2026 Best Picture Power Rankings, and the Best Movies at TIFF. Plus: Zach Cregger on ‘Resident Evil’!

I'm Sean Fennese and this is the big picture at Conversation Show about awards and gore. Today on the show Adam Naiman stops by with his annual report from the Toronto International Film Festival. Adam will share his favorite films from the fest and some movies he didn't like very much and we'll talk about the big picture of that festival. The end of TIFF truly signals the start of award season so we are also kick starting our monthly best picture power rankings tradition. And then after all that, Zach Kreger joins me to break down resident evil, his amazing new success video game adaptation, Zach has come on for all of his films. This time it was in person, he's incredibly insightful and fun and funny to talk about movies with. You'll want to stick around for that, which is a slightly spoiler filled conversation. And first some movie news right after this. This episode is presented by state farm, you know the feeling long day, good meal, you finally sit down and now you're just staring at your screen. Slasher, romcom, period drama, psychological thriller. But some decisions don't have to be that hard. State Farm is here to help. Like when you choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan, bundling, just another way to save with the personal price plan, like a good neighbor, state farm is there. Those are based on rating plans that vary by state coverage options are selected by the customer availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. Okay, there's a lot of news going on. Yes. There's a lot, you know, I feel like I saw you every day this weekend. We hung out a lot and yet we didn't talk about any of this stuff. Well, yeah, because we didn't actually talk that much. We were just running after. No, we just children. Yeah. And we played soccer with them. I guess I did see you every day. Yeah. That's nice. Nice to be back with you as well. I played a lot of soccer with your son. He's getting very good. Um, Resident Evil made $60 million in the United States of America. This is Craigers biggest movie of all time. It's a $108 million global debut, biggest opening in franchise history, biggest opening of Craigers career, biggest opening ever for an already video game adaptation. When I think I think he goes into the like, for sure, Jordan Peele, Gregor and this person has a movie coming out and now we need to go to see it. It's, you know, not on the Nolan scale, but no one but Christopher Nolan is on the Nolan scale. You know, it's not Tarantino. It's not Spielberg, but it's like, it's pretty name brand, you know, I went to the first available showing at a 2 p.m. on a Thursday in Pasadena. I was the only woman there, but there are many, there were people seemingly solo. There were a couple. I was like, I saw the second time last night. There were a lot of dates. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Um, I, I don't know how many of these were dates. It was mostly just people who had the vibe of my guy released a new movie. And so I'm there at 2 p.m. on Thursday to see it. Yeah. I was also there for that reason. Okay. We'll talk about your thoughts on the movie in a little bit. And we'll talk, Zach will talk a lot more about making the movie, which I think people enjoy. So a paramount is going to settle the lawsuits and the, and the merger is going to happen. I mean, I think or the, or Rob Bonta and the AGs are going to settle the lawsuits. Yeah. Maybe the AGs bent the name. Is that what happened here? Yeah. Well, I, you know, I only was able to read part of the reading of the consent decree, whatever. And also I am not legally trained in any way. Okay. Some high level takeaways from this news, which you and I have been not really discussing over the last two months, very purposefully, because most of it has been posturing from one side or the other in public to try to influence this, the ultimate resolution of sorts. And everyone really wanted this to get done by the end of the year on the paramount side, obviously, because the ticking fee that's happening and because who knows as administrations change, there is going to be midterms. A lot could change in the corporate atmosphere. So the ticking fee was due to start on October 1st and two days September 21st. So there we have it. Here's the things that it sounds like David Ellison and co have agreed to to make this go forward. One, operations in California will stay. No selling of the paramount or one or other studio lots. That, that is, it does feel like those threats were a very cheap and scary threat to the many people who have built their lives in California while working for Paramount. But like, it's good that it's off to take. I also personally feel that it would be unrecoverable to move operations to Tennessee and would dramatically change how Hollywood operates. So I'm thankful that that's not happening for a variety of reasons. Secondarily, an investment of an additional $300 million annually in US film production, which is meaningful. Now, $300 million is not $2 billion, but it is some money for shooting films here actually spent some time over the weekend talking with a friend who works on movies and we talked about how just nothing films here anymore and that everybody, my friends or producers spend six months out of the year in Ireland or Budapest or London or, you know, they have to go other places just to make movies. So the idea of establishing more of a beach head here where movies were effectively born is helpful. Right. And also maybe the places that are being portrayed could actually be portrayed by those places. So there's a list of wherever across the world for Florida and something else for San Diego and it just starts to feel really silly, which I think everyone who is actually making movies and is traveling to these places and fighting for money and hiring people will tell you how incredibly stupid it is right now. Yes, it feels very strange. Actually, Craig talked about going to the Czech Republic to make Resident Evil to shoot what should be a fake American city, you know, this is a very common thing. The next thing is the obligation to release at least 30 movies theatrically every year. Yes. Which is a huge promise and one that almost everybody I know is very skeptical of because of the challenges of a variety of factors. One, there's obviously the financial factor, how much money you're spending on movies. Two is the capacity, the space that you can make in movie theaters over a calendar year. Three is the marketing spend that is necessary to promote movies and not just put movies out that are going to instantaneously die. And four, just to have the amount of staff that can oversee the execution of this big bold plan, even though we are merging together to studios, we expect there to be redundancies as they say. Yes, they said that it's many, many, many millions or billions of dollars in redundancies. So I don't, Chris and I talked on Friday about whether or not the clockwork imprint could potentially be a place to have more of a down-and-dirty, low-budget machine that can get somewhere between five and ten movies into the marketplace every year. And then that will help allow them to achieve this big number on any thoughts about this promise. So there are two specifications within it, which is that it's four independent movies a year and then 20% of the 30, which is six movies a year must be blockbusters. And I think the definition of blockbusters is 50 million or more. I think that's that high. I think that's written in, but yes, I would just say so and that there is the consequence that is apparently built in, if they don't meet that threshold, is that they have to divest mirror max. Interesting. That is, which is sort of a punishment, I think, or also then just maybe- I message just another buyer of some kind. Yes. Okay. And that is the only consequence built in, and I think Bonta in particular had campaigns literally on making there be some harder financial consequences if they don't meet it. That's notable. I think, for example, I believe mirror max is and dimension is tied into screen, for example. So maybe that means giving up the rights to produce future screen films, which as we saw from the movie that came out earlier this year is still very much a cash cow for them. Okay. That's notable. Another big one is establishing a third party independent board to oversee CNN and CBS news in order to maintain the news outlets editorial independence. Okay. Okay. We'll see how that works. Yes. You should listen to the press box. I'm sure that Brian and Jolene David will be talking about the ramifications of that. They've been covering the barri-wise 60 minutes saga quite closely over the last few months. You've been watching? No, but you know what? I was not a 60 minutes watcher before, so I'm not going to stand on ceremony and be like, how dare you for something that didn't really meaningfully matter to me. Do I hope that there is independence for the journalists who are working in these spaces? I do. Yes. I hope that that can be maintained. Let's move away from this settlement because I presume there'll be some more turns of the wheel over the next couple of weeks. Did you get the trailer for the further adventures of Cliff Booth? Missed adventures of Cliff Booth. So I showed up later. I skipped the trailer. I skipped the trailers. Okay. I didn't have a volume and time spent, but I did watch it online this morning because it's now available online. So we didn't get it obviously because we went to the screening and the press screening. And I went to the movies last night, 30 to 60 percent just to make sure I got to see the trailers. And then they didn't show the trailers. Yes. They didn't show the Cliff Booth trailer. They didn't show the trailer. We'll talk about momentarily. But they did release the Cliff Booth trailer online this morning. I thought it was fascinating. I thought it was exactly what it is, which is it was, it just looks like a David Fincher movie. With Quentin Tarantino gags in it and sharp lines of dialogue cut tightly in a trailer. What did you think? We're going to talk more about Brad Pitt next week. I think when Heart of the Beast comes on, I've been sending you promo stills from Heart of the Beast. Two soldiers, a man and a dog. And a lot of Camo. And then Brad Pitt's girlfriend getting off a lot of seemed fits depending on where they are. Tennessee or NASCAR. Yeah. That's something you know about. We're going to we'll we'll need to have a Brad Pitt conversation because even watching this trailer, I was like, oh, and the interesting thing about this role is that he has played it before. Yeah. And so I thought he had the voice down. I was like that is but sure, but but there's an energy and there is there is something that is different. Well, this is again like sort of a teaser where the first thing we saw on the Super Bowl was like a minute long and this is only a minute and a half long. I got very excited by I'll just say how the camera's moving. Sure. Or say David featuring a demolition derby. I was like, I do want to see this. What Chris said which is, you know, I'd watch the sewer if it were filmed by a fincher and written by Tarantino. Like I agree. But I just I will say put a pin in the pit of it all because I have been paying attention. I'm going to see the dog movie on myself. I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm seeing next Sunday night if you'd like to join me. I don't have to check on my babysitting, but sure. By babysitting, I mean, my son, my husband taking care of my children. But yeah. There was another teaser attached to I guess some I'm X screenings, though not mine, of Resident Evil this weekend. And that's Jeremy Sonye's new movie, which is called Slayground now. But the teaser, I don't think was for the movie, but I don't know. Okay. And what was shown was effectively a 30 second four box surveillance footage of various people experiencing a haunted attraction that maybe was too close for comfort or too real to be believed set to drowning pools song bodies, which I know is one of your favorites. And you know, it was a very overt attempt at a viral Blair Witch style teaser. Yeah. Jeremy Sonye is a director. I love really one of my guys. And then a website run like hell.com appears. Yeah. And then a note that it says this fall appears. Now this movie was previously known called October. Yeah. It's an 824 movie. And I don't know if it's coming out this fall. There's a countdown clock on run like hell. I did. I did not see the teaser, but I did visit run like hell.com enjoyed all the creepy footage. Well, no, I thought that's you know that I don't like giving my email. But I do think they also have it. You know, so they'll they'll let me know. Yeah. I mean, if this does come out this fall, this would be the second surprise movie the day 24th putting out this fall. If you can see everything the second surprise movie in October. I mean, I guess they've they have announced you can see everything a bit earlier, but it seems like it's going to work for that one. This is what I'm writing about this week is what if can a should a movie be a surprise? You know, we think of so much of what we do is like anticipating. Yes, but we also say wouldn't it be amazing if we just went in without nothing and we try to do as much as we can. And I don't watch the trailers till you make me do it for this very reason because it is replicating that kind of festival feeling that you and I have of just going in and being like, whoa. For people who are really, really hyped about movies. So I think it's smart, you know, you have to pull off the marketing. Sure. Serpiticiously. It's sort of like Beyonce did the surprise album, which was an Beyonce as Beyonce. And you can do it a few times. And a few other people, I think, tried it with varying degrees of success. And, you know, there's something cool going on with word of mouth about movies right now that I think you can leverage it in a way that maybe you couldn't five years ago or twenty years ago. So I'm fascinated by this choice. I love conceptually. I'm really interested in it. And I also just know and the film has it's like, I think it's James Badge Dale and Chase Sui wonders and image inputs and a bunch of actors that I already really like. So like I'm on board and bait what it may be about, which is this very famous haunted attraction in Tennessee that was very dangerous. Or at least and be inspired by if that's the case, that's also intriguing to me. Dangerous for safety reasons or dangerous because there were people with chance us. I don't think it went that far. But I think there were a lot of things done without supposedly without consent to the people who were participating, which don't tell me that before you try to get me at whatever haunted nights, you know, Halloween hall. