 1: You and we we were at to act.
Speaker 2: I think my husband was infected. What daddy, daddy? What's
Speaker 2: wrong with daddy?
Speaker 1: She got sick?
Speaker 3: What is happening to me?
Speaker 1: Can you understand me? You're you're hearing you're scaring me.
Speaker 2: That is me, Hurry, Mommy is coming. I'd beat right
Speaker 2: in joining me to mark their territory all over this film.
Speaker 2: Or Tommy meets the Third and Steve Sarmento Hello, gents, Hello, Hello,
Speaker 2: A rude to you. The transformation from stay at home
Speaker 2: dad to feral beast raises some questions. Can you protect
Speaker 2: your family when you are the danger? Does the film's
Speaker 2: emotional bite match its monster mayhem? Or is the reboot
Speaker 2: all bark and no bite. It's a real doggy dog World,
Speaker 2: don't you agree, Tom, Doggy Dog World. That's right, Doggy
Speaker 2: Dog Classic.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: Let's let's get some just opening thoughts. Where where do
Speaker 2: I feel? I feel like I want to start with
Speaker 2: Tom because Steve comes into the meeting tonight having renamed
Speaker 2: himself not Steve Sarmento, but Sad Steve, and that scares me.
Speaker 2: So I like to start with somebody who I think knows.
Speaker 2: I think I know where he's coming from on the movie,
Speaker 2: what do you?
Speaker 3: I was not excited about this movie until I found
Speaker 3: out who directed it, because, as I've mentioned maybe before,
Speaker 3: I'm not a huge wolf person, wolfman person, or traditional
Speaker 3: universal monster person but this guy lay one out lay
Speaker 3: one l I've always said Lee Lee Lee Weel directed
Speaker 3: the Invisible Man remake, which was outstanding, so that made
Speaker 3: me really excited for this. I wanted to see if
Speaker 3: this would be a sort of a reconstructed, deconstructed horror
Speaker 3: movie that's really about something else instead of just turning
Speaker 3: into wolves. So with that, I was looking forward to it.
Speaker 3: And yeah, that's how I went into this movie. Overall,
Speaker 3: I think this movie has two really really outstanding ideas,
Speaker 3: and that's more than some movies have. Is that enough?
Speaker 3: Is that enough to warrant the entire screen time? I'm
Speaker 3: not exactly sure. I think it got some things really
Speaker 3: right in some things were lacking enough where I was
Speaker 3: a little disappointed because the parts that were good made
Speaker 3: me want the parts that were lacking to be so
Speaker 3: much better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh so I'm right there. I'm right there with
Speaker 1: Tommy because I knew this was part of that Lumhouse.
Speaker 1: We're going to reconceive these universal classic monster movies and
Speaker 1: we're going to really present them different. I love Invisible Man,
Speaker 1: so I thought, Okay, I'm looking for this reinvention. I
Speaker 1: know I'm not going to get the traditional wolf Man,
Speaker 1: which I was fine with. I do love the nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one. The wolf Man's my favorite classic monster movies,
Speaker 1: so I knew I wasn't going to get that I
Speaker 1: was going to get a twist on it. So I
Speaker 1: was really intrigued by what would be that end to
Speaker 1: that story. What is that twist that they're going to
Speaker 1: do that's going to allow them to leverage that sort
Speaker 1: of mythology of that wolfman, you know, dual nature of man.
Speaker 1: Do something with that. And I there were some there
Speaker 1: were some parts of this that I really enjoyed. There's
Speaker 1: some sequences that really, wow, this is I like this direction.
Speaker 1: I liked some of these things. But ultimately, by the
Speaker 1: time I left the movie.
Speaker 3: I was very sad.
Speaker 1: And then as I read a little bit more about
Speaker 1: what the writers were trying to do with this story,
Speaker 1: the spin they were trying to take, I got actually
Speaker 1: angry with this film because I have some strong feelings
Speaker 1: about what they felt they were trying to say with this,
Speaker 1: and I have sharp disagreement with that. So I've said
Speaker 1: and angry about this film. Sad and angry, Yeah, sangry, Wow, angry.
Speaker 3: I didn't read anything about this movie, so I'm just
Speaker 3: skipping around, okay.
Speaker 2: I so I went into it. I think maybe I was.
Speaker 2: I was ambivalent going into it. I wasn't not excited
Speaker 2: about it. I be in HVISI Man was great, obviously,
Speaker 2: Leewan l I like and and so I was excited
Speaker 2: to see what he could do revisioning this this property,
Speaker 2: just because I've watched a bunch of other Wolfman movies
Speaker 2: and I tend to be a fan of a lot
Speaker 2: of more recent ones. When animals dream, ginger snaps, I
Speaker 2: like very much, And so I like the idea. And
Speaker 2: I also like that the fact that that werewolves are
Speaker 2: just such a easy metaphor for so many different kinds
Speaker 2: of things. And I think that's where this movie sets
Speaker 2: up a lot right right that. You know, we have
Speaker 2: themes of parenthood and family and generational trauma and loss
Speaker 2: of humanity and identity, and of course we've got survival
Speaker 2: and sort of the Sophie's Choice, uh kind of stuff
Speaker 2: in here in an isolated, sort of confined space. Like
Speaker 2: I like all of that stuff, All of the intention
Speaker 2: around those big themes absolutely hit home with me. And
Speaker 2: I don't know if there's a single one of them
Speaker 2: that I feel like made good on its promise in
Speaker 2: the setup of the movie, and that's the disappointment. I
Speaker 2: don't think I'm sad or angry. I'm not sangry. I
Speaker 2: am disappointed that I feel like the movie had so
Speaker 2: much promise and ended up being ultimately a little bit empty.
Speaker 2: That it would be a terrible movie if it were
Speaker 2: not for a few really interesting things that they did
Speaker 2: with the actual making of it that I loved. Like there,
Speaker 2: I was like blown back in my seat watching some
Speaker 2: of the choices that they made. And I know we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about those in a little bit, but first,
Speaker 2: if you will indulge me a brief overview of the story. Blake,
Speaker 2: a writer and stay at home father living in San Francisco,
Speaker 2: inherits his childhood home in a place I like to
Speaker 2: call rural Oregon in name only, Reino. After his estranged
Speaker 2: father is presumed dead. Blake's having a tough time at
Speaker 2: home and wants to use this trip to visit his
Speaker 2: dead dad's place to reconnect with his wife Charlotte and
Speaker 2: daughter Ginger. They don't think it's a good idea, but
Speaker 2: narrative propels them all to Roino anyway. As they approach
Speaker 2: the farmhouse at night, they are attacked by an unseen creature.
Speaker 2: Because sometimes this movie goes hard on pace. The family
Speaker 2: foreshadowingly barricades themselves inside together and Blake begins to exhibit
Speaker 2: strange behavior. Charlotte has just start doing a lot of
Speaker 2: work around the house because her husband does an increasing
Speaker 2: amount of sitting about and eventually licking and chewing on himself.
Speaker 2: That is the story of wolf Man.
Speaker 3: That's not bad. You're exactly right, yep, well play.
