Disclosure Day

[music playing] ♪ Clank Jack with Britain and David ♪ ♪ Clank Jack with Britain and David ♪ ♪ Don't know what to say or to express ♪ ♪ All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Jack ♪ [music playing] ♪ ♪ Podcast, podcast, podcast, podcast, podcast ♪ Podcast. Very good, very good. And what I want you to understand all of that. I understood all of it. Everything out there. Yeah, I was speaking mathematics, David. It's easy. You couldn't hear that. That didn't sound like anything to you. That's so crazy. That was me saying 2 plus 2 plus 10 minus 1 equals. [laughter] And get lost sleep last night. I lost the trip. But I said 2 plus 2 plus 10 minus 1 is 13. 13. And then I was going to add one more thing to it. I was going to do times zero tricky. This is my bit I do with Acer Ehrlich, son of David Ehrlich. I did it one time. You love math. I'm now three years into him insisting I do it every single time. He loves math. He thinks math is the best thing in the funniest thing. And my bit is that I take out the calculator on my phone and I come up with the biggest number I can. And then I go watch how big this is going to be. And then I times it by zero. And then when the number disappears, I go, what are you doing? You're using some kind of prank calculator. You spoofing and goofing me. And he hasn't caught on yet. He likes pointing at me and saying, you're so bad at math. That's what you like. He likes that I become the fool. I'm hoisted by my petard. I will say in the film disclosure day, when you have the reveal that there are two people that have been gifted, you know, the knowledge from extraterrestrials. And one of them got math and the other person got empathy. I was just like, fuck, if I was the math person, I'd just like kill myself. But I feel like you're thinking of this as a, because I'm bad at math. And you're an empathetic person. Well, true. But it's like, but then you'd be good at well, I don't want to be good at math. Well, but you're already empathetic. I actually do want to be good at math. There are a lot of things I'm not good at that I don't care about. It would be great to be good at math. For me, that's dancing. Oh, I'd love to be great at this. My number one thing is languages. Like if I could like snap my finger and suddenly be able to speak like 50 languages, that would be so. Which Emily Blunt can do in this move. Yes. She definitely, and also I'm nosy as hell. The fact that she like and be like, David Sims tonight's your wife's birthday. You're going to take her to a music college. I apologize. Like, you know, all of that's actually true. For me, play all the instruments. You want a one man band. I can just like grab a violin. Yeah. Grab a guitar. Pick up. Well, I could play a tuba. But you know, I'm sorry. What? Yeah, Ben Williams on the tube. I was a band kid in middle school. I feel like I might have known this, but I forgot that it was the tuba. It's a tuba guy. No, yeah. Ben Big tuba. You've never seen the picture of Ben in his school band where he looks like a little Porcelain Christmas ornament. He does. I've read he's runny face. Oh. Yeah. He's very runny faced. And we love that about him. We love that about him. You're not really a runny guy now, but. Oh, thank God. I mean, I suppose if you get a few beers in you, a few pints in you, you might get a little runny. Yeah. Right. I mean, the emotions kick in. I feel like if you're laughing really hard, you're proud of a joke. You're getting emotional. Yeah. Yeah. It'll happen. I referred to you as a ginger recently, and you took on bridge. It's not a ginger. I'm not a ginger. I thought he would. I feel like. I've got some little, you're not like a proper, as the Brits would call it, "Ginger." But you've got reddish hair. What? It really sounds offensive. It sounds my lips. In like, in a weird way. Because it's like, "I don't believe you." You don't believe me. It's real. It is real. That is totally real. They call them gamers. And I'm sure I've said this on the podcast before. I came home from school when I was like 10, and I was like, to my mom, I'm like, they're so mean. Everyone is so mean to this kid who has red hair. You know, and she's like. That's what he deserves. Yeah. She was like, "You listen to me." That's what you call him. No, no, no. Just 1,000 years of hating Irish and Scottish people. Like, she's just like, because I was like, why do they, and she was like, they don't even know it, but it's just, you know, decades, centuries of like, well, those are the, you know, the Gallic. You know, we don't want them. It all traces back to a couple missing pots of gold and that they just no one has ever gotten out. I'm trying to be empathetic and explain this. So shocking to me as a child of like, the fuck, he's just got right here. You're all. Yeah. You're all pasty English people. You're not. I don't think it's just the red hair. It's the red hair and the freckles. It's the freckles. It's the, that you look a little different, you know, I mean, what did, what did children do? They're children's. What did children's do? They make fun of people who look different. It's not nice. They shouldn't do it. I think, dude, they're out. They're obviously not playing literal siblings in this. And I think they're both very good at American accents, but does it not kind of help that Joshua Connor and Emily Blarrow both British in this movie a little removed from reality? They both have the same exact kind of like pitch of their performance. Mm-hmm. I think that's very fair. I'm trying to think of, I feel like there's a lot of other examples recently of this of the, like, two Brits in the lead both doing it. You want two fake Americans. Like, isn't paired. Yeah. I feel like I just watched a movie. Like that. I mean, obviously everyone's always complaining about the Brits getting the plum rolls. But sure. Yes. Is there something on that? I mean, the one that's crazy that I think about all the time, of course, is Daisy Ridley. Not doing an American accent. And John Boyega doing an American accent and Star Wars, which is not set on earth. No. But they decided like only one of you can do your own voice. It's tribute to Carrie Fisher. They were like, what if this doesn't line up? I think what you were thinking of actually was the Mandalorian and Grogu, because Pedro Pascal is not actually a Mandalorian or acting or in it. But Grogu is a Yoda's species. Talk about nice work. You can get it. Okay. So I'm looking through my. Pedro Pascal in the Mandalorian. Sure. Sure. I'm looking through my Letterbox diary. Okay. Uh, back rooms. Oh, yes. Although Renata is. She's not. She's not a hero. She's not British, but she's also not really doing. She's doing something with that. Another good example of a movie where it's like, they should feel a little off everything about this movie's a little off. Yeah. Right. Right. And it's sort of set in like before. Yeah. So we went into like, you know, those kinds of details. It's very old in that way. Right. You're just like. It's just a little off. Just a little off. A little strange. And with the original. It was originally someone else. It was, um, uh, uh, uh, Christa Miliotti. Miliotti. It was Christa Miliotti. And Renata was going to be in weapons. I just think of it like all the shuffling of this sort of, uh, you know, intriguing acting. So was she. Was she going to be a Julia Gardner? Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Which I'm sure she would have crunched with Julia's brain. Tyree Henry was going to be Benedict Wong. Sure. And, uh, why am I forgetting his name now? Um, the original cast of Webster. Tom Burke was going to be old and hair and Rick, which like, I mean, these are all good actors. And then Peter Pascal was going to be rolling. Yes. Pascal was going to be. He probably would have been pretty good, but Brolin's really good in weapons. His Brolin's really good at playing, um, a fucking masculine guy who's neutered. Like he's really good with that. And also, he's going to play a tough guy too, but like he's better if you kind of neuter him a little bit. Brolin, related question. Please. Yeah. It's an installment of Brolin with the homies. Brolin with the homies. Um, I have not watched the trailer for Whale Fall. Oh. I haven't yet. What if there was a Whale Fall? But I'm hearing great things. That's what I wanted to ask. If anyone has seen the trailer. I have. Yes. Does a Whale Fall? Yes. Yes. Thank you. From where? Higher up in the water. Correct. To just deeper in the water? Yeah. The Whale came up and then like, you know, it starts going back down and you're inside of it. Oh. How do you get out there? So they're Jonas. Yeah. Very much so. It's a draw. Austin Abrams is looking for Brolin. I think it's what I think. Inside of. He's looking for his. Inside a Whale. He doesn't know. He doesn't know. He doesn't know. And then they both deep in the Whale. They both in Whale. And then they got to get out of the Whale. Yeah. Oh my God. Are the deep in Whale got to get out of a Whale movie? Are the tickets on sale yet? Yeah. You have to go to a Whale. Yeah. Marie. Marie, it's really easy to get the tickets. Just go down the bottom of the ocean and nothing bad will happen. Get really crazy. I really like that guy's last movie, you know what we'll save you. Yes. Right. Which was a movie that I was on. That was on Hulu where I was just like, this should be a movie theater. Yeah. And so I'm glad that his next movie is in a movie theater. Well, sure. I mean, you're thinking in a very traditional kind of a leadest way. Hulu was merely trying to wish you a happy Hulu ween and you were not appreciative. And a happy Hulu ween to you all. It is a course disclosure day, but I want to wish all of you a happy Hulu ween. Oh, I'm just close your day. Disclosure day. There's a new film by Steven Spielberg, who we've covered on the podcast twice. One plus one equals one in this case. Should we do it now covered one complete demographer? There's two episodes of this just because we've actually covered Spielberg and two separate minutes here. I feel like we could. Yes. Spielberg and once through the prison of late Spielberg indeed because there's definitely like a post-fable men's reading and then a pre-fable men's reading in my opinion. Yeah, I'm sure almost anything you ever made. Yeah. David, this is great. More work. Hey, you love it, David. Keep going. Add more epic. Yeah, let me clear my schedule. And like, it's like me trying to find new spots in my schedule. I was just like fucking like truck, you know, like my shovel hitting rock. Like I dug to the bottom of Minecraft. Do you know there's another Minecraft movie coming out next year? Yeah. Here's some dust, isn't it? Minecraft movie squared. Pretty, pretty fun. Oh, I love that. That's actually pretty clever. So the next one can be cubed, right? Yeah. You get that, Ben? Haha. Haha. Haha. I was just building out my first 2017 list of 2020, so yeah, okay, okay. You know, if like, all right, what does it really matter about what's going to be coming out? And yeah, it was I was like, oh, they got that fucking done quickly. Yeah. They're filming it right now with Kirsten Duns, who's about to start a kind of historic finally getting that background. Yeah. Give her the bag. She's got house made. Yeah. Yeah. My house made secret. Yes. So like, that's another one where they were like roll this back as fast as possible. I feel like she's got three sneaky sequels of things that weren't obvious slam dunks. So she's doing kind of the rock in like 2010? Yeah. Except she's not like franchise Viagra, which is what he of course loved the rock was in GI Joe to journey to the mysterious island. There's another one. He kept being in sequels to movies that he was not in. And there was one. What was the other one? You're right. Journey to the mysterious island. Of course, is the one where he's like, you know, the, the, the Twitter joke was like, hey, we got a par for you. It's like, I'm not interested. It's like, okay. Well, how can we sweeten the deal? I want to ride a B. Okay. Wait. What? That was the poster riding to be. The poster was him riding a drunk. What a ride to be. Sorry. This is one of those classic Dwayne Johnson, Michael Cain Johnson vehicles, the big three. Hold on. And the plus of B, the big three plus of B. It was a B movie. It was a B movie. Um, I'm not seeing him riding a B. I'm seeing him running away from it. I'll find you. I'll find you. I'll find you. Like lizard creature. Oh, I got to be. You found it. You found it. You found it. Oh, wow. People said my daughter was reading her rock book just last night. He wasn't, he couldn't ride a B. He does it. Vanessa Huggins too. Of course. The billing order. He was like, get Huggins. Get a B. Then I'm interested. The billing order is Dwayne Johnson, Michael Cain's second billed. I assumed he'd be the aunt, but he's second billed. I want second billed. Joss Huggerson returning from the first film. Yeah. He's like, hi, guys. And everyone's like, what is the first? The cold. Vanessa Huggerson. The kind of pressure was in it. Maybe returning. I don't know. And Kristen Davis. She got the aunt. Kristen Davis. Okay. She's our little self. Yeah. Good for her. Yeah. Vanessa Huggins is not in Journey to the center of the earth. Was Ben and Frazier. Yes. So did she replace Ben and Frazier? Yes. She's the place. The rock is actually replacing Seth Meyers, who is also in it. No. Journey, as I'm sure said on the spot, guys before, has one of my favorite trailer jokes, which is the pecs. No, no, no. With Ben and Frazier. Oh, oh, oh. Yeah. We still falling. No, it's just they fall. Ah. That they stop. And then Brad and Frazier goes, we're still falling. It's so funny. Both of those movies made a hundred million. No. We should. Next time we're looking for, like, end of year, like, what's a fun, like, two slot, a two slot? Like, you guys should just journey to where there must be an original, like, because it's the HG Wells. Like, was there like a 50s journey to the center of the earth or whatever? Probably. Oh, sure. So you can fold that in, because journey to is adapting a different HG Wells book retrofitting it. Sure. Very faithful. I think there's an HG Wells book called The Mysterious Island. I think we're right. I'm just saying, like, I don't know if they really even opened the book. The book opened. The opening line of the book is Dwayne Johnson was writing a bumblebee. And at the time audiences were very confused. They went, I don't get what this means. Is this a foreign language? Is he speaking in tongues, like Emily Blunt in Disclosure Day, and then decades later it became clear? It's not HG Wells, of course. I'm sorry, it's Jules Verne. What if we did a Jules Verne Patreon series, like what are some film adaptations of? The 2000 leagues under the sea around the world, maybe? 20,000. 20,000. Oh, yeah. 18,000 whole leagues. So you're, so like, the whale started at 2000, and then he fell 20,000 leagues under the sea. There's too many hunchbacks. Okay. You guys are out of control. Okay. So 20,000 leagues under the sea. You've got the Kirk Douglas James Mason movie. So there you got that. Okay. There was also a James Mason journey to the center of the earth in 1959. Okay. Do any of you guys have a good James Mason? I'm sure I could work on one. Yeah. I think you know what we do. Then there's, oh, this is a problem. We have a huge problem. Okay. There's a huge problem now that we're doing this. Many series that I've committed. We've been having. I'm serious. We've been having serious problem. There are two works, two, two versions of another work of his around the world in 80 days. So there's the interminable best picture winner. Yes. And then the horrendous Steve Chalky Chan and Cecil DeFront. Another big three. Once the last time those three made a movie together, Cougan Chan and DeFronts. This is great. I love him. Who is DeFronts? Who is DeFronts actress? The Steve DeFronts. The Steve DeFronts. Oh, Dan Schum. Oh, Dan Schum. No, actually. I like skipped over all of the French horror from the New French extremity. The New French extremity. He was the Northwire lady. And oh, the Donshaw. There's also a Ray Harryhausen mysterious island along with the, you know, and then there's a Joseph Cotton from the Earth to the Moon from 1958. Okay. That could be fun. That could be fun. So this sounds like a really quick twelfth movie series. I think it's like nine. I think we're overcomplicated. From the Earth to the Moon is the one in the book where they just get in a bullet and shoot it at the Moon, which I always thought is pretty cool. Yeah. That's what happens in the Melliers. Yeah. Well, yeah. So maybe we throw that in too. We break these into sub franchises. We go from the Earth to the Moon, we go journey, we go to leagues, we go days. Maybe they're safe for it. We can play them at two X, yeah, or four X or just play him on a simultaneous screen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just be like, I see. I think there's a B over there. Okay. We're moving on. I'm going to roll this bait. I can't. How would he say it? It's about to roll the bait. The bloody bait. I don't know if Michael Kane actually rides the B because he's not riding the B on it. I'm sorry. There's a character poster right here. Yeah, he does. Look at his face. He's got to have any energy on the B. I'm going to fucking B. I'm going to buy it. He doesn't talk like that usually. The B doesn't talk like that. We're talking about disclosure day. Yes. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Yes. Steven Spielberg decided to jump a little over his comfort zone and make a movie about our relationship to aliens. This time he's blowing the doors wide open on this thing. This film is called Disclosure Day. It is directed by Steven Spielberg. Yes. It is written by David Kep. It is his frequent collaborator story by Steven Spielberg. Pretty rare that he takes a story. I remember everyone getting really excited when they saw that credit. Yeah. It's Spielberg alien story would go has been a real mystery box movie. It was just sort of announced Spielberg kept alien film. It was untiedled for a while. Then it was called The Dish, which was a terrible title. The cast was known. Everything else was kind of a mystery for a while. Wasn't there like another project that was also announced and like we weren't sure which one was going to come first. There was like the more historical drama about like Winburg, Plot against America type folks in New York. I mean sure. There was the bullet, um, yeah, but it felt like he was unconventionally slow to land on a new project post-fablements. Usually he-- That's true. That four year gap is long for him these days. Really long. Really for any days, I guess. But usually he has-- I mean, I think he said this in an interview that basically the longest gap he had taken previously was the one in between his crazy 93 and his crazy 97. Because even in the pandemic, he had a movie come out and Fablements came out quickly after. And that was both him building dream works and building a family. There was that feeling of like usually he's got like 10 movies in development. And the second he's promoting one movie, you hear that he's already starting the next one. We're never going to see that kid, Pope kidnapping movie. No, he dropped that. That got made. It got made. There's like an Italian movie that came out about that story. I feel like he just kind of let it, you know, he was like, forget it. Now he's supposedly working on a western. Now he's saying he's working on a western, but it doesn't feel as-- it feels like he slowed his clip down. And I think it's getting into a little bit more of a, I don't want to work for the sake of working. I want to make a thing I feel an override desire to do. He's 79 years old. It is crazy. I have a correction for you. He's 79 years young. You are right. And you're pretty. He's a pretty. He's a brightly fella. He just moved to New Yorkers. I was in New Yorkers. He's a New Yorker now. I'm sure he's living 42nd Street, Nate Avenue. No, I don't know. He's a mild stomping person. Um, I don't think it's pretty crazy that all the boomers are old. I mean, that's, that's life. No, it's life. It just does feel wrong to me. I think of them as being the whipper stampers, even though they, I was born into a world that they had already claimed. Right. They're the movie brats or whatever where they've grown up by the time you were watching movies. Uh, Stevie Spielberg, he's 79, he'll be 80 in December. So this is 40th feature film. What number are we looking at here? Oh, he's going to make me count. Let's see. No, we're not counting fire light, but we are counting dual. This is very much a return to, I wouldn't say return to form, but it was framed as a guy's Spielberg is going to do the Spielberg thing again for the first time in a while. Down to a thing I saw our redditors post about, which was a good point. The poster for this movie is Spielberg last name only above the title. Yeah. It is hard to think of another case where the director's name is above the title, not yet as a Steven Spielberg film. And there's also not an actor name above the title. He is, it's as if it's Schwarzenegger, you're, you're, you're totally right. I mean, Nolan is that, but he, he loves these film by Christopher Nolan and a big, long bit billing block. Yeah, although, but the Odyssey's teaser poster is just a film by Christopher Nolan. It's, it's not that, you know, other people couldn't do that, but it's a rare that there's a lot of campaign that is just Spielberg. Spielberg. I mean, there's closure day. There's the number one lead Chrono. We all know. Yes. But that's not a billing issue. It's his mummy, David. What if he revealed I found this mummy? That's why it's called the current is the mummy. It's my mummy. I didn't direct the vote. I was so scared during that movie. I was screaming. I was shaking. I was convulsing. And then someone pointed out to me, don't worry, Griffin. It's Lee Kronin's mummy. And I went, oh, my God. I didn't know who belonged to. Oh, my God. I was waiting for the HBO Max drop. Oh, sorry. I didn't know whose mummy it was. Whatever it's going to be on. Yeah. I feel bad for Lee Kronin. That was, that was a tough break. Maybe it is his fault. Maybe he was like, my name has to be about the title. But that feels like a real daffy duck shirt thing. But I think more, I mean, what I heard was essentially they were like, they want to make it clear. It's not. It's the brand of pleasure. The brand of pleasure. And I'm like, I would do anything else to make that clear rather than making the public. They should just call it haunted child. Yes. Just call it something else. They were. We found a fucked up thing. In the desert. There, like, the focus features or whatever, like Twitter account, they tweeted like once a day for two weeks. It was new line, I think. Or whatever it was, Brendan Frazier is not in Lee Kronin's. Yes. Yes. And I thought they were doing a bit where they were leading up to like a surprise cameo. Right. I think they were not in niche. They were initially going to tweet that once then they were like, let's make it a bit. And then it was kind of a classic like, well, you made it a bit. And that's kind of like, now they're smoke and people think there will be fun with classic just to be clear. But this is not a movie based on the toys. But they did work in all my T shirt that says Brendan Frazier is not in the mummy. They did. They did. They didn't like in all caps. They did. I was like, come on. You're like, they did. You're, you're, you're asking for it. They were asking for it. Lee Steven Spielberg, Lee Kronin has made, I think three films. Steven Spielberg has made 35 36 if you count 12. It's on the movie, which I don't. Yeah. If you're nasty. But this is his 35th feature. Okay. From my count. Yes. Yeah. And good. Right. That's sort of, he's doing a UFO movie. He's doing some sort of alien movie. Why is Spielberg going back to this well? We were debating this with our editor, Alan Smithy. How many alien films does Spielberg count? If you include Crystal Skull, which you have to. It's five. So the five are close encounters, close encounters of the third kind. Yes. ETV. Extra terrestrial. War. Of the worlds. Mm-hmm. Then Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the universe and disclose your day. Yeah. Remember gay ET? Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. We did like 45 hours of bits about gay ET and we never landed on LGBT. Sometimes it's something's like right in front of you. It was right there. It was right there. Well, we did, but we definitely did say that he was the extra extra terrestrial. Yeah. We did say that. Okay. Right. And we won many awards for that. What I noted when I was writing my review is this is his first contemporary films for the worlds. Uh-huh. And then I started thinking about it a little bit more. So you do have the terminal. That's a contemporary film by him with no funny business. It takes place in an alternate reality in which Tom Hanks is funny. No, he's very funny. It does have an alien. It does. It has an illegal immigrant. That's so true. That is so true. From Cretclosia. Oh. And normal voice. Normal accent. Victor Novoreski. Because a lot of his, when I was thinking about it, a lot of his contemporary set films, I'm so here we, you know, disclosure day, war of the worlds. Uh, let's set aside terminal for a second here. The Jurassic Park movies. Yeah. I mean, is always contemporary. I guess it is. Always is contemporary. It's obviously very old fashioned, but it is set. Yes. I think in the present day. Yeah. Uh, uh, uh, sugarland Express and eat heat. So it's yeah, in dual, sure, but and jaws and yeah, but like, you know, things like Jurassic Park, uh, war the world's disclosure day, it's like, yeah, they're set in the present day, sort of, but disclosure day is kind of sent in a slightly different world from our own. It's got alien tech and kind of, you know, like it feels like Jurassic Park is a little bit the same where it's like, yeah, yeah, this is our time, but you're like, yeah, but it's not. Right. It made dinosaurs in it. Right. I think that was part of the pitch on this movie is Spielberg's going to talk about our times. This thing that we all love that Spielberg could make these very emotional character-driven blockbusters that felt like they were in conversation with our world. It's also just the thing of like, hey, so if you people get to do an original big movie like this, so it's awesome that he wants to. Yes. Like, when he was like, I might remake bullet. I was like, I bet you will do a good job if you do that. I don't really want you to. I'd rather you took a weirder swing. I also, I think, no, I'm so emotional about it. Yeah. You're going to burp. There are, I would say two modes that Spielberg has been operating in since this century started. One is him sort of trying to become a classicist, right? Trying to become like a hawks or a hues or a Ford and to focus on maybe sort of neglected genres or more classical filmmaking styles and making kind of grown up movies. And this whole feeling that he and George Lucas are complaining about IP culture and franchise blockbuster movies, but there's some guilt about maybe what they created and Steven is trying to actively put the opposite type of movie into the system, which for so long, his name was so big that no matter what, basically anything he did became a massive success. And that has fallen off the last 15 little bit. He's still Steven Spielberg, but there's no longer a guarantee like Lincoln made Lincoln was humongous. Like $300 million. Something like that. Like it was like 180 domestic, but yeah, but that's like crazy. That's, that's when he still was like anything he does becomes a blockbuster. Obviously, right, West Side Story and Fabelman's were not blockbusters. West Side Story was very much the COVID hangover. Fabelman's was one of those things where it's like, I think that movie should have done better. It did quite like nothing, but it was right in, it was still, you know, 2022 and it was that thing where Universal put it on fucking the very schedule was bad. After 17 days, and they were like, well, this is what we do with all our movies now. And it was just like, guys. Shut the fuck up. Steven Spielberg made this. Yes. Like I have a lot of work. It's funny for Oscars. Yeah. What was the other one I was going to throw out? I mean, the post and Burgerspies both did well, but sort of like well for adult dramas. They both did like 60, 70 domestic, 100 worldwide. Wow. Well, you know what? I'm going to look at something like that. Something like that. Something like that. I'm just kidding. They don't exist. Great. There are two modes. There's that. And then the second mode is, for the last 25 years, he's constantly tempted by, can I go back and do a classic Spielberg family blockbuster? And very levels. Posted 81 bridge to 70. Okay. Those are both good numbers. Yeah. Yeah. There have been varying levels of success and people disagree about which ones work better than others, but I would say like Tintin, Crystal Skull, Ready Player One, these are sort of good, the BFG, these are like he's trying to go back home again and also trying to find a new modern mode of how can I be in conversation with what's happening right now in blockbuster movies, but like return for my crown. And this feels like him making a 70s movie. It's what's fascinating about it is that it doesn't feel like him being like fuck. What did the kids like today? No, totally. He's not ready. Ready Player One was a little bit more of him being like, let me get in the current sandbox and see what I want to do. Tintin is, I want to use these new tools and be in a Joneses. What does this look like in a modern context? This is your right. This is more like Close Encounters. It is a blockbuster adult drama. Now the other sort of qualifier here as we talked about when we did our original series is that when he does the two, well, I just got an insane text message. And he does the two, what do you believe it's about my grandmother? When he does the two Tom Cruise movies where it's like the biggest director and the biggest star in all of Hollywood are doing something together. They make these two very haunted dark movies. They're awesome, but they're not traditional audience pleasing blockbusters, right? He makes haunted films. So this is like. The promise of kind of Spielbergface, Wonder, Humanity Driven, Character Driven, Performance Driven, Classic Ambulent Blockbuster was the from the moment they started actually putting out trailer posters, the promise of what this movie was. David, I think you and I pretty unabashedly loved this huge fan of this movie. I think it's fantastic. I'm curious to see it a second time, because it is a movie that is, you know, like 80% slow burn. And I was loving the unraveling, I would disagree with you. Yeah. I thought it was, it drops, first of all, the craziest opening shot of any fucking Spielberg movie. It's a true, you could bet a billion dollars. What do you think the opening frame of this movie is? Dick. Dick. I would sooner bet that then I would sooner bet that than that it is. The opening shot is like an AW wrestler kicking the camera. It's really is so fun, but it drops you in media res and that is you're on the run the whole time. You're on the run. Yeah. Very close. Yeah. And like, and obviously it has that minority report vibe all sort of like I want to talk about what I'm thinking about right now, but with a sci fi lens, but it's got the twilight zone thing of where is this going? Yeah, sure, sure, sure. We're in the middle of the story, we'll tell you stuff is we're moving. How are these things connected? But we got to keep moving. Right, got to keep moving. I mean, that's what's smart about the construction of the movie is that it's able to play both sides of the coin. Yeah. It does the thing that I'm sure, you know, people don't like where no, you know, everyone's like, so what's going on in the guy's like, I'm going to tell you, we got to get to this house. And then I'm going to tell you one more sentence. It's also. And then we got to do another thing. The characters themselves who don't actually know what they're being come out of those somewhere. What you're describing David usually pisses me off. Right. And in this movie, why it works me off to is that no one has the complete picture. Everyone has pieces of it. And they're trying to strategically use what they know to get the support and the allegiance of the others. But no one has the full view of everything, not even Colin Firth. Not even Colin. We're just holding onto a stick. I'm grumpy today. Do you think Spielberg's jealous that he's probably only going to end up being the second most powerful stick of the summer movie season? Uh, go ahead. One wish will. Oh, fucking whipping the disclosure stick. That's a bundle of sticks. It's one. No, wait. What's going on? Yeah. It's got like the little kind of. It's got some corn through it. It's got a bundle. It's got thorns. Yeah. He's the one wish will. That movie, that movie, I saw it with no hype beyond like fantasy being like, it's pretty, it's good. Like you should check your finger. You walked out of the screen and you held up to the way and then you went, I think three 40 domestic more than baby Oda. I just walked out being like, that was very like unpleasant and effective. That was like a pretty. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I got it. I got it. Right. I did not walk out being like, well, a world just changed generationally. Yeah. Everything is changing. So admit, it's not my vibe of a movie. I suppose. So I was maybe never going to feel that way back in my day kids were using chat GPT to do their homework. Nowadays they're using one wish willows, but no one wish willow. And they say my one wish is to write my next paper for me. Just one paper. Okay. So Trump administration heard of him is actually like releasing UFO files, but they love releasing files. That's all they do is release files every file that they want to see. They're releasing. So if you go to war.gov/ufo, we live on stupid earth. It's so stupid. It's so stupid. So he just actually did a second release on May 8th of like a bunch of stuff. I haven't gotten through it. And all of the like images and video, it's you know, what the fuck is the thing is something we need to talk about right away because people have been like, there's already been this closure day and like no one cared. And I'm like, well, the images are basically just like some blobs with their like, I don't know. These blobs were weird. It's so weird how people have not cared because they there's nothing to look at. I know. But still they are. It's just like we saw a weird phenomenon. It's why I got you the same as we aliens crashed. We took the aliens who were alive. We are ruined. We are ruined. Yes. We tortured them. All right. Yeah. To make technology. To make cell phones and sorry, we didn't tell anyone. We used it all like bar versus like, yeah, a plane was flying in the air. And it's all Bob and the Bob was weird. Yeah. And the Bob kind of moved in a weird way. And we do have a video that if you'd like to see, which is sort of currently. This is why I think the ending of this movie has to go as hard as it does because it needs to be like, what if all networks were co-opted by 15 minutes of just decades of footage? You know, so much shit. Of it looks like little guys and little alien costumes, like the moment in the film where you start to see, and we're getting into spoilers and all this, but there was the moment the film where you start to see the aliens for the first time. I forget what the first image is. You've seen it more recently. The Ness Murray. The first image is for like the torture. It's the torture. You know, sequence. Yeah. Right. Right. It's Joshua Connor showing Eve Houston on the laptop, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I started pumping my fist and I was like, so he's just fucking doing it. Yeah. He's just putting a gray, almond eye. Right. That could cost a man an alien. I didn't really, I didn't really, I didn't really, I was like, yeah, he's not overthinking this at all. Yeah. Aliens are looking like everyone's default cultural cartoon alien, and he's just rendering them realistically. And it's like, yeah, you know, aliens. So just close your day. You were saying that you both are, you know, fully on board. I feel like you and Ben are moderate positive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And it was not, I, I was not like, holy fuck, this is like a perfect movie. There were moments of it where I was like really emotionally affected and like very enraptured. And there were other moments where a like nurse asks Emily Blunt, did the trauma that happened in your childhood? Did you ever seek help for that? Or like the last, you know, 15 minutes of the movie. The last 15 minutes I was on the edge of my seat. I mean, I, this is the thing. We saw it with a bunch of people, you know, the great, the king, the king of TikTok himself, Reese. I was sitting next to Reese. Yeah. Alan Smithy was there. A lot of our critic friends, Esther and her soon to be husband, Bob. So we were all talking after the movie. It was one of these things where like, I really think this boils down to the last 15 minutes. Either you're a hundred percent on board and that wins you over or you, you push back on it a little bit because it's Spielberg going full Spielberg. It's, it's him going hard, not inspectacle, but in his emotionality and his worldview. And we'll get into it. But I just want to say the religious stuff at the end and the, the, the, the nuns. And a being like aliens are also God's children. I was like, boo, I love that part. And I usually, that's usually a thing I bristle at in movies because I'm a dirty, leftist, coastal elite even. But like, like, that's a thing on trauma on movies where they get too spiritual. And I'm like, this stopped being my language. I just, this is not an in for me. I feel like I'm being recruited in this like, I bought it as a storytelling thing. It didn't feel like being like it was being pushed on me. They also got me like when Elizabeth Marvel's like, she's so good. In Genesis, the line is, you know, God, God's greatest creation on earth. Yes. I'm like in the theater. I'm going like, oh shit, like I never thought about it. It's right. It was right there in the text. Oh, fuck. God was right in about aliens. God was like, God. Like an alien, it's fucking crazy. That's what God was like. I think the movie, like what religion is supposed to do historically it has not, but it's supposed to make you love your fellow human and have respect for humanity and other people. So like believe that there, there is some sort of higher power out there that is governing all of us and bringing us together. I think it's like, yes. The aliens in this film are used as a device, as a, this is now the thing that is bringing everyone together. And I love that unity. That's totally true. I think it's also just kind of like he's running at the idea of like the answer to weird shit isn't aliens or God, you know, it can be but you know what I mean, it's sort of like they don't have to be mutually exclusive like we could find out that I mean, that's sure that right, the aliens exist on and earth. And that doesn't mean like you have to abandon your belief system or like the way you think the world was ordered or whatever like that, it's like, you know, God can fit into that, however you like. I think this movie's about can fit into a lot of stuff. In my reading, this movie is about two things primarily. So Marie, what you were saying about like what religion in theory serves to do, right? I think even beyond that, it serves to give us a language, a shared language of understanding for how to be alive. Right? That is the basic underlying purpose of any organized religion is a set of codes and ethics and morals and values through which to understand human again. existence. That gets distorted and weaponized in a million different ways, which is why I get really uneasy with religion and when movies feel like they're pushing religious text on me. I don't think this film is pushing a theological reading of the universe. I think it is using characters with theology to explore what it's actually saying, which to me is two things, right? There's a kind of personal story in this of what Spielberg's going through in his life, and then there's a sort of larger, this is what Steven wants to say about the current state of the world. The personal story is Spielberg has always said that he doesn't like therapy, or that rather, he went to one therapy session and didn't find it useful, and that for him working through his issues through his movies is always what felt productive to him. And that's why you got these movies where people went like, huh, Steven Spielberg still seemed really hung up about this divorce thing because it was basically men will become the most successful director in the history of Hollywood to avoid going to therapy. All this time, he's avoiding making the movie about the real thing, which is the fabulments. He gets that out of his system. It makes the movie where everyone who works on that is like, he was crying on set all the time. It was a really difficult process. He exercised something from his system, and he's promoting that movie. And he's like, I actually don't know what I make next to a certain degree. I've been avoiding making this movie my whole career, and I don't know what I have to say. And this is a movie about two people processing trauma. It is a movie about two characters who end up being the ones who can serve to create a catharsis for people at large, through reckoning with their own trauma and their own history, things that they have pointedly just been saying, like, I don't want to fucking think about that shit anymore. I don't need that. I'm fine. I'm functional. That's thing one. Thing two in this movie is Spielberg talks a lot about having his existential crisis during the pandemic as many of us did. What do I fucking do now? I've just been work, work, work, work, work. And now I'm slowed down. I can't make movies. If I only make one movie again, what is it? What's the one movie I have to make, Fable Mints, but also really reckoning with the world. He said he would leave his home and just drive around for hours because he didn't know what to do with himself. And I think what this movie's commenting on is we are living in obviously a very fractured world in which people live in alternate realities and is very impossible to get any agreement on anything. Religions, one of these things that's supposed to unify people, it is only push people further apart. It has only made things more violent. And we went through this collective trauma of this horrible global pandemic that affected literally everyone on the planet to some degree and it fractured us even further. And I think he's creating a simulation of, is there anything that could happen, a form of communication that actually unified all of humanity for a minute? And I think this movie builds to a note of and what happens now. The last word of this movie I believe is listen, and it's sort of like the next step is what do we say now that we have everyone's attention because for one brief moment for 15 minutes, we have collectively gotten everyone onto the exact same page. There is now a reality that has just adjusted that we all have to understand. And I think it's basically saying there's now something new that's like replacing religion. Not that the aliens will become their own religion, but that part of it is that the Elizabeth Marvel character is someone who's not fighting this is saying like this doesn't negate my worldview because my worldview is less about the dogmatic text here than it is about the ideas of what we're trying to get at, which is a unification of empathy, which this movie is about like, is there any fucking way that empathy could win again? Right. Is there any fucking way that we could all just get on the same page about this sort of fantasy from a lot of movies of like if we learned about, you know, extraterrestrials, would that somehow unite us because I think Spielberg is saying, sort of, I mean, is he religious? Is he spiritual? He talks about this like he's also not Catholic, he is a little more religious than he was and he says he kind of reconnected with it and you know, like there's a lot of spiritual thought in his movie and kind of like, how do we reconcile, you know, spirituality with, you know, science and modernity? Right. Well, it's, it's the dynamic of his parents, you know, if you're a programmer, musician, and the artist. There's that emotional clip. I mean, truly, it's one of them, it's a communicator and a mathematician in this movie, right? And it's as he's confronting or thinking about what you're talking about of like, could empathy triumph and how could this, you know, go over today and he's picking a whatever D.O.D. subcontractor, whatever, Joshua Conner is basically someone who got sucked into the deep state because he's good at math because he was a hacker and it was the one way he was going to get his prison sentence. Packed the planet. Obviously, well, agree. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then she's, what is she? She's a, a weather girl. She's a, yeah, local meteorologist, but yes, she's a meteorologist, of course, but you know, like she's a, you know, she's a media figure. She's a TV person. Yeah. It's almost old fashioned at this point, but like, I don't need Spielberg making a movie about like an influencer. Anyway, you know what I mean? Like, no, find with him a lighting on like, she's this kind of mainstream TV face. We're going right to the end in certain ways, but I think one of those moves that's moving makes that is so smart and is a, a, a move indicative of a Spielberg level of confidence and intelligence is that she breaks the story and very quickly it gets transferred over to the actual like national network news. Yeah. That was something. I'm sorry. I have my issues with this movie where like, yes, I am aware that I am watching a movie about aliens. So already, there's a level of suspension of disbelief, but there were other things where I was just like, you know, like kind of squinting and screaming like is something doesn't pass the, the smell test like, I haven't watched local news in years. Same. I can't say I watch a lot of local news. Sure. Does it do like the news people in Kansas City report on what's going on in North Korea? I mean, if nuclear war was about to break out possibly, yeah, I would think so. They don't just hand it over to the national. No, I mean, they're, they're competitive. I think it's both. And I think, I think this movie, you know, it's this other fascinating thing that you hear for years and it's been more and more open secret lately that like Steven Spielberg is obsessed with SNL and attends most tapings of SNL. And now has moved to New York. He is a New York resident. That was my first thought. Just a time for SNL. Yeah. Yeah. He was like, I can't keep doing the like weekly flight. Because I would hear that from people that he would fly in just and he'd sit behind the monitor with, you know, the people who like working SNL are like, it's weird. Spielberg's just always. It means he said like the words doja cat or whatever, right? I mean, like if he's having to watch like current SNL, also, why isn't he hosting? He's been like, I love, you know, Anita or whoever is like, you know, Steve as a Domingo's dad or some shit didn't call Domingo host SNL this year. He didn't SNL, didn't he? Oh, Coleman Domingo. I meant Domingo. Oh, that's true. The character. So the great character of Domingo. Yes. Did they address that on the Coleman Domingo episode? I think they didn't. Coleman Domingo was great in that episode. I believe it. You know, Coleman Domingo was a cast member of the big gay sketch show on logo. I didn't know that. I know every single thing about the big gay. No, I didn't. Coleman Domingo is like a fight pool player. I didn't know he had a comedy background every kind of experience. You could possibly have an actor and it took him like 40 years to hit as one of our undeniable guys. I love him. I love him. Yes. I love him in this movie. I think he's great in this film. He's great. Of course he's in Lincoln. I'm trying to think if he works. Right. He's got a small part in that. He's like the first thing you see in Lincoln. Yes. Is it also, is it David O'Yellow? Who? He's also. Yeah. In that opening battle. He's worked with Spielberg since that and since then he's been nominated twice for Best Actor. Yes. He's once I think, you know, I think he kind of snuck in there. He's a great actor. The other one wildly deserving. Very good. He's incredible. He's incredible. Very good in syncing. I did not love Rustin. I didn't either. That felt like it. I didn't say it. It felt like a kind of you made it. Richard Jenkins, the visitor. Yeah. Kind of a better performance with Colin Firth and a single man back in day where it's like, you know what? You've been around for a long time. You're great actor. Here's a nom in the next year. They're like, oh, you're even better than this thing. Yeah. Here you go. I, Colin Firth was the opposite arguably, but he's good in both of those films. I think the single man's a silly movie. I think it's silly movie. I think it's incredible performance. He's good. I like that movie a lot. It's so fucking bad. Oh my God. Tom Ford. He's got a new one coming. Yeah, he does. Very much looking forward to it. He's also about like a guy who wears pants or something. Have that women or what's that sad? Oh God. Remember, he was going to make the whale with James Corden. Do you remember that? What? Yes. Yep. Yep. Yep. He had the rights option. Have you ever intervened on that one? Yeah. So honestly, I might have preferred that. We went full disclosure. I know. I might have preferred that. Possibly. You know what? I'll see it. I'll see it. I'll evaluate. Can it be better? Can I ask? Please. What do you think that would look like? Can you do it towards me so I can capture this one? I'm trying to do like a sort of a cord and face. His new movie is called Cry to Heaven, and it's an adaptation of an and rice book. Great. So I imagine it'll be rather some choice. Amazing. It was kind of fun. Nicholas Hold. Um, Aaron Taylor Johnson. So so far, former collaborator is kind of guys. Adele. Okay. Karen Hines. Okay. Okay. George McKay. Yes. Mark Strong. Okay. Colin Firth. Colin Firth. Got him. Yeah. The stick. Paul Bettany. Our guy. Hunter Schaefer. Sure. Love her. a lot of this guys. Yeah. Love that. Um, I, uh, this is interesting. I didn't know that you were anti-tom Ford, David. I, he's like, that is because maybe you're not yet enough. I don't think that's true. I'm going to be honest with you. I really don't think that's the problem here. I'm pretty, I'm getting pretty sure that's not why I don't like his movie. I'm going to throw out a pretentious asshole. I'm going to throw out a counter argument. Here's my countertake. His movies are not, not bad enough. Yeah. I, both of his movies, they look pretty good and I, I kind of respect that about them, but they're pretty stupid. A single man is like, Firth kind of really convinces you. It's a good movie. Yes. And then when you kind of lay out the plot, you're like, this was a little silly, but it's so much just the first performance. It gets a lot further. Nocturnal animals truly was one of those things where I'm like, he took a script written by an 11 year old, right? And then he cast like really good actors and, you know, got, like, you know, got to look and really slick and fancy. But like, that is a really, really silly movie. Every time I bring this up, there are always nocturnal animal defenders to get mad at me. But when I, I think I saw that movie with Joe Reed reading Ray and Joe. And when I realized, oh, the structure of this movie is just going to be Amy Adams, where reads a chapter of a manuscript, while wearing a cocktail dress and then it cuts to her going like, whoa, she makes a phone call. She gets a voicemail. She's like, hey, I read this crazy chapter. I just want to talk to you anyway. Call me back. Reading glasses back on. Time for another chapter. Sounds great. We love, we love women who read. That's true. We do support. Just to get us a little bit back on the rails here is giving me the thumbs up. Can I throw out a take and I want to get your read on it? I'm currently holding the photo of Mike Myers naked and Austin powers pretty cut, actually. Looking pretty cut. Deep fee. And we're getting back on track. We are getting back on track. Yeah. This is about to close your day. My first thought when I see Colin Firth in disclosure day with the beard with the turtle neck. Like, is this kind of the hottest he's ever been on screen? It's a good look. Go with no, because I think Colin Firth has been very handsome in a lot of movies. I think he's very handsome. I mean, I guess we can't count pride and prejudice because that's not a movie. I'm like, okay, maybe not ever, but like, it's a great love of late of late. Well, I was honestly kind of thinking like, where's Firth been? Because he's obviously very good in this movie because he's good at this kind of shit. And this isn't installing a Firth thing's Firth. And I was like, I know if I look it up, it's not like they'll be gaps. Like, I'm sure he works consistently and I'm sure there's some weird TV and stuff. I was going to say there is some weird TV in there. And like, forgive me for forgetting about Empire of Light, you know, which was only a couple years ago. And like, you know, he does a lot of British shit that barely makes it over here. Like, movies called like mothering Sunday or, you know, where you're kind of like, well, I assume that was fine. It's a real title, just so people know. That's not a thing that David made up. Yeah. Lovely job. But I feel like we've