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll be doing that for sure. Okay. Let's just let's go to Narnia really quickly before we get into the the tip conversation. So we were not together when news started coming out about the chronicles of Narnia, Narnia colon the magician's nephew, the plumber's niece. There was a piece in Empire magazine kind of announcing some of the details of Greta Gerwig's new film. Yeah. I can hold it together here. There was also I was a cover reveal. A cover reveal. Yes. And the cover reveal was Merrill Streep as the lion whose name I've been told I miss pronounced and now they've scared me into never saying it, which was maybe the point. Is it not Aslan? That's what I was saying. But the Brits have a whole other thing going on. Aslan. I don't know. Aslan. Yeah. That's probably it. Does anybody know? Aslan. No. Aslan. That's right. Anyone? Aslan? We're not British. I've read this entire book and I said, Aslan for three, three nights to my daughter. Maybe we can make that the big picture dialect. Okay. Merrill Streep is indeed portraying this extremely powerful lion who is a not so unclear metaphor for Christ. The movie has been term shifted. Yes. From turn of the century in London, turn of the 20th century London to 1950s London. Okay. So post war. Post war. I'm reading a book set in 1950s London right now written by Kate Atkinson. Is there a magical line in it? Not yet, but there are many other shenanigans and they're putting on not a play or a musical, but a festival. So there's, you know, performance aspects. There could be a stuffed lion. Not that magic. Again, I haven't finished the book, but Kate Atkinson is my favorite living analyst quick sidetrack. Yeah. My daughter went to a birthday party over the weekend. I didn't go with her, but the key component of the birthday party was magic show. There was a magician there. Okay. A magician who performs at the magic castle. Yeah. And she came home with a goodie bag that only had magic tricks in it. It has begun. Wow. She shall become a magician. This is a goal moving on. Rock opera for Narnia. Sure. What is it? No songs. Rock opera. Rock opera vibe. So does that just mean loud music from this? No, I think like outsized colorful sort of like over the top performance style. Like if you, there was a photo of Emma Mackie shared who stars in the movie and she looks like she almost looks like Ziggy Stardust or something. There's like some glitter and makeup and these outrageous colors. She's playing the white queen in the film. And 1950s London is obviously like that is where, but we came from. The music that was happening at that time inspired him to push the music form forward. So that's it's a choice, right? It is at least a very specific choice that goes away from the core text and evolves it in some way. But your guard is up on the magician's nephew. My guard has been up from the beginning because it's important to protect her heart, right? And I love Greta. Yeah. Greta who did show up to the premiere of the Lucas narrative museum. Yes. But it was not included in the All Men Directors photo. What's that about? That was strange. You know, I was invited to that and I was like, you did not a big deal. I don't know what to say. And then I looked at the photos and I was like, holy shit. Why did I go to this tactical error? Yeah. I really, I thought it was like a press invite or something. And then it turned out. Everybody was there. Sure. Yeah. Whoops. Okay. Let me mistake. I do this for her. She should have been in that photo. And I, you know, we'll see February 12th in theaters. Okay. Yeah. Why? Okay. Not just I max. Cliff Booth is just an I max. This is wide. Great. Get your, get your thinking cap on. You're going to read the book. Do you think I should or now that you've read it? Should I go in cold? I read a good thought. Yeah. I, I, it's a slim text. I've read some CS Lewis. I read it growing up. But it's not super fresh in my memory. So, but then do I have to read, you know, the whole thing, the whole series to remember Narnia and the first story, right? It's the very first. It's not, didn't come out first, but it is original. It is an origin story, really, of this whole world. See again, great. An origin story. Well, okay. You'll have to roll with it. I am. I hope everyone's having a great time in London. A place I'd like to re-production as far as I can tell. But I don't know. That was the other thing when they were like, it's delayed because we had to take a six-week trip. All sorts of, you don't know what's going on. But I do hope that London, it seems like a beautiful time to be in London right now. Okay. Well, let's move from the US to Toronto. Let's bring it out of Naman. Mean pod guy is here. It's September. It must mean it's TIFF time. TIFF just concluded the Toronto International Film Festival. Adam, how are you? I am okay. I've come out the other end and back to back to life. Back to life. Back to life for the People's Choice Award. Many people are saying one of the most indicative awards in all of festival season. We have winners. Yes. I'm going to read the winners. Yeah. I don't know that the winners historically match closely with Adam's favorite films from the film festival. But let's just put them out front. The winner of the People's Choice Award this year was LeBola Negra. This is the first time Netflix film has won the PCA. This is the first non-English language film to win since Nadine LeBicki is where do we go now in 2011. Coming in second place, I play Rocky, which many people had as the prohibitive favorite. Coming in third place, Sean Haters being human. The opening night. The opening night film. you. Those are your big three. Mm-hmm. The International PCA winner, since LeBull and Edgar won the People's Choice Award, was Elsonore, not Lee Chong Dong's possible love. Okay. I've seen both of those movies. I can't say I understand that one at all. Yeah. Adam Naiman. Yeah. I give you those results. You say what? Well, I say that it's very interesting that we had a foreign language film win the award, but the International Prize a English language film. I mean, I don't I mean, I don't know how much I believe any of these results. You know, it always seems like, you know, some convenient movies win. I mean, I guess it's on the level. It's two straight years that, you know, the same documentarian has has has won an award. I mean, what these awards mean is very hard to say. I think TIFF would really like them to mean something. I think that they're, you know, happy for those those housey in days of three billboards and green book in the shape of water, where these things were hugely predictive of the Academy Awards. I don't think that either Bull and Eggo or Elsonore is likely to win Best Picture, but, you know, leave that to me, sir. Please. This is this is. Can I ask you an important people's Choice Award question, Adam? Please. Do you, man of the people vote for the People's Choice Award? I do not vote for the People's Choice Award, not because I'm not a person, because it's not my choice. I just I just I just plum forget. Okay. You know, every every time every time I'm on the way out of the theater, I just remember to do literally anything else. Okay. And is that what it is? Is it you get a ballot on the way out? It used to be. Now, I believe you just text or log in, which is why which is why movies that I think people are not actually physically at are able to are are able to. And, you know, you know, for festival that takes place in my city and that I attend for a long time, for 10 straight days, I don't pay a lot of attention to how that award works. Okay. Okay. Who do you text? Like, like Jim Tiff? Like, what are we talking about here? Yeah. Jim, Jim, Jim, what what you do is you just text the festival and say, this should win. Okay. And they explain some past winners then. Yeah. And they explain some past winners and they go and they go, they go, okay. Okay. Well, okay. So what did you like? What really jumped out to you? And what observations do you have from this season in Toronto? Well, I mean, I think that I started the piece I wrote for for Ringer by saying this was a year of audiences talking back to the films, sometimes quite oddly and inappropriately, you mentioned Lee Chang Dong's possible love, which is a good film based on the audience reaction here. It's like a slapstick comedy. People were like whooping and hollering and cheering. I mean, this isn't like really hand. I was at a, yeah, people were sort of doing like, you know, applause breaks in the middle of that film. It made, made more sense. Deeply literate 240 minute family drama. Yeah, there were also people cheering and clapping during a part of Josephine, which is not me doing a bit. It was very, this was a movie I texted Sean before I went in and I'm like, look, I'm quite tired. I've heard this movie is is grueling and upsetting. You know, I'm going to get something out of this today when I'm tired. He was like, you should probably see it. I'm glad I did. But there were like passages in the film where people were we're we're clapping during that. So it's strange. I don't know if it's a desire to be part of an event or if it's just a really, you know, enthusiastic cohort of people. Maybe they're trying to, you know, enhance the quality of the movies at this festival by engaging with them. But there was a lot of talk back. There was a lot of clap back. There was a, you know, some heckling Danny Boyle got heckled. I was at that screening too. Oh, I read of this. Yeah. Whereas where someone told them knock that shit off basically, pertaining to generative AI. Right. And my feeling about that, because I have no thoughts on ink the movie whatsoever. I think I think Boyle needs to go back to the bone temple. Those movies are very good. But I also thought that he is such a nice guy. He's so likable and charming. It's hard to dislike Danny Boyle that he was actually kind of a good like canary in this coal mine. For example, people feel comfortable yelling at Danny Boyle on stage in Toronto to knock that shit off. It's probably a sign people are not dying to see these little 30 seconds of conspicuous, but pointless AI. I mean, I don't know much to say about ink. I don't know much to say about ink. But I will say the AI that is in it is completely pointless. There's, it makes no difference to the film. So why do we effectively have the same takeaway immediately recognizable and also unnecessary. Just yeah, why? Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, that was sort of one of the things was that there was a lot of talking to the screen and back at the screen. I think the festival was aiming for a higher participation rate in a different way. As you guys surely read, this was the inauguration of the market, which you know, was now, you guys visited Toronto. You have the geography memorized, you know, it's still basically all taking place at the lightbox within about a block and a half over in the big Metro Toronto Convention Center. There was a market set up on two floors, which was often kind of cavernous and hollow and empty. But I also wasn't spending peak hours there. It's a very nice free, it's a very nice free coffee. I ran into a pair of independent horror filmmakers, I did not get their name, but they were pitching me on their project. And I said, sounds great. I wish them well. But, but, but, but, you should just set up a booth for that, you know, like in the market next year, just on the quarter in Toronto. But not do anything. Just receive ideas and say, I wish you well. I wish everybody, well, and everybody wishes me well, largely because of this podcast, people still keep going like, you're tall guys on that, the American podcast. People always asking how Sean and Amanda are. That's, that's real. By the way, people are always curious to hear the Toronto. Hi, everybody. We're sorry we couldn't be there this year. Yeah. They think you guys are very famous. But the market didn't stretch. Yeah. The market did stretch certain things on the ground a little thin, like to be honest. I mean, you know, there were only one press screening per film. And that's not like, winging and complaining. I mean, if there's one press reading, you show up on time or you don't. Yeah. But it meant that, you know, it meant that lines were longer. I know that there was some slowness sometimes with people who had showed up delegates, just kind of getting their, their badges. I mean, I bear no ill will to the market. I'm not an industry person. I did host an industry panel. And that was well attended. I have friends who are filmmakers and producers and distributors and sales agents. And I think that they had, you know, fun navigating the back rooms of the Metro Toronto Convention Center. But, but the festivals felt spread a little thin. And maybe that's a self-fulfilling feeling. Like when you've heard all summer, this is going to be the case. Maybe it just kind of feels like that. But it was not the best time I've had at TIFF, which is not meant as a put down of the festival, but just an honest response. It does seem logical that Toronto would have a market considering the way that the markets work at other festivals around the world, getting something like that off the ground is always challenging. What about the movies? Like, what did you really respond to? Well, I think I've said it on this pod before. It's no less true for saying it over and over, which is you can have a very good time at TIFF if you pick and guess, right? And if you don't, or if you're running a particular beat, or if you're a glutton for punishment, you'll see bad movies. It's just a lot of averages. There's like 280 of them, you know? So I buy and large sauce that I thought was pretty good, but that's because I was trying to for work purposes and for personal purposes. I wasn't, you know, wandering into I wasn't wandering into random stuff. I avoided the films that I thought I was going to, you know, dislike intensely, but there's a balance too. You have to see partially because I'm writing about them for ringer or for other publications, you know, films like Elsinore or I play Rocky or Ink. I mean, these are things that I would try not choose to prioritize, both because they're bad necessarily, because they're going to be readily available and widely distributed. You know, as I wrote in the piece I felt for ringer, the best thing I saw, I would say for me by a mile was every time by Sandra Walner, which is going to be at the New York Film Festival and is some kind of strange, elusive, bizarre movie. I mean, most of the people I spoke to liked it, they liked it without being necessarily sure that they had gotten it. That's not code for its obscure or incoherent. It's incredibly lucid and brilliantly made. It's just mysterious and that's kind of a rare thing. A lot of the times, movies like this are mysterious, but they're kind of nudging you in the rib saying do you get it, or giving you a very easy way to interpret it. It's a film about a family in Berlin, mother in two daughters. One is a teenager, one is sort of eight or nine. So the very bad happens, involving the older daughter. I mean, it's not a spoiler. Almost any review would say that the older daughter dies in an accident. The film skips what you'd think the movie would be about, which is the immediate grief, kind of picks up after the grief has been subsumed into daily life. And traces of the daughter remain. And I think they're the traces we're used to if people remaining, like her cell phone and her minecraft world and photos of her and memories of her. And then without spoiling the movie, reality seems to mutate around these memories. And at least on two separate occasions, my heart just stopped in terms of how surprising this film is. A lot of people are comparing it to After Sun because it's the same cinematographer and because there is a kind of vacation at a resort that figures into the plot. I am happy with comparison after Sun because I like that movie very much, but it's much different. You know, After Sun is all very lucid and organized and analytical. And this movie is just very mysterious and strange and perverse. You know, I think this is a really great filmmaker. So that's the thing I like the most by far. Yeah, looking forward to seeing that we both miss that in can. It was on my list. I had a ticket because the resort you mentioned was in Tenerife, which is of course the only, you know, bold name that I read in the entire description. But then things changed, but then it went on certain regard. It went on certain regard. Yes. Yeah. And I think it's going to be Germany's Oscar submission. It is, yes. And I think that when When people see it, they'll be confused and excited. excited by it as I was. I think it's amazing, and I can't wait to see it again. - Okay, what else did you enjoy? - I liked possible love, which you guys have or haven't seen. - We have. - We have. - We've both seen. I thought that this was an example where I didn't think he was getting the effects he usually gets. And then by the end, he kind of earned them. Or we're engineered them. Maybe I can't tell if it's earning or engineering it. If you've talked about it on the pod already, maybe people have some sense of the plot. But it's very similar to burning in that it's a kind of class. I think it's much closer to burning actually than it is to parasite. People just compare movies to parasite 'cause it's a subtitled movie people have seen, right? It's like that tweet about the boss baby, like this movie's giving me boss baby vibes. It's not really like parasite. It's more like burning where there's this disparity between these two households, these two characters. And it's hard to tell if it's aspiration or resentment. That's kind of burbling up between them. But obviously he's dealing in this movie of Lee Chenggang a bit with his own practice. He has a character who's a filmmaker, a movie who's making a movie about those class divisions and that inequality. And I thought it was very, very strong in the second half. I just found myself wondering if the second half was just better than the first. Or if that's just how he works. He builds very skillfully. And then all of a sudden you're having this kind of stuff seemingly hit out of nowhere. But it wasn't as pressurized and amazing as burning was all the way through for me. The first time I watched both movies. - Yeah, I don't want to spoil our conversation about that movie too much. 