Speaker 2: Uh so, let's let's dig in just just a bit
Speaker 2: on some of those themes, because I want to hear Steve,
Speaker 2: what pissed you off so hard?
Speaker 1: Oh you want me just go angry?
Speaker 2: Holl on it.
Speaker 3: Wolf men aren't real?
Speaker 2: So wolf aren't real?
Speaker 3: Aren't real?
Speaker 2: About point of order?
Speaker 1: Yes, so it started with so I have to get
Speaker 1: into the movie a little bit one of the twists,
Speaker 1: and we can talk about pot points all that, but
Speaker 1: I felt by the end of the movie we had
Speaker 1: a sense that Blake had lost his humanity, and Pete,
Speaker 1: I think you alluded to that, and there's various ways
Speaker 1: in which that happens, which we can discuss later. But
Speaker 1: to get to my point about angry. So at the
Speaker 1: end of the movie, he's lost his humanity. So that
Speaker 1: when I read that Whenell said in the story they
Speaker 1: were inspired by a close friend's battle with als, which
Speaker 1: took away her mobility and ability to communicate in a long,
Speaker 1: slow process, it was terrifying to watch, thinking, this is
Speaker 1: a movie about people with a disease like that where
Speaker 1: communication can break down, or Alzheimer's dementia, things like that,
Speaker 1: And to then extend that metaphor to say, oh, when
Speaker 1: that happens to you, you are losing your humanity. You
Speaker 1: are becoming a monster. That is very problematic to me,
Speaker 1: because if Blake had kept his humanity and had a barrier,
Speaker 1: he could not overcome. But we lose all sense of
Speaker 1: who he is. We don't see his perspective anymore, so
Speaker 1: we don't know what his thoughts are, we don't know
Speaker 1: what his motives are, so he becomes monster less than human.
Speaker 1: And to say that someone suffering from one of these
Speaker 1: horrible diseases loses their humanity because of their inability to
Speaker 1: communicate is really offensive to me and makes me very angry.
Speaker 2: I think that's really interesting, and it gets to the
Speaker 2: visual conceit that the movie uses to define perspective that
Speaker 2: I was so blown away by Oh I loved it, Yes,
Speaker 2: but it's equally frustrating. So we're at Tom, do you
Speaker 2: want to describe it? You liked it too, right? We
Speaker 2: texted about this part.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wolf eyes, wolf vision, I don't know what to
Speaker 3: call it, but yeah, when we start to see from
Speaker 3: his perspective, he's able to classic Wolfman stuff, like he
Speaker 3: smells things that no one else is able to smell.
Speaker 3: All of his senses are heightened. But then visually, his
Speaker 3: ability to see in the dark is greatly enhanced, and
Speaker 3: it's almost sort of like this. I don't know if
Speaker 3: it's infrared, but it's like that you see like light traces,
Speaker 3: you know. He can There was one time when I
Speaker 3: thought it was too much. Was the spider? I thought
Speaker 3: it was it was too much because it was just
Speaker 3: like the spiders are too loud, Like it's like someone
Speaker 3: like pushing over a bunch of paint cans. And it
Speaker 3: turns out he's just looking at a spider, yeah, with
Speaker 3: a boombox, so that, you know. But the afilion to see,
Speaker 3: to hear, see, smell out things is really graphically well played.
Speaker 3: Not graphically visually in ways that we haven't had a lot.
Speaker 3: Usually it's a lot of sniffing and it's a lot
Speaker 3: of hearing, and we can talk about the sound design
Speaker 3: for this movie, but yeah, to be able to in
Speaker 3: one shot, we will see the perspective of what the
Speaker 3: family is seeing in their limited abilities and what is
Speaker 3: he seeing in his heightened abilities, And it really makes
Speaker 3: for a great comparison.
Speaker 2: And the transition the first time they used that trick
Speaker 2: was brilliant. It was suddenly, we're speaking Russian in red
Speaker 2: October right like. It was a really neat bit of
Speaker 2: awareness that you didn't know you were in his perspective,
Speaker 2: and that's why he suddenly couldn't you know, his family
Speaker 2: wasn't talking to him anymore, even as he was talking
Speaker 2: to them. I thought that was such a fantastic reveal.
Speaker 2: The problem I have with it when you talk about
Speaker 2: promises that they did not make good on, is exactly
Speaker 2: to your point, Steve. I would have loved it if
Speaker 2: we'd had a diving bell in the butterfly experience, where
Speaker 2: he is trapped in this perspective and he still deeply
Speaker 2: wants to communicate but can't, and the rage is that
Speaker 2: metaphor for werewolf, you know, the werewolf monster, because otherwise
Speaker 2: you're right, he loses everything and the metaphor falls apart.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I would have been frustrated by
Speaker 2: it had I not read the same thing you did,
Speaker 2: like what they had said. Had I not known any
Speaker 2: of that, I probably wouldn't have given it much thought
Speaker 2: other than wouldn't it have been cool? But the fact
Speaker 2: is that to know that was kind of intentional and
Speaker 2: not seeing the other side of what that communicates, I
Speaker 2: think is hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's what made me sad walking out of
Speaker 1: the movie at first. Was I put in my notes,
Speaker 1: I'm like, Blake has lost his humanity apparently, but I
Speaker 1: don't know when that happens in his transformation, or if
Speaker 1: we were to assume that, are we to assume that
Speaker 1: he does maintain his humanity Because of the final moment
Speaker 1: where the daughter communicates what she senses he is thinking,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's accurate or not, And I
Speaker 1: think maybe I'm to assume that, but I haven't been
Speaker 1: given enough along the way to really solidify that that
Speaker 1: there's a deeper understanding of what he's trying to do.
Speaker 1: By the daughter and we as an audience have no
Speaker 1: sense of why he's acting certain ways. If we could
Speaker 1: get into his perspective, it is that I need to
Speaker 1: tell you something, or I'm trying to get you to
Speaker 1: someplace safe, or I'm trying to push you away from
Speaker 1: me because of these these urges I'm having, you know,
Speaker 1: to gnaw on flesh or whatever that is, and we don't,
Speaker 1: we just it just becomes monster versus you know, final
Speaker 1: girl and daughter running through the woods. And I don't
Speaker 1: know why we are given that other than that is
Speaker 1: the tropes of the genre as oh, you're getting chased
Speaker 1: by the monster. But I had been built up to expect, oh,
Speaker 1: this shifting perspective. It was a great balance back and
Speaker 1: forth of their frustration, his frustration or overcoming this barrier
Speaker 1: of how do we fix this? And we've got a
Speaker 1: ticking clock of you know, is this getting worse? We're
Speaker 1: in a confined space. All those great moments to come
Speaker 1: to a boiling point of something and to just cop out.
Speaker 3: At the end.
Speaker 1: It made me very sad because it could have been
Speaker 1: so powerful.
Speaker 3: But he doesn't spend a lot of time just hunting them, right,
Speaker 3: He's protecting them for mostly from the ogol. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: I think that's his fatherly, that that's the humanity that's there.
