#28. 'Those Who Wish Me Dead'
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The main title is Those Who Wish Me Dead (HBO Max), Taylor Sheridan's survival thriller with Angelina Jolie as a smokejumper protecting a boy from two assassins, and it draws a real split. Sonny is deeply disappointed in a director he loves (Wind River, Hell or High Water, Sicario): the whole thing plays like an elevator pitch scribbled on a napkin — "Firestorm meets The Client" — where every character exists only to serve the plot and none feels like a person you could imagine off-screen (his running gag: nobody in it you could picture ordering a burger at the Cheesecake Factory). JVL loves it, defending it as "Die Hard in a forest" — a lean, fat-free ensemble of six characters in three pairs — and singling out the movie's best joke, that Tyler Perry and the killers work for a third-party assassination contractor pinching pennies on the cleanup ("I said from the beginning there should have been two teams"). Vic scores it a Quadrant B (plot B-, duration A+, violence A+, a D for sex/nudity), knocking it as a well-made made-for-TV movie undercut by obviously fake CGI fire; Sonny and JVL also spar over whether Jolie is miscast (Sonny doesn't buy 67-pound Jolie parachuting into a burning forest) and whether she's the least interesting character in her own movie. The long opening covers G-Money reactivating the dreaded TruMotion soap-opera smoothing on JVL's TCL Roku, a nostalgic riff on childhood phones and taped movie-theater showtime hotlines, real industry talk on the WarnerMedia–Discovery merger (and Amazon circling MGM), a tribute to the late Charles Grodin, Sonny finishing Resident Evil Village on his PS5/OLED, and Vic's Cheesecake Factory outing with the kids. It closes with a My Octopus Teacher outtake — JVL desperate to know if the guy fucks the octopus — and Sonny's "I'm sure it's fine."
From the show notes
This week, the guys discuss Those Who Wish Me Dead on HBO Max. And speaking of HBO Max, they also talk about the Warner Media/Discovery merger. Plus: watches are discussed, as always. As mentioned in the episode, here's the link to the thing with the Guy Ritchie character JVL was so excited about.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00Hey! Stop! I'm not gonna hurt you. I wanna see where the blood's coming from. It's not my blood. You in trouble? Anyone else in trouble? My dad said, "If anything happened, I should find someone I can trust." Are you someone I can trust?
Vic00:00:30Hello and welcome to another edition of The Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder, The Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com, you'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and don't forget about the Sub-Beacon merchandise store at tpublic.com. Gentlemen, how are we?
JVL00:01:00JVL. Victorino, I have so many things to talk about.
Vic00:01:03I know. So do I, but I'm parceling them out for the next few shows because you never know.
JVL00:01:10When I was in third grade, I discovered that the phone company had put the letters on the alphanumeric keypad for the first time. It had never occurred to me that this was a thing that was there, right? Yeah, or what the purpose of it was, or you just never noticed it.
?00:01:29Right. Right.
JVL00:01:29Right. Right. And so one night, when I was left to my own devices, I picked up the phone, and I just started spelling out words with the alphanumeric keypad. This was during the height of the E.T. craze, and so I think I spelled out something like E.T. and Elliot are best friends or something like that. Like you would press the buttons on the phone. Right, to spell out the alphabet. The phone code sort of went dead for three seconds, and then it started ringing. It started ringing in a weird dial tone, and then somebody answered, speaking a foreign language. I was like...
Vic00:02:10You dialed. What? I hope that didn't start off with the numbers 011.
JVL00:02:15And so I clearly had somehow dialed out internationally. And I remember my parents were like, "That phone call cost us $7!" Because I hung up right away. I believe G-Money did something similar. With my Roku remote. Because this week, my TruMotion motion smoothing was turned back on. And I don't know which of the sub-menus he activated it from. And I've been going through and trying to find it and turn it off. Okay.
Vic00:02:49Explain to normal people what is that thing that you just said?
JVL00:02:53Soap opera. The soap opera stuff that you get on television.
Sonny00:02:56Soap opera effect on your TV that they have set to make it
JVL00:02:59look good in a store, which is for some dumb reason, the default setting.
Sonny00:03:05And it's because that's, I mean, it's, it's the default setting because that's what they have in stores because it's like super bright and super, the motion is super smooth, but it
JVL00:03:14looks like a home movie versus the eye catching picture. Yeah. So I need to, at some point find 10 or 15 minutes to sit and systematically go through all of the different various sub menus to find out what combination of buttons he pushed to bring this thing back out. Cause I killed the true motion five minutes after installing this television.
Sonny00:03:38What kind of TV do you have?
JVL00:03:39I have the, the TCL, the TCL Roku. Sonny, here's a question. If we set two televisions in front of Vic, one with motion smoothing on and one with the motion smoothing not on, do you think he could pick out which was which?
Sonny00:03:51Yeah. Assuming we weren't watching soccer or something. Yeah.
Vic00:03:54Is this, is this, is this the same as pan and scan?