'Cause we'll probably spend a good amount of time on it because I think it's gonna be in the orbit for a while. And it's relationship to his other movies and even just working with actors that he's worked with before on other movies and using them, like weaponizing them in a way, like what we know about them or what we think about them, especially as a Western audience where like maybe have not seen some of these actors in very many movies, so to bring someone back and kind of what that means. But I thought it was pretty powerful. I always feel like there's a quality to his work that is like maybe this should have just been a novel. And you know, he is a novelist. And like he just writes very literally for cinema. And there were a couple of moments in burning where he really transcends that where I like he completely snap my brain in half. - Yeah. - This movie never didn't quite get there. And in terms of that like feeling of the cinematic language living up to, I think a lot of the ideas that he was interested in, but I did like it a lot. - I mean, I just felt the same way you did Adam were at, like I did feel at a remove in the first half. And it does feel also that that's intentional and that it is working at a very slow place to get you to the second half and really the third act revelations. But some of the choices made in the first half and even some of that commentary on filmmaking, you know, like I still work for me more intellectually than emotionally, which again, maybe is the point is the, and I'm still trying to figure out when people were laughing. 'Cause that's real. I can't, that's one thing I will tell you. I did not laugh in that film. Not even at the Laura Piano joke. - No, no, there was there was there was laughing and Chuck Wiggard or even a couple little smattered clapp, some spattered clapping. It was very weird. - It was really, really weird. I wouldn't, I wouldn't bring it up if it wasn't weird. - Well, this is, I think the part of maybe an interesting future episode that we can explore about kind of like what the audience's relationship is to movies now. There's all this talk of rep screenings kind of drawing a lot of inappropriate laughter at times when you see something from an older film that doesn't feel like it totally fits the contemporary sensibility. And there's something about this too where, you know, that's a movie really, it's not about class warfare, but it's about these sort of like extremely nuanced differences in people's lives and how someone who feels very far below them classwise is obviously not so far from them in terms of their own humanity. And so like there's this desire to like cheer for something that represents like social power, which is just corny to me. Like I just feel like getting like getting really behind something like that in the middle of the movie just feels odd. But. - Well, that was where the screening of Josephine was so bizarre. This isn't a movie that I want to spoil and it's a movie that in some ways I'd left up a longer conversation about later 'cause I'm really mixed on how I feel about this film, the Dariusio film about a married couple, Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan, whose daughter goes through something terrible and then is kind of haunted by it. I found the literal haunting aspect to be a mixed bag for me. But the parts that people were clapping at believe me, it wasn't the sort of like child haunted by trauma stuff. It's like when the movie gets into the courtroom. And when they feel like something has been said that is defiant for them or a kind of truth to power has been spoken even if it's by a child. And people were kind of clapping. And I remember thinking at the time, I mean, the filmmakers in the building, in some ways it's an impressive movie. She's really smart. I'm pulling for her in the movie a little bit like, how does she feel about this? Because this is not a movie with applause breaks tonally built in, you know, it's meant to be this. - Yeah, we shouldn't say too much about the movie 'cause it's the experience of it is kind of critical, I think, for going into it. But I had the same reaction as you out of Sundance. It absolutely affected me. It absolutely hit me very hard while watching it. And there were also moments where I felt this deep level of manipulation that kind of usually annoys me when I'm watching a movie. And I feel like somebody's got their hand on my shoulder. And so I generally recommend it. And I think people should seek it out too. And you should definitely come back so we can talk about it on the show because it is a very fertile ground for discussion of what a movie should be trying to accomplish. And I really admire that she's like, fuck it. I'm going for it in her movies. Her last movie is the same thing. It's not as effective as this movie. But I appreciate that there's someone who is willing to really like break convention to get you to feel something. - Yeah, and it's interesting 'cause one, maybe not just at this festival, but in general, is that language of horror is starting to infiltrate all kinds of other films. And in some ways, I appreciated it because actual horror on the ground at TIFF was kind of hard to find. I didn't see some of the midnight Madness films. I thought that the midnight Madness selection didn't look like it had a lot of straight up scary stuff. But that is why I want to speak up a little bit about River, which I think is quite a fun, slasher film. I liked it more in retrospect. When I was watching it, I was a little non-plus. But in retrospect and thinking, but how well-made it is, I'm definitely pro river. And either of you guys have seen that one yet, right? - No, I'm very excited. This was the big acquisition out of the festival, right? - Yeah. Yeah, Josh, Josh, I don't wanna go to Xamarin. Josh Juliano or Josh Julio Dino's film. Sorry if I got that wrong, Josh. He directed a good movie. Yeah, it was bought for, I think, eight million bucks by Bloom House and Universal. I think IFC had it and then they sold it off. I mean, one other big thing at this festival was it was the obsession, victory lap of all time, you know? Because I think TIFF feels an ownership of that movie. When there's a certain movie, you know, like Moonlight or Green Book or Obsession, if they can sort of lay any ownership to it, they will remind you of that ad nauseam. So they brought Curry Barker back. They brought Indian Everett. - He was getting some fish sauce. - And Curry, she's got pounds. It's coming to some money. - Yeah. - Yeah. And talking about that idea of starting their journey, you know, what a long-range trip it's been one year later. - Great. - You know, I don't know if river is going to have the same discourse monster effect because it's not getting its hands in the same kind of can of worms. But I must say, Jessica Roth and Jane Levy in the same movie that's ingenious. They're both great. Like, they're great both of them in this kind of film. I loved watching them act together. The killers are suitably freaky. Always good at a Q&A when there is a six, nine professional basketball player on stage to bring back absurdly tall slasher movie killers. I think that was good. And it's just very evocatively staged and shot and made. Like, I wouldn't go too hyperbolic about it. It's not great, but it shouldn't be undervalued either. It's a good, it's for what it is. It's a very good time. - And it was the only kind of genre film or horror movie I saw that I liked. - Oh, interesting. Yeah, I mean, who likes a, down and dirty, gnarly, genre movie more than me? I make some really, that was, that's the one movie this entire fall film festival season. I was like, "Bock, I wish I saw that." And you know, usually I feel that four or five times. And this was the one movie where, and I felt this even given that obsession after math, I felt that last year when obsession premiered and people that I know who really love this stuff were like, "Dude, this is the one. You're gonna love this." And so there is still something fun about that when you wander into a room and you're like, "I heard this could be cool." And then a movie pops up and you're like, "Well, that was genuinely good." That was genuinely exciting and fun to watch somebody new arrive. And so that's cool. What else? And it seems like maybe you were not blown away by the lineup this year. - Yeah, you wanna take any shots on the way out? - Yeah. - On the way out, we just got here. (laughing) I mean, not blown away. I mean, look, some of these are movies I'm gonna write about a greater length, for Ringer or elsewhere. I'm sure they'll be cause later on to talk about I play Rocky, which is an interesting comparison to Elsonar, right? Where really you're sort of just judging these two lead performances. I think Stallone is a more familiar person to impersonate maybe than Ian Charlson, but they're both, I'm sort of trying to say this is fairly as possible. They're both kind of about the craft of acting. And they're sort of both about what actors are kind of pulling out of them, pulling out of themselves. It's interesting that it's the Peter Farley movie that is less cut to ribbons directly than the other one. I mean, Andrew Scott might be giving a great performance in Elsonar, but it is hard to tell. Cause at a certain point, about an hour and a half in the director just doesn't trust anything. He doesn't trust the script, doesn't trust the audience. he just. I did not like the way that movie was directed in the homestretch and your Scott's a great actor, but you can't give a great sustained performance when you're cut up like that. And as for I play Rocky, I think it's still under NDA, but I read a book that's also tied to the making of Rocky that's not yet. And watching the movie made me think of how funny the book was. Much funnier incidents in reality than the kind of fake ones that the movie puts together, but you know, good, good line readings by Tracy Letts playing just like the studio, just just playing the studio. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. You know, like the studio, the studio guy who gets everything wrong. God, what else did I, what else did I even see? It's all like 40 movies. It's not great. Let's not jump out of mind. So you are one of the lone dissenters on Joey Firstman's Club Kid. So I'm sure I think it's worth. I'm in and I are very in the bag for this movie. We loved it. Super. And honestly, Adam, when I saw your one word review on Letterbox, I thought, okay, Club Kid, people's choice award here it comes. Oh, we know what I just before we tied with Club Kid, another bit of applause was at the press screening of the debut. Okay. It was a press screening where I remember before the press screening, reading people clapped for this movie at Telluride and then the Toronto audience did the same thing, but it was like a telegraph to them. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was telegraph. Also not a movie. I like very much. It's going to be a good review. I have no, I have some idea of what's waiting me and we'll see. But for Club Kid, I mean, look, it's an interesting discussion about the difference between a movie being effective and a movie being good. Is this movie effective? Very hard to argue that it is not. I was surrounded by people sniffling and crying at the screening. I myself was just sick, but not crying. I just felt felt like shit while watching it. So there's that. I think it's interesting when a movie is all about the characters, flaws and growth and self-recording when they really kind of do nothing wrong. At the movie constantly reminds you that they haven't really done anything wrong, that the things that happen aren't really their fault, not really their problem. I love movies about 10-year-olds who are just perfect and have none of the actual rough edges or typical edges that can be extremely unfair in both criticisms. Honestly, I really know. No, I'm not because even the things they try and introduce, like the anger issues the kid has, go nowhere. He is sort of absolved by the machinery of the plot the main character played by the filmmaker, who of course is writing, directing and starring in this kind of very self-flattering project. Not since Chacha Real Smooth, in my opinion, it's been a movie that operates in that way. I feel like it's a showcase movie. It's designed to show this guy as a talented writer, as a talented director, as a talented actor. He is all of those things, but it's in the sacrifice of the real kind of complexity in his movie might be about. I don't really think the complications and contradictions of that scene are well developed. I don't think the contradictions of maybe starting to date your kid's therapist, no matter how hot he is and he is exceptionally hot. They have incredible chemistry now. Yeah, I don't know. Sometimes you just got to do it. I'm not against that at all. I'm against the fact that it's introduced to a kind of ethical impasse in the movie. It doesn't matter. The kid's anger management issues don't really matter, and even we don't want to spoil the whole movie, but even the outcome and resolution of the film, it's all kind of easy. I think that that's the reason I do not include you guys in this. You are my friends and I love you and all that. I think that the movie is very pleasing and I think people are being pleased by it. I found it to be pretty shallow and kind of self-flattering and also a weird view of what it means to take responsibility in life as if the two lifestyles are incompatible. I think if you follow that logic a little too far, it's kind of a weirdly reactionary conservative underpinning for a movie like this to have, as if what we see in the first half of the movie is something that just a priori has to be escaped before you can take on these other responsibilities, which I don't know is actually true. You always have a criticism more. I'm like, what are you talking about? That's a real, I don't agree with that at all. I think you can read it that way, and we can talk about it more when the movie comes so that we don't spoil it for people, but to me, it's more about the decisions within the scene, not the scene. This is not a rejection of the scene. It's a rejection of the way that the person lived inside of the scene and that person does do things in the movie. It's not my job to defend the movie, but this not totally worked for me because it's a person who could have been living a little bit differently while doing the work that he does and because of the actions that he takes early in his life and later in his life, the poor judgment that he displays leads to the outcome of the movie. Now, stuff about the kid, that's fair note. I guess so. I don't disagree with you that it is, it is very traditional, both in the structure of the film and also, ultimately, it's views on kids and what a happy ending is and what resolution for all of the people are. It is not provocative in that way, though it is provocative in that we still don't know what all of the club drugs are. Maybe that's the other thing. Maybe you're just like, I'm not even going to try to use the link. My life is clearly all club drugs. No, what I was going to say is that what's, I'll make a value neutral observation too, which is that it's interesting to see how quickly the DNA of not just the safeties, but Sean Baker now becomes a mood board. And that's not a putdown because I like, often I like those filmmakers and it's smart to take some of that stuff. It's the same producer as an officer. Yeah, same producer is an aura, which you can feel in that opening sequence. You know, you can feel that opening sequence for sure. There's some very good performances in it kind of around the edges. There's a good performance at the center of it. I mean, like I said, it's a showcase for talent. Yeah, I just, I just found it to be little self-regarding and a little easy. And I didn't think that what you say to it, the character's decisions, I don't think he made nearly enough kind of bad ones. There's an out with all of them where the movie is sort of like, oh, but he didn't mean it. But that's just bad luck. Yeah. And it's a little, it's a little annoying to me. For me, this in retrospect, the most predictable thing of all time is Adam not responding to this movie. But I'm interested that it did not place in the top three in the people's, in the people's choice voting at Toronto, because it really seemed based on the other reactions our experience in can are experience of this film. And then you as a reverse bell weather, Adam, that it would really I think a little bit of it. Here's my general, I don't know if it's skepticism around how this award operates, but you've got two premieres and you've got one movie that I would say is being considered kind of undeniable right now. The played huge a can, the played huge a telly ride that played huge a Toronto. And so that trio is sort of immovable in a way and putting another can title there, maybe lessens the impact of the award. And so, you know, if club kid were or the debut were in fourth place, I wouldn't be surprised, but we don't know. Okay, is there anything else you want to cite that you thought was worthwhile before we wrap? Anything else that I want to cite, I mean, I think that a lot of the movies that I think people are very excited about this fall are elsewhere. And that would sort of mean less or be less of an observation if there weren't so many other movies at TIFF. I mean, we haven't really had a discussion about it as a showcase of Canadian films, because I know that that's not a leading issue. We haven't talked about how good the wavelength section is, which