not been, you know, using our Firth, well enough. It's a great take. I mean, just looking here, it's like, God, yeah. I mean, like King's been too. He's, you know, kind of the lead. But then you're like, he's in five movies in 2018. The happy prince, in which he played Oscar Wilde's friend, that's a Rupert Everett, Oscar Wilde, the mercy where he's on a boat. That was directed by James Marsh, who did theory of everything. Yeah. Mom, here we go again, obviously, you know, smaller part. If you guys seen Rylane. Yeah, Rylane's good. He has a cameo and Rylane as a tortilla chef at an Mexican restaurant called Love Gwachtcheli. They crater, they credit him crater him. They credit him as burrito maker. Yes. It's very funny. Now movies really cute. If you want to see a picture of him in it, I would like Mary Poppins returns. He's the villain. That's kind of thankless 1917s like an extended cameo. I mean, this is kind of a better version of his Mary Poppins thing. Yeah. Of kind of like, can you just come in and kind of go like, well, I don't know about that. It's just very specifically. It's the amount of gray in his hair. Operation mincemeat was good fun. Yeah. That one's good fun. But basically, he's hot in it. Oh, no, I was just. This is what I'm talking about. But when he's down on, I mean, wait, wait, wait, he's not on. How do he looks? He looks lovely. But I'm just saying the turtle neck, the beautiful line of his shoulder in the last bridge rooming. No, I think it's a great look. The last bridge of Jones, was he a ghost? He's dead. He's dead. He gets eaten by a fucking chart. If you're not considering, I did see it. He fell inside a wall. Do you think he's hot and fever pitch way back when a movie that was very formative from his child? I think he looks pretty goofy. Yeah. He's got this sort of like puffy hair. Yeah. I mean, he kind of looks like Dominic Susa there, but without the interesting bone structure. Well, yeah, I was going to say he's still my heart. I mean, Susa. I mean, yes, we're a big, we're big Susa fans. But again, he's got like striking features and the idea of him and fever pitch was kind of like, yeah, he's a bit of a door. Like he needs to clean up his, like, you know, who's next in there and fever pitch. Mark Strong. Yeah. That's great. From the way back. If you discount what are basically cameos, Rylane. He's credited for Barbie where they reuse footage. There's a documentary he narrated in Bridget Jones. He doesn't make a movie in between Empire of Light and Disclosure Day. What he does do at that time, the staircase, I forgot about. I thought he liked it. I thought he was good in it. Never watched it obsessed with the documentary. He did something called Lockerby, a search for truth. That was in British. Lockerby is a very famous British. A, you know, a plane was blown up over Scotland. Okay. Over the town of Lockerby. Yeah. Yeah. And then this is really important. He of course, plays Minecraft's employer, sir. Beucachalus. Beucachalus. I believe Sefalis Hodge in Young Sherlock, a Guy Richie Amazon Prime original series that has no connection to the Guy Richie Sherlock Holmes franchise. Guy Richie has two different Sherlock Holmes. Yes. In which there's boxing in both, I think. And hero finds Tiffin played young Sherlock. I thought you were going to say that he shows up in Watson. No, Watson. Unfortunately, he's placed his boss. Yeah. Watson has been cancelled. It's been axed, but now Young Sherlock is here to pick up. And now fucking doctor, who's been axed? Like, I'm like, Britain's got it. Yeah. They just were like, oh, we're just not bringing back and shooting got one. We're going to start over. It's back to the starting board. It's back to even right. You know, the last episode ended with him turning into Billy Piper. And then when everyone asks, like, oh, so what's the plan there? They're like, yeah, we don't know. We just kind of film that and figure it out later. Next year. And they're like, he's the next doctor. And they're like, maybe we're maybe it's possible. And Brussels T Davies was supposed to stay on for many more years. 100% and the fan backlash to that moment was so intense. They also clearly just didn't have anything. And then of course, right, the lack of a plan was so apparent. And finally, BBC was just like, I think we're going to just like blank slate this. Like doctor, who sort of out to pasture right now. And if someone's got a pitch, let us know. Can we talk about the most important thing here? Yeah. Are we going to get back to disclosure today? Is this Emily Blanc's best performance over ever, ever possible? It's conversation. Very good in the film. Yeah. She's phenomenal. I would I immediately was like, okay, this is edge of tomorrow level. It's I mean, that's the conversation. But for me, it's like edge of tomorrow. That's the other one. Those are the three. Apparently she's quite amazing and but I haven't seen it. And she's obviously like unbelievably good and devilish product. But I'm giving those other three movies the advantage because she has more screen time. She for me, it's all about pain hustlers. No, I don't know. She totally blew me away. Like, yeah, she's really, really incredible in the movie. We got a little bit of a we take her for granted. It is. I have to address the elephant in the room, which is she's one of those actors who comes up a lot when you're talking about how, uh, everyone looks like a member of the Dursal family now. Yeah. Lots of, uh, cosmetic procedures have made actors, specifically actresses struggle to emote because they don't have less, they are less expressive. Right. They don't have his more and more leading men these days. That's why I was like, you know, what? It's happened. It's happened to Gosling. I guess fucking Rosie O'Donnell when she was like, everyone's seen my face list. I'm like, yeah, I haven't seen her. She's looking good. She's looking great. She looks great. Congrats. But I, I think one, it works for the character. I agree. I was that she is a, I mean, you're all just I she's someone on television. Yeah. When I saw the trailer, it really fits the kind of like, uh, local news famous. I bought there is something so effect, like affecting about having someone who looks kind of plasticky. Yes. End up being the most empathetic connector. And that you see her face ultimately, her, her emotions transferred to her muscles, breakthrough, all of the works she's seen in this movie that took my breath away. And that is after a pretty crazy action set piece where they are in a car where Emily Blent and Joshua Conner in a car chase. And then the car ends up hitting the side of a train and then they get pulled along in the train. And then another train is coming in the opposite direction and they have to like get they have to survive. And they end up well, like climbing inside a train cart the last minute and it is a train car full of like pianos being delivered. - Yes, yes. - And she has a panic attack. - It's really good. - Which it was crazy to see a character have a really understandable human reaction to surviving an action set piece. You never get that. And as Josh O'Connor is like helping her breathe and she's like, I can't feel my hands, I can't feel my hands. He's rubbing her hands against piano wires. I was like, I was like on the edge of my seat. I'm like, I've had panic attacks. - Me too. - Many times and I'm like, this is the most accurate. - It's a really hard thing to perform and not look hammy as hell. It's hard to not make it just feel like a ton of fucking business. What I also liked about that scene before is just like the first minute of it, you're like, okay, what's happening now? You have that thought like, well, she's got magic power. - He's fucking another communication coming up. - And then you sort of start to settle down with Josh as the viewer and you're kind of like, no, no, right. She's just having a human reaction, right? - As Mary said. - It also helps that the guy he hired to play the mathematician is naturally one of the most empathetic actors alive. - He's like the most sensitive bedside manner guy. - He's doing that Spielberg thing of like, he's the co-lead but he's very much like, I am very happily the second lead kind of the off-ball, like, you know, right, the emotional support character because it starts with him and the actions invested in him. He stole the data. He's on the run. - He's the snow guy. - Oh, he's the hero and then assembly blunt story unfolds. You're like, oh, she's kind of right. - He's the kind of alpha here. - Right, right. - Should we start, should we start to talk about the plot? - Yeah, so an AW wrestler kicks in the camera. We see Joshua Conner's out of match. He's with the backpack. He's trying to negotiate a handoff but he's surrounded by government agents. Colin Firth does show up here is it all his underlings? - Colin Firth shows he's there. - He shows up in like the back alley. - Eve Hueson, who, if you don't know, is Bono's daughter. - She sure is. - Oh, okay. - I told you Ben, but you didn't listen. - I don't know. - I talked about you too. This is what you're hearing. - Yeah. - You know what's funny, yeah. You know what's funny, Ben, is she actually, she's biologically Bono's daughter but she wasn't conceived in the traditional sense. One day she just showed up on an iPod. (laughing) - That's a pretty good joke. - That is a pretty good joke. - I started thinking about it and I was like, I better not trip over this wording because I'm sitting on a fucking high hand. Suddenly I got a royal flush. I just got to slap this thing down on the table. - You know, she's been acting for a while. - Yeah, she's phenomenal in the nick. - Which was I think most people's first - That's what I knew her from. - Her just by, she's worked with Fieldberg before. She's one of the daughters being like, she's the main one. - She's the one who's got the boyfriend. - She's recently, well, she was on bad sisters on Apple TV. She was in Flora and Son, which is half a good-- - I never saw that. - And it's half-- - She's great in it. It's half a good movie. All the parts with Joseph Gordon Levitt and it made me want to throw something at my screen, but she's great. - Well, Mary, you don't want to hear me play music? I just want to show my music with her. - I liked her. - I wrote it down. - It's a song. And why don't I have a conversation about AI? - What do I like her? - Wow, your, your Joker Lev is really good. - Yes, my one good impression. I don't really remember her and Jake Kelly. - She plays the woman, the actress, in the flashback. - She's the one they fought over. - Yeah. - She's the one who left at the crota. - She's good, and she's got that one big scene. - Yeah, I think she's a good act. She's definitely like a son of a-- - I saw Mother of the Daughters, right? I think it's implied that she's the mother of the Daughters. - Or at least one of them. I think that we want Jake Kelly. - I like Jake Kelly. - My guy, yeah, he's a good woman. - Jake Kelly, remember? - That's a movie that-- - Bring 'em back. What do they have? - This is like Jake Kelly, too. - Yes, it's not a perfect film, but I think that films a lot darker and meaner than people think it is. - 100% the movie ends with him crying, saying, "Fucked up." But people would have-- - Yeah, I enjoyed it, but-- - Okay, so back to the school. Eve Houston plays Jane, the girlfriend of Daniel, played by Josh O'Connor. And she has been held hostage. She uses a bargaining chip. - Yes, 'cause he's stolen some stuff. - He's got an alien stick. - Right, he's stolen that. - We don't know, we don't know what's next. - We don't know what any, at this point in the movie, we don't know what the hell's going on. We just know that he's got a stick. - He's got a stick in his hand. - He's got to use a glove. They all go, you don't know how to operate that thing. - Right. - And he tries to do this hand off and get her back to safety. And she basically is like, I just had to fucking survive being kidnapped because of you, I'm not leaving your fucking side. It is such a great Spielberg kind of setup to be like, here's a relationship that's had a bit of a crux point of is this about to get really serious or not? And now they're being tested in like a world altering event and they're trying to use this event to establish better lines of communication, right? Like it's basically a young couple being like, are we really gonna make this work or not? They also, you realize that they don't really know anything about each other? - Totally. - So she did not know that he was, she doesn't know why any of this is happening. She also didn't know that he was previously in jail. - Didn't know that it, do you know we had a mysterious government job? - He didn't know that she was a novitiate. So she had spent the time to potentially become a nun. - What would you think if you're dating someone and they dropped that info? Like I actually was almost none. I almost went none. - I think it's kind of hot, yeah. - I think it depends on like what's your relationship to all of that today? - Yeah, true. - Would be my first question. - But I think, you know, it's like, oh, most people who I know like the whole like, oh, I lost the calling thing. I'm like, nah, you wanted to have sex. - She says we've had sex. It's a brutal, they're never gonna overcome that in the marketing, right? The vouchasticity thing, it's just a horrible cell. - Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, but like, I mean, I really liked when Regina Hall, yes, Regina Hall, yes, was on Amy Polish podcast, and she talked about how she almost became a nun. - Regina Hall almost became a nun? - I really recommend it. It's really funny. - It's amazing. And she talks about how like a lot of convents, not every convent, but a lot of convents, they guard against the like, we're not your backup. So if you're like 38, they sniff you out of like, hey, just 'cause you're not happy with like, however things have gone, you don't get to just like be a nun now. Like, you know, just kind of be like, well, I wanted to just live with you guys and who cares about dating or we're like, you know, having a job or whatever. - It's kind of like a saving solverment situation if that helps translate it, you know, where the nuns can kind of sniff out to, oh, you're not, you're avoiding something. - And then at one point, Regina's like, and some of them, like, if you've had more than three sexual partners, which I don't know about you, Amy, but, and Amy's like, oh, I, you know, and it's very funny. - There's that moment where Amy Puller goes, what was it like working with Leonardo DiCaprio? And she like scratches her eyelid and she goes, you know, the problem is he's just very green. - Yeah, and I didn't see that clip. - He doesn't have a lot of experience. - Speaking of Regina Hall and Leonardo DiCaprio, I was thinking about one battle after another, a lot during this movie. - Yeah, the on the run nature. - The on the run nature, the alien sticks kind of look like the device, the music devices. There's a lot of, they hide out with nuns. There's a lot of, like, dodge, like, car chases. - This is true. - And so I was like, oh, okay. - Cool. - This movie has-- - I know where Spielberg liked one battle so far. - This movie has like four or five kind of classical set pieces that are, like, beautifully Spielberg's days. - Yeah, it's got some proper, you know, right, like, blockbuster stuff. - But they're not super long in a way where we've gotten so used to a creep of, if a sequence starts. - It's gotta be like 20 minutes. - 20, yeah. - Truly. And I kept thinking, like, I know your big takeaway, David, was like, it's so tender. I was surprised by how tender it was. I think it was the word you used. - Tender, tender ass moving. - And I was just like, it's really, like, classical. It feels like really kind of, like, simple and focused in its own weird way down to, like, oh, they're trying to, like, cross this train comes. It's clipping them. The train is being, the car's being dragged by the train. And you're like, this is fun. Is it gonna be 15 minutes? And you're like, no, it's four. It's pretty brief and it's, yeah. They handle it in a way that regular people at their absolute adrenaline limit might be able to handle it and then they're really freaked out after. - There's a secret. - They're not like, ooh, that was crazy. Anyway, you know, like. - A car turns invisible and you're seeing the effects of water and stepping into the car. - I really like it. - I like it too. - I was like, oh, so is he gonna do 15 minutes of invisible car chase now? - And you're like, no, three. - Like, another day did. - Find another day to handle that. - It's so funny to the physical comedy of it where they keep running into the invisible stuff. - I really enjoyed that. I got it falling into the window. - Oh, I loved it. - That's Spielberg tonal management. - Can I tell you? - Please. - Just derailing the pod here, but I just wanna tell you why. The four winners of this year's honorary Oscars. - Oh. - Were they just announced? - Just announced. - Okay. - Did Harrison Ford get it? - Can you give us the categories of profession? - But first. - Okay, she just guessed one of them. - Wow. - They're finally given up. - They're given up. - It's a little rude to Glen. - It's actually a little rude to-- - Chop in November. - It's maybe the mere thing anyone has ever done to her. - She's not gonna win a competitive Oscar or she will in the classic like, well now that we gave you an honorary, the Paul Newman. - I threw out some reels. Is there any chance that there's a stealth candidate and it was sunrise on the reaping? - Yeah. - And I was like, I don't think she's probably in it enough. - And my whole thing is like, she was really good in the fucking wake up deadline. - Yeah. and they didn't even try, 'cause it's kind of like, all right, so Glenn Close is one. Another is a producing team. - Is it Kennedy and Marshall? - No, you probably won't get indie producers. Legendary indie producers. - Oh, there you go. - There you