Sonny00:03:57Yes. Same thing.
?00:03:59Yeah.
Sonny00:03:59It's just a new name for pan and scan. I knew it. I TVs are so weird like that, man. I, uh, I was watching something today, uh, that I, that I'm gonna be reviewing this week, uh, in my newsletter. And it was, I, it's like, it's a dark movie. It was like, there's, it's lots at night, lots of shadows and stuff. And I was messing around with the settings a little bit to make it a little bit brighter because I was watching it during the day. So there was light and my TV, the black levels on my TV are like black album, black. It's like. The black paint that you put on stealth bombers to make sure nobody can, nobody can see them black. Um, so any light makes it reflect like kind of badly and, and it makes it, it makes it a little harder to see. So I, I would just started like, I, I, I just put it in some of the preset settings and on my TV, there are two settings. Uh, well there's like filmmaker mode, which turns all the motion smoothing off, puts it on, you know, all the, the Christopher Nolan approved settings. Then the, the, then there's, there's cinema user and cinema home. And I was, I was messing around with these to try and figure out which one was right. And one of them, one of them has a like motion smoothing built into it as a preset. I was just like, why that's not cinema. That's that's TV. Don't do that. Don't do that. So anyway, a long story short, all of these things are very tricky. There's probably what probably happened is he knocked some preset version, like yes, that thing on that hasn't like deep in the subroutine of whatever.
JVL00:05:35Sonny, I have a question in your, your new fancy OLED with the filmmaker mode, the Christopher Nolan film, like does that also muddy up the dialogue for you as well?
Sonny00:05:45Yes, excellent. It's like somebody, somebody actually comes to your house and punches you in each ear and then starts playing. That's how it works.
Vic00:05:56Yeah. So that's even better in the Michael Mann version. You get the Michael Mann levels.
Sonny00:06:00And the Michael Mann version, uh, all the characters sound like Gong Lee and Miami vice.
JVL00:06:06So racist.
Sonny00:06:06So that's not racist.
JVL00:06:08She just sounds, she sounds ridiculous.
Sonny00:06:09She said she's a Chinese national raised in Cuba English speaking English. It was ridiculous.
Vic00:06:15If I were blind, I tell Jay Jay pod.
Sonny00:06:18I remember Jay pods review of that for the weekly standard was like, it was literally, I think it was just 600 words on Gong Lee's accent. Yeah. That's all I remember from it.
JVL00:06:27Now, look, I don't want to tell you guys what you have. To talk about in this section of the show. You're big boys. You can do whatever you want.
Vic00:06:33But before you do that, JVL, let me just jump into this. I just wanted to say, when you were talking about calling the number and seeing what happens, uh, that reminded me, you did that too.
JVL00:06:42And you got a sex line.
Vic00:06:43It was great.
JVL00:06:44It was intentional actually.
Vic00:06:45But, uh, no, you know what I called? I called as a little kid. I called the, uh, the movie theater. To ask you like, you know, like, cause you want to see when a movie was playing.
JVL00:06:56When is star wars, but you know, so you pick it up.
Vic00:06:59And, uh, it's in the middle. It's on a loop, the number. And it was for, if anybody who remembers in Tom's service place called cinema alley. And I was just curious. So, cause I see the number of the paper you call it and you think it's a real person on the other line, but of course it just picks up at the middle of wherever you are, the loop. And if you missed it, you have to listen to the whole thing again. And I just, uh, I remember asking, I panicked and I thought I had to say something. And you know what a movie I saw posters for a movie at the time called the onion field and older listeners will remember whatever year it was. I don't remember what year it was. It was the onion field. And I panicked and I said, is the onion ring playing? And that's all I said, no answer.
JVL00:07:43So this is going to the young people listening to this will be shocked and they won't understand how this worked, but the way it worked back then was that the, the movie theater had a phone. And it was hooked up to a tape recorder and the tape recorder played an action actual tape you called and it answered automatically and the tape just started playing from wherever it was. How I would love to get that job, but go ahead. But, but the best part of this is that in order to save costs, the movie theater would use the same tape for thousands and thousands of recordings. And so the, the voice degradation, which already was being done on, you know, audio tape done over analog phone lines by the time you. You could start clues, the fending sea of six thirties, right.
Vic00:08:39And, uh, you know, such were the days. I remember calling, it was like Seaview square mall. And that one had like eight. It was a big deal. Cause it had like eight, it was a multiplex and the voice on the other end was like, you could, it was a, it was a teenager who couldn't, you know, like who just didn't give a shit. And yeah. And it's a lot. It's a long thing. It's a long reading. But of course I, when I think about it, it's great because that's your voice, you know, you can just do the whole thing, but they, they were so, but they clearly were, they were so bored out of their minds because you have to do all the times for all the movies and then it's like, you know, whatever.