is experimental and avant-garde film, because it's always good, because those programmers always bring it, whether it's films that are being brought from Berlin and can like a Niko Parado's wonderful, everything else's noise, or John Torres, the remotes, which is kind of like Vaporwave, Filipino, Kronenberg is really good movie, you know, like there are very good movies to see at TIFF. But as an idea of what is shaping the fall, I can't speak for you guys, or I can't speak for listeners of this podcast, it's not TIFF's fault, but like, James Ray's movie wasn't here. Paul Thompson Anderson's movie wasn't here, and you know, Behemoth, which is playing at the New York Film Festival, which people are very excited by, wasn't here. You know, primetime wasn't here. So in some ways, talking about TIFF is recapitulating films that, you know, Amanda saw Adventist, or that you guys are all going to see at the New York Film Festival, but it's with some pretty major one sort of missing. And I think the feeling, fair or not, is 10 years ago, those things might not have just not been missing. They might have been present here, rather than somewhere else. There's a whole bunch of tricky reasons for this, you know, and it's not as simple as saying TIFF didn't get the good films. But I know that reading about primetime, or reading about the Nathan Field or Doc, or reading about some of the other things that were Adventist was a big part of my TIFF. A big part of my last 10 days was reading about movies that I wasn't seeing. And maybe that's my faults, or maybe that's my problem. But it's a good one. I think that's true, though. I think I will be honest, it felt that way, and Adventist a little bit. And I got, you know, some of the movies that you just listed, and I was also reading about you can see everything from afar so it does there's something somewhere else at all the festivals at this point because so many films are skipping festivals. Yeah, I'm just going to say I feel like there's something is shifting right now about and we've been talking about that's a little bit over the last couple of years especially as can has become so powerful in terms of dictating what the sort of art house prestige slate will look like for the remainder of the year and that didn't used to be the case 20 years ago and now it's very much the case. And then this year it felt like can was a little bit softer than usual and yet it is still emerged with three or four titles I feel like they're going to make it all the way to the finish line. So no one's going to be able to get every movie at one single festival Toronto is one of the few festivals though where you because of the scope and size and the number of films programmed in the past maybe you had more of an ability to put your arms around the bulk of the season and maybe that is starting to strain out a little bit. So it's interesting that it's changing in that way. You know what can movie not go over well in Toronto or not really was fjord. Not go over well with me personally which is another discussion I don't think it's very good movie. But it was sort of palpable how just looking at the local reviews are so predictable. Yeah. Well, you know, like like like that just didn't go millions and Scandinavians, you know, we will talk about fewer moments early when we rank our best picture contenders. Adam, is there anything you like to promote or talk about that you're working on? Well, you know, I have a podcast that is going to be coming out at the beginning of next year. It is not with with with with with Ringer, but you know, hopefully I'll still be allowed on on your podcast. You guys are both certainly welcome on mind Amanda has already been on it. Yeah. And that'll that'll come out next year. Sean, you're slated and you will be we have a date are you know, we have to pick a we have to pick a day in a way. I don't want to say too much about it also because it's a proper, you know, broadcaster podcast and I want to let them promote it, but think the movie they live and forcing people to watch a movie again, including you, whatever we talk about, you were going to be forced to to watch again, you have to be on the podcast twice each episode is comprised of two appearances by by by each of my guests, sort of a rewatchable conceit. Is that what you're saying? No, not a rewatchable conceit and we and we have first first first of all, so you guys deliberately rewatch in between discussions of the film on the rewatchables, no, that's true. It's a part of that podcast and homage to John Carpenter and they live, no, am I ever on it in 10 year history? No. So that's it. So that would be a big big difference between this and the rewatchables is that I'm on it. But, you know, in that I'm the host, but you guys are among a list of absolutely fantastic critics, filmmakers, friends with whom I'm going to discuss some of these sounds like maybe Jordan Firstman will not be on the show though, just checking it on that. I make a I mean, I wonder how many filmmakers when they hear about this pot are going to be like, fuck that guy, but there's also going to be a fair number of filmmakers who've already agreed to be on. I just don't want to spoil, I just don't want to spoil who they are, but definitely critics and, you know, big, big, big picture pals was so nice, you know, seeing you guys in person in Toronto that I wanted to just harangue you on a podcast, Amanda, no spoilers, did you enjoy doing it? I had a great time. It was a lot of fun and I mean, there is some creative direction to it that I personally really enjoyed. So we'll leave it at that. See? I can see Sean skepticism is just melting. I see here's this about creative direction. I can just see it. I've always been in the back for Namin. I think you know that. I appreciate it. Thank you guys for having me. Thank you for remembering that, you know, Toronto exists. And I look forward to talking about which movies are we going to argue about Fjord? I can't wait to talk about Fjord. Fjord Club Kid. Josephine. We don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Lots to come. Yeah. Lots to come. Thanks Adam. Bye Adam. Bye guys. Okay. Best picture power in case you feel ready for this. I do. I made a short-ish list myself ahead of time. But this is collaborative. It is. I'd like to pose something to you before we start. Please. I think since this is the first one, we should start with one and then work our way down to number one. Yes. Number one. Yeah. I'm on board with that. Sure. Sure. Because, you know, we're building the universe right now. I'm down with that. Complete snapshot of where we are right now. Okay. So you just want to read this list of films. Do you think that would be a mistake? Once again, Sean Fantasy reads a list of films. I think there's proof that that's something people enjoy. It's true. Um, you can do your movie phone voice. Hey, you know, thank you to the people of San Francisco for buying those tickets and selling out. Do you see the show sold out? Oh, it's sold out. Oh, good. That's great. Yeah, San Francisco. Never done a show there. I'm very excited. I haven't been at some time. I'm going to need everybody to tell me where to buy vintage Levi's and food. We need restaurants. Yeah, but also Sean, when are we going to dinner because you've booked us all night long? Oh, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I always do this. I even stepped in front of you a little bit on this one and I was like, well, let's just be clear about our time commitment. I love cinema. I also love cinema, but then when we're on a work trip, I like going out to dinner. Let me go further. Yeah. I love cinema with others. Okay. That's really beautiful. That's what we're doing here. You are the community. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. As far as I can tell right now, and I, you've given this a look beforehand, right? Yes. Yeah. I think there are 30 contenders for best picture right now. Now, nearly all of the fall film festivals have concluded. We of course have the New York Film Festival, which is going on right now, but it really kicks in a high gear next week with a bunch of new films. And then we'll have the AFI Fest, we'll have some of the more regional festivals, you know, your millburgs, your scads, stuff like that. But the biggies are off the board. And one of us has seen 23 of the 30 contenders. There's really only seven movies that are true mysteries to us. And even those seven movies, we have a lot of that. Yeah. Where, yes. And so there's no movie this year. There's no Nosferatu this year, where it's like, well, there is, but we know what it is. Yes. And we haven't seen it yet. Yes. But even then, I feel like I have a lot of pre-release information about the movie that indicates. Does that make you feel special? Yeah. Good. Okay. And you know what? We're all special in unique ways. I'm absolutely fascinated by the season. We're going to do this seven times now over the next seven months. I promise it will only be once a month and it'll always be appended to the end of an episode that is about a movie. We're promising me or you're promising the people who just like to bitch in. Everyone who enjoys it. The other thing I want to announce to you right now live on the show is that over the final 21 weeks leading up to the Academy Awards, we will have an individual segment about every single race. Okay. We used to do this years ago on the show called the Big Race and we would want to talk about like the acting races and but every single race, we're going to talk about best sound. We're going to talk about costume design. Yeah. We're going to really put our heads around it. This is me learning that it's more than 21 weeks until the Oscars. I know. 21 episodes. 21 episodes. Yes. Okay. Because I was like that's half a year. We're not. We are closer than six months at this point, right? No. No. No. No. We're just under September to October, October, November, December, January, February, March. We're just under six months. Oh, you're right. We're just six months. Yes. You're right. You're right. Yeah. But I, okay. That seems like a good idea. Good job. Okay. Thank you. Here are the 30 films. Please sit quietly. You don't want to go back and forth? Yeah. Sure. Okay. I did this alphabetically so it was not to tip my hand at any meaningful way. Okay. Great. We just, we love to understand how your mind works. Thank you. sudden artificial behemoth being human labola negra club kid the debut digger dune part three Elson or fatherland fjord the further misadventures of cliff booth ink the invite Josephine Michael Minator obsession the Odyssey paper tiger possible love prime time project Hail Mary tender loving care sense and sensibility where wolf wild horse nine wildwood you can see everything I think we could host something i'm just putting it out there we are hosting something i how do you feel i really had some good topspin on some of those i thought you're an amazing broadcaster thank you so much ever said anything otherwise we've said many other things about you but amazing broadcaster no question okay so i want to start with one because there's an obvious one normally and listen in list making you know in our editorial lives you're supposed to start from the bottom and then reveal to number one that is how you make a good list but because this is the first one we're feeling it out yep we start with number one which is of course the Odyssey i agree with you the Odyssey is the is the front runner in this race yes even after all of these fall film festival releases and the the hype that has been accrued by those movies my head is kind of spinning now though about this because you always do you think it's because you don't do Pilates or anything and so you don't have any sort of center of gravity like emotionally or physically i've always had exceptional balance okay that's just the fact all right and yet you're just you're back and forth you're like the you know the car wash thing no i mean i have an active mind i have an active mind okay if it's If there's anything that is unbalanced, it's my mind. And I'm always looking for the unthought moment. - Okay. - What aren't they thinking about? How can we surprise them? - This is how we miss F1. This is how we miss Fjord for the Palm Door. This is how we miss shape of water for the experts. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - No, I fucked up many times. Number two to me is clearly LeBole and Egra. That's also, I have it written down. - Okay, so LeBole and Egra, which just won the TIFF, audience award, the people's choice award, was it smash out of can, lost Hobbies one, the best director of can. I talked to many people that tell your eye who swooned over the movie. Now you haven't seen this movie, I'm just so interested. - I'm going on Thursday, I'm so excited. - So now it's in an interesting place where you have really had it hyped to see you for five months. - Yeah. - And I'll be wondering if the air will ever come out of the balloon because if you like it and other people who still haven't seen it like it, this feels like a legitimate threat to the Odyssey. Now it's so early and we've done this a million times. Emilia Perez once upon a time seemed like a significant threat. - Right. In a very similar scenario. - This movie was acquired by Netflix out of can. - Yes, a European title out of can by Netflix coming after a Nolan film. Now, I need to see this movie again now, 'cause I feel like a lot of time has passed since I've last seen it. - I will say, you don't often text me coming up of a movie that we haven't seen. We like to save it and/or you just text me a joke. And this was one of this since year, I was blown away by this. So, you know, I either get it, you did that for sentimental value, which didn't ultimately win. And then you did that for Empire of Light, which was one of the worst movies we've ever seen. - That's not true. I did not flip for Empire of Light. - No, you didn't flip for it. You texted me like in the opposite direction, and you were like, this is a crime. Like everyone should be prosecuted for this. - That's the only time I ever texted you after a screen. - Those are the ones that I can remember. - Wow, okay, that's interesting. How do I keep that trend going? - But I'm also like in a festival. - Amanda, I've just seen other mommy. - I've never seen this work. - Have you seen other mommy yet? You can't go without me. That's the-- - We'll see it after I get back. - Okay, yeah, but you can't do it. - We can mostly see together. I promise. - Thank you. - There probably will be an entire episode about other mommy. - Yeah, no, I know. - I'm living a whole life about it. - The other other mommy trailer was in front of Resident Evil last night, and also it played so well. - Yeah. - This is now two trailers that we're really all pretty excited about that movie. So, I'm just putting this out here, like early on to say-- - I have it at number to listen. We have a document proof that independently I agree with you. - The interesting thing about it is, like, of course, Netflix is never won. Netflix trying to get over the hump. It's been a theme of this show since we've been doing this show. They didn't produce the movie, but they did acquire it, and they're given it the full push. They're printed in a lot of cities. They're gonna put on a lot of screens. They're gonna work hard. This is their big ticket. And there will be Nolan fatigue. I don't know if there will be enough Nolan fatigue to lead to losing, but Frank Choice, and the movie is passionate as LeBolin Edgar, that I think we'll have his passionate responses the movie is, is really interesting. I just wanna say that at this stage now, because if I had to put money on it, I think that will be the story of the season. I think it will be the Odyssey versus this LeBolin Edgar. - Okay. - And the two, the differences in the similarities between those two films. - I believe that. - Okay. - I think, again, I made a point of getting it on the calendar, even before I wanted to, because I was like, this is the one I can tell. Just as soon as Netflix announced that, incredibly long run, I was like, oh, this is your awards film. This is what you think your best chances, and that's a very seasoned and experienced awards team, even though they've never made it. - They haven't won, but they're as smart and as invested in this as anybody. - So they know, and that they've identified it, says to me. I'm also, it's a sweeping historical epic. Penelope cruise, isn't it? Sounds great. - I'm glad you're close. - Yeah, I'm excited to see it again, actually. Just quickly, for the purposes of this discussion, the seven movies that we haven't seen, artificial, being human, which we didn't, we were not a TIFF, Dune Part Three. - Correct. - The further misadventures of Cliff Booth. - Yes. - Sense and sensibility. - Yeah, there are a lot of people have seen that. I'm seeing it next week, if you'd like to join me. Where Wolf and Wildwood. Some people have seen