go. - And Pamela Hoplar. - Pamela, oh that's awesome. - That makes me so happy. - Another is a very, very esteemed workaholic director who's still working even though he's old and he's a bit of a grump and he has no competitive Oscar. Similar to Glenn Close. - But a lot of nominations. - I can't believe he doesn't have an Oscar, yes. - Ridley Scott. - Ridley Scott. - There we go. - Wow. - And I'm sure his speech will be sunshiny. - Well, the problem is they're gonna have Grover present the award to him and get his order wrong. David's doing the face. (laughing) - The fourth, I think might excite you, Griffin Newman, because it's an animator. It's an animator. - An animator. He makes the cartoons. - Future films? - Don Bluth. - No. - Don Bluth. - What medium of animation is this? - He worked at Disney for very many years and he's worked at Hanabar Barra and is it Clayton? - Pixar. - Nope. - He's also a pioneer in his field, an African-American animator. - Oh, oh, it's Floyd Norman. - Floyd Norman. - A legend. - 90 years old. - A legend. Worked on Toy Story 2. - Yes, but it was a work done like. - Worked in a sleeping beauty or whatever. - He's a bit of a forest-gump in animation. - Oh my god. - That's a very cool one. - It's a good four. - Yeah. - Or five. - You just had a really funny reaction, which is I pulled the name Floyd Norman and she looked stunned that I could know a name of someone that obscure and then I saw her face settle into like, if he doesn't know that, then who is he? - Exactly. - That was the work for you. - That was the arc. You were like, how did you pull that? Well, right, you're fucking you. That's the shit in your brain. Floyd Norman, that's all. - But that was also really excited to learn about this guy. - Yeah, he's a really cool guy. I think he's written a book. He might've been the first African-American animator. - He's something. - He worked on sleep. - He was a sleeper. - He's worked on sleep. - He's been everywhere. - But he also like, Alvin and the chipmunks in the 80s and robot chicken, that's so fucking cool. - Yeah, it was cool. - Yeah, it was like when they, when Pixar got big enough that they needed to hire more animators, it was such a big deal that it was like, we can get Floyd Norman and I think he worked on like two or three at that point in time. - Disclosure day. - Disclosure day. - Okay. - So, trade on. - And Eve. - Yes, and then we got to talk about our introduction to Emily Blunt. - That's as, that's where it's trying to take us. - So they escape and they hide out in a convent. We now jump over to meeting Emily Blunt. - So, her and her boyfriend. - Played by. - Wyatt Russell. - David's boyfriend. - Wait, you guys see mine? I mean, I do love the guy. - You do love him. - Yeah, he's great. - He's great. They're hanging out in their cool loft in Kansas City, Missouri. - Yeah. - And she is. - I feel Royale's season ticket holder would be fun. - That sounds like it makes the movie a lot more interesting. - I was, I'm gonna say. - If you were this character and you had season tickets. - Someone here ever been to Kansas City. - No, never been to Kansas. I know I've never been to Kansas City in Missouri. - My, my aunt Dawn and uncle Ken moved out there for a bit and I went to visit them as a child. A lot of fun, like art museums and stuff for kids there. Kind of like an underrated art city. - I'd like to go. I wanna go to Kaufman Stadium before it closes. I wanna get some of that BBQ. I think they got a big old zoo in aquarium. Like I think I got some cool stuff. - Oh, that's right, 'cause they have their own BBQ. - Which is it. - It's like a city style. - It's a rub. - It's a base, less saucy based. - Friend of the show passed in future guest Heidi Gardner. - No, no, it has a frown there. - Oh, yeah, she's frown. - And she has like an out there. - Yeah, but invest a lot into the community and has a lot of cool projects in particular coming up. - Shout out to Kansas. - Yeah. - But Emily blood. - Why didn't you ask him? He's the barbecue guy. - Right. - Oh, fuck bad. In case not, how did you not? - Come my show. - Come my show. - It's cool. What's my school? Low and slow. (upbeat music) - Emily Blint. She is a meteorologist. She wants to be a serious news reporter. - She's trying to get that break. I like this couple. - Yeah, he seems to be, why it also seems to be like a little laid back. - It's like a musician, younger dude. - She witnesses a cardinal. - Lands on their open window. - Comes in the room and then all of a sudden she starts speaking in Russian. - This scene will see. - It's a really cool scene. - Our buddy Sean Fantasy was talking on Big Picture about the end of Oak Street coming out. - Yeah, the David Robert Mitchell. - I don't think that looks good. - I think it looks awesome. - Okay, cool. - And he was talking about his optimism for that movie. - And he put his finger on a thing that I've felt for a long time and I've never been able to verbalize. But like he's like my single favorite thing in the movies, the best feeling I can have is that sort of extended twilight zone thing of where is this going? Like pieces are being laid out and I don't understand how they fit together. And even if a movie sticks the landing and satisfies me with the answers, he was like, there's no feeling I like more than being in the middle of a movie like that. - Totally. - And this movie is so good at doing this shit where like why is suddenly everyone reacting really weird to this bird? The movie gets really quiet. The John Williams score on this film is excellent, but it barely kicks in until the second hour. But it is a very good score. - The first hour is kind of silent. - You know, after, you know, like his post score is so minimal, right? And it's sort of like, and didn't he not do obviously website story like that? - He did "Dial of Destiny," which that score got, as I've said, "Fuckin' Rolls X in a Rocks." But that wasn't the first film I've read. I'm like, did he do? I mean, his "Fableman" score, I just kind of remember being like, lovely. - I think it's really lovely. - But not like, I don't like, I can't summon any themes from it or like, you know, not like sticky in my head. And I was like, I wonder if he's just kind of moved to this, you know, right? Like, he does softer quieter stuff. This requires a little more of him. - It felt, it felt like the, I felt that jazz slash a tonal sort of stuff come, which I have always appreciated about him. - But this moment with the cardinal landing, you could imagine a version of it in which the Williams score starts swelling already and the camera pushes it out of the face of wonder. And instead, everything is just kind of slow and eerie and quiet. And then this moment of her speaking Russian goes on way longer than you'd think. - They also, like, okay, so to talk a little bit about the trailers for this movie, they reveal that she does the speaking in a weird alien dialogue. - That was the first trailer, which was otherwise pretty vague, but was built around the set piece of. - Did, I, that might have been the only trailer I saw. Did they show her speaking other languages? - No. - That to me, I was like, oh, totally. - Right. - And, you know, that, that, the scene of her speaking in the alien language while live on air recalls so many videos that tend to go viral now of, like, local newscaster has stroked. - Yeah. - That are always so strange and not to watch. - Right, yes, like we found there's an odd, and it's like, it's not even so much that you're watching someone suffer, but it's kind of like watch reality break. - Yes. - Watch everything just be normal and then not normal. Oh, you know, like, yes. - I think it has to be inspired by that, and I even wonder if that was the starting point for this character being a broadcaster. But the things that are so strange about those moments is not just the reality is breaking, but it's people who are so trained and polished and composed, and you see their survival instincts kicking in, where they're still kind of, like, carrying themself correctly, but what they're saying no longer makes sense. And so we know that moment's coming 'cause it's in the trailer. She starts speaking in Russian, which is this other thing you hear that sometimes people have these bizarre medical side effects where they wake up and they're fluent in another language, or they start speaking tongues or whatever it is. And the scene's just very odd. She gets in her car to drive to work. She's running behind, a cop pulls her over, and then she does this fucking emotional reading of him. You're trying to arrest me because you got in a fight with her, and she knows every specific detail. For a second, you're like, is this this character sort of like party trick that she's learned how to read people, and she doesn't know it's sort of a mentalist thing, right? But she's getting close enough, yes. And instead, she's like, it's shaken by it. What just came out of me. And then she goes into her workplace and starts the broadcast. And- - Well, first she starts speaking to someone in Korean. - Right, right, right. There's a Korean war that's, we're on the brink of, and they have a Korean guest who's speaking as an expert, and they're having trouble with the translator. And she jumps in and like clarifies everything. And everyone's like, since when do you know Korean? She's like, what are you talking about? I don't know Korean. All this is fascinating where you're like, you're watching Emily Blunt pivot so fast to do things hyper-competently, and then immediately have no memory of what she just did or understanding of how it came off. - Well, I think it's not that she's hearing it as English. - Yes, right. - It's not that she's doing anything weird. - Yes, she's not forgetting. - It's similar to later when Josh O'Connor is like, I know what she said. And when it's like, no one knows what she said. - They think given the codex. - The way that information is revealed in the movies, I think is really cool, because like we don't learn that Josh O'Connor is someone who has also had an alien encounter until further in the film. We don't learn that he was able to understand her alien language on the TV broadcast until a little later. And we also, the way that they revealed that this stuff, like I think I assumed that Emily Blunt always had this power, especially when she's like, talking to the police officer. - Uh-huh. - But then to realize that it just came on. - Like it just kept on. - I think the cardinal act-- - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - The cardinal act. thing. I mean, I had really avoided any advertising for this movie. I didn't watch the full trailer, but I'd obviously seen the teaser a couple of times. The full trailer also literally dropped while we were in the screening, and I watched it afterwards. And I was like, there are 10 things in this trailer that I never would have put in the marketing in a way that bumped me out. Yeah, I mean, the early stuff was vague. You're trying to get people good. I get it. And that early trailer was heavy on the animal stuff, almost to the point of abstraction, where you're just kind of like, is this movie about, I mean, I get that it's aliens or something, but like, yeah, what's the deal with the animal being in league with aliens or something? It's not just the animals. It's the shot of the the home that that looks like a Thomas concade painting. Yes. And everyone's like, the fuck is this? Like, there were CGI complaints. Yeah. It makes sense in the context of the movie, the way the scene plays out. But it's somewhere around this concurrently, we've set up that Colin Firth is the head of the agency. Everyone's gone in this sort of crisis. Wardex. Wardex is in crisis mode because stuff's been stolen. Yes. And people who work for it are missing. And in particular, Coleman Domingo, Coleman Domingo, who's high up, is missing. Here you go. And he's a guy on a headset. He is basically has the air of a stage manager. Right. And they're early in a warehouse and they're making something. They're building a set around him. And he's sort of talking in Joshua Conner and saying like, you know, follow the plan. It would be okay. Everything's going to be okay. I love this guy. It's going to be all right. You're just going to make it happen. It's going to be a very fun subversion to have his character be so like warm and chill versus like, we need to hear ASAP. Right. You know, you have to go. So often, man on phone is like really like, like kind of riling up the tension. And this every time he's like, it's okay. This is the first place I felt the manifestation of 50 years of Steven Spielberg studying SNL because like Heidi is one of the people who would tell me about him coming to visit. And I go, like, so what does he do? And she said, he just is obsessed with how the show gets made. He loves just watching it come together. And the stuff you can't see unless you're in the studio, during the commercial breaks, how calmly people construct a set out of nowhere. Right. All these sets are like in slats that have to be rebuilt and dressed in like 90 seconds. No, obviously it's been much covered over the years. Yeah. The way that SNL is made is crazy. And he loves the dance of that. And he loves the hyper professionalism of that. And it certainly manifests in the final final sequence, which we'll get to. But everything about Hugo felt very, this is like SNL A.D. You know, this is floor manager. This is just watching the team just do everything very calmly and be like, it'll get done. And like at this time, Hugo and Daniel are in contact with each other. But Emily Blunt is kind of on her own. You don't know how she's connected. And then so Hugo and his employees get Josh and Eve to a safe house, which is like a farmhouse. And then we learn what the stick, the alien stick does sort of. I feel like the impression is it actually probably does more stuff. Yes. This is just a thing they figured out. Yeah. But it seems to all the alien stuff seems to kind of amount to sort of an empathic power of like they can kind of see in your head or talk to you in your head, right? This sort of classic gray big head thing of like maybe they're telepathic, like right? You know, it's like a capabilities. Right. But that's what makes them more powerful than us is that they've cracked empathy. Maybe at a time where we've become more divided. And like the stick is maybe like an amplifier, like a radio antenna that just kind of like zaps your brains with thousands. Yeah. Colin Firth will hold the stick and he'll look at a photo of someone they call it diving. And then he can kind of present in their like personal space and talk to them, but no one else can see them. So it's kind of like I guess it's just like they're you're he's in their heads. They also make it clear that Coleman Domingo was the main one who operated this, that it's like a high skill level thing. And Coleman Domingo probably you sort of get the idea is like is a more empathetic person. And lately he's probably better at it. He's an even more empathetic, but also by wielding this, he has now learned more. He has absorbed their feelings. Their message has gotten through to him and that's why he has basically become radicalized of we got to open the doors. We got to let everyone know. So they're explaining the stick, but they're also setting up with the videos of really why forming this resistance, which is that this company, this private company has been torturing aliens. And look, I think I think David Kep and Spielberg are smart about it. It's like we're going to do the classic conspiracy theory. It's going to be the basics that even an audience member who doesn't care about this stuff might know, just to sort of lay out what we kind of learned. It's like there's definitely was like a crash. Area 51 definitely is a place where alien stuff is brought a fucking Jackie Gleason there. Yeah, maybe brought Jackie Gleason there to see an alien because he was drunk and was like, I want to see an alien that's like a conspiracy. Yeah, totally, that Nixon would get drunk and be like, get the alien box out. I want to look at it, you know, or whatever that and that like there's a company or a subcontractor in the DOD that is basically men in black style, move beyond government of control by making money off of like patenting tax, right? Like that's how they do it. The first thing that I can even tell them what they're, you know, what to do anymore. When I googled Nixon, Jackie Gleason UFO is a clip from the Joe Rogan experience. Good. Yeah. Good. I thought Joe Rogan was very good in this movie, by the way. And no one really used him as an actor this well since Zookeeper maybe. Yeah, he has plays the villain. He's actually incredibly bad. It feels like he won a contest or lost a contest, and was forced to be in the movie when you look up what's called the disclosure movement, which is people who believe, you know, this is government covering up. Yeah. I said this to the big, you know, to the news and deals thread. Sure. You know, this is the first guy. Yes, of Wikipedia. And I believe Chris Ryan said this looks like a guy who runs a boutique physical media website out of his garage. And I think I said blooddiscs.shop app. I don't know. I think he looks more like a pond stars kind of guy. Right, right. Kind of like, uh, give you 22,000, you know, like, yeah, these things are mutually exclusive Marie guys, guys buying pallets of discs from Europe, and also he's doing some ponding on the side. And, and, you know, and Sean and Chris or Sean and Alex are we're like, Oh, yeah, that guy's like the star of the documentary. It's called, disclosure. It's got very big on Amazon. He's a guy who worked at the DOD and is basically like, well, I know people who knew things, right. Because as much again as I was like, well, stuff's been disclosed like the big hearing that Congress had a couple of people testified with like, well, someone I worked with told me that they saw an alien. You know, there was never the compelling thing. It was more