Sonny00:09:13Anyway, one other thing that I wanted to say, but there was, can I ask, can I question because this is, this is all well before my time and my day, I just looked at the newspaper for the listing. You could do that too. I don't even, I don't understand what you guys are doing calling, but the, uh, did you guys have movie phone back then? Was that a thing or was that only way before we moved? So this is, so this is not movie phone. This is before movies. Okay. No. Yeah.
JVL00:09:42Movie phone was the future.
Sonny00:09:46That was wild.
Vic00:09:47Uh, trivial.
JVL00:09:48You said you didn't want to tell us what I didn't want to tell you, but Sonny, if you want to talk about HBO max and what has just happened to what might be the best stream streaming service or what might have been the best streaming service around and is now clearly going to become garbage. I would love to hear your thoughts, Victorino. If you want to talk about my octopus teacher.
Vic00:10:11No, you know, I'll save that for an outtake, but I was going to say, what, what did you mean by the HBO max? Because it's going to be owned by discovery.
Sonny00:10:20So, so HBO max. So basically AT&T, uh, is the latest in a long line of businesses that realize the movie business sucks. If you want to be a high margin, uh, powerhouse corporation in the United States of America, the movie business is not a good one. Um, so AT&T is unwinding Warner media from its, uh, holdings. Basically what they are doing is that they, they are, I, I will be 100% honest with you. I don't understand exactly how this works and who owns what and whatever, but the, the long and the short of it is. AT&T is spinning Warner media off into its own thing, which will merge with discovery, uh, the discovery network, which has its own channel discovery plus its own streaming service discovery plus. Um, and those two things will, I think be something like, uh, ESPN, Hulu, uh, Disney plus it will be that sort of package. There will not be a HBO max hub within. Uh, discovery plus there will not be a discovery plus hub within HBO max. I think, I don't know. Nobody really knows for sure. Um, the long and the short of it is again, AT&T was like, oh, this sucks. This business sucks. We got to get out of it. And they, they have, they recently previously. Uh, got out of the direct TV business taking an enormous loss, uh, $48 billion. Yeah. I mean, just a, just a huge, huge write down.
Vic00:11:54So like 80 billion, once you throw in the lawyers and, uh, and, and, and
Sonny00:11:58the courts, so AT&T is just getting rid of, uh, getting rid of stuff. Now I am, I'm less, I'm less, uh, I'm less skeptical of this move than JBL because a, it was, it was always kind of a weird fit anyway, AT&T and HBO. And, uh, the, the HBO max service is the best of the streaming services. If I had to pick one, it would just be that one. But discovery plus is actually really good too. For my wife. These are the only, if we had the, if we were like, you can only have two services and it's just you, you don't have kids. Number one would be HBO max. Number two would be discovery plus. That's it. That's what we would have. So I'm not, I'm not, I'm not super, I'm not super, uh, you know, worried about this. The real question is what, you know, who, who they give it to and what they do with the actual Warner brothers library. Um, because HBO max has done a decent job of like working things in from the library, working them out. Um, they have the best and they have the best lineup.
Vic00:12:53That includes DC, right? Sonny.
Sonny00:12:56Yeah. Warner brothers owns DC Warner media. Owns owns DC. Um, this could mean, this could mean the return, the Snyder verse could be restored. JBL. You don't know. You never know the, the, the guy, the guy at discovery, who's going to be running things, you know, he likes to turn on a dime, baby. He likes to, he likes to, he, he, he will, he could look at, you know, this whole JJ Abrams verse and just be like, no, we need to get Zack Snyder back in charge because
JVL00:13:22here's, here's the interesting possible outcome.
Sonny00:13:25Here's the interesting thing. Warner brothers in 18. And he had been very, very quiet about the numbers on the Snyder cut. Um, and there are two ways to look at that. The first is that they were terrible and they don't wanna, they don't wanna, uh, you know, tout a, a miserable failure. And the second is that they were amazing and they don't wanna tout a huge success because they were essentially strong armed into doing it. So, um, I don't know. Uh, it's, it's gonna be real interesting to see what happens. I am, uh, I'm not, I'm not, uh, not terribly bullish, not terribly bearish. I. I am, I'm actually weirdly more interested in what is happening with Amazon and MGM right now. Um, there's talk, uh, Amazon is apparently circling MGM, which has been on the, the block for, uh, for, for a few months now. And the, the rumors floating around earlier this week were that Amazon was gonna spend about $9 billion to acquire MGM, to acquire its library, but also to acquire all of the movies it has rights to things.
Vic00:14:26Would that include then, would that mean that Amazon would own MGM grand?
Sonny00:14:31Uh, I don't know. I don't know. I think that's a different, really? I think that's a different enterprise at this point.
Vic00:14:37Again, all of these things are like, I'm going into the prime room instead of the champagne room. They call it the prime room.
Sonny00:14:42Well, that's, uh, there's not, there's not an MGM strip club.
Vic00:14:46I know. I just, I just, I just threw it all in there together. Sapphire. I thought we were talking about Sapphire. I got, I got carried away. Okay.