Speaker 3: I do agree with Steve that it's it's like, at
Speaker 3: some point it feels like there is a missing part
Speaker 3: of this movie. You see him after he's he gets
Speaker 3: almost pulled under the door by og wolf monster, and
Speaker 3: then he has some sort of like a weird fit,
Speaker 3: and then they do a practical thing where all the
Speaker 3: lights go out and he is Then that's very cool.
Speaker 3: But then when we're next a lot has happened, and
Speaker 3: it seems like, why was that off screen? He has
Speaker 3: now lost the ability to understand any language he is
Speaker 3: writing that he's dying. I mean that just seemed like
Speaker 3: a pretty key part to be able to see the
Speaker 3: warping of things.
Speaker 2: I saw it two days ago, Tom check me out
Speaker 2: on order of things because the og door event happens,
Speaker 2: lights go down, when he wakes up, he's on the
Speaker 2: couch he's been sleeping, and then he makes his way
Speaker 2: downstairs to hear his wife on the ham radio. Right,
Speaker 2: is that the next thing that happens? I think that
Speaker 2: sounds right, Yes, yes, yes, So I walked out with
Speaker 2: that question of how long was he asleep because clearly,
Speaker 2: and this is what gets to I think the movie's
Speaker 2: sort of divergence from lore, which is this it seems
Speaker 2: to be treating this disease, wolf face disease as a
Speaker 2: disease or an infection, something that can be spread through
Speaker 2: cuts obviously, and not through any you know, timey wymy
Speaker 2: cycle of the moon stuff anymore. We're just this is
Speaker 2: just what happens when you get sick in Oregon.
Speaker 3: Which I really liked when I said there are two
Speaker 3: great ideas in the movie. One of them for me
Speaker 3: is making this a bottle episode that not having you
Speaker 3: go through days and days of I think I can
Speaker 3: smell with that Spider's thinking or whatever. Having it sped
Speaker 3: up so fast made it really compelling to me. Now
Speaker 3: I know I'm talking outside of my mouth because I said,
Speaker 3: sped it up so fast, great job. But there also
Speaker 3: is a function. There's a part of the movie missing
Speaker 3: that seems like they Tyler durdin it that like so
Speaker 3: much happens apparently when he's asleep, that all a project
Speaker 3: mayhem happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I took that as I mean, yeah, we
Speaker 1: need to cut out some time so that I'm assuming
Speaker 1: since it all takes place overnight, and I want to
Speaker 1: say it's it's maybe an hour or two at most
Speaker 1: that it could could possibly be. So I took that as,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the virus acting, you know, so that
Speaker 1: when he wakes up, we don't have that he's lost
Speaker 1: that sense of progression of slowly, although we do get
Speaker 1: a hint of it earlier on when he's barricading the
Speaker 1: door and he turns and talks to his wife and
Speaker 1: he talks to his daughter and they're just sort of
Speaker 1: looking at him.
Speaker 3: Right, which we find out later it's because he's speaking Russian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's speaking. And the other aspect that I thought
Speaker 1: maybe you were alluding to Tommy about two aspects of
Speaker 1: this is it's the fact that it's the return to
Speaker 1: his home and the movie starts with the whole thing
Speaker 1: with his his father and all that we know he's conflicted,
Speaker 1: and he has that speech to his daughter about sometimes
Speaker 1: you know, his parents were so focused on protecting our
Speaker 1: kids from the things that scar them that we become
Speaker 1: the things that end up doing the scarring. About his
Speaker 1: relationship with his father, the fact that I mean we
Speaker 1: can get into I don't know how much of a
Speaker 1: spoiler this is but og Wolf is his father, so
Speaker 1: everything coming back to where he grew up. The source
Speaker 1: of this infection is his father. It's all this fear
Speaker 1: of am I becoming my father? Am I creating this
Speaker 1: barrier between me.
Speaker 3: And my child?
Speaker 1: Aspect of that I thought was, you know, before I
Speaker 1: read about disease things, I thought, oh, this guy is
Speaker 1: returning to his home. He's becoming more in touch with
Speaker 1: who his you know, who he was raised to be,
Speaker 1: his roots. Because we have that friction between the wife
Speaker 1: and him, which is really ill defined about what that
Speaker 1: friction is in their marriage. But now that he's back
Speaker 1: to who he is, he's sort of embracing this is
Speaker 1: my true identity, which is going to create more in
Speaker 1: the marriage. And I thought that's an interesting metaphor, but
Speaker 1: again I don't have Once he kills og Wolf aka Dad,
Speaker 1: according to my notes that I took as I was
Speaker 1: watching this, that's when we no longer see his perspective anymore.
Speaker 1: We no longer see anything from Break's point of view
Speaker 1: because he's become his father, fully animal, fully defiant, whatever,
Speaker 1: and so we don't know what he's thinking, and he's
Speaker 1: lost that humanity because he's become we're all, you know,
Speaker 1: crazy woodsman guy living off the grit. He's fully embraced
Speaker 1: that by killing the father.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's no there's no real functional book of
Speaker 2: the vampire in this like there's no real exposition dump
Speaker 2: in the middle that explains what's happening. But I think that's,
Speaker 2: you know, that comes from sort of internalized lore. Once
Speaker 2: you actually exercise your new abilities by you know, your
Speaker 2: first kill really cements it. And now you're a werewolf.
Speaker 2: We kind of know that, right. Do we have any
Speaker 2: idea on because there are actually three wolf's men in
Speaker 2: this movie. We know our protagonist Blake is a wolfman.
Speaker 2: We also know that Dad is now a wolf man.
Speaker 2: But arguably there's a very long yeah, there's a ooh yeah,
Speaker 2: no o g wolfman from the beginning that Dad and
Speaker 2: young Blake were out hunting. Who was that?
Speaker 3: He was the hiker that went missing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the hiker that went missing in the That's that's
Speaker 1: what I assumed.
Speaker 2: That was the opening title card, right, that was what
Speaker 2: I was assuming too. But I thought, maybe the movie's
Speaker 2: getting a little cheeky and it's actually Grandpa. What do
Speaker 2: they want me to believe? Because it's so circular, right, Like,
Speaker 2: this comes back to the exact same thing in the
Speaker 2: in the Deer Blind that happens to the beginning in
Speaker 2: the beginning happens at the end. But this time she
Speaker 2: closes the loop, right she does. The werewolf doesn't get away.
Speaker 2: And when you think about what her taking action, what
Speaker 2: does that represent closing the loop? Had dad closed the
Speaker 2: loop before, the entire family lineage would change in ways.
Speaker 2: So there's some interesting stuff going on there.
Speaker 1: Oh there is, yeah, that.