just hearsay kind of indirect testimony. Nobody sat down and was like, I worked at the Department of Defense. And my job was cover up aliens. And I'm going to admit it. And we got up an alien and it was chill as hell. I would touch the skin. I got powers. And I saw rainbows. It's a new color reciculi or whatever. I think another thing this movie is doing. Yes, it's like, yes, this movie's playing in that pool. Yes. And it's a bit of a pool where when you, yeah, it's a Joe Roganie pool. It's a Joe Roganie club's that shit. If what is there too much money at stake? And then you have what feels very Spielberg game for some people might be a little too corny. And I bought it because I felt like they did just the right amount. The idea that this all of this behavior was justified by a sense of self preservation or defensiveness that then has sort of justified perhaps advanced interrogation techniques and such. But also there's so much money at stake that they're continuing to justify all of their reasoning. While also hiding behind this, it's for the good of the people. A person who start people are dumb panicky animals. Others would just kind of be like, okay, I'd tap them. And I'd say, thanks God. I'd be like, oh, my God, this is incredible. Life is magical. Yeah, the universe is incredible. I kind of think of what it would take for me to believe it. I'd either have to like, so this is a big question, right? Would it work on you? I have to like meet an alien face to face, sure, or it would have to be like a like legitimate press conference like Obama saying we killed Osama, but just not Trump. This is a prop. Someone else walked it out and even happened during the Trump administration. Then I don't believe it. Here's what it would take for me. Okay, go ahead. Then I have a thought. LGBT absolutely eating its snatch game. Like he comes out like whaling flowers and ponies at the Tony. Yeah. Oh, just where would LGBT both the tone right? You know, like, I thought pink did a great job. I didn't watch. I also, it was one of those things where women and I was like, why is pink hosting? And I was like, well, you know what? She's a born entertainer. Yeah. Ben and I were seeing Zodiac with a friend of the show Leslie Hadlin. We were hootin and allorin. We were having a grand old time. Do you think we will find the Zodiac killer? Or like believable evidence of aliens? Well, it was Arthur Lee Allen. And we all know this. Those knives in his car were for a chicken. He killed for dinner. Doesn't the DNA not match on the David, what were you gonna say? So I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but right, like the end of the movie, which we'll, you know, we'll discuss things we're missing, but you know, like, yes, they show a bunch of clips and you could kind of explain away clips. But then the movie is ending with them pointing a camera at an alien, who is then looking down the lens going, "Listen to me, I am an alien." I think that would really, would start to move the needle a little bit. There's just so much footage that is ultimately that's the other thing. But then, right, I've already debated this with some people where they're like, "Oh, I don't think, you know, in this age of no one believes anything in AI and Trump." And I'm like, right, but people believe that things are getting covered up. Like, why would they not believe that it's like, "Hey, it's true." - This is one of the things that feel bad, right? - Like setting for himself as a challenge is, what could you do that actually would grab everyone's attention and hold everyone together? - For a movie about a guy who snaps a twig to have a girl like one wish willow? - Is there something happening where Emily Blunt is using her, like, powers of empathy to then make everyone, like, to connect with everyone over the air. - Getting a little metaphorical more than actually. - I think it's not like she's sending the vibes through the TV. - She can definitely, like, read the alien, you know, and kind of panplay. - It's just the thing where I'm like, oh, this is a moment where every, like, he shows like, people on the subway, on their phones, people, they've stopped walking, they're just all glued, and I'm like, I don't know. - No? - I don't know. - Alien? - You don't know what? - I buy it. But this is the moment. - I'd be like, oh, there's someone on, like, a Kansas City news channel who's talking about aliens. - The movie's gonna live or die on this. I 100% believe that if I was on the subway, and, like, I could see the moment where, like, someone's phone pings, and then another person's phone pings, and then everyone in the car is, like, are you seeing this? - There have been moments like this. And this would be the biggest one that had ever happened in the history of humanity. - Definitely. - I, by the way, it plays out down to even just the transferring of, like, oh, no, this is getting bumped up to the nightly news. This is no longer Emily Blunts broadcast. She breaks the story. This woman, I think, is so fucking good who plays the newscaster at the end. - Yeah, she is really good. The one, the newscaster, she's having to play, like, I don't know what's going on in the middle of this. - I don't know. I don't know what's going on in real life. - Would you cry? - Yeah, maybe I would. - I kind of think so. - I got hooked up watching this film when that happens. - I got choked. I didn't get choked up, choked up during the disclosure part. I got choked up during the, when they were in the house. - Um, which, oh, the two thing, yeah, yeah. - What happens? - And so it's, oh, wait, before we get there, we just have to acknowledge another thing, which is that Eve Huesin has been, at one point, is taken over by a conference, directives to, she needs to eliminate-- - He's trying to jump in her brain and get her to-- - Basically kill her boyfriend, Josh O'Connor. - And she's, she is, this is why I wasn't bumping on this. Is that there's, the movie's a dangerous risk of getting into, can faith overcome all. But I think you can read it more literally, that it's not that, like, the power of Jesus is stopping the alien technology from being used in a bad way. It's that, like, the way she is squeezing the cross necklace and causing, like, you know, pain in her hand and actual, like, lacerations, is, like, the, the literalization of how she applies her beliefs to be able to guide her through situations, not the inherent power of those beliefs. If that makes any sense, that was the distinction for me. And it's down to the fact that she's causing herself pain, right, that it's not a self-punishment thing as a sacrifice. It's that, like, the idea of the cross doesn't really do anything. It's what you apply it to, that is made manifest then. But she basically, yes, is, like, using a tremendous amount of willpower to stop Colin Firth from making her kill him. And there are a lot of cool shots with, like, reflections and a knife. - And it gets into then, right, them needing to, like, evolve their level of communication, their relationship where she's, like, I don't trust me, time me up. I should be withheld or, yeah, restrained. And I love the bit of him and the, they go to, like, a random motel and he immediately tries to find every single item in the hotel that has the name or the address because he's, like, her eyes are a transmission device. - Right. - Yeah. - It's really cool. How does he eventually, he, like, move something? - It's, he's holding the. - Stick. - The one which will, though. - The diving stick. - Oh, no. He's holding a piece of paper that he wrote down. - Oh, right. - 'Cause he is able to, he sees the clip of Emily Blant speaking alien language and is like, oh, that's a mathematical equation. He starts translating it by hand on a piece of paper from the hotel, notepad. - Well, he thinks he's sleeping. - He's holding it in his hand and he drops it. And so she can see. - Immediately, if they come in. - Yeah. - This was the thing I forgot to finish setting up. But this notion that the conflict character is so completely curdled that he is so kind of, like, Colonel Kurtz died in his beliefs largely in the wake of his wife's death. - Right. - He loves the familiar center. - This man's completely corrupted now and the way the common domingo tries to relate to him of, like, you used to actually think about things and now you're so concerned with losing your position, your money, your status, your power, these people who just then, you know, the desire for security, even when you become a billionaire, just completely rots your fucking brain and you'll do anything to make sure that no one takes a dollar from you anymore, basically. - Yeah, and I think Spielberg's commenting, obviously, on like, people who crave power and government and then we'll do anything to keep it working for, say, Donald Trump, sorry to say his name. You heard of this guy? - Say it too loudly, Robert DeNiro is gonna break into the studio. - He's no good. - Cool eight man style, throwing up his middle fingers. But I also, the implication I sort of got is, like, you know, maybe back in the day, Hugo and Comfortscock know it. You know, we're like, we're gonna, one day figure out. - We're trying to get the public right. - How to finesse this out. And then at some point, Hugo realized, like, oh no, you're never, you're, your plan is to just keep making money on this shit. - Yes. - Keep operating in the background, but never actually let people know about it because like, that you're just too scared of, like, the organization. - And he already knew strongly that this is, I am correct, it will destroy society if we allow them. - And one of my favorite things at the, is at the end, when he's finally cooked, he plays the underling. - I don't know, but he was really good. - That guy was very good, yeah. Okay, his name I think is Henry Lloyd Hughes. You know, he's just like, the guy who had the gun, right? Like the guy who's kind of his, his, his, his, his, - Trenchment, yes. - But like, there's just that moment where finally, when the broadcast is starting work, Firth just sits in the chair and he's like, fine. - He's British too. - It's over. - Yeah. - A lot of British talent. - He respects, respects the Brit. - Where was this filmed primarily? - Filmed? - New Jersey. - Was filmed. - Well. - New Jersey. - Well. - Well, hunting to New Jersey, Ben. - Also a little Atlanta. A little New York City. - Mm-hmm. - But yeah, like the Kate May C. Shoreline Railroad was used for the railway. - Shout out to Jersey Shore. - There's the, there you go. You did that in a little accent. - You did? Yannouche, obviously shot it. - Uh-huh. - Yannouche Kameshkishat, that seems to be over here. - You did? Did you know that? - I said, yeah. - Edited by Sarah Brother, who directed, who edited like the last bunch of Spielberg movies with Michael Conn, but is getting the solo credit here. - I mean, Michael Conn is like 96. - Michael Conn is 95 years young. He's just 95 years young. John Williams is 94. Like there was something striking looking at the credits of this movie and realizing like, the guys that Spielberg has been with for decades and Yannouche is a little younger than Steve. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just still out there. - But when he started, he found a bunch, Steve was the young guy. He found a bunch of collaborators who had 10 years experience on him. - Right. - And these guys are getting really, they're dancing around retirement. - Right. - These are sort of the final laps around for a lot of them. - They get captured in the hotel. Or at least Daniel does. - Yeah. - Jaina escapes with the stick. We got back to Margaret who has left the hospital, ditched her friggin' laser ass boyfriend. - They try to sell her down the river. - Yeah. - I mean, he's sort of, you know, you sort of, it's a good Spielberg character because you empathize that he's like, "Well, I think my girlfriend's having a mental illness." - Yeah. - It also starts and it feels like this couple is gonna break up in six weeks. - But yeah. - Yeah, definitely they're already kind of weird because she's like, I think we should move again and he's like, but I want to like sell guitars in Kansas City or whatever it is he seems to do. - It's unclear. - But, you know, the thing we've sort of mentioned with it's like, when they're in the gas station, it's pandemonium because everyone's prepping for what seems to be maybe not the end of the world, but some kind of escalation in a foreign war, like a nuclear North Korea. That might be like a nuclear exchange or something. Something crazy is happening. None of our main characters care. - No. - Ever. - So it's all background did and I love that it's all kind of just like, you know, North Korea, you kind of just hear this sort of vague, like, you know, yeah, the situation continues to escalate. - It's also, if anything, and they make it, you know, textual at one point, but there's a concern of, well, anything we do even be able to cut through the noise. It's like there's already such a big story happening. - Yeah. - But so, yeah. So like when Wyatt Russell is finally kind of clearly, like I think I need to, you know, hand Emily off to the other. are. They're in a gas station where it's all popping off. Yeah. So she can kind of sneak out calls and reports her. Right. Emily and Josh link up. Wait, do we, I'm sorry, one more, do we like the scene where it takes him three times to run over the phone with the car? Oh, I love that. I love that. She's like, you didn't fucking the wheels didn't even drive forward. And like I was watching it being like, I also would struggle. It's like, I don't know exactly where the wheel is when I'm putting in the car. It's really good. She's really funny. Yeah. At this point, they establish, you kind of see what the other people are seeing as they're talking to Emily Blunt where there's like that shot in the trailer where you see like an old woman turn into Emily Blunt when the camera passes a guy's the back of a guy's head. And without any context, you're like, oh, is she a shape shifter? But really, that is just like the visual way to represent that every time she is connecting with someone, she is, they are seeing her as see someone. I read it as it's one of her powers, much like the language thing. It's like when that's what she needs to do, that's what it is. Because you have the scene later where she gets out of custody. And she does it by looking at 15 consecutive people. Right. And to each of those people, she is the one person who a silent look from would make them stop in their car. I thought that sequence was insane. I thought that sequence was incredible. That's another time when I started to like kind of tear up. Yeah, I think it's so beautiful. That's how she frees Josh. Yes. And then they are like, we just got to get back to Kansas. She'll start off leaving Kansas, but now she's got to get back to Kansas. They just find each other in the way that you go set of like you'll know where to go. She'll know how to reach you. They're always two. Yeah. When they get to Hugo in his little warehouse where he is, we find out that he has been reconstructing her home from childhood. And it is important that they reconstruct the circumstances of circumcision. Nope. In fact, David, I have to push back here. They do not reconstruct what an alien circumcised. What I'm supposed to do is like, the problem is the aliens have been circumcised and then you're like, what's he worried about? This was his problem. It's an anti-circumcision stream. And he starts going on like weird TikTok interviews, you know, like with like circumcision influencers. I must, I must call out who else recently reconstructed their childhood home in exacting detail to then restage the events of primal trauma. Huh. Wait, who? Academy award winner Steven Spielberg. Yeah. And the faithful men. Yes. Yeah. I wonder if, because like, I feel like this movie was entirely built post-fabulous. Yeah. Correct. If he's like, right, reckoning with like, what a strange emotional experience that was for him to reenact these things to build these things. Yeah. Yeah. Cause like so much of the magic trick of the movie. And what I love also is that when Emily Blunt is confronted with her home, she's not just like, wow, she's like, all right, so it's my, what's going on? She's like totally overwhelmed. Yes. And yes, I am the exact age that like I got, they say that she's 38, which Emily Blunt is not 38. But the hell do you think she is though? I think she's like 43. Yeah, she's not that much older. But I am 37 and a half. I'm 37 and a half as well. Marie and I are very close. We're very close. You're 40. And Ben, that's a term 41. Yeah. But just like that, the, the way that the house looked. Yeah. The TV, the stack, the HSS. And then when you got to her bedroom, I was just like, oh, I started thinking like how I would react if someone reconstructed because my home was torn down. Yeah. My, my, there's my parents gave up where I grew up. Yeah. So I can never go back. Yeah. And I just, I started to think about what an overwhelming experience. No, totally. I know. Like I could, I never always visit my house in London would. I've visited your house in London. I stood outside and took a picture for you. Well, it's in Disneyland, right? Yeah. It's in Disneyland. And there's a little, there's a little, there's a little blue plaque outside saying, David Sims. My street does have a blue plaque on it. It did. But not my room. It's a, I think it's Kwame and Kruna. It's a very interesting person. Because Park Park Wolf, the dog lived here. Maybe one day there will be a blue plaque. Maybe famous podcaster, David Sims, and people go like another new low for blue plaques. God, I didn't think they could get any stoop in her. He's just Christ. You should just be like Charles Dickens. Now it's fucking this guy, co-creator of gay ET David Sims. And then so I was like, oh, actually, that's pretty funny. He's like, all right, all right. Maybe it's funny. They didn't even land on LGBT and they're like, he