Sonny00:14:51I, uh, I, I think that's actually more interesting and like what, what it could mean for. Both prime as a streaming service and MGM as a studio and, uh, and it would, it would signal a doubling down of Amazon's commitment to its film studio that I think people were kind of questioning that, that, you know, that it, it has been on slightly shaky ground. Um, so I think that's actually a more interesting, uh, story, but again, it's hard cause it's, it's all just rumor and innuendo at this point. It's hard to say one way or the other, what any of this stuff will actually end up looking like. You know, I, again, the Warner, the Warner discovery deal, really interesting. Uh, I'm fascinated to see what happens. I don't, I don't know. I don't know. We don't have any actual information yet.
Vic00:15:38So you're right about the, uh, Discovery Channel and your wife, because my wife is the same way. She loves HGTV and the show about the husband and wife living down in, I think, Mississippi
Sonny00:15:50Aaron and yes.
Vic00:15:52And they're something they, yes. And it's not love it or listed obviously, but it's like, and yeah. And they, they're, they go to these homes in their hometown rescue, hometown rescue. And I have to tell you something town makeover. I'm intrigued by her and she is not. Yeah, I know. That's the face, right? Okay. Initially that's the face. And yet I'm, I'm intrigued. That's all I'm saying. She's got, she's got a weird face, a weird profile there, that short haircut. And yet something about it. I'm something about her, something about her, uh, she have a boyish boyish.
Sonny00:16:26Yes. Yeah. But you know,
Vic00:16:27yeah. And she's got a great accent, a boyish figure as some. All right. I wouldn't go that far, but there's something about her that I was like, mm-hmm. I can do some, I can, I can do some, I can do some drilling like a 10 year old boy. I do remember that. It's a racy line. God bless Bill Paxton. May he rest in peace.
Sonny00:16:47But his birthday, his birthday was this week. Really?
Vic00:16:50Oh, anyway, I could just see myself, you know, drilling with her. All right. Okay.
Sonny00:16:54Oh, come on. Anyway, save it for the octopus. Oh,
Vic00:16:57sorry. Uh, uh, very, very disappointed by the way. Very sad. And to hear about the death of Charles Grodin. I didn't know he was 86. That is old.
Sonny00:17:0886, 87, something like that. Not that old.
Vic00:17:11Uh, I was just. Yeah.
Sonny00:17:12It's not the oldest, not the oldest person you've killed Vic.
Vic00:17:15I know that that would be next one side. Uh, uh, Christopher Plummer. Are they both gone now?
Sonny00:17:21Yeah.
JVL00:17:22Was Charles Grodin really, I, I feel like in the obits I saw, they were like Charles Grodin from the. Beethoven.
Vic00:17:31No, that's terrible. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's done better. That's that's what the headline or his obit is for. Well, there was like 20 Beethoven. Beethoven movies.
Sonny00:17:39Well, because I guarantee you, if you go to his IMDb page, the first thing that comes up is probably Beethoven.
Vic00:17:46Yeah. He has done so much good work over the years. I remember him. The first time I remember Charles Grodin was in the movie. Heaven can wait with Warren Beatty. And he was having the affair with Diane Cannon and he is fantastic. He's a villain. That and then he plays nice guys. Remember, he was Murray Blum and Dave and then Midnight Run. He's fantastic in that, too. Also, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm not adding anything else to this, I'm just reporting. I'm just reporting this. I'm pretty sure he is the person responsible for Norah O'Donnell becoming famous. Because he's the one who saw they saw her on C-SPAN when she was at Roll Call, I don't know if she. Overlapped with you, Sonny, at Roll Call. This is before your time. No, I think she was there before you before my time. And he had a show on CNBC and then they would then fly her up there to Fort Lee to do the show.
Sonny00:18:42Is that is that Miss Chef? Miss Chef Jeff Norah O'Donnell?
Vic00:18:45Yes, yes, it is.
JVL00:18:48Anyway, classmate, you know, a lot of great journalistic talents came out of the Georgetown class of ninety five. There you let me know. Well, there is Norah O'Donnell, the anchor of the CBS Evening News. Yes. Dan Rather's chair. Yeah. And Mattis, who is the executive editor, American deputy deputy, the deputy editor weekend content.
Vic00:19:11And I spotted some great typos today are, you know, they're basically basically the same. We are equally years accomplished. I don't know. I'm still waiting for my invite to talk to the kids at Georgetown. Sonny, anything else going on? With you? How's your week of freedom?
Sonny00:19:29It's not a week of freedom. Beth is in Reno. It's not a week of freedom. It's evenings of kind of freedom. I did manage to finish Resident Evil Village in the first the first night that she was gone. That was I spent I'm a little bit tired because I was up to one in the morning. Is it just all zombies?
Vic00:19:47It's all zombies, right? Is that a movie or a video game?
Sonny00:19:50Video games. Video game. I don't play many video games, but I really like for some reason, I really like the Resident Evil series. I've I've now played the last the last five of them. Wow.
JVL00:20:01Wait, did you beat it in one night?