Wildwood, some people have seen Sense and sensibility. I know someone who's seen Dune Part Three. - Oh, yeah. - Okay. - I'm not sure that any of those movies really feel like they're going in the 10? - Not even Dune Part Three. - Oh, sorry, besides Dune Part Three, I should say, I shouldn't have said that. When you think about number three, I'll give you my gut on number three. - Yeah. - I think Wild Horse Nine is like-- - It's also what I have written on number three. - No, do you think that's because you and I have gotten too similar over the years? - No, I think it's because that was sort of pre-identified. I think the festivals kind of confirmed it. And McDonough has like a long track record, at least with nominations. - It does. - There is a big Malkovich moment happening. And so it does seem that intense lots. That just, that fits right in. And that's, is that searchlight? - That is searchlight. And so searchlight, that'll be searchlight's movie. Yeah. - I agree with you. They do have another movie on the board Behemoth. I'm not sure if I see that in the 10 yet. - Yeah. - What do you think is number four? I'm legitimately something. I know at least four movies that I feel confident will be in the top. - Yeah. - But I don't know what order I think they go in. - I only filled out, I have seven here, and I put them in an order. So at four, I have Dune Part Three written. - Just 'cause you feel like it's just a lock and we know what it is. And I mean, I think 3D close to a lock. He is admired. The other was, Part Two was nominated. - It was nominated, but it had significantly, I think it had significantly fewer nominations and wins over one. One had a great craft one where I think it brought five or six craft awards. And I think Dune Part Two had fewer nominations and fewer wins. I think that there is some of the return of the King vibe and appreciation for Villanoove, at least below the line and probably in director, if I had to say, I don't know. - He didn't get in. - He didn't get it. - Last time he didn't get in, he didn't get in for one either. And that is something that has eluded him. - I do also think that this going up against Doomsday will cleverly present itself as like the lesser of the Black Buster evils and it's either you can be this slop and in the comic book "Minds Forever" or you can elevate. So the positioning is favorable for it. - And that is effectively gonna be the marketing. - Yeah, so I do think it'll happen. - I feel confident about its presence. - Yeah, it doesn't have to be so hard to say. - It doesn't have to be so hard. - But I understand you're thinking completely. I'll give you just other movies that I think will be there. I think the invite will be there. - Invites number five for me, I do as well. - A movie that they're doing a very interesting thing here where every three or four weeks, they're screening it for a new group of people, guilds, various influencing bodies, just to remind people like, hey, don't forget about this. Don't forget about this, don't forget about this. The smaller movie did pretty good business, but was not a Black Buster compared to some of these other titles. It was not a big fall festival movie. So I think they're handling that very well. - I think so. It plays really well. It is also now just making it out. It's available to rent people who can't go to the theaters or seeing it. I have just a lot of anecdotal of, hey, you know what I saw at the invite. It's really great from pretty much everyone in my life. Many, if not all of the actors will be out on the road, either for this Oscar season, Penelope Cruz, being one of them, Olivia Wilde is also in Behemoth, or Seth Rogan has the studio season two coming out at some point. So I, and so you'll be reminded, oh, I really like all of these people. And I just, I think it's the right mix of provocative but also relatable. - Accessible. - Yeah, accessible. In a way that I think the drama is too provocative, even though it's, you know, my fave. And then we can talk about Club Kid later. - Yeah, I mean, Ken A24 Navigate. - Exactly. - Three, maybe even four contenders is a real question. And what is their leading contender? Is the invite really their leading contender? Or is it Club Kid or is it the debut? - Right. - The debut? It's one of those weird situations where it feels like if Julianne Moore doesn't win best actress, I'll be really surprised at this point. There are some storytelling choices that are a bit unusual and at times surreal in a way that feels a little bit outside. What the, what you might be expecting and what you're hoping to get out of a movie that is otherwise being celebrated in the way that it is, it really worked for me. But I don't know if it's gonna play the same way broadly to like the steak eaters of the academy. You know, the 67 year old producers who don't have as unusual a taste. - Sure, will it play to Europeans? Because that's like, I can't tell the other half of it. - I think so. I haven't seen it yet. I was really surprised that it didn't place at Toronto also it seemed like it had a rapturous perception there. Though maybe it was just all of the critic friends I follow who were really thrilled by the like play bill that they made. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Which, you know, again, great marketing. - They're doing a good job around that. I, I don't know, I found it tremendously satisfying fun. I thought it was a great time at the movies. - Jesse Eisenberg is liked, though in my head, a real pain had been nominated for Best Picture and it was not. He was nominated for Screenplay and Kieran Culkin-1 for Sporting Actor, but there is some history there in terms of him being embraced by the Academy. - Yeah, I mean, it just has a very simple thing which is that everybody likes Julianne Moore and Gianmatti. - Yeah. - Everybody thinks that they're great. If you meet a person who's like, "I don't really like Paul Gianmatti," that's like, "You should be suspicious of that person." They're both just so gifted in doing their thing, but the movie has some unusual storytelling choices that I think people will bump on. - Okay. - Coming out to tell you right, I would have put it in my tent. And now I think there's a little bit of a re-examination of the big cantitles. We heard Adam say, "Feword didn't go over well." - Right. - It seems like the reception of Minotaur was sort of like a very polite, like this is quite good, but maybe not rapturous. - Yeah. - How are you feeling about those movies? - I mean, Feword has the palm and it has neon and it has Sebastian Stan and Renata Renzva and Sebastian Stan is already on the cover of New York Magazine this month. Like, I think it has enough that it will get a spot. - I agree with you. - I'm gonna put that a little lower on the Totem pole. - Yeah. - Sure. - Seven. - Great. Seven's wonderful. - You ordered seven. So then what's going in six and five based on this discussion? - Where did you put the invite? - I guess the invite, five feels very powerful for a small film. Like in my mind, it's more like eight 'cause there's a end with some unknowns and it's gonna end up like nine or 10, but it's gonna get in. That's kind of my vibe on the movie right now. But some of that is contingent on the debut club kid. - Why don't you put it at seven then and Feword at six? - Yeah. - And I don't know what's at five. - Well, do you still feel the project home areas in? - I don't know what to do with it. I don't know what to do. Everyone's gone quiet and Ren Gosling is bam-bam and I just, puppets are back and then they weren't back and up is down. - Ryan Gosling is Starfighter in Star Wars Starfighter. - And then he's not Doom. Who is he in the-- - Doom? No, he's Ghost Rider. - Thank you. - And Starfighter and Ghost Rider and Bam-Bam. - Sure, and Bam-Bam. - Okay. Whatever you wanna do in your life, I guess. I feel like it's gone quiet, but that is also the playbook for something that comes out in March. And we'll reheat. I do as well, but that is three huge movies in the Odyssey, June, and Project Home Area. - You're right, and that's very unusual. - Yes. - I still think it's gonna hang in there. It's Amazon's movie, it's their one big movie. It's a movie they're gonna push really hard. I'm gonna say let's put it at five just because we know what we have with it. - Okay. - I'm in peace with that. - In the same vein of Doon Part Three, where it's like, well, we know that this is a movie that is approving commodity in the Oscar race. We know the Project Home Area was a big success that people liked. - So these are the seven, for sure, that I had written down. And almost exactly this order. - Now, we've seen six of these seven movies and we've seen the two previous films in the Doon series. So that's part of it, right? That's like, we're working with knowledge that we have, not knowledge, we're missing. Now we get into a place where you have to take some chances in this discussion. Can a movie like All of a Sudden or on the all the way on the other side of the spectrum, a movie like Michael get into a best picture race in 2026? - I'd like to read you, here's the rest of my list. Michael, question mark, fatherland, question mark, club kid, question mark, I play Rocky, question mark, All of a Sudden, question mark. And then the debut was up there also. - I didn't think that I play Rocky in my long list. It's 31 movies. - Oh, oh dear. - You're a obsession for you, Amanda. - I don't think it's gonna happen in best picture anymore. I think it's gonna be in Indynav already and also ran to Julianne Moore. - That would be a repeat effectively. - Like, weapons. - Yeah. - Yeah, could it happen, I don't know if it could happen in screenplay or in something? - It could. - Yeah, I think that's more likely than best picture breakthrough. - Indynav already versus Julianne Moore would be a very interesting comparison to the Mikey Madison versus Demi Moore campaign. - Is Indynav already lead? - Yes, I think so. - Yes, I think so. - Even though maybe she's not. I think they would runner in that. - We don't have to get into that fight already, but I'm not totally sure. - Okay. - If I were them, I would not runner against Julianne Moore. - Well, maybe they'll get away with not doing it, even though it is a two-hander, but. - Yeah. - Obsession in Variety's predictions is not, I'm not seeing it here for original screenplay. - Okay. - That's pretty weird. How can that be? Anyhow. Okay, so of those movies that you've listed with your question marks. - Yes. - What are you most confident in? - Why am I most confident in? - Hmm. - I still sort of think the debut seems like it's gonna happen. I feel like the Jesse Eisenberg plus the Julianne Moore of it all, I haven't seen it. There's a warmth for it to tell your ride. Could be wrong. I just argued against that same reasoning for Obsession. So, you know, there's no consistency in my logic here. And again, I haven't seen it. - I'm not against it. And like I said, I think that there is coming out to tell your ride, I would have said no question. - Yeah. - It's going in. In the aftermath. I've heard from people who know stuff. We're like, yeah, maybe this didn't totally work. - Okay. - I'll put it on there because we know, I know what it is. And I, I, I, I know it could happen. - Do you want to do a club kid? - I don't think it's gonna go. - I don't think it is either, which I think is devastating. But that's okay, we'll have a great time with it. - I think there's just too much on 824's play if I'm being totally honest with you. Now we say can something more unusual happen? Can a, you can see everything become the first documentary to be nominated for best, best picture. - Be fun. - Can. - I wouldn't know because I haven't seen it yet. - Can obsession get in as a. - Do you, so what do you think? I said what I think, but I don't. - Well, it's the same thing as F1. In that it is like a highly commercial movie that is quote unquote original. I think actually F1 and obsession are original in the exact same way. In that there are lots of forebears and there's a lot to kind of go on, but they did make up this whole story and all these characters and it came from nothing. And the business likes that. They want to reward that, something that can be commercially viable but feels new. - And do you think they picked that over Michael? - God, I hope so. - I mean, I hope so too. That is, that's something. - Michael is the exact opposite of that. - That's true. It's a good argument for obsession. Okay, I'm game to put it in. - Let's put obsession to 10. - Great. - I'm not at all convinced that that's where it's gonna land. - Okay. - But for now, knowing what we know, I think it's a little bit easier to see something like that happening rather than minotaur or digger or, you know. - Yes, I have seen digger. - And it's not near your top 10. - I, you know, the Academy Historically really does like Inri too and likes Inri too more than anyone on this podcast right now and responds to it. It is very Inri too. So, you know. - Maybe I could go in. - I don't know. It's not hugely commercial, is what I would say. - A lot of it pushed it out. A lot of the pundits after the screening on Saturday. So you were there. - I was there. I never had it in, you know, but I don't, what I saw did not lead me to think that it's gonna make top 10 could be wrong, but obsessions, but here's the thing I'll say in response to this. And this is, you know, Amanda's late September annual, but what about the international voters? And I always over correct. And I think we, but we start with too many Hollywood titles. I'm always like, let's, you know, put six or seven, but we're pretty much only doing. - We've got Fjord and LeBole and Egra as our two international entrants so far. - That's true. - So what's the third? What's the third? Is the third all of a sudden? - Hamaguchi was nominated for Best Picture for Drive My Car. - It's true. - This movie is gonna be one of the best reviewed movies of the year, no question about it. - Yes. - It is gonna be a critical darling. It's gonna get, I think a lot of consideration for both actresses, for Tau Akamoto and Virginia Fira. And I think there's a Virginia Fira Best Actress campaign that I think could work. - That would be great. - She's phenomenal in the movie. It is a challenging movie for the stake eaters. It's a three and a half hour, derational, personal drama about Elder Care. - And capitalism and the beauty of life. - Life and death, everything. Is it? - Yeah, we could put, you know, the counter to that is that the Academy loves Pablo Cowsky. That's a known quantity that movie is 72 minutes long and also stars Sundra Hooler. So. - I know. I don't feel like that. - I don't think that it will either. I don't think, I like the movie. I don't, it doesn't feel the same as Cold War, which Cold War, I think. - I agree. - I think they felt like they had a discovery and him getting into director that year was so exciting. It felt like the '70s Oscars. But it doesn't feel there's the same level of acclaim. And I think most of the acclaim will be around her in that. triumph for it of performances that she has with, I guess, a quartet, right? She's in Digger as well. So she's in Digger, she's in Rose, she's in Fatherland, and she's in Project Home Area. And she's gonna get-- - And she sings in Project Home Area. - Yes. Which is like a nice call back to Tony Eardman. She's gonna get recognized somehow. - Yeah. - I don't think Fatherland's gonna get in. - Okay. - Just like, I don't think-- - All right, then. - Inks gonna get in, just like I don't think Josephine's gonna get in, just like I don't think. I'm waiting with Bated Breath to see the response of the behemoth. - I'm waiting with Bated Breath to see behemoths. - I'll tell you this right now. I really don't know. - Okay. - And I feel comfortable saying I don't know. - No, I don't mean that I'm pejorative. Like I literally don't know whether or not people respond to the movie. What else? - Paper Tiger. - I mean, I hope so. - Yeah. - It's opening the New York film festival. So people are gonna be back in the mix a bit. - It's gonna get very well reviewed as all of James Grace films are. It's, I think it's actually smart to play it there and to not run it through the festival machine, the way that Adam was hoping he was gonna be able to see it there. But whether or not it has the power to overcome some of these other movies in this particular context. - Right. - Grace has just never succeeded in this particular space. He's a New York filmmaker and-- - Yes. - You know, it's a Scorsese thing. Scorsese for years was up against Hollywood and they were just like, "Eh, you're too New York." And this movie is the most New York movies made in some time. What's the last, what's a wild swing we can take? I don't think Primetime feels too transgressive to me. We'll talk about it on Friday on the show. I really liked it. - Me too. - But it does not feel like an Oscar movie. It's tenderloving care. Possible. This isn't Mike Lee's New film. - I want