caught up with it later. Later. Just Ben, just your dad live in the home that you grew up in. He told us that. Not only does he live in the home. He grew up in, he lives in like a family home that's generations. It was my great-grandmother's home. And that's where the jeans were buried. That's a, that's a home bill hollowed ground built by Haasley. Is your, is your bedroom still your bedroom or has it been converted to like Ninja Turtles posters and shit? No, it's not all that was taken down. It just functions as a guest room. What happens next? You basically, you get the chase, the train. And then they're in the house and they both are, you know, they're holding the stick and they have to like, they have to kind of go back to the moment of what we learn to be their common first alien encounter. Common Domingo has been focused on her. We're trying to find her. He knows that there was a human, a child that was abducted by an alien. What he realizes when Joshua Connor calls him and tells him that he can understand what he said on the broadcast, there were two. There were always two. Of course, there were that they were abducted together as children by a bunch of woodland critters in their Thomas Kincaid Christmas cottage. That's how they made visualized it to them since the children would not be terrified, which is why it looks so artificial. And did they were imbued with these powers of communication to hopefully be able to someday, Maria, you're about to cry at this idea. I don't know. I'm thinking about this movie's incredible. I'm thinking about how, because they're animals, it's often brought up as kind of like a failure of humanity that we have more empathy for animals than we do for other humans. Right. That people get more upset when they see animals being hurt in movies than they do. Like the classic, like, Hurricane Katrina, people were more freaked out when they saw a dog, got on a roof, you know, even though they've been watching suffering. And there is something that, yeah, that's it, that the aliens have chosen to present themselves as like, I know just, if there's like a scene where you see the way the fox is looking at. I like that they stack up on top of each other. I like that they make a little kind of like, oh, yeah. I mean, I was interesting. The animal stuff, animal stuff never really works on me, which probably means I'm a monster, but I mean, like, I can find an animal cute and not want to see an animal be in peril. But like, for me, I was much more just like the kid stuff gets me of just like the idea of a kid not knowing what's happening and all that, you know, like now that just like freaks me out so much. You're right, Marie, that there's the thing of like, if they presented to us as aliens, would we be terrified? And they presented as humans, would we be distrusting only by presenting as a magical deer, Cardinal, and raccoon who all stack up on top of each other and our good friends. The big three, deer raccoon, of course, would, would we feel safe and comfortable enough? Yeah. I want to share, because I've said on this podcast many times that I am jealous of people who've been abducted by aliens. Yes, you have said that. And that it's something that I've always wanted. Friend of the show, Chris Baroube, the great Chris Baroube, producer and sometimes host of 99% invisible, great podcast. He was so nice. He makes you feel like an asshole, the, the, as I was going to say, the friendliest man in the world. There's no more genuine friendly person than Chris Baroube. Was he abducted by an alien? Probably no, but I was talking to him about this movie and my relationship with aliens and he did challenge me where he said, wouldn't that be really scary? Obviously, like, ha, obviously, maybe you are more talking about like kind of again, like I feel like we're all in this stoutic for the 90s aesthetic around alien abductions, which, right, right, which also bled a little bit into, I know, I'm not going to call you out here, Ben, but a, you know, drug subcultures, right? I'm kind of like, you know, he shirts where there's a gray alien and maybe he has a joint and he's got his fingers up and he's coming in peace, you know, there's also like the SNL, the SNL skit, the alien in California, where it's like three of them had had a, like, I was bathed in a warm light and I felt held and cared for and it was magical. And then you kept being like actually, they stuck stuff up my butt. I was Donald Duck in it. Like, I guess in my mind, I'm like, I'm going to show them Sega Genesis. They love it. They love it. They love it. They would, those, those, they're kind of guys. Okay, yeah, just close your day. A little kids getting abducted by aliens and it seems very effective. They remember everything. Colin Firth was still trying to fucking fuck with their shit. They have to like make themselves invisible, which is another thing you can do with the alien stick. Invisible car. And we were just gonna say that sequence that that was really fun. Yeah, I'm a simple house. Why don't you guys get bonked? Good. A lot, a lot. guys get bonked. I do want to say, and this is like, if we're talking about like empathy and cinema, one of the guys that plays one of Hugo's assistants. I think his name is like Brandon Wilson. The entire movie, every time they showed him, I was like, I know this guy from somewhere, but I don't think that he's an actor. I think he's someone that I know who like happens to be in a movie. Like I just felt like I had some sort of different connection with it. No, Brandon Wilson. Well, I don't know who Brandon, he's not showing up. Maybe his name's wrong. No, you're, you're going to know you're right. Brandon Wilson here he is. Yeah. He's in, um, nickel boys. That's the whole thing where I thought I knew him because that would be so. Yes. And so the whole time, well, you're placing the other guys head. Yep. For most of the movie and that guy's your friend. And that only after the movie when I looked it up, but I was like, Oh, it's the guy from nickel boys. I was like, that's a crazy reaction that I have. Thank you for solving that. That's a really good movie. Yes. You know, no shit. Like, you know, good movie that I have not felt the need to rewire or felt the desire to rewatch because it's so emotionally demanding and all that. It's a complete experience. Right. But just throw it on. Yeah. If you're listening to this and you've never seen nickel boys, you should watch nickel boys. Nickel boys 40X. If we can get it back in theaters for a little 40X, make it even more of an empathetic experience. Only how interested you are in ruining movies with 40X. I'm sorry. You pronounce preserving the art of theatrical movie going in a very strange way. Hoppers is now on Disney Plus. And I was watching it with my, my like three and a half year old nephew who loved it and still chair. I was having like PTSD flashbacks to like being jostled around. We had a great time. You guys saw hoppers in with the early still to this date. My only 40X experience. So both are like and I were like, I don't, we don't know how you do this. I'm going tonight. I went last night. What are you doing today? What did you see last night? I took, I took my little cousin to see he man, a message the universe last night. And then tonight I'm going to see scary movie in 40. Yeah. 100% better. And I'm going to laugh. I'm going to laugh. That's pretty funny. Thank you. One of the other people in Hugo's crew. No problems. Her name. Sorry. Gabby Beans. It's a great name. Oh, yes. She's a very good actor. Yeah. Yeah. I like her. I was just looking her up. Gabby Beans. We've also got, because like it is the classic Spielberg. Like he's so famous. He doesn't have to worry too much about star power thing. Hettie and Park, who I really like, who plays, this, who plays this character a lot plays the kind of like column first number four. Right. They're like person next to the boss on the phone being like, okay, get it done. Get it done. Right. You know, like, but you know, she's really good. You're saying that he doesn't need to cast manager star, but Jeremy Shamist. Gabby Beans, of course, was honeydote's personal assistant. Honeydote secretary. You don't get more famous than that. And they have like bits about coffee or whatever. Yeah. They do the coffee bit spider for secretary. Jeremy Shamist. I love him. Who is a great theater actor? I mean, he's done TV. Yeah. But great local New York credible New York theater actor. Yeah. He's like, what is, I mean, he's in charge of the local broadcast. You know, he's like Emily Blunts boss or whatever. He's so fucking good. And because he doesn't want to. He's like, why am I going to get off the air right now? Right. Because he has basically two scenes and scene one is him being like, why are you late? And like, this is so stressful. Well, you know, and then scene two is her returning and being like, Oh, you're talking about the, the like the manager, the guy anchor. Oh, he's, he is. Yeah. But no, no, no, and her returning and being like, this is what we're going to do. And he's like, I don't really get it. But okay. And he watched him snap in action. He's so good. Yeah. Agreed. Don't you think? Yeah. But he's also reacting to her suggestive power. Of course, he's working on him. She's working on him. But that's okay. And that's where you realize this movie is going to build to a final set piece of they just have to get on the news and they have to show everyone everything. And this is the real SNL thing because this becomes a sequence that's a tribute to live switchboard editors. Totally. So that I found that so thrilling. It's so cool. And like, look, I'm someone SNL for sure. I love sports. Like it's something where sometimes in sports, you'll see a behind the scenes look at that of like, and here's how that play was, you know, called live in the, in the broadcast, but where you see the guy that will go, you know, ready, 10, 10. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like the Oscars perfect. I could get a junior speech like where he's in real time directing. Yeah. Get a camera over to her right now. Yeah. I want to see the mom. I want to see the, you know, like, you know, like, and then just, right, but just the whole like, ready, three, three, you know, like, just the way they have some kind of internal metro. So cool. I'm going to invoke it. Uh-oh. It reminded me of Sully where you will cut to a sequence where the hero of the sequence is a guy you met 30 seconds ago, not the lead character, you know, where it's like, suddenly, who's pulling this off? People were just meeting for the first time. Our characters have taken us to this point, but this is new. But you know, who else pulled it off? Sully, Billy. Hunter Chesley. Sully. Sully. Sully. I thought when they cut to, uh, the, like, NBC headquarters in New York, I thought we were going to get like a cameo from Lauren or Domingo. Can I do a version of Lori at the Tony? Yeah. Okay. Marie, phone out, phone out, Marie, get a picture. Okay. Wait. Sorry. And he was sitting low, low and slow barbecue style. When Schmigg say, okay. You know, they announced Schmigg a dude. Yeah. And then for some reason he accepted, I mean, I know he's a producer, but I, like, I don't think he's the lead. No. Uh, but it just cuts to him. Just, it's just, it's just like, fucking Lauren, like, really? Like, I love Lauren. Like, it was fine with Lauren. Lauren's cool. It was a very anti-climactic, uh, final award. Um, that was just one of those Tony's. I love the Tony's. Means, but every year there's this strain to the Tony's even more of the Oscars of like, we're really trying to sell mainstream America on the things we have on offer right now, right? On like, Broadway's got for you. And some years, it rocks. Like they're like, look at all this cool shit. And you're like, yeah, it's rocks. And some years, it's like Schmigg a dude is the best musical. And unfortunately, we must also contractually because it was nominated, presented, like, a number from Titanic or whatever. Yes. Your Titanic, Kate. So bad. Have you seen that? The most epic bacon, millennial, like, loser shit. Throw it in the ocean. I saw Titanic, like four years ago. That old UCB thing. That's where it belongs. That's where it must stay. Not on Broadway. Well, what a funky grand I supposed to do. Wait, if we don't give him the space, you don't like the fact that the character is named Victor Garber. That's so funny to me. That's not like a funny. I'm laughing. Listen to me laugh. You guys stop. No, I'm kind of funny. I haven't seen it. Romely texted me that she was watching at the other day and said it was terrible. It's one of those things that, you know, it broke containment. Like it belonged, you know, I'm off, off, off, you know, like, Broadway. Did you know that? Yeah, Lord Michael's has two Tony's. He also produced Leopold Stett. Oh, he's got two Tony's wild. So we see a montage. Yes. Of the whole history of aliens, different stuff that is always quality, different forms large and other stuff. I'm not familiar with, I feel like if you're a real head, you're probably really recognizing a lot of this stuff. So Rogan would have lots to say about it. Yeah. I was told where I would prefer to shout out Tom DeLonch. Oh, sure. Yes. Tom would have a lot to say. Yes, fighters. And I did say this before we started recording, but I watched a documentary by James Fox last night, prepare for this. And it was called I don't remember the fucking name of it. I'm not to look it up again. And what's it the fuck? And it was not. Griffin got a different joke out before I was going to say and it was not the star of Ray and collateral. It was not a Jamie. No, okay. So what I was called the phenomenon, but it was not. It was narrated by Peter Coyote. Oh, right. And I was like, there really is the crazy about the guy who nominated who, excuse me, narrates Ken Burns, like historical docs narrating a thing about, like, you know, New Mexico, New Mexico, like alien encounters or whatever. It's more crazy that it's key man from fucking ET being like, this is real now. Yes. Yeah. Griffin said this to Marie and she was sure. I went. Yeah. That is mostly Ken Burns. I was applauded for the great. Yeah. I see also bitter moon. I think so. He's the other guy. Better move. It's all right. Checking out. Yeah. Great long sequence. It just even you. What I like is that I like that it goes into real time basically that the movie slows. They're not even showing you this really from the perspective of our characters. You're seeing people see it, but you're also just seeing it and you're seeing ships. You're seeing cell phone videos. You're seeing super eight footage. You're seeing like bad DV camera footage. You're seeing everything. You're seeing the aliens. You're seeing the torture. And then they start to wheel in to the television studio. Old alien in a wheelchair. And I did kind of grab Reese, the King of TikTok and go like, is he going to fucking do it? So when I said the ending didn't really work for me, I just had trouble buying all of it that people are affected by it. What would work that it would go over? There's like a moment where like someone at NBC News is like, I put the footage through our AI filter and they confirmed it's 99% not AI or whatever. And I'm like, okay. Like that you think people would believe it. - I just, I needed a little more skepticism. - I mean, the whole movie is built to this idea. We have to, you know, we have to like just think about like the ensuing minutes and hours. - Yeah. - You know what I mean? Like it's not like that all flashes and they're like, "Anyway, that was your one look at it." You know, it's like this is just the start of all of this is now just out. - I think I have this problem generally with, alien or monster movies that any time I see it. - The thing, the creature. - Yeah. - Then it is like, it gets deflated for now. - Yeah. What is it, is it Night of the Demon? - Oh, sure. - The classical movie where they show the demon and you're like, "Ah fuck, you don't have enough money for the demon." - Yeah. - There's some great movie where it's like the atmosphere is so good. This movie is incredible. And they're like, "And now behold the demon." And I'm just like, "Oh, it looks okay." Something like, under the skin really works for me because we spend most of the time, the alien's like a human, but acting weird. And I'm like, "Yeah, man who fell to earth." Like those sorts of things work better for-- - You're looking at it now, it looks pretty fucking good. I don't know. - Yeah, that looks awesome. I don't think that looks awesome. - Yeah, that looks pretty good, dude. - Yeah. - I think that Steve knocked it out of the park with this alien design. I think it looks great. - Yeah, I like the design. - And I like the ships, I like the weird kind of X ships. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah, the ships are really cool. - Yeah. - Right, you give them glimpses up there. - I love this, but we walked out and like half of our friends were like, "He really went full Spielberg at the end, huh?" And I'm like, "He went full Spielberg at the end." - Oh, it's truly like, yeah. - My review is Spielberg at the movie because the end of the movie is everyone watching. - Yeah, we all know. - And it's just every single face, mouth, the jar, kind of, right, you know, just, yeah. - There was a line that I really liked from the movie. Elizabeth Marvel says when she's talking to Yves Uson about how she lost her calling or whatever. And she tells her like, "You didn't lose faith in God, "you lost faith in humanity." And that is what caused you to turn away from your faith and believing in something. I think I unfortunately, I'm just so cynical right now about. - Gotta get less cynical, my friend. - That I. - I don't disagree with that, but this movie successfully made me buy in the world, the reality of the film that it would work. I don't believe it would work in life and I don't feel good about anything, but I did buy it within the context of the movie. - I think once I actually saw NBC News, and then I was like, "Okay, now that's when it started "to feel a little more like. " - Well, their programming is totally lost. I mean, they wouldn't know what to do with this. - So what do you think happens? People are just like, "Ah, whatever." - We don't know. - And then they just go back into film Twitter and just are posting, like is that? - Well, I mean, film Twitter is pretty good. It's fun to post through it. - Let him post through it. - You know, like, what if there's a gift? - Okay. - What if? - I am having, I don't know if I believe that a broadcast in Kansas City would get picked up right away by now. - You gotta roll with this a little bit. - I know, but it's gotta roll with this a little bit. - I know, I think it would. - These things would move fast. - Yeah. - They really would, especially in internet age, where people can communicate with each other this much. It's just-- - I can see it showing up on the internet before it gets-- - But I think about, I mean, you invoked it, but I think about shit like the night that they fucking got-- - I think about a big lot. - Which is one of the last times that I was like, I think I have to turn the news on. - Yes, I'm hearing. - And that won't happen again when something crazy happens. - Yeah. - Which we won't say because we don't want anyone coming after us to investigate. - When it happens, yes. - When it happens, right? - When it happens. - Okay, well, the box office game. - It's a closure day. - I would guess right now that it's gonna open to 40, which feels like in the middle of where the projections are, but I really have no idea and I don't know how it's gonna play. I've had friends for the last couple of weeks 'cause we got to see this early and thank you to the kind folks at Universal for helping us with podcast scheduling. But people have asked me what I think about it and then it's followed by, do you think it's gonna work? Is it gonna work as an Oscar movie? Is it gonna work as a box office movie? And I went, I don't know. It's really classical. It's really old-fashioned. It's classic Steve, but it doesn't feel in conversation with this moment. In a way that maybe is what people want because this feels like a moment of everyone rejecting the traditional blockbuster model the last 20 years. Now, they're mostly rejecting it for 20-somethings with one wish willows and back rooms. And this is literally the elder statesmaid. - I was so excited when Spielberg was under watchables. It's like, I'm about to go see back rooms. I'm excited. - It looks just like it just rocks. - When he gave a red carpet interview where he shouted pain Parsons and Cray Barker out. - It's like, are young guys and I was young and I think it's so great. And I'm like, you know what? Good for you, Steve. - One of the greatest moments in history of podcasting is on the 2001 rewatchables where Bill Simmons is like, Joe, it's just pretty good. - Check it out. - No, the moment for me that's the best where he goes. But 70 millimeters back now, do you know about this? As if Steven Spielberg isn't, I think Bill's, I think Bill's happened a little fun. - What is that? - I don't know, I think. - It's a great moment either way. - The part of the magic of Bill Simmons in my opinion though is you're always kind of like, does he know he's toured a bit or not? - That's the time he does, yeah. - I, I, compared, I said this movie felt like a shaman movie to me, which I am a shaman, man. - It does feel shaman. - It's a very shaman. - It's very shaman, but I also think that it's going to run into the shaman thing of it being so open-hearted and earnest that it's going to rub people the wrong way. I think it's going to be divisive. - Yeah, I really, I really don't know. - It's gonna, no, I think so. It's gonna be quite polarizing. And then as with almost all the movies he makes, a few years later, people are gonna be like, it's been we're kind of cooked on that one, huh? I'm rewatching it. It's like, it's got a few sequences that are really hit. It's just what's happened with all of these movies of his, even ready player, one of the most hated of them. - I like this. I like right here. - I'm a fierce defender. - He's telling me I'm having it. - It's fierce defenders, like, and yeah, it's just, you know, it's just what our men's doing. - I remember the post last night, and I remember being like, yeah, on it when it came out, the ending is still, I think, somewhat disastrous. - I agree with that. - I don't really even-- - It's just a pretty hard step. - No, no, it's like, they're setting up the, like, Nixon extended universe and they start with, like, the water gate. - It's cliffhanger, doesn't think he never made good on with the sequel. - No, he wouldn't have happened that. - Well, what do you mean, what happened? He went to see an alien with Jackie Gleason. - And they had a great time. - They had a great time. - They're picking up the thread here, yeah. - I think I've had some really good shots in it, and I'm like, oh, yeah, this is like-- - You know, who's in that movie? - Crazy Let's. - Let's see. - I have felt, even in the Spielberg movies, I have loved in the last 20 years that he's had a bit of a running ending problem that he doesn't know how to leave well enough alone. - That's true, he overstays it in four times. - Right, this is a full stop ending for him. - It's great. - That's rare, because usually he likes to nap a lot. - Like the disclosure is big, but then it just ends at the exact moment. And I was just like, he hasn't done that. - The kind of the one time he's fully nailed the ending for me since Jurassic Park. - One more thing with him on new watchables, where like I do truly love that he was like, I made Ready Player One, 'cause I loved to end them. Like I, because of the ending where he's like, by the way, it's closed a few days and we need to go outside, please. - He's like, that's why I made that move. - He also was like, my kids hated me for that one. - Yeah, Kelly, yeah. - Fucking tell them Spielberg. - So we think-- - Spielberg. - Obsession is gonna be number two at the box office again. - Oh, right. Yeah, I think possibly. I think Scary Movie and Masters of the Universe will likely drop quite a bit. And so I would put obsession at two. I'd put those at like three and four. - You were asking Maru's is kicking around at five. I don't think there's any other big release this one. - You were asking, do you think Scary Movie's gonna have a big drop? That franchise maybe traditionally has the biggest second weekend drops of any franchise ever. - Yeah, they kind of kept people in there. - My whole time favorite stat is that Scary Movie 4 made a quarter of its domestic total on its opening day. It made like 20 on Friday. And then it went to like 10 to five. - I will say-- - And ended up at 60. - Some other movies coming out this week. Stop that train, which was not made with AI. Well, not. No, AI. - Nope. - It wasn't. - Made my hand. - If I keep saying this, people will believe me. And a movie that Allison Wilmore told me rocks the furious. - Yes. - It's like a Hong Kong act. - And then we're gonna keep this out. - So did David Arleke. - One go. - I was like, oh cool. - See that. - Man to learn in Grogu. Oh, oh, I'm actually predicting that to quintuplets with Grocer and jump back up. Everyone's realizing it's good now. - That is the next present my daughter is going to get for continuing to stay in bed. - Galactic snack in Grogu. - Correct. - Which she's very excited to receive. Of course, what do you think the first of the fucking bag of toys I brought back from that are swag from people who give us nice toys? - I'll say mostly Reese the King of Tental. - The wonderful Reese King of Tental. - Give you a lot of Nintendo swag. And I gave you Galactic snack in Grogu. - Exactly. - What was the first that you gave out to the junior? - He's an all star. - She's just like the fucking bastard. - He's got the pink brush. - Good best guy in the world. - What was your choice? - You mean to joke about someone else's son having a magical paintbrush? - I just like this is a joke structure that anyone's son has a magic paintbrush. - It was the name junior that activated me. - Yes. - But I can't remember, you know. - Yeah. So, Man to Uncle Grogu does exist. Oh, Wingro Junior was my joke. - Oh, right. - The heat to will have Wingro Junior and he has a paintbrush. - We were saying that Tim Simons should read for Wingro Junior in ET. - That's so good. - And like Sim said, Wingro Junior and his magic paintbrush. - You've got a magic paintbrush. - But I haven't read heat to so I'm very confused about the time. - Don't worry. When you read heat to, you stay with anything more clear. - It rocks to be clear. But you don't read heat to and go. I definitely see how this is a movie. You're like, whoa. Oh, okay. - All right, you know what? Mikey Mann, I trust you. - But yeah, I mean, there's nothing else big this week. So yeah, I do think that'll be mostly these gold overs. - I do, I got the hard number. So I just want to share with this Toy Story 5, which I do think is going to rule this summer. I do think Odyssey being all rated kind of solidifies unless Spider-Man is way better than we're guessing. It does feel like Toy Story 5 kind of has the runway now. I mean, I know what you mean, but the Odyssey pre-sale stuff is completely unprecedented and insane. Like, it's just kind of insane. - Also, Oppenheimer is more ostensibly more boring and also rated R. - Yes, and three hours. Like the Queenie Barbie. And Toy Story 5, I think Barbie numbers. - It might, the family movie thing, it's just like people, you know, are like, yeah, it'll have legs for, you know, for years because of, you know, family movie stuff. And it's like, that can be true. But then oddly, sometimes it's not like, disclosure day is also hoping for, it's second weekend is a Father's Day weekend. It's open for a nice hold, I think, because of that. - It's a dead movie. - Because, right, it's going for dad, but obviously it will be up against Toy Story 5. I don't think Leviticus or the death of Robin Hood are really too threatening there. And the next week, he got Supergirl, and I think now with these fucking superhero movies, it seems like it's just kind of like, they open okay. - It's supergirls not gonna get the blank check bump. So I think that's really. - It's not so true at all. - And there's another thing standing in Toy Story 5's way. - My most anticipated movie, The Summer, Minions vs Monsters. - Minions and Monsters. - It's got some time before Minions swings around. - It's got two weeks. - Okay. - But beyond that, every time I see a Minions and Monsters trailer, I'm like, am I into the Minions? - It looks, this raw strings. - I just want to read, 'cause I got the actual numbers here. Scary movie four opened to 44 million and ended up at 90. It was a straight double. And the first four days it opened on Easter weekend, it went from 19 to 13 to seven to three on four consecutive days. - Look, these movies are bad. - These movies perform, yes. But in 40X. - Smoke. - So you saw, okay. So you saw Scary Movie 4 and 4? - Oh yeah, it's bad, he's seeing that tonight. - I thought you already saw it though. - No, he's. - He's going back in time in 40X. - Look, it's, the promises made to friends. - You saw for the first time with Mitchy. - I saw it with Mitch in Zachary. - Right. - Anna Belicherry, yeah. It was great. And Mikeus. - And Mikeus, the great one. - Yeah. - And what's the other thing you saw in 40X? - I thought he may own it for it, which I've also seen twice. - Both movies I kind of like. Two movies you didn't write really recommend. - The movie. - No, look, I'm pro movies. - Yeah. There's stuff in him and I like. - It's just, they fixed half of the script. And if they had another year, I probably would fully like it as a movie. - I'm gonna watch it. - Yeah. - But I will say the initial reaction had me push it down to sort of priority with someone. - Especially with it not being based on things you care about at all. - I don't care about these things. - Right, yeah. - It's true. - He man is not one of my, one of my fellas. - I do, I just, I do. - Do you care, Ben? - He man? - No. - I'm really, I'm smartened from what they did to my boy Orco. - They did not-- - Is he not an end at all? - Is he an end at all? - Do you know what I did the other day? - I'm in the store, I'm like, hey, do you have this? I'm like, I don't know, it doesn't drop you a series two of the 20s, 26 tops, it doesn't drop until next week and physically, I'm like, oh, that's fine. I'm walking around and I see Magic the Gathering, which has gone all in, much like Lego back in the day, on like, they just do like, you know, Lord of the Rings cards now, right? They just let license them out and I love that game when I was a kid. - They had teenage Ninja Turtles, Magic the Gathering cards, so I bought a fucking box of them. - Wow. - Wow. - Yeah. - 'Cause we did a role-playing game. - Yeah. - It was kind of a fun format. - Magic is a little, 'cause it's like a strategy game though. It's a little less fun like to maybe record. - Got it. I don't know. - I've never played. - I've never played. - All right. Well, we get it, you're cool. - No, it's fine. - Ben, can you do me a favor as we wrap this episode up? - Yeah. - Can you turn the printer on so I can print the sides for the audition I'm going to run to go do? - Yes. - Thank you. - We have a printer here? - Yeah, we do. It's right there. - Oh. - I mean, thank God we have some things that are useful in this episode. - Yeah. - An office full of useful things. So next week, we start to understand, yeah, that's right, the toy store I've filmed called Finding Nemo. - We'll be coming at, I hope we cut out the part where I basically threatened to murder you about three hours, 50 minutes. - Yeah, I also hope we cut that out. - In the Finding Nemo episode? - Yeah. - Just 'cause if we don't, it'll be really, we'll feel for the fire of like, oh, David wants to murder Griffin Newman. - It was also just like, I'm not going to agree to license it out to the Netflix doc in five years. - Right. - Wait, no. - My family. - My mother too. - My estate. - Excuse me. - So you're going to murder him? - Yeah. - Okay. - That's what he claims in the Nemo episode. - I don't see it. - And look, we'll cut all of it out, but he gets like, detailed. - Oh, I know. That sounds like a doughboy. Is that what you were, Mike starts talking, it starts like, and you're like, wait, Mitch, have you planned something? - That's what they talk about. - That's special. - That's true. - Don't wait for the best podcast. - No. Uh, Stanton's starting with Finding Nemo. - Yes. - A little known film. - Yes. - A small one by him. - Yes. - We got Becca Alter from Vulture. - We got Becca. - And then, yes, we will discuss, you know, some very successful films and also in the blink of an eye. - Yes. - I mean, successful. I mean, financially successful. - And John Carter. - The definitive, Hollywood bounce of the last 25 years. - It's a bounce. - I'm really excited to reread that New Yorker article. - It's one of the best. - And, you know, somewhere in the middle of there, we will, of course, discuss Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, as previously mentioned. - Yes. And that series will end with Toy Story 5, which will obviously be late, but it means we kind of want slime to see it two times. - Yeah. - You'll have percolated on it, because we're recording it next week because he's off. - I have ticker. - I'm going. - What's work? I'm seeing it a third time after we record the episode. That is the actual fact. - So, have you already seen it? - No. We're all seeing it together. - Yeah. - And then I'm seeing it the night before we record. - Oh, okay. - And then I'm seeing it again the night after we record. So I get three in before I go to insert Ford Country here. - Wow. The printer's running, which means everything's working, and I'm going to run out of here. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for PodC. A mini series on the phones of Andrew Stan that has to be said that way, or else it doesn't make any sense. - PodC. - PodC. - You can also check out our Patreon over at patreon.com/blankcheck. - That's so true. It's so true. - And we are currently covering, I want to say. We just recently released a Billie Eilish hit me hard and soft, and I don't remember the exact title. - The concert tour 3D. - Flash our trip to Wisconsin. - Yeah. - As well as paired with a live discussion at the Wisconsin Film Festival we did about BabeTube in the city. - And I mean, no offense when I tell you that's what the episode is. - I appreciate that. Of course. And then yes, we're running through Robocop, Robert Cop, that's right, Robert Cop, movie with one really good one, and then some bum. - Yeah. It's one of the types of commentary series we do, failure to ever make one good follow-up and frustration mounting. - Yes. - Yes. - But I think they're all fun episodes. I certainly go Griff mode on several areas. - So does that mean that David Threatenstermord, are you a guy? - No, I feel like we actually have good times on those. - Generally. - I think our frustrations are with the Robert Cop franchise. - Yeah. - On those last days. - We started to get a little grumpy on them. - The 2014 one is so bad. - So bad that I just remember being really bad. - You got worked up. - Yeah. - You then got really worked up. Anyway, soon enough for that, and as always, blank check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Simms. Our executive producer is me Ben Hossley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas and our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Our work by Joe Bowen, Holly Moss and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minick, special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, blank check special features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social @blankcheckpod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by blank check productions.