Sonny00:20:03No, no, no, no, no. It took it took it took about a week stretched out over like four nights, really.
JVL00:20:10He just went with no sleep.
Sonny00:20:11Well, it takes it takes like 12 hours. I mean, it's funny because people are people complain like, oh, these games are so short. And like real gamers finish them in like 10 hours. It takes me like 25% longer. Just take whatever the actual time is. Yeah.
Vic00:20:26When you play, are you the are you Mila Jovovich or your own character?
Sonny00:20:31No, the movies are not. They do not track what what is happening in the games, really. So different, different, different universes.
JVL00:20:40Is this for your PS5?
Sonny00:20:42For my PS5 on my OLED.
JVL00:20:45What is that like? Is it mind blowing? Does it feel like the future?
Sonny00:20:48I bet you the thing about I mean, the thing about it's very smooth is like is the most important thing. I'm not like I'm. It's weird. I play so few video games, really, that I'm I'm not really a graphic snob. I grew up playing NES and SNES. So I like so anything they do now is just like magic.
JVL00:21:09We jump back to high school to the 14 year old Sonny Bunch sophomore year and we grab him from whatever video game console he's playing at the time and we plop you down in front of this. Would you feel like it was magic? And like, would your would your eyeballs explode with how amazing it is or would you be like,
Sonny00:21:26oh, OK, that's good. Mostly, I'd be like. What are all those? Why do you guys keep looking at little screens in your hands? What are you doing?
Vic00:21:36Right.
JVL00:21:36There's all these other things. What's happening?
Sonny00:21:38Why? Why are you all pointing those things at me? Why? How am I on the what's what's Twitch? What's live streaming? What am I doing? No, I mean, it is. I mean, it's obviously an enormous, huge difference from, you know, PlayStation one. Or I when I was 14, I still probably play like Super Nintendo, frankly, but. So, yeah, I mean, it's huge, big, huge, big difference. It's it's like real life, man. It's like shooting, shooting people right in the face.
Vic00:22:07It's all zombies coming at you, right?
Sonny00:22:10Well, more werewolves in this game than zombies. But yes, same same basic idea.
Vic00:22:13It's all, you know, I know it's it's it sounds silly to say, is it scary? But I remember when I lived alone at the Kennedy Warren, I had one of these later spin offs of Castle Wolfenstein Wolfenstein. And it was where, you know, you get through the Nazis and then you go through the undead.
Sonny00:22:31Yeah, they were undead.
Vic00:22:32Yeah. And it was scary. I was there. It was like, you know, it was scary.
Sonny00:22:36So Resident Evil started as a survival horror game that was like like in the super like really controlled the camera angle. So you could only see certain things and things pop out and scary. The game has shifted towards more of an action, an action shooter game, except the last two episodes, Resident Evil seven I forget what the the title. I forget what the I forget what the subtitle that was. Resident Evil, Resident Evil Village, Resident Evil eight. They have been they've they've reverted a little more to the classic horror roots. Lots of narrow corridors, lots of like, oh, jumping out of the dark. It's what's playing this game on the OLED was amazing because it's, you know, it's pitch black outside pitch black in my room. It's just like it's like being in the murky. Yeah, you're in the dark and in the murky. It's great. I don't know about that. It sounds amazing. Terrifying.
Vic00:23:31I am doing fine. Yeah, everything's all right, Victor. Yesterday, Kate had a thing down on snorkeling recently. OK, no, no, I'll save that for later. Kate had a thing, a dinner thing for work you want to. And so I decided that I would take the kid was down in Clarendon. So I said, I got a great idea. I'll take the kids over. They've always been asking to go. And I just don't go there because it's just a little bit too far away and it's just a lot more, you know, you find parking and stuff. But I took the kids to the Cheesecake Factory, which they haven't been to in a very long time.
JVL00:24:05It's Clarendon, 10 minutes from your house.
Vic00:24:07Yeah, like I said, so far, a long way away. So I go over there and it's finding the parking and stuff.
Sonny00:24:14It's it's that that Cheesecake Factory is awful, too. It's always packed. Oh, yes. It's impossible to get a table.
Vic00:24:22COVID issue was yes. That's the thing is you can't make reservations in the old. Days. You remember people would be sitting in the front at all those little like those those banquets just waiting to be called. And you're there forever. And there's only so many times you can look at the display case of cheesecake.
Sonny00:24:37I've never understood. Who are these people who are just going and sitting and waiting for 45 minutes to sit down at either Cheesecake Factory or Olive Garden or Outback Steakhouse? We're literally any any of these restaurants. I don't understand it.