it to be. But, you know, I feel like-- - You want to hold Dict this movie right now? - No, I think we should probably do all of a sudden. - Okay, I'm fine with that. Let's do all of a sudden. - Please, I'm president. - This will change a lot. - Yeah. - And yet this doesn't seem so crazy to me. What we have here. Do you want to read this, Ten? Since I've already read so many movie titles today. - We trade it. Sure, at Ten Obsession, nine, all of a sudden, eight, the debut, seven, the invite, six, fjord, five, projectile, Mary, four, Dune Part Three, three, Wild Horse Nine, two, Labul and Egra, and one, The Odyssey. When you make a quote card about this, you will note, Jack Sanders, that this is not a review of the quality of these films or our personal preferences. I don't know why I'm still doing the movie voice. - I'm gonna write that down verbatim. Can I just say something very briefly? I feel like the narrative most of this year has been like, oh, 2026, like, kind of good. Like, I'm looking at this 31 list, this list of 31 films. I'm like, this is a really good year. Like, yeah, I think this is a really good year. - I agree, I mean, and like, have you seen Club Kid yet? I haven't. - I'm also, I'm using the ones that I have seen that I love, and then also some of the ones that you guys have seen that you've spoke to lately about. - I think it's not a ceiling scraping year is the thing. To me, I'll just give you my own stupid metric. No five star movies so far for me this year. - Yeah, I think that's probably true for me as well. - That's just, you know, it's my silly little system, but it's unusual for there to not be one for me. As somebody who wants to, I go into every movie, wanting to love it. And there's been stuff that's gotten close that I really liked a lot. I'm not sure if anything will top my glee during Nirvana, The Band, The Show, The Movie, the first time I saw it, but I saw that last year. So that's the other thing is, that was screened for me. I think in November of 2025, which is a long time ago now. All right, I feel like we did good work here. - Okay. - Do you want to quickly share some feelings about the film, Resident Evil, which you've not seen? - Sure, I have now seen. So this, I will spoil it, I guess, sort of. - Well, if you don't want the movie spoiled for you, I shouldn't listen, nor should you probably listen to the Zach Kregger conversation, or at least not much of that. But-- - Yeah, I just, I really don't want to hear from people who care about the spoilers of Resident Evil enough to be mad at me, but also didn't care enough to go see it opening weekend as much of America did. - What if those people were on the front lines of saving lives as doctors, physicians, assistants, nurses, surgeons? - Then I think them and commend them. And I also hope that they have their responsibility to not listen to this. - Right, press pause. - In the same way that they take on the responsibility of saving other people's lives every day. - That's right, you know? - Yeah, absolutely. You should be in charge of everything. - Thank you for finally saying it. I really liked this. It's, you know, we spent the whole weekend together and we're talking with another friend who had seen obsession and that was like, okay, and so now I'm gonna do Resident Evil 'cause that's the next thing. - I referenced our friend to Zach. - Yeah, and I said, okay, so that's gonna be a little different for you, right? And this feels less like a great example of a movie breaking genre containment and more like just a really sick movie for the sickos. And I got it. There is like, it's obviously a very funny movie, but there's a real hutspa to it that I could pick up on, even though by the end, like with, you know, like the wart tentacles, I was like, I'm good, you know? Like I have other things that I could be doing right now and I warts in particular. But Austin Abrams is amazing. I think like the first, what is it? 30 minutes really until you get the Resident Evil title when he's, you know, in the woods and then they go to the farmhouse is just absolutely electric. And that does also include the now, you know, memed by Chris and you shooting a little girl in the face. - Very enjoyable stuff. - Yeah, that was really good. And I think that was one of the only times that I was like freaked out. That's the other thing is that I didn't find it. I found it really, really gross, but now particularly scary. And but I paid that, that's a compliment for me because I wasn't like, I wasn't having a bad time. I was just kind of like, oh, okay, so what you're going for here is to be as gnarly as possible and also just to be on the right. It's very lean. I don't know anything about the video game as previously discussed. I'm sure there were Easter eggs. In fact, I met a listener at the screening who said there were some, but they, you know, other than video games, it didn't really, none of the Easter eggs really left out at me. - Yeah, there are a couple of things that where he's spending two seconds longer on a moment to give you that sensation, but it is not the like, hey, here's this character who you love, do you know? But I didn't, you know, I didn't really worry about that. I will say, I thought everything was really gnarly and every once in a while you could see the computer animation of the gnarliness and that just doesn't work for me as well. So that's just, that is an aesthetic. - Well, it's interesting. I didn't actually talk to Zach about this. Maybe I should have, but I watched his video that he made for Vanity Fair about the bodies on off the roofs sequence, which I think is amazing. - Which is amazing, but you can tell that those are the crowd, those are my crowd people. - Right, the people are not real, but the bodies that are falling, that was done practically. So, but the city scape is not real. So the buildings beside him, which looked so real to me on the film, were CGI. And the buildings in the background in the view, in Abrams' character's view were CGI. And the bodies that were falling were like real blood bags, like real, you know, practically done. And quite dangerous for Abrams, as he was running through the streets. And I thought it was kind of, and I really regret not asking him about this, but I thought it was an fascinating fusion of the false and the real. And like the way that it can be used positively. - Yeah. - And the execution of a scene. Now, the third act, which is a little bit more controversial, features a lot of CGI. - Yes. - And there are some reasons for that, obviously. But, and I've seen some people be really down on the third act. Chris and I had a really fun time with it, I think 'cause it was like the mic drop quality of it, where it was just like movies over, fuck you. - Yeah, no, I thought that was funny. I mean, also Griffin Newman shows up in the third act. And I was like, many people did the Leo Pony, 'cause the screen, I was like, hey, that's Griffin Newman. You know, and I was like a lone 2PM on a Thursday looking around like, hey, that's my guy. That's my friend. - It was so wonderful. - So that was great. - I know, I knew that. - I had no idea. - No, you didn't tell me that, but that's better, because then I was like, wait a second. - I was with Griffin and David last fall, and we were sitting together, and we'd been together for like three hours in a bar. And then Griffin just started telling me, I don't even know who we led to it, maybe 'cause they had just recorded a pod with Craigor. And then as soon as he told me, I was like, fuck, I wish I didn't know that. I would have loved to have that experience of seeing him on the screen. - I will also say, and this is around the third act, but the image of, so when they go to the nursery in the maternity ward in the hospital, I was like, don't you fucking flash this, Zach Craigor, I'm gonna be so mad at you. And then the image of the baby hands coming up over the plastic box is the funniest thing I've ever seen. - So good. - So good. And it was the exact opposite of the flash. Like I got the sense of the humor. - Yeah, it was really. - Were you about saving the babies? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it was great. So I was very pro. And it was more like, okay, now I understand Sean and Chris better than I found my movie. - Totally. - It's riffing on things that we love. - Yeah. But it was not at all alienating to me in the way that both some horror movies, but certainly most video game movies could be. - Zach said it. He's like, I'm not into torture porn. That's not, I don't wanna watch that kind of thing. This was a much more like irreverent, fun, funny, roller coaster style approach to that kind of story. Okay, great. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Let's go now to my conversation. Was that Craigor? (upbeat music) Zach Craigor is here. Back, three for three. How are you doing? - I'm good, thanks for having me. you excited about the release of your film? - I'm excited to have it out there, yeah. - Okay, so the first thing I wanted to ask you was I know that you went directly from weapons into this movie, and I think you might have told me that when we talked for weapons, and that sounded really stressful. - It was hard. - When we spoke last, I was in Prague in Prague, like deep in it. - Right, yeah. - So was that a good choice? - Uh, good bad, I have no idea. It's what happened, and it feels fine. I feel like I was able to maybe harness momentum, you know, and I feel like Austin and I were in a good, good kind of flow state for weapons, and we were able to just pick up where we left off with this, and that was great. Yeah, I think it was the right choice. Now I'm like a corpse, you know? It was because also this movie, we finished the movie like a week and a half ago, you know, maybe. Like maybe I'm being a little, maybe it was two weeks ago, but it was like, you know, it was pencils down at 11.59, Saturday night, because the DCP had to ship. And there's actually the international version is different than the domestic version, because I was still needing to make changes. And like we missed our international finish line time, you know, so there are shots I'm not stoked on in the international version that are better in the domestic. That's how down to the wire it was. - Yeah, I mean, I was straight from that into the press stuff. So I was thinking about celebrating the idea of like two movies in two years from a, from a filmmaker, I like, which never happens anymore. And it didn't used to happen with some frequency in the 50s, 60s, 70s. And now it does feel like this is more of a rare thing to celebrate. Like what do you, it's even crazier that they used to do that in the 70s, because the edit process was so much different, you know? And that like I talk about this with my editor, I'm like, I can't even imagine the post process. If I, we were doing physical cutting in real real real and like trying things at two frames off. Okay, that give it, give me 10 minutes or how I have no idea how long it took. But it's like, so, so that's, I think part of the reason movies took so much longer back then, it's wild. Anyway, sorry, what was your question? - Well, and it wasn't even a question. It was like an observation and I was wondering if you took anything, whether it's specifically, strategically about how to make a movie or even just like your, your mind state coming out of weapons going into a movie like this, because they're similar, but they're also very different. They're very different. Okay, so part of it is like the way that, right after Barbarian, I wrote weapons, Resident Evil, and flood very close together. - Right, that's your next movie. - Flood is my next movie. And so weapons was the one I was trying to get going first 'cause I wrote it first, and then when that's stalled because of like weird casting things and all this, then I was gonna jump right into a flood. So I was gonna shoot flood before I did weapons. And then the way things worked out, I was kinda pushing both movies forward, like which one is gonna go? I'll jump on either one that goes. It ended up being weapons that went. And then I was gonna do flood, but it turned out that Resident Evil, there's a right thing, and it was like, if I don't shoot it next, I'll probably never get to make it. And I was thinking, like, do I shoot flood and roll the dice that I'll never make Resident Evil? Or do I make Resident Evil and roll the dice that hopefully on the other side I'll still be able to make flood? It was a super stressful thing. - Yeah. - All of this is during the edit of weapons when I had to make these things. And also it was like flood and Resident Evil were written simultaneously. And so flood is a very cerebral, it's more sophisticated, it feels more like weapons, it's much more like something I feel like flood, like maybe put on my tombstone, you know? And Resident Evil was this like little like play time to just break up the strain of writing flood. It was like, Resident Evil was like, you know, easy dude. It was to write. It was just like dumb fun where I wrote it with my buddy and we were just like, oh, oh, oh, oh, and then, and like really not agonizing over anything. You know, wrote it in 15 hours probably and just were like, this feels fun. I'd like to see this movie. It's a rock 'em sock 'em thing. I think that's what he said. - That's what he said, yeah. - And flood then I would go back and like agonize by myself and work incredibly hard. And so, so that's partly, I don't know where I'm going with this, but to me, Resident Evil was always supposed to be just this like fun spa day, whereas weapons and flood were like, you know, really different. It ended up being the hardest movie I've ever, I've only made three movies, but it was so much harder than I had guessed. I thought it would be like, turn my brain off and have a blast and I can shoot these sequences, you know? This is one thing I feel confident about. Like, I know where to put the camera to like craft a horror suspense thing. So that's all I'm gonna do and what a great time. And it ended up being, why was it so hard? Just because, what was the number one thing you did not anticipate? - I didn't anticipate being sick the whole time. - Oh, yeah, that's bad. - Yeah, I had pneumonia for the first half and then I had a bacterial infection for the back half. And it was very intense and I was never, I never had 50% of my body, you know? And so that was really hard. So you take that and then you put that in being nocturnal for however many months in the North of the Czech Republic and the snow in the freezing cold, not seeing the sun ever. Even when we were shooting on stage, we were nocturnal because the schedule kind of demanded it, you know? So it's like, talk about a morale killer. Like make your crew shoot indoors nights for weeks at a time and people just start to lose it, you know? And so that was like, that was so hard. - Okay, that was really hard. - Why did you do that? Why did you shoot it in the snow? Why did you shoot it at night? - When I'm riding it, I'm like, this would be cool in the snow. And like, you know, he lies about not having chains and that's why he slides in the snow and it's his lie that made him, that's the first domino. And you know, I was, there's lots of themes in this, but one of the themes is, is cutting corners and he is guilty of that. And that's why he's in this situation. And so by the, you know, I didn't interrogate these decisions when I'm riding, I just, right. And then, and then, you know, I didn't appreciate it when I was in, you know, selling the movie. And then, and then all of a sudden, it's like, okay, we're gonna make it and you are the dog that caught the male truck. And you're just like, oh, no. I have to go figure all this stuff out. - It's so funny, like the movie has no sweat on it. Like it doesn't feel like a movie. I'm not just saying this to gas you, like, I, it doesn't feel like a movie that was hard to make. Like it's a ride and you get really involved in it, right? And it does feel like you executed what you'd conceived. - Great. - And even like, I, I repeated what you said to me on the show last year because I was like, this is pretty much exactly what he promised. And delivered on the thing he promised. And so like, I'm curious about how it feels. Like when something, did anything go wrong? Like when something goes wrong, what do you do? Even if you don't have like the, the mental energy because you don't feel well to push through on a day. - Well, partly is I just have such an incredible support system. You know, a movie is like, not just the director. It's like, it's a whole team. And so I could be, you know, I could be Deathly ill and I still have, I still have my department heads and I have my producer, Mary and I have, I have all these people, you know, that are gonna prop me up and help me get over the finish line. I also am a hyper prepper. You know, I am about, I don't know if there's anyone who is more, more, I spend so much energy on the prep. I mean, I