Speaker 3: And it sounds better how you just did it than
Speaker 3: I think it was portrayed. I think one of the
Speaker 3: things that's missing is some pretty serious chemistry with this
Speaker 3: family that usually you not do a bottle episode until
Speaker 3: you have really defined all of your relationships because then
Speaker 3: by definition, you can sit them down in a room
Speaker 3: and have them all talk. To your point. You already said,
Speaker 3: we don't know nothing. We don't know nothing. We don't
Speaker 3: know anything about this marriage. We do so little about
Speaker 3: I mean, she says, I don't know how to talk
Speaker 3: to my daughter. Okay, so thanks for telling us that
Speaker 3: and not showing us. They have no chemistry. Husband and
Speaker 3: wife has almost no chemistry. There's not a lot to
Speaker 3: root for in this story about families falling apart in
Speaker 3: generational trauma. That one scene with him and his daughter
Speaker 3: when he's like, I'm sorry, I don't want to be
Speaker 3: my dad, Like, it's pretty telegraph. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: telling in this movie. Yeah, for as quick as it moves,
Speaker 3: sometimes there's also a lot of time just sort of spent,
Speaker 3: and it needed to be more. I think maybe this
Speaker 3: movie was potentially miscast and I don't know why, but
Speaker 3: there's just not a real There's no electricity between all
Speaker 3: three characters. I believe that they're a family, and I
Speaker 3: think the daughter's lisp gets stronger and stronger at different
Speaker 3: times of the movie. At the end, she says, is
Speaker 3: daddy thick? And I was like, you didn't say that
Speaker 3: in the first half of the movie. Daddy is not thick.
Speaker 2: I had no comment on a child's lisp, but I'm
Speaker 2: going to let that go. Carried that, but I will say,
Speaker 2: I think you're exactly right. Even though I found the
Speaker 2: Ginger adorable, I thought she was she was great as
Speaker 2: a kid. I never once felt like she was the
Speaker 2: child of her parents, and I most of the time
Speaker 2: felt like Blake was some sort of an opair care
Speaker 2: person for the child, and that he had barely met
Speaker 2: his wife, like when she walked in, they looked so
Speaker 2: wrong for each other, Like I would have been the
Speaker 2: friend saying, don't ever marry the don't ever marry right right,
Speaker 2: like they're just they should not they they shouldn't have
Speaker 2: been been together. And I struggle with that now. Neither
Speaker 2: of them are people that I know too much about.
Speaker 2: The only thing I've seen Julia Garner in is the
Speaker 2: Delvy show that she did. Do you remember the Oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, you guys and a Delvi She was in
Speaker 2: what was it called? Well, she was in Martha Macy,
Speaker 2: Martha Barcy May Marlin, which was terrific, terrific, terrific. Apartment
Speaker 2: seven A apparently was pretty good. But the thing she
Speaker 2: was in Inventing Anna was Oh.
Speaker 3: About that woman that had the talk crazy and just
Speaker 3: sort of made up a life.
Speaker 2: Yes, she made up a life, and she's now out
Speaker 2: of jail. And I think she was on Dancing with
Speaker 2: the Stars. I could not bring myself to watch it
Speaker 2: because it was such a it just felt dirty. But
Speaker 2: apparently she was very good. Julie Garner was very very
Speaker 2: good as this horrible woman. And so that's the only
Speaker 2: thing I really knew about her was I liked her
Speaker 2: as a cultist and that i'd heard she was very good.
Speaker 3: And they're both both husband and wife were both in
Speaker 3: Martha Marcy May Marlene. So maybe that's how it all
Speaker 3: came together. I don't know. I didn't think that they
Speaker 3: were a good fit. And I know they're not supposed
Speaker 3: to be a great fit, but you're supposed to at
Speaker 3: least have the feeling of there was such a spark
Speaker 3: that is now gone. This was there a drag And
Speaker 3: even before he becomes a sad wolf man, he's already
Speaker 3: kind of a sad sack. He's a writer to what end.
Speaker 3: She's a journalist who cares like they don't see their
Speaker 3: life does not feel real.
Speaker 1: No, we we know that is when he shows up
Speaker 1: at you know, she's walking out of the office building,
Speaker 1: right he's sitting there and they sit down to have lunch,
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh, we haven't done this in a while,
Speaker 1: like done what spent time with each other? He had
Speaker 1: lunch together steps but I don't know or even when
Speaker 1: when they're in the apartment, she comes on the phone
Speaker 1: and he's asking her to take that, you know, take
Speaker 1: that call someplace else, Like, why, what's the issue? You
Speaker 1: know what, there's there's clearly some friction there, but in
Speaker 1: a working couple and comes home on an important call
Speaker 1: like okay, that it wasn't disrupting anything he was trying
Speaker 1: to do. I don't see what what was rubbing him
Speaker 1: the wrong way? I was never given enough information to
Speaker 1: know why they rub each other wrong so much? And
Speaker 1: why are they so different? And if they are so different,
Speaker 1: what was the magic that brought them together? What was
Speaker 1: that little meat cute that brings them together that they
Speaker 1: Oh they had this and it's now gone and lost?
Speaker 1: If it was something to have to do with the
Speaker 1: woods of like, oh, that's the reason to go back.
Speaker 1: But I don't see the draw for him, because clearly
Speaker 1: he got out of there as soon as he could.
Speaker 1: What's the draw to go back other than the pack
Speaker 1: up dad's stuff? But what's so valuable that he needs
Speaker 1: to go back there to reclaim? Do they need the money?
Speaker 1: There were so many things I thought, what's the I
Speaker 1: don't understand the reason for going there? Just do weekend
Speaker 1: get away to revisit your traumatic childhood? Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: too many unknowns.
Speaker 2: I actually I'll disagree on the scene where he asked
Speaker 2: her to stop or to take the call elsewhere, because
Speaker 2: I felt like that in and of itself was a
Speaker 2: little capsule of marital strife that you know, they're in
Speaker 2: the middle of some sort of law term relationship struggle,
Speaker 2: and he has asked her in an air of disrespect. Right,
Speaker 2: he is saying, quite loudly, please leave. He's interrupting the
Speaker 2: call to ask her to leave the kitchen, and she
Speaker 2: is with great disrespect, completely ignoring him, which is a
Speaker 2: sign of a marriage in trouble. It's like a little
Speaker 2: like it's a bluepill for marriage and trouble or red pill. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a red pill for marriage and trouble. I didn't
Speaker 2: mind that. I think it would have been more It
Speaker 2: would have carried more weight if it had been between
Speaker 2: two people that I could ever believe liked each other.
Speaker 2: But because I never really got that point, I felt
Speaker 2: like it was a relationship that was like there was
Speaker 2: no believable faith in a backstory between those two. I
Speaker 2: think that's where it kind of fell apart from me.
Speaker 3: Right, this movie thinks that if a man and a
Speaker 3: woman are together at some point, they deserve and should
Speaker 3: be together no matter what, and that's just not true, right,
Speaker 3: people should be together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so that's okay. So that's interesting. That's that's
Speaker 2: relationship dynamics don't don't play very well, and that's problematic
Speaker 2: for the movie if you want to believe that there's
Speaker 2: any sacrifice at the end, especially because there's.