Vic00:24:50There's a line. And then they have an inner car. If you're outside, then you hear that like they'll call your name on a speaker. The buzzer. They give you the buzzer. The buzzer. Yeah. You give me a buzzer because yes. And but it's funny because, you know, telling the kids we're going to go to the Cheesecake Factory, it's JBL. It's like it's like I told him we're going to Lubeck fan or we're going to or we're going to Daniel or the murder dead kids. And and they go in there. They're so excited. And my daughter said, it's just it looks just like Disney World in there because, you know, it's like very Epcot ish. It's very like with the colors and things. So we go in and you get that enormous book. You know, what do you get? And I can't. And I tell the kids I said, I said, just like only appetizers. You don't need more. Get a small, small plate app or whatever. And my son's like, no, no, I'm just going to get I'm just going to get the burger. Is that is it big enough? I'm like, yeah, it's enormous. You get the burger and the fries. It fills up the whole plate. And so I, I decide that, of course, I'm not getting an appetite. I'm just getting one thing. But I thought I will go healthy last night. And I went with the orange chicken. Oranges are very healthy. Orange chicken is good for you. Protein. But I will say this like no joke. It is a better orange chicken than most Chinese restaurants.
Sonny00:26:12This is I mean, this is the thing about Cheesecake Factory is that it's really good. And like I'm like, I don't care.
Vic00:26:17It's still good.
Sonny00:26:18I'm not I'm not I'm not going to say I like I just was, you know, making fun of all the people who sat there and wait forever because I didn't have to wait. But if you did, if you didn't have to wait, it's it's like I used to go there all the time before screenings of movies in Friendship Heights. I would just I would pop over, go to sit at the bar, get a, you know, salad or a burger or whatever, and then go go see the movie because it's tasty. It's always good. It's always exactly the same. You know what I want? I want things to be the same consistency when I order them.
Vic00:26:45Consistency is a big deal. Consistency, service, food, whatever.
Sonny00:26:48I want it dumped out of that bag and into the walk and then on to my plate. That's all I want.
Vic00:26:53So the funny thing is, the funny thing is, you know, I want to make the kids think they're starving. My son, he goes, I'm going to eat the burger anyway. I know I'm I'm so hungry. They brought the fresh bread over and he eats one of the he ate a whole loaf. Like, you know how they give you two loaves? He ate the brown one. That's like oatmeal, honey or whatever. And I'm like, Are you kidding me? And of course, you have like half the burger. And then I had to be part of his burger because I didn't want to waste it. Right. But you can't take it home. It's not you're not going to take it home.
JVL00:27:21It's crispy. Nobody takes nobody takes away their food from Cheesecake Factory. You don't want everyone staring at you like, Oh, look, they've got the doggy bag.
Vic00:27:30Oh, no, I don't. I don't care. But I said, I'm not walking around with it. I'm not walking around with it. So I failed. But it's crispy because a lot of places it's like, you know, soft and mushy. But I tell you, it's fantastic. And the only problem is they do. You know, the menu is I've written about this is it has the the caloric content.
Sonny00:27:51Now, I don't like that.
Vic00:27:52I don't like it either, Sonny, because, you know, it affects your Don't want to know that. Instead of getting something that you like or tastes good, you end up having to get something that's possibly healthier. And that's terrible. Take it up with Cass Sunstein.
Sonny00:28:04Yeah. Tired of these nudges, not to be nudged. I want to be nudged back to my my cardiac. The good rest.
Vic00:28:10The good news is this morning I ran seven miles and burned a thousand calories. So my orange chicken was only a thousand calories. You know who'd be proud of me? You know who'd be proud of me? Brooks Captain Bill Dwyer is going to say, oh, he's a runner. He's in training and he's a very brave firefighter. Speaking of which, thank you. I used him for the transition. This week we're talking because people are like, what are we getting to this movie? I'm looking at the clock, but I've lost track because of the thing. So anyway, this week we're talking about those who wish me dead. Sonny, how about a big boy review? But even before that, did you see this at home on H. B. O. Max or did you see it in theater?
Sonny00:28:57I saw it at home via a screening link, but go ahead. Not even on HBO Max. I'm I'm glad you mentioned Captain Bill Dwyer because I would be curious to get a good captain's take on the idea of Angelina Jolie as a smokejumper, because here's the thing about Angelina Jolie. She is a classic movie star. She's got she's got a face like a porcelain doll and, you know, she has charisma and she like she she's got great lips and she you know, she just she captures the eye. You stare at her and you and you're you're sucked right in. The idea of her jumping out of an airplane with all 67 pounds of her carrying one of those giant rucksacks and parachuting into a burning forest, I don't buy it for a second. Now, this is not this is frankly not a big problem with the movie. I don't I almost never complain about about casting and like, honestly, it's not even really that big of a problem here for me. The bigger problem in this movie is that the whole thing feels like an elevator pitch that somebody wrote on a napkin and then forgot to fill all the details in later. So here's here's the elevator pitch. The elevator pitch for this movie is basically it's like all right. It's like Firestorm meets the client. That's it. That's it. That's the that's the firestorm.
Vic00:30:20The one with the firefighters who get stuck on the hill.
Sonny00:30:23That's the one with Howie Long. I think, is it? Did I get that right? Oh, Howie Long, okay. I'm pretty sure that's the Howie Long movie. Anyway, I'm thinking of the Howie Long forest fire movie. That's what I'm thinking of.