make the movie in prep, you know. And so, but what goes into that is, I mean, storyboarding. - Then storyboarding. - This movie. So I had to, because we, so much of this is like, I hadn't gone to Prague to scout and we hadn't built anything. So I couldn't photo board, which is what I usually do. So I storyboarded every single frame of the movie, every frame, months in advance, NLA here, you know, just did that. That way, we are building the sets to my boards. You know, I am scouting to the boards. I'm still, you know, looking for improvements, but we shot, I'd say, 97% of the movie is boarded, exactly as it is. There are a few shots I found in the moment where I was like, let's do this. Let's get this if we have time. But generally, that was the blueprint. So does that mean that the script is etched in stone? No, actually, I made many changes in, I mean, in Prague. You know, like, he wasn't on the phone, walking to the hospital. The whole final lab attack is completely different than it was scripted and storyboarded. So it was like during production, the stunt team took my storyboards and they do, they stunt always does a pre-vis, where they film like, you know, on an empty stage, they film your sequences to show you what they're gonna do in their approach, right? And so I actually had the good fortune of watching the lab attack, as it was scripted and boarded, you know, probably week two of production. And I was like, this is not good. It's just, and it's not, they didn't do anything. It's the conceit is not working. It's too quick and it just, it didn't work. So during production, I had to rewrite, re-board, and then, you know, reshape that whole final sequence. I know people still find it unsatisfying, but you know, it is what it is. I actually love it, I don't give a shit. But we had to pivot in re-invent the whole ending of the movie. And it was always gonna end with him turning into a monster. But it was like the sequence of events was completely different. So when you realize there's something that you've come up with isn't good. Are you like all the time? But is it, are you beating yourself up about it? Yeah, I'm not good about like being nice to myself. But then how do you figure out how to fix it? You obsess and you just obsess. and you do. try many different, you know, I try and give myself, okay, I'm gonna write six different solutions to this problem, and I'm gonna let all six of them be bad. Okay, my only goal, the only metrics of success right now is that I have six separate things. - Okay. - And then generally, one of them will be, will surprise me, you know. I give myself space to have bad ideas. I encourage myself to have bad ideas. When I do that, something, I unclench from result, and I am allowed to trick myself into having fun and being creative. And so that's, I try and approach writing that way. I try and approach everything that way. It's try and take as much of the result and the stress out of the creative process, which is very difficult when you're dealing with tens of millions of dollars if someone else is money. But that's how the joy comes through. You know, and so, you know, it's hard when you're in production, you're fucking exhausted, you've got your movies broken and you got to figure it out. But, you know, I feel like the only tool I have is to like, don't solve it, just play with it, you know. And give yourself a, like, give yourself permission to have a bad idea. And generally, you'll accidentally have a good one. - Did you actually like working at this scale? 'Cause even though this is such an intimate, tight story, I feel like it's a much bigger movie than the two previous movies. - It is, it is. It feels smaller to me. And it's partly the runtime. Partly it's one actor. But it was, you know, in a lot of ways, I completely recognize how it's bigger. All these set pieces were all, like, little movies in and of themselves. He's never, it just, you know, two people sitting and talking in a room sounds like paradise to me now. But, so, yeah, I get it. But it's also, it's like, you know, if you're prepped and you, and you are, everyone is on the same page and everyone is clear about the mission. It's not, it's not so daunting, you know. Clear, clear planning is the solution to all of the overwhelming, you know, things that come. And the lizard will grow to the size of its cage. So even if I was shooting like a movie in a diner with two people talking, somehow some way it would become overwhelming, almost. You know, that's just the law of making any movie ever. It's like, you always feel like you just don't have enough time and you just don't have enough money and how are we going to pull this off? And then you just do, you know, because you leap before you look and you just, you just have to have faith that like you're going to figure it out. Do you see, even though the timing was not necessarily in your control, each movie being kind of a reaction to each other in terms of what you're trying to accomplish tonally or the scope or anything like that? Maybe, I don't know if I have enough perspective to know if that's true. I know that like, resident evil was supposed to be my like, just play. And then, you know, weapons is this deeply personal, necessary thing for me. And then flood is this like other like really important thing to me and this was supposed to be like a little fun palette cleanser in between these two like, you know, things. So I, and that, that's how I think of them is like, you know, I think of resident evil though, is a little heavier than the way that you have described it a few times. It is and there is a lot of meaning for me in that politically and personally and there's, there's, there's, and it's funny, like resident evil has not been consumed by the, the meaning talk in the way that weapons was. Even though to me, it is the movie loaded with meaning. That's fine. I have to let that be what it is. - Do you think that, okay, actually, I wanted to go back ask you about something you mentioned earlier. You said that you thought you might lose the chance to make this movie if you didn't make it when you did. - Yeah. - But I also read you say that maybe you just wouldn't call resident evil and you would still make the movie. - No, I don't know, I don't remember saying that. I trust that I said something along those lines. I think what I was trying to communicate was like, I have to write a movie that would matter to me, whether it was or wasn't called resident evil. Like I would never want to make something just because I get to make a resident evil movie. I would, you know, it has to be a movie that is like a burning thing for me. I would not have made this movie if I couldn't call it resident evil. I think that's been like, I don't want to even get into the whole bullshit of like how the internet has been, you know, my relationship to the internet. But I think I know, right? - I know. - But I do think that people have accused me of hijacking the franchise IP to make a movie I wanted to make in slapping resident evil in it. - Right, right. - So I could get into that. - But that is what you said a year ago. You were like, I love these games. I'm inspired by the game. - Look, I know the truth about myself. So I think I just found out the truth about this and I sleep soundly and I know me and I know why I did this. I wanted to write a resident evil movie. That's the movie we made. I think along the way I fell in love with the story and I would have wanted to make it even if they took the resident evil thing away from me. I don't think I would have, but I would have wanted to. - So I think that's what I was saying. - But there's also something wonderful in the movie with respect to that that I'm not a gamer and I played resident evil but not hardly at all. But I do know that you are actively nodding and at times almost replicating the experience of either playing the game or like I'm searching for this shot gun shells. - That's the point of the movie. - The opening of the drawers. - Yeah. - And obviously dropping in every man into a situation rather than a special forces guy. So I'm curious like how much of that you're thinking about in the construction where you're like, this is gonna be a tasty little Easter egg for my friends at home versus, you know, can the the mom I was on the playground with who was asking me about the movie yesterday? Can she enjoy it? Having no relationship to this? - You know, I wrote it a while ago. So I don't remember, you know. I think I just knew like this story will approximate the feeling of the games. It will, you know, it will check the boxes that I want checked in a Resident Evil movie. And then as I'm going, you know, the Easter eggs are just organic to the story. So I'm not really shoe-horning anything in, you know, I mean, yes, I put some spray cans over here at a frame and I made sure that the. - I'm a bot. - That's just the exact same. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - And the barn, yeah. - Honestly, here's, I'm, you heard it here first, but you know, that typewriter on the desk, I went back and reshot that because I forgot to put the, that wasn't even about that. You know, I just, he looked in an empty office and then like a week and a half later, I was like, I gotta put the typewriter on that desk. We gotta go back and we gotta reshoot that. And I did, I'm so glad I did because, you know, people like it, yeah. But it's like that just goes to show you, that is not my priority in making this movie. It's like, get the Easter eggs, you know, all that stuff. I just, yeah. There's also something that I found really amusing in the movie and I was wondering how intentional it was, which is it felt like you were kind of glancing at or mocking horror movie orthodoxy. It was sort of like the safety on the gun, no service on the cell phone. These like conventions that we encounter or like a little girl who seems like she needs help. Like these are things that we come to expect in these movies, but because the movie is this very delicate balance between horror and comedy, like it's not, oh no service, this character's fucked. It's like no service, of course, this guy's a buffoon, you know, like there's like, how is it his fault that there's no service, like an idiot, dude. Because he made that stupid choice, no, you know, no chains. And so he's in this situation, okay, I'm getting you, you know. Like we like Austin, obviously, but, you know, he's like a, I saw him the whole time as a silent movie character, as like a buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin guy, who's like, we like you, we're rooting for you. You keep doing the wrong thing, dude, you know, like why did you do that? So I don't know how much you're thinking about, you know, the meta-textual idea versus what's just going to make this movie fun. Just, just that, just what's gonna be fun. I'm not smart enough to take all the meta-textual idea. I don't think that's true, because you're thinking about theme in your movies. So like, that is more of my lane. Okay, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah, can I ask about theme? Sure. I mean, I don't want to be telling the themes, because, okay, because that's such a, it's such a lazy thing. And I embarrassed myself with Barbarian, you know, where like that movie came out and I was so amazed that anyone cared about anything that I had to say about that movie. So I would tell anyone who was willing to listen. What it means and what that means and why that's there. And then after I kind of came out of that season, I was really embarrassed, you know, because I think, yeah, because it's not, that's not classy, A, and B, it's like, I don't trust the work to speak for itself, you know, it's like, if it's really all there, then smart enough people should be able to check it out and other people should be able to like not worry about it. And why do I have to be out in front of the movie it's teaching the movie, it's not good. You're right. And yet there's a conflict there. One, for people like me, I'm just gonna ask. Like, I'm just, I'm just curious, you know, like I just want to know, because I'm elated to something while watching it. When it's done, I'll tell you everything, but I don't want to be on a podcast being didactic about my own course, of course, zombie movie. But I think part of it is because there's this wonderful history in genre movies of smuggling in ideas. You know, it's not like a deep emotional drama where it's very clear on the surface. Like, this is about the broken American family because in genre, you can load a lot of stuff into it. But how lame would it be if George Romero right after and I did a living dead came out, was like, did you see how it's about Vietnam and race? Did you get it? Like, that is not cool, you know what I mean? It's not, it's not cool, but we do sort of, well, why do we demand it? You know, it's like you put it there for a reason. I don't know. Is it demanded? I think a lot of, like, I don't know the answer to that. - That's a good question. - It's a good challenge to the work that you're doing and the work that I feel I'm forced to do in the aftermath of the work that you do. I do want to ask you about Gore. Because in that conversation I was having with the mom on the playground yesterday who was asking me can I go see it? I said, you know, are you into Gore? Like are you into a gory horror movie? And I'm curious if you have like a philosophy about it. I don't know if I do. I mean, I don't like torture porn. You know, there are definitely movies that are, where the Gore, if the Gore's the point, it's like I'm not interested at all. But I do love me some Gore. I mean, there are, I think that irreversible look and I'm not gonna get into the merits or the conversation about irreversible. But the fire extinguisher scene is to me, like put it on Mount Rushmore. That is like a true masterpiece of movie violence and I'm obsessed with that, you know. There's another movie that has a scene of Gore that shocked me so incredibly deeply. And I tried to do that in Resident Evil. It's a movie that I bet you've never heard of called "Los Best Artos." I don't know, yeah, it's an incredible movie. It's like, and there's a scene, I was watching this just kind of by myself and there's a scene where a character shoots a woman in the head with a shotgun and the gun is in the frame and her head explodes. And I remember it was like, I was like offended. It was so shocking. I was like, you can't do that. Like I thought I'd seen like a snuff film or something. It's not, you know, it's just a low budget genre movie. But it was like, it broke me. And so it's another thing I have reshought where I was trying to get something like that in this. And so originally when she comes running in and her head goes, I had her just a single on her. And then like a week later, I was like, guys, we have to go back and reshoot that because the trick is the gun has to be in the frame. You have to see the muzzle flash instantaneously with the head explosion. That's what makes the magic. And I should have learned that from "Los Best Artos," which I haven't seen in over a decade. So maybe I could even be misremembering the language of that movie. But so we went back and I made sure that Austin was in the frame and the gun goes off and we re-did it, which is by the way, never a fun conversation when you're like making a movie. And like, hey, by the way, we're gonna go back. I appreciate that thing we are in a shot. But I've never regretted doing that. - Yeah, but that movie, that moment plays. So I thought it's like a time when it plays so well. - It matters, yeah. - And I think if I hadn't done it, I would have, I would have short-changed one of the more fun moments of the whole movie. - Speaking of that sequence, one thing I think about with a lot of your films, all of them really, is like how much speed matters, and how it feels like there's like kind of an engine in characters, like the chase at the end of weapons, certainly the chase at, you know, in Barbarian. Like there are these moments where like people, not just running, but the ticking clock sensation, they are getting every time you're watching a moment and someone is in danger. Like, I guess this is a little bit of like, how do you do that in terms of editing and creating a sense of discomfort and this impending doom that is coming? - I have no idea. I don't know, I haven't really thought about like speed. So I'm not prepared to have any sort of insight into it. I just, I don't know. I mean, movies are made of movies, right? You know, I heard Cormac McCarthy in an interview say books are made of books, and I thought that was such a beautiful, like that's so true. And if that's true of books, then it's definitely more so, true movies. - True. - And so I'm sure I'm just stealing what I've loved in other movies, you know? I mean, I am, you know? So whatever momentum that is being, you know, harnessed is really, I'm only as good as everything I've seen. - When we talk to after weapons, I played a game with you where I just said movie titles to you and I was like, "Where are you thinking of this?" And you were like, "Yes, no, no, no, idiot, no." - I don't know if I said that, but okay, all right. - This one feels like it's more overt in a very gratifying way. - Yeah. - Can I throw a blank? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just for the purposes of like kind of understanding, not just what you were thinking of when you're making it, but like maybe how you direct actors or the tone that you're going for. Like to me, I'm gonna give 'em all to you at once, and you can choose whatever you want to like. But specifically, this is what jumped out. After hours, die hard, Fargo, back to the future, evil dead too. - Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. All of 'em. - Okay. Okay, so did, have you heard about like, Austin's in my short hand on this? - No. - Okay, so his baseline we kind of figured out was Marty McFly. Right? - That's exactly what I said on the show. - And so we were like, okay, dude, your center of gravity is Marty McFly. All right, so it's the way you move. It's your level of courage, your nature. So, okay, McFly. Now, there are times where your bad ass, a little bit, we're gonna tick you into the, so that's McFly. So we'll dial our McFly into the McFly. And then there are times where you have no dignity and you're shrieking like a little bitch and running and you know, the hat and that's McAllister, right? And so we would be, we would be dialing in, I think on this one, I'm gonna just go full McLean. I'd be like, I actually thought this might be McAllister. - Yeah, so how? - We would have-- - We would have-- - We max. - Yeah, I know it. It's lucky for us, but that would be, we would talk about that a lot. And so there's like scenes where we would try, do this one McLean, let's see how it feels. Okay, try it again, try McAllister, let's see what this is like. So that really was our shorthand going into this. - This is a very different performance for Austin from weapons. Weapons, especially going back and looking at it, is like a real transformation where I don't, I don't think I realized how much he had like-- - He's on a regular basis. - He's on a regular basis. - Yeah, he's so, looks just so different. And now he's like a star, so you don't, it's not, it feels odd to see him in that way. Maybe just broadly like, why did you want him for this? Like, 'cause you thought you could do the three Macs, like what was the-- - No, you know what it was is that we're shooting weapons, we're having just like an incredible time, you know? I mean, honestly, that movie was a really blessed movie, where I, every chapter of that movie, I like fell in love with my actor and I love weapons like so much. Austin's chapter was, we just like clicked, we just clicked in a way that was like instant and really powerful and I remember there's a scene in weapons where he's going around the back of the house and it's raining and he's trying to push his way through this chain link fence and it's like, and he's just like, he pushes and he kind of squeezes through and then the fence just kind of opens up naturally behind him, which he perfected, he could like magically make that happen every single take, which is like, I was like, this guy can do anything. Like he is, there's a subroutine that has to run in an actor's mind when they're on camera, right? And that subroutine is consists of like, of hitting my mark and waiting for this timing and where's the camera and how do I open up? It's all of the technical considerations that need to be present, right? And but, you know, it needs to be running underneath the central program of inhabiting the truth of the situation in this character. Austin's subroutine is like so dialed in that I just recognize immediately like, I'm dealing with a Ferrari here. Okay, so that's one thing, but then the way he was muttering at the gate as he came through, he was like, "Touch me man." He like did this thing and I was like, I was like dying laughing and it also come, come, come. And then he was like, run over and we'd watch playback and like, you know, have a fit of laughter and we could do that again and then he would do it again and we were just like, there was like a charge, you know, and that whole chapter with him, we were just like, just total pigs and shit, just like, and love with what we were doing, the feeling the magic and I knew that, you know, when it was time to make residency, I didn't say anything to him while we were shooting weapons but I just knew like, if this guy can play a "thieving junkie" and we all just want to take him home, put him in our pocket and like, you know, love him. Like then I am like totally playing with loaded dice if I can get him in a recid and evil because like, we love him. And he's so good. He's really wonderful. There's another rules question I'm curious about. The movie features dogs, zombies, child zombies, rats, zombies, babies, zombies. Oh, the rats, you know, so the stickers he looks at, yeah, you know, that's, did you put that together? No. So the stickers, that's everyone he kills, you know, and the idea of getting into theme, you know, he's terrified of family change and he sees this and he's been annihilating his family as we go, the rat, I'm just now realizing, I put a little mouse next to the dog. Anyway, whatever, just, I'm having this realization right now, I fucked it up. Well, I mean, maybe if you had a pet snake and then the mice you feed the snake, that brings you into the family unit. Did you actually think that like violating the rules of decency by having all these be like, it gives a shit? Well, you've said you're reversible here in this conversation. I'm not that guy. That doesn't really occur. I mean, I enjoyed that though. It did feel like it was sort of like all bets are off. Like when Chris and I talked about the movie on the show last week, he was like, oh, I'm a little worried this is going to turn into like some lone wolf and cub thing with a little girl and was so relieved when he just blew that girl up. I was head off, you know, that there's something very fun. - That would be the lamest turn the movie could take, and now it's like Brian, like, no, and they learn a lesson together, and then like, and at the end, he says goodbye to her, and then he's like, I do want to be a, like, fuck that movie. I would never want to be that movie. - Yeah, yeah. - Why is Brian so afraid of family and change? - I mean, I'm, okay. I'm curious about your signature. - Here's not, what, hang on, what young man isn't? - I agree, I agree. I talked to Amanda and my co-host yesterday, and she said, this is a movie about how all guys are scared to have a child. And I said that, well, that's probably true. - Not totally true, because we're all about blowing people's heads off. But I think the signature thing is funny. So we saw like a clip of the movie months ago at Cinemacon, and I'm pretty sure that the shot of the woman racing towards the house was in whatever they showed us. - Okay. - And I was like, oh, cragger shot. - Okay. - And what is it, how do you think about that? Like having moves that people identify now, and then does that make you rethink how you do things? - No. - I mean, I think it's okay for any artist to have their personality in the work, you know? I don't wanna ever get caught up in thinking about what, I would never want to have my output dictated by that sort of consideration. That's not healthy, you know? I think the way I think. I visualize things the way I visualize them, you know? And I am, as long as I am not feeling stagnant or like I'm repeating myself, then I'm okay with it. If it feels like a motif, I'm okay with it. If it feels like I've run out of room, that's a problem. But I don't feel that way yet, you know? - Is there a particular kind of thing you haven't done yet that you wanna do? - No, I mean, I'm doing what I wanna do. Flood is like, you know, Flood is gonna be the most challenging movie, but I think it is going to be a movie that is gonna push, I'm gonna really push myself in terms of how I have, you know, characters and it's, you know, the drama of that movie I think is me, like if this movie was me playing Sam Raimi, then that, it doesn't matter. I don't wanna talk about it too prematurely, but it's just a different frontier for me. - Okay. - So I'm excited for that. One thing that I think is really great about your movies is that they do feel like when they're over, they're over. Like they do feel like mic drop movies. And that's a bold act in an IP movie, you know, to say like, that's it, we're done. Like I'm not coming back. And yet you keep making movies and people are like, "Hey, so what's the sequel?" And they wanna give you a lot of money and they want you to make the sequel and then you get put in this position. - What is it? - What an amazing life. - No, you're very lucky. I'm very talented. - A very fortunate, but most great filmmakers, I would venture to say all great filmmakers who make commercially appealing genre movies do eventually get drawn back in to their most beloved properties. And I'm wondering how you think about that 'cause it seems like you've been pretty resistant to it thus far. - Yeah, I just, I have more stories to tell that are different. And if that's the case, then that's what it is. I have to go to my next love and the reason anything I do as good as because it comes from a place of love and joy. And if I were to double back and try and do something from a place of commercial concern, then it probably wouldn't be as good. And so I, that's it. That's the answer, you know? I am so in love with flood that there's no amount of money that would make me consider anything in front of that movie. Okay. You know what I mean? - It's very honorable. - Who knows on the other side of that movie? I may come crawling back. Hey, barbarian prequel. You know, that would never happen. But you know. - You kind of already did it in barbarian, did you not? - Yeah, I mean, that movie. I would, that, first of all, what a repulsive sequel, you know, that would have to, like that. There's no world where that would be. - You never know. I do. Okay, a couple more for you. When Curry Barker was here in May, he said, "I talked to Zach and he was really nice to me." And he helped me. And I was like, "Oh, that's cool." - That's really sweet of you to say. - He might have said it off-mic, but I think he's already said it afterward, so I don't think it really matters. And I know that you've talked to a couple of people who are older than you, who you really admire. And so I'm a little bit curious about the secret fraternity of mentorship, how does that work? How do you get in touch with people? How do they get in touch with you? What responsibilities do you feel to that? - I am happy to talk to anybody I feel like that is, is coming to me with a real, actual issue that I can help with. You know, if somebody's like, how do I get into the business? It's like, I'm, you know, I, but if somebody is like, I'm making a movie and I'm having an issue. I've got all the time in the world, you know? I think Currie is so special. And so I'm just like, you know, I'm honored to be able to offer anything. I also feel it's so funny. I've only made three movies, dude. I've only made three movies. I don't feel like an elder statesman. I feel like I am still figuring myself out. I have a long way to go, but I also recognize that, you know, that's three more movies than a lot of other people have made. And so I have learned some stuff. I don't even know what I'm saying right now. I don't know. It meant the world to me to be able to talk to some of my heroes and have them give me time, to give me actual time, and to like pay attention to my movie and offer, you know, solutions to problems that I wasn't aware of. You know, Jordan Peel helped me with Barbarian, which was like amazing. And, you know, I've talked with David Fincher helped me with weapons, which like, oh my God. So, of course, I'm, I'm, I've honored to pay that forward to other talented people. Yeah. Do you think there'll ever be a time when you don't work in genre? I have no idea. Probably not because who knows? I would never want to say that now because I change, you know, everyone changes and, and, but my, ever since I, it's funny. My mom sent me a text yesterday. She saw the movie. She said, you know, I'm so proud of you, Zach, you know, the little boy who drew bloody knives in church and, and it turned out okay, you know, and it's like, this is who I've always been, you know, yeah, I mean, I concerned, I scared my mom a lot as a little kid. You know, she'd be like, what's your favorite color? People like red and black, she's like, Jesus Christ. You know, like, I got in so much trouble, because I would write horrible things, you know, just to entertain myself and draw horrible things that they get it out. Yeah, and to me, it's like, there's not a cause for concern here. This is, yeah, I think horror fans are the same way that we like these movies because we're like, we got to get this out, you know, like, there's a primal interest in it, but it's not perient. Like, it's not dangerous. It's just for something more interesting, yeah. I'm a genuinely friendly, happy person, you know, I really am. And I, I don't really care why, for whatever reason, I'm obsessed with like, horrible dark art, but I have always been. I'm no longer interested in the origin of that. Okay, I just, I like what I like and, and I make what I make. And so, you know, if I never make a romantic comedy, I would give two shits, you know, I'm fine with this. Wow, that's inspiring. Speaking of, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? Do you feel, do you watch still watch a lot of movies? Yeah, because it's so movie literate and so comfortable talking about them in the process of making your movies. But some filmmakers, when they start making movies, especially in succession, they don't watch as much. I watch a lot. I mean, I do. I, I just am always interested in the, in the process. So I want to know why they put the camera there. Why is that light there? You know, why is this edit suck? You know, so I feel like I learn more from watching mediocrity and bad movies sometimes just because I'm like, oh, that's why it doesn't work. You know, I still like good movies. There's not a lot of them, I feel like. The last thing I watched that I was really, you know, there's a movie on shutter called Deadmail. Have you seen Deadmail? No. Oh, buddy. It's good. You know, you got a shutter movie past me, which is pretty hard to do, right? Deadmail? Is it mail? Is that like a couple of years ago? Yeah, I came out. Yeah. It came out like I think 2023, I don't want to say it or four. I don't know. I feel like I can even see the, the tile on the, on the surface. It was made by like these two teachers. Like I don't know if they're high school teachers. And I've emailed with them. But I mean, they made it for like nothing. What's it? Can you do a snapshot? It's a true crime story that unfolds in a really interesting way. And I thought the protagonist was really cool. And I just, I really liked the movie a lot. I was like, you know, I troll shutter. I start every shutter movie. I don't finish 75% of you and I are the same. Yes, yes, yes. I love what they're doing, though. I've got bless them. I will forever end my, my subscription. But you know, it's, it's, it is, it is doing a necessary thing, shutter that I think is, is a, is wonderful. And so I give every shutter movie, you know, a start. And when you find one that is like, holy shit, is this good? Yes, it is. Oh my God. You know, it's great. So I thought dead male was good. Great pick. Perfect pick. Really good to see you in person. Thanks for doing this. Yes. Okay, I hope to come back when we, - You can do a flood and let's do that. - Okay, just don't fuck it up. - Don't fuck it up. - I know, right? What if it sucks? - Yeah, I can't even go mad. - I think it'll be bad. - I think it'll be all right. Okay, cool. Alright, thanks, man. - Thanks, Zach. (upbeat music) - Okay, thanks to Zach. He's a man. Thanks to Adam Neiman, also a man. - Yeah. - Thanks for producing Jack Sanders. Also the man for his work on today's episode. Thanks Luke's Kavanaugh, the man for his production support. Later this week, bonus episode, me and Tracy Letz. - I'm very excited. - We're talking about Borman and the Devil, which is a new documentary about the making of the exorcist to Colin Heretic, which is John Borman's much-mulligned sequel to William Friedkin's Masterpiece. And then we talked about movies about directors, documentaries and scripted films. That movie is available on VOD on the 22nd Tuesday. So you can watch that, listen to that episode. And then later this week, prime time. - I'm ready. - I'm ready as well. - You're gonna thank the women here? - He thanked all the men. - I don't see anyone here. (laughing) - Bye. - Are women working on this show? (upbeat music)