Speaker 3: No one else in the movie. Yeah, you need to
Speaker 3: have rock solid characters if you're not going to have
Speaker 3: my she's not going to go to lunch with her
Speaker 3: friend and be like we used to be so great,
Speaker 3: you know, like all of those ways that you get
Speaker 3: information without doing flashbacks. They haven't given themselves the keys
Speaker 3: to do any of that, which I like because it
Speaker 3: speeds it up, but you gotta meeel it.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, now the only other character we get is what
Speaker 1: a childhood friend Derek, when they're on the way there,
Speaker 1: and clearly she's uncomfortable letting this strange man who's got
Speaker 1: a gun in the car, and Blake's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's going to be okay. And again it's the to
Speaker 1: PE's point, it's showing the you know, the relationship is
Speaker 1: in trouble that he's going to move forward with something,
Speaker 1: knowing that it bothers her. He doesn't really make an
Speaker 1: attempt to like allay her fears or concerns of like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I grew up with this guy. I don't really remember
Speaker 1: him that well. But there was nothing, just like he's
Speaker 1: going to get in the car, moved to the back
Speaker 1: and thought, oh, here's an interesting opportunity to really play
Speaker 1: out the dynamics of this relationship, give us a little
Speaker 1: bit more about Blake or what is going on? You know,
Speaker 1: who is this guy? He's playing nice? Okay, what's this
Speaker 1: going to do for the family dynamic to introduce this outsider? Nothing,
Speaker 1: because we're just going to kill him off in the
Speaker 1: next two minutes.
Speaker 2: So that was fast. Again, this movie goes hard on
Speaker 2: pace sometimes.
Speaker 1: But I loved the crash though. The crash the way
Speaker 1: that was filmed, that was the other standout for me.
Speaker 1: It was just the spinning, twirling camera that really disoriented,
Speaker 1: but I still had a sense of I wasn't confused.
Speaker 1: I just was like rolling and moving and twisting with
Speaker 1: things in a way that I hadn't seen before that
Speaker 1: I really really enjoyed visually for.
Speaker 2: That, and you stay disoriented with that set piece for
Speaker 2: the duration of the movie. The fact that it's a
Speaker 2: moving truck sideways in the trees was so cool. I
Speaker 2: thought that was really cool. And having to go back
Speaker 2: to it, the fact that they introduced the wolf face
Speaker 2: crawling on the side of the truck in that first
Speaker 2: like minute after they reached the forest was I thought
Speaker 2: really great and threatening and propulsive, and I thought, this
Speaker 2: is I'm feeling like I'm in pretty good hands. It
Speaker 2: was a surprise. Let's talk about the wolf Man. There's
Speaker 2: been some consternation about the Wolfman, that he is diseased
Speaker 2: and doesn't always look like a wolf. What did you
Speaker 2: think about the wolf Man? Did it bug you?
Speaker 3: No? No, I was fine. I mean I was grossed
Speaker 3: out by it, which I guess is supposed to be
Speaker 3: the point. But no, I thought he was wolf and doggish. Wait,
Speaker 3: what are people? Maybe? I don't know. The complaints that
Speaker 3: they're not all like hairy and like actual wolf like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that he's not more wolfy than he is.
Speaker 1: He los his hair rather than gaining hair. He has
Speaker 1: a big underwright, you know, I mean that dislocating the jaw.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of a lot of Kronenberg. The nails,
Speaker 1: those things, which I thought, oh, perfect, we're going practical,
Speaker 1: we're going with this, and it's it's it's it's more
Speaker 1: realistic than like, oh, my entire face is going to
Speaker 1: transform into something then revert back. So it's something that
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, you could have some physical alteration like that.
Speaker 1: That seemed reasonable, somewhat realistic. So I didn't really you know,
Speaker 1: knowing that this was sort of a deconstruction, you know,
Speaker 1: unraveling of the wolf Man tail, I didn't expect a
Speaker 1: traditional same thing with the Invisible Man, right. It wasn't like, oh,
Speaker 1: we got the magic formula. So I I know some
Speaker 1: people may have been upset that it's not about the
Speaker 1: moon and all that, but again, if we're gonna reinvent it,
Speaker 1: let's tie it into something. So I was I was
Speaker 1: fine with that. There was good practical stuff. I didn't
Speaker 1: need him running around on all fours, you know, we
Speaker 1: do get a little bit of that, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I gotta say I thought those were some great choices,
Speaker 2: and that was some stuff that I had never seen
Speaker 2: in a movie like this, where he's injured, he's caught
Speaker 2: in trap and he chews off his own foot to
Speaker 2: get out. Of the trap, very wolfy he is. You know,
Speaker 2: he gets his arm is cut and gets grossly disgustingly infected,
Speaker 2: and you realize, oh my god, she needs to put
Speaker 2: a cone on his head so he doesn't live a century.
Speaker 2: That's what is missing in this movie. That would have
Speaker 2: been a fantastic thing. You gotta know, there's going to
Speaker 2: be a lampoon of that scene. And she puts a
Speaker 2: cone on his head.
Speaker 3: She's putting his antibiotics like a piece of cheese.
Speaker 2: Yes, I found that stuff really fun.
Speaker 3: I prefer the disease. I mean, I know that we
Speaker 3: were upset understandably about some of the aims of the filmmakers,
Speaker 3: but I prefer the idea of it being more of
Speaker 3: an infection than a supernatural, lee controlled, lunar controlled kind
Speaker 3: of a thing. It resonates more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh absolutely, yeah, absolutely, you can do a lot
Speaker 1: more with that because of things that could be pasted
Speaker 1: or transmitted that way of that, and it is it
Speaker 1: does make sense for then a ticking clock. It's not
Speaker 1: like we have to wait till the next full moon.
Speaker 1: It can be a rapidly progressing disease that's going to
Speaker 1: transform and have physical effects within you. Know hours, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I was fully on board, but that even the disease
Speaker 1: aspect separate from you know, writer's intent, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: made sense for a way to reinvent this particular type.
Speaker 3: To not go back to man, right is really the
Speaker 3: thing that separates this from every other one that I
Speaker 3: remember seeing is there's no coming back. There's no regression, right.
Speaker 2: Right, which is to say this isn't a mood right right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Which makes sense with the idea of generational trauma, which
Speaker 3: makes the idea of these things that you can't I guess,
Speaker 3: I mean you can sort of escape that if you
Speaker 3: try hard enough. I don't know. Again, I brought up
Speaker 3: the lack of character development originally to complain and be
Speaker 3: a real b word about that. I didn't feel like
Speaker 3: the generational trauma played enough. I was told what it is.
Speaker 3: I didn't feel it.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of telling. As you said, there
Speaker 1: was just so much telling and not following through on
Speaker 1: things that we were given and hinted at. Coming back
Speaker 1: to the spider thing, very cool, but then we get
Speaker 1: when they're on the little garden greenhouse thing and the
Speaker 1: staples are popping out, I'm like, that should be like
Speaker 1: bullets ricocheting in his ears. He should know that, like,
Speaker 1: she's in danger of this plastic fallowing through because the
Speaker 1: staples are pulling out, and I thought everything should be
Speaker 1: triggering those senses. Unless we get a sense that, oh
Speaker 1: I can, like Peter Parker, I can control it. Right,
Speaker 1: we don't get that. We just know that this spider
Speaker 1: sounds like someone he was hearing the spider.
Speaker 3: I can't figure out what's going on.
Speaker 1: That spider's because he can't put stuff in his ears,
Speaker 1: like get the cotton.