JVL00:30:35It's Die Hard in a Forest.
Sonny00:30:38No, but it's not Die Hard. It's not Die Hard in a Forest because Die Hard in a Forest would be much better than this. It's Firestorm with the client because this is because all right. So here's the plot of the movie. The plot of the movie is this kid, his father is killed by two guys, one of whom is Aiden Gillen. The other one is Nicholas Holt, and they have killed this man for reasons we don't really know. He knows secrets. He knows all the secrets that will bring down whatever politicians of all sorts, which is which we learn from Tyler Perry, who is in this movie for literally two minutes to explain again in the most generic way possible. This kid knows secrets that will bring down governors and we got to get rid of them. And I was like, oh, cool. Tyler Perry's in this. Maybe he'll show up again later in the. Nope. Never comes back. Never comes back. So anyway, this kid is stuck in the forest. Angelina Jolie has to help him. She has tension with John Bernthal, who plays a sheriff whose wife is pregnant. They the you know, yada, yada, yada. I was so disappointed in this movie. I was so disappointed in this movie because I like Taylor Sheridan a lot. Taylor Sheridan is the writer director of this movie. He also wrote and direct wrote and directed Wind River.
Vic00:32:01Oh, I like that.
Sonny00:32:02And and he wrote Hell or High Water and Sicario. I love all of those movies, all of those movies we just mentioned. I like I like a lot. I mean, he also does Yellowstone, which I haven't watched because it's on Paramount Network. I don't know.
JVL00:32:16Those are very dark movies you mentioned.
Sonny00:32:18But those are all very good movies. And here's what I like about those movies. All of the characters in those movies feel lived in and real. And I can imagine them behaving in certain ways off the screen when we don't see them. And there isn't a single character in this movie who I see on screen and think I can imagine that guy like getting a burger at the Cheesecake Factory, looking, flipping through the menu and deciding, you know, I'm going to get the sixteen hundred calorie Hawaiian burger because that that that looks I could there there isn't a single character in this movie who I can imagine. I can imagine doing anything aside from serving the function of the plot. And the plot is so simple. It's just save the kid, say we got to figure out how to we have to figure out how to get the kid to the forest. We have to figure out how to get the kid out of the forest and we have to do it in a way that gets these two murderers dead. Those are like those are the those are the only imperatives in this whole film. And nobody nobody in this movie serves any purpose except for what they need to do in the plot. At any given moment. And it's really kind of frustrating to watch. It's really, really frustrating to watch. Leave aside leave aside, you know, the watching it at home versus watching it in a movie theater. I feel like this is a movie that would have been nice to see in a movie theater. I bet the sound design is really great with the forest fires and the big the big lightning storm set piece. I bet that would have been, you know, kind of fun to watch. But but just every everything about this movie feels lazy and half thought through again, like like somebody was sitting at the Cheesecake Factory was like, all right, I got a movie for you, a forest fire with the client and they're trying to kill the kid. Go and they're like, OK, sure. Who can we get to be in this? And they have great actors. I love Angelina Jolie. I think I think Jon Bernthal is great. I think Aiden Gillen is very well suited for this sort of role as the crazy killer. Nicholas Holt is the kind of wide eyed bug eyed killer. I like that. I just like I like everybody in this movie. Um. The movie is bad. It's just it's just bad. It's like it's just not it's not there's nothing to it.
JVL00:34:30Victorino, you're nodding your head. I am.
Sonny00:34:33Man of the people also hates this movie.