Speaker 2: Someone gave that spider a drum kit the the Actually,
Speaker 2: the interesting thing about that is that there is some
Speaker 2: supposition that they that characters can hide from Og dog Man,
Speaker 2: and the movie had already taught us that that is
Speaker 2: functionally impossible, because he can hear a spider in a
Speaker 2: closet in a room upstairs. So the og dog Man
Speaker 2: who's chasing them should have been the one to hear
Speaker 2: all the staples and the plastic and everything. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know car starting the works. It should have been,
Speaker 2: but but the movie can't handle that kind of stress testing.
Speaker 2: That's not the kind of movie this is, right, So
Speaker 2: at least they didn't turn into giant wolves and you know,
Speaker 2: glisten in the sun vampires like that. It's it's more
Speaker 2: grounded than that. And and I think that's that's fine.
Speaker 2: Uh it's this movie was not filmed in Oregon. As
Speaker 2: an Oregonian, I just have to say that was filmed
Speaker 2: in New Zealand. And there's a lot about New Zealand
Speaker 2: that we and Oregon would love to have. And so
Speaker 2: I just want to say, hats off to you in
Speaker 2: New Zealand. You're doing great.
Speaker 3: That explains the world's giant spider. Yes, right, that's the
Speaker 3: much more of a New Zealand Australian.
Speaker 2: Thing than because it was wearing a hat and hell yeah,
Speaker 2: uh Lee one L, what have we What have you
Speaker 2: seen from? You know we've already dropped Invisible Man? What
Speaker 2: else do you love about Lee one L? If anything?
Speaker 3: I honestly, if I'm being completely honest, I get him
Speaker 3: confused with what he has done versus what James Wan
Speaker 3: has done, because I know that they are co conspirators
Speaker 3: a lot, right starting with us aw.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, yep.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, but I think I like enough
Speaker 3: of what he's done. And I loved Invisible Man one
Speaker 3: thing about this one. I didn't think this movie was
Speaker 3: very scary. And this movie also had like big jump
Speaker 3: scares that didn't work, and I couldn't figure out why,
Speaker 3: like thumps that came out of nowhere, or you're waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting,
Speaker 3: and you see the breath over the deer blind and
Speaker 3: then the scene there's a big crash, but it doesn't work.
Speaker 3: Something about it. When there was some really good stuff
Speaker 3: in Invisible Man that worked as jump scares and stuff,
Speaker 3: this movie just wasn't very scary, which I was surprised by.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agree, I think it. Yeah, it failed to deliver
Speaker 1: on scares. It had a little bit of the gore
Speaker 1: with that, but yeah, I never felt even you would
Speaker 1: think with the ticking clock in a confined space that
Speaker 1: I would be really on the edge of my seat,
Speaker 1: some tension and all of that, and I just never
Speaker 1: got wound that tight. And I don't know if that
Speaker 1: was a choice to not do that because of the
Speaker 1: story trying to be told that. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I knew that it wasn't what I expected overall, you know,
Speaker 1: in many ways, And coming back to Lee wentel because
Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of like horror and all that.
Speaker 1: But I know his first the first or second film
Speaker 1: he directed, Upgrade from twenty eighteen is a great movie.
Speaker 1: I've heard great things about that and saw that it
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is really really creative. Loved that movie.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that Invisible Man, I felt like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: like you know the projects he's directed. So this was
Speaker 1: a bit of a stumble for me. You know, overall,
Speaker 1: I was expecting something that was going to push some boundaries,
Speaker 1: or reinvent some things, or take familiar turf in a
Speaker 1: new direction, and it just didn't get there this time.
Speaker 2: He I like everything this is he's one of the
Speaker 2: rare directors right now that I maybe it's not rare.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I've never done the study. I've seen
Speaker 2: everything he's directed, I haven't seen everything he's acted in
Speaker 2: or written. But Insidious Chapter three was a fine entry
Speaker 2: in the Insidious story. Upgrade was great Invisible Man and Wolfman,
Speaker 2: and he's got Upgrade the TV show, which it looks
Speaker 2: like he's directing at least some of and the Green
Speaker 2: Hornet and Cato coming at some point, which could be
Speaker 2: interesting and maybe as racist as the original. Who knows
Speaker 2: You're Crost, So I really like what he's going for.
Speaker 2: And I think if you go back to Upgrade, you
Speaker 2: see exactly the kind of propulsive direction that he's capable of.
Speaker 2: And I think that plays in The Invisible Man and
Speaker 2: in this movie. It's it may be weirdly inconsistently applied
Speaker 2: in the pacing of this movie. Sometimes it really does,
Speaker 2: but you're right. Sometimes there are these action choices or
Speaker 2: these choices that are that are imbued with threat and
Speaker 2: fear and they're neutered for lack of a better word.
Speaker 3: There's one fantastic scare and unfortunately the uh trailer give
Speaker 3: it away, which was a real drag because he does
Speaker 3: the three different times. This movie is very big into
Speaker 3: that West Late with Wes Craven open up a thing
Speaker 3: so you can't see behind you, and they close it
Speaker 3: but there's no one there. That was the new that
Speaker 3: he really brought in with like scream and stuff. After
Speaker 3: so many people, you know, there was always someone on
Speaker 3: other side of the door. During the entire charging up
Speaker 3: the car sequence that happens three different times, and each
Speaker 3: time you're like I that was when I was leaning forward.
Speaker 3: I was like, I have you, you have me in
Speaker 3: the palm of your hands. Shoot, I saw the trailer
Speaker 3: and I know as soon as the car starts the
Speaker 3: it's the Winshield lifer. See, that's the thing that was
Speaker 3: missing with the other jumps. Jump scares aren't just jump
Speaker 3: scares anymore. This is like things like in Smile and
Speaker 3: Smile to the jump scare also does something to break
Speaker 3: your brain. It can't just be loud and there. It
Speaker 3: has to be loud and there and upside down, like
Speaker 3: you can't immediately identify what you're seeing in the direction
Speaker 3: and the physics involved. That's how jump scares have progressed.
Speaker 3: The idea version of that is three hidden things and
Speaker 3: then it being revealed from outside of the car but
Speaker 3: through this dirty windshield. That's a brain breaker. That's a
Speaker 3: really exciting time for jump scares. But this movie needed
Speaker 3: to bring that more. Just having a real loud thump
Speaker 3: after a couple seconds of silence, I think unfortunately we've
Speaker 3: moved past.
Speaker 2: That now I can I totally see that, and I
Speaker 2: think that is one of those sequences in this movie
Speaker 2: that I think is a real highlight in terms of
Speaker 2: pacing of a scene. Because you're right and it and
Speaker 2: it still got me, even though I knew it was coming.
Speaker 3: It's still right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's right. It's really really great.
Speaker 3: Sound design out of seas apart from apart from this
Speaker 3: Spider just for me personally, apart from this Spider drum kit,
Speaker 3: this movie begins, it lives in sound, and there's actually
Speaker 3: it seems like dramatically little amount of music, and even
Speaker 3: so much so that when it did show up sometimes
Speaker 3: I was like, oh music, And usually I don't feel
Speaker 3: that way, but there was so much just creepy crawling,
Speaker 3: I mean whenever. That was also big in the Wolf Vision,
Speaker 3: for lack of a better phrase, things that you would
Speaker 3: he would be hearing and feeling, the entire forest just
Speaker 3: come to life. I thought that the sound design was incredible.
Speaker 3: It seems so dense without seeming just loud. I loved it.
Speaker 2: I absolutely agree. I think Stevid Waalfish did the did
Speaker 2: the score for you know, it's an austere score. I
Speaker 2: want to pile on the Wolf Vision stuff. Stephan Douccio
Speaker 2: did the cinematography, and I think just lighting camera was
Speaker 2: absolutely better than competent. Like, I think the film looked
Speaker 2: really good, and particularly in contrasts like when You're going
Speaker 2: from the incredibly lit wolf vision to what they were
Speaker 2: experiencing in the dark was haunting. I thought it was great,
Speaker 2: like you can.
Speaker 3: Get so close to them and they have no idea.
Speaker 2: That barn sequence at the end when he was right
Speaker 2: there sitting on that bear was incredibly cool.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad that it that it feed that way
Speaker 3: because I was like, oh no, they forgot to light
Speaker 3: this entire sitnin and like maybe like a robe, and
Speaker 3: I was like, this isn't working. And then it's purposeful
Speaker 3: to show that. I when we were texting Pete, I
Speaker 3: brought up Pitch Black, the when we all met in
Speaker 3: Diegel where he had those like his night vision kind
Speaker 3: of things. The big difference that this movie does really
Speaker 3: update that idea. Ay, it looks better, but then be
Speaker 3: showing both in one uncut shot I've never seen that
Speaker 3: much before, which was again one of the two to
Speaker 3: three really outstanding ideas in this movie. It makes sense
Speaker 3: that he'd be like, oh I cracked it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: absolutely one night wolf vision spider trope kit, let's go,
Speaker 3: well this I'm I am.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say. I know Steve is sad and angry,
Speaker 2: but I think this movie is better than what we
Speaker 2: talked about last month.
Speaker 1: So well, so I'm going to talk about first Shot,
Speaker 1: Last Shot for a second because they really please with
Speaker 1: how I felt about this movie. Because first shot you
Speaker 1: get out we probably not yes, lots of lots of noise,
Speaker 1: lots of noise in black, and then you get the
Speaker 1: wasp that's being just attacked and swarmed by the ants.
Speaker 1: So but I thought, okay, what is that telling It's okay,
Speaker 1: we're in the woods, but there's something else If you're
Speaker 1: gonna do something like that, what is that telling me?
Speaker 1: Like the big thing being taken down by the little
Speaker 1: thing something? You know?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it metaphor for virus cells attacking something? You know?
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, there, what am I to make of this?
Speaker 1: I thought, that's a compelling image. That's gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try to make some meaning out of give me something
Speaker 1: to wrestle with. In the contrast that with the end,
Speaker 1: which is we're told you know earlier on oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go to Oregon.
Speaker 3: It's this not.
Speaker 1: Far from the farmhouse I grew up on. There's this valley.
Speaker 1: You can go stand there and just know everything's gonna
Speaker 1: be okay, and so what is our last shot? Mom
Speaker 1: and daughter are standing there looking at the valley. Everything's
Speaker 1: gonna be okay. It was just to do on the nose.
Speaker 1: I was like, come on, you, you open with some intrigue,
Speaker 1: with something compelling, enigmatic, and end with just like, let
Speaker 1: me hitch you with in the head with this a
Speaker 1: little bit harder.
Speaker 2: That's so funny. That's not what I got from the
Speaker 2: last bit at all. Uh, Like, I guess there's a
Speaker 2: certain sort of maternal everything's going to be okay. But man,
Speaker 2: when they pull back and you reveal that giant New
Speaker 2: Zealand earthscape, all I could think about was you were
Speaker 2: ill equipped to go from where you are to where
Speaker 2: you need to be. You are, Like, what you just
Speaker 2: dealt with was a just a microcosm of what the
Speaker 2: earth can do to you in this sport. You don't
Speaker 2: belong here, mother and daughter, and I guess you're about
Speaker 2: to be tested. So for me, it was a deeply
Speaker 2: morose ending.
Speaker 3: Oh oh, I have to agree with Steve that we
Speaker 3: were shown that exact view twice and both times I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: And the first time, yeah, you're shown that this is
Speaker 3: a place of comfort, this is a place of but wait, no,
Speaker 3: you're not. He literally says, everything's going to be okay. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and this is the daughter and yeah.
Speaker 2: And everything's not okay. Hey, you guys like he lies
Speaker 2: to his son. He says everything's gonna be okay, and
Speaker 2: then the earth destroys them both. He turns into Dogface
Speaker 2: Man and then his son turns into dog Face Man
Speaker 2: and they're both dead. Everything was not okay. That's the
Speaker 2: metaphor of this movie. You don't belong here, you'll be dead.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what is so morose about it.
Speaker 2: The circularity is not hopeful, it's hopeless.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Sure, when the character says, when you stand there, you
Speaker 1: have this feeling you know that everything's gonna be okay,
Speaker 1: and you put characters there, then they've endured this and
Speaker 1: that they've killed the monster. So mother and daughter have
Speaker 1: now magically bonded and all of that, and they're there.
Speaker 1: And when the character says, when you stand here and
Speaker 1: look at this, you know everything's gonna be okay. I
Speaker 1: have to take that at its word with this film, so.
Speaker 2: And its word is bogus. That's what everyone had.
Speaker 3: Just stayed and looked at the view.
Speaker 1: They would have exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I if I had to tie a rope between
Speaker 3: the two and say what it is, it's two different
Speaker 3: versions of nature. It's beautiful gracefulness and then a complete
Speaker 3: lack of grace, the beginning being just the monstrosity of nature,
Speaker 3: and the ending being the beauty that nature can present.
Speaker 3: But I don't feel good about that because I didn't
Speaker 3: even see the first image. But I was able to
Speaker 3: see it just enough. But like, I'll give it that,
Speaker 3: but no, I don't think it terribly works.
Speaker 2: The only thing that's hopeful about it is the fact
Speaker 2: that they broke the cycle, right, that that she did
Speaker 2: kill the the their predator, And so if I'm giving
Speaker 2: it any grace that it could be hopeful, it's because
Speaker 2: that's the one thing that's different this time, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: oh maybe, but I still think they're both dead.
Speaker 1: Well how do they get out of there?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't They've got.
Speaker 3: And the magazine she apparently writes for is Shotgun Monthly.
Speaker 2: She's immediately good at a lot of things, That's true.
Speaker 3: While we're in mom Jean's like she adapts, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 2: Well this was a treat, but you know what we
Speaker 2: have to do now? This is where things get serious.
Speaker 2: This is where we have to uh, we have to
Speaker 2: carve our opinions in the stone that is letterboxed. We
Speaker 2: are at letterbox letterbox dot com, slash the next real
Speaker 2: That's where you can find our HQ page, and we
Speaker 2: are gonna out of five stars half stars count, We're
Speaker 2: going to say what we think of this movie. Steve,
Speaker 2: would you like to start at the bottom because I'd
Speaker 2: like to know if I have more stars to work
Speaker 2: with for mine.
Speaker 1: Oh, you probably have a lot for stars to work
Speaker 1: with on your end, because I am gonna say it
Speaker 1: just gets worse.
Speaker 2: And we're supposed to have booied it, now.
Speaker 1: Booied it by saying it's it's horrible and it details
Speaker 1: in so many ways that I'm now Yeah. I debated
Speaker 1: because I had to look back at what we did
Speaker 1: last month and how I felt about that film and
Speaker 1: where this compares and all that, and I'm I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go with two stars and no heart on this. Two
Speaker 1: stars and that's it. That's a generous two stars. There
Speaker 1: was almost one and a half. But I do have
Speaker 1: to give some credit for the technical aspects, because if
Speaker 1: we didn't have that wolf vision transition, the sound design,
Speaker 1: some of those things, the way the crash was filmed.
Speaker 1: I thought those really saved this film for me from
Speaker 1: being a complete mess.
Speaker 2: So two stars, all right, and we did y two
Speaker 2: k last month.
Speaker 1: We also know, I know this was this was worse
Speaker 1: than that.
Speaker 2: That's stunning to me right now that that's this is
Speaker 2: the conversation we're having Gladiator too. Before that. You remember,
Speaker 2: we didn't love Gladiator too, No.
Speaker 1: I know, and this was that was too. I give
Speaker 1: that two and a half stars, and I think this
Speaker 1: is worse than that because at least there was a
Speaker 1: flamboyt Denzel and his scarves and see that.
Speaker 3: I guess just sort of repeat what I said in
Speaker 3: the beginning. It has real problems, and it has enough.
Speaker 3: The sound design is great, the creature thing is great.
Speaker 3: I love the idea of generational trauma. I do not
Speaker 3: believe it paid off, but I like that idea of
Speaker 3: trying to how Invisible Man was actually about domestic abuse.
Speaker 3: This is actually about passing down sicknesses. I didn't read
Speaker 3: what Steve read, and so i'm I don't like that idea,
Speaker 3: but I didn't see it. I never would have thought
Speaker 3: of it that way. With that, and so with all
Speaker 3: of that, then I will give it a three. I'll
Speaker 3: say a three, and maybe it should be three point five.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, but I think that maybe I'll be
Speaker 3: a three, because I'm grumpy enough to say that if
Speaker 3: you're gonna put your people in a real small area
Speaker 3: for a long amount of time, you've got to nail
Speaker 3: the characters first and then start thinking about how you're
Speaker 3: going to get the moving truck on its side, and
Speaker 3: then go from there. Because I just there was an unfortunate,
Speaker 3: real emotional hole in this movie and it's character development.
Speaker 3: But that being said, there's a lot that is strong
Speaker 3: and I don't like wolf Men, and I watched this
Speaker 3: whole movie and I was glad that I saw it,
Speaker 3: So three three in.
Speaker 2: A art I stand with you, Tom. I feel like
Speaker 2: this movie has more going for it than going against it.
Speaker 2: And while I wasn't necessarily scared, I don't think the
Speaker 2: movie had to be scary to actually execute on its metaphor.
Speaker 2: That unfortunately is the challenge for me. That it's set
Speaker 2: up so much, it aspired to do so much that
Speaker 2: it didn't make good on all of its promises. But
Speaker 2: it looked good. It sounded great. It did some really
Speaker 2: interesting things with camera and production that I thought were
Speaker 2: just wonderful on screen. And the cast is actually quite good, right.
Speaker 2: I think Christopher Abbott is great. I think that they
Speaker 2: are miscast together as a family, but individually they're really
Speaker 2: very good, talented people. I think this was a good
Speaker 2: swing for Lee Wan l. I don't think he lived
Speaker 2: up to necessarily Invisible Man level of reboot, but I
Speaker 2: am excited to see what comes next. I think, give
Speaker 2: give them more. Let's see what he can do with
Speaker 2: something with something else. So I'm three stars in a
Speaker 2: heart on this movie, which I know Tom and I
Speaker 2: are kind of the island based on what I've read.
Speaker 2: Others don't like. The others are sad stems.
Speaker 3: Oh really, I haven't looked.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, well, let me just tell you the text
Speaker 2: I had told our you know, our friend Andy. I'd said, hey, Andy,
Speaker 2: I don't because he told me he was going to
Speaker 2: see the movie yesterday even though I had seen it
Speaker 2: on Friday, and I said, I don't think you'll regret it.
Speaker 2: And he writes back to me after he saw it,
Speaker 2: this is it. One line? Wow, period, that was terrible good.
Speaker 3: He needed to go check out that view.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't believe he gave him one point five stars.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah huh yeah, So I you know, I am. I'm
Speaker 2: excited about it. Now we have to talk about what
Speaker 2: we're talking about next month, and I think because of
Speaker 2: your predisposition to these kinds of movies, Tom, I think
Speaker 2: you should introduce what we're talking about next month.
Speaker 3: Oh, this is one that I was not on my radar,
Speaker 3: but I think that the trailers have been very good
Speaker 3: and they make it seem like this is a genre
Speaker 3: that is not for me, but every once in a while,
Speaker 3: like how Guardians of the Galaxy was more like a
Speaker 3: big group comedy and Civil No, Civil War was a great,
Speaker 3: big group thing, and Winter Soldier was more like a
Speaker 3: seventies paranoia film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, comedy, buddies.
Speaker 3: We are going to be seeing Captain America. Now it's me,
Speaker 3: I don't know what's the family is Captain America. Now
Speaker 3: it's the.
Speaker 2: Brave New World.
Speaker 3: No, it's Captain America, Brave New World. And the trailer
Speaker 3: it has Harrison Ford in it and some red guy
Speaker 3: shows up in the trailer. I don't know what that's about.
Speaker 3: I honestly do not, but it looks like it could
Speaker 3: be really good. It looks like they're taking us a
Speaker 3: real swing and sort of bringing it down, giving it
Speaker 3: the right things to write people, and not just trying
Speaker 3: to put butts in seats. So I am surprisingly interested
Speaker 3: in seeing Brave New World with Captain America. I think
Speaker 3: I got the name wrong.
Speaker 2: You get totally. You did great, It's absolutely fine, and
Speaker 2: you got a month in practice. That's our February pick.
Speaker 2: We're excited to be there. Don't forget to do all
Speaker 2: the things you love to do for podcasts. It really
Speaker 2: helps us if you head to you know, if you
Speaker 2: share the show with people you think will like it.
Speaker 2: That's that's the bread and butter of all of our podcasts.
Speaker 2: So you know, like share sing praises from roof to ups,
Speaker 2: anything that works for you. And thank you Steve, Sad,
Speaker 2: Steve and Tom for doing this movie with us this month.
Speaker 2: We'll see you next month. Everybody meeting adjourned.
Speaker 3: Oh I