Vic00:34:35Yeah, I get the quadrant score is a B according to my calculations. So the plot is a B minus. Yeah, it's great. I got it. But I would have liked to know why and what what is in there? What was in the scrap of what was in a flash drive? I hope it wasn't a flash drive. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
Sonny00:35:00I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
Vic00:35:03I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? right backdraft it was this great story about the you know about the cuts that they're making and scott glenn's casting revenge on the alderman and this whole thing okay that works that works it's ridiculous but it works no we don't know we just left it is ah okay uh violence and actions in a plus but i'll revisit that later on and i gave it sex nudity a d i mean you know she takes a shirt off she's beat up and all but you know she has a bra but not bad for 45 talk about angelina jolie uh so i but watching this movie for me it had to feel it felt like a made-for-tv movie um and you know what else there were some bad special effects uh like the was it just me or did a lot of the i'm not saying that they didn't do real fires but a lot of the fires and explosions kind of look fake
Sonny00:36:11yes you're right i mean i am it all looks like cg i i looking at it it just did not look like
JVL00:36:18they set fifteen thousand acres of forest on fire no no it's it's like they just used a computer to do that instead of practical christopher nolan if christopher nolan he would have burned all of montana to the ground christopher nolan would have bought a state
Sonny00:36:34and he would have burned every every tree down in it you know it's a controlled burn it's a
Vic00:36:40controlled burn so uh so so yeah i i i did i i did not like the movie for for those reasons as i mentioned um and again like you said with tyler perry who's the real boss you know who do they because in the end the two back and i like i like the people you mentioned the same thing aiden gillen is great he's got the beady eyes he always talks in this way you know he has that
Sonny00:37:02sort of as little because he's trying he's trying to like he's trying to hide his irish accent
Vic00:37:07with varying success yeah with degrees of success yes but i felt like in the end you know and it's getting they're killing all these people right it's a huge trail of bodies and you want to ask them in the end as they're you know they're they're it's not working out spoiler alert for them uh and you want to say to them and they're still driven to kill like the kid or whatever is it worth it how much are they paying you you know why i i i was hoping that like the the pregnant woman would get the information from aiden gillen like who why who are you the whole thing and nothing so we don't uh get any of that uh jvl you guys are fucking crazy it's oh come on it's great oh what
Sonny00:37:53it's i mean how can you like how can you like this movie this is not the the best movie of
JVL00:37:592021 probably um probably but this it really is die hard it's die hard in a forest it's great it is a spare piece of movie making which goes very effectively from from moment to moment has almost no fat on it whatsoever has one two three four five six characters that i actually cared about this is a thing how could you care about any of these characters i totally this is the of all your criticisms sonny the one i find the most befuddling is the idea that you can't picture any of these people off screen i can picture all of them off screen and furthermore i kind of want a movie with angelina jolie and her smoke jumper bros who we get like five or six minutes of in the beginning who are hysterical one of whom looks like australian uh uh i'm having a brain lock um bruce wayne dark knight returns christian bale one of them is is a christian bale look-alike uh everything about it's great i you weren't left
Vic00:39:12wanting thinking like wow what's going on here and why are they going after them i mean it's cool like i said i gave it big points for action but you weren't left like wanting jvl like to know why
JVL00:39:23you know i in a funny way i really appreciate the fact that so that for me the two parts that i found the most interesting are that tyler perry and his character is he is not the bad guy he is merely the middle manager for a company that does assassination and so they are you know a third-party consultants to whoever the actual bad guy is and so these guys work for him they are his employees and so when aiden gillen and nicholas holt go out to see him he's talking about like you know what they need to deliver to the client and that's hysterical and that maybe the most single most interesting moment in the movie is when gillen and holt are going from one spot to another and aiden gillen's character complains i said from the beginning there should have been two teams that was funny that that is a funny line and nicholas holt says it's a fascinating way to save money you know and it's hysterical because what he's doing is like contractors the world over right the client has themselves 16 ways to sunday and is now facing the end of everything and even facing the end of everything they're pinching pennies on the cleanup solution it's hysterical how do you not love that i uh again i i i loved i love the sheriff uh john what's his name john berthal john berthal i've ever seen the guy
Vic00:41:00before he's great oh he plays really iacocca in ford versus ferrari yeah he's in ford versus
Sonny00:41:06ferrari he's the accountant he's the brother in the accountant he's fantastic in this and
JVL00:41:12angelina jolie is just a movie star she's magnetic i mean she is a a real deal leading lady and a movie star and she's great and you know it's funny you say that about not being able to picture her jumping out of things because there's one thing which there's one moment in it where the suspension of disbelief is really asking too much and i just thought to myself oh come on and that is when she is tramping through the forest with the kid and she's just in that kind of tight t-shirt and they're sitting by the forest they're sitting by the fire and she's talking about how one day he's going to be going down the shirt of some other girl and then they get up and they go hiking and i thought that kid would not be able to go hiking with a boner like that no no way that some 12 or 13 year old kid out in the middle of nowhere with angelina jolie while she's talking about him growing up and making out would then be able to like just jump up it might be the eddie murphy routine do you remember this victorino uh you know eddie go up there to the board and no sir i'll take an f and i that that was a little bit too much that didn't cross my mind when i i hear can i can i say she looks like she's 28 years old by the way can i can i suggest
Sonny00:42:28can i suggest one thing i think this movie has a main character problem in that angelina jolie just is absolutely magnetic and 100 a movie star least interesting character in the movie by an enormous margin um i i found the uh pregnant wife john bernthal pairing much more interesting we haven't even talked about her i forget i forget her name but she's she's wonderful um and and i contract killers who are just middlemen getting screwed is like an interesting and kind of funny idea a whole movie about them just about them would have been more interesting but instead they they're like super competent at the beginning and then by the end of the movie they can't they can't kill a single person on the screen and it's it's frustrating to watch because they have like it is not 48 hours it is it is not it is not a natural it is i'm sorry i didn't buy it i just didn't buy it i thought it was i thought it was all the way i thought i thought it was cheap and i thought it was again just characters serving the function of the plot and the function of the plot is once they get to montana they have to be fuck-ups i don't think they're fucking they're they're totally
JVL00:43:36competent throughout things this the the whole plan is fraying and they know it's fraying and they know that again from the beginning that this they are under-resourced to handle this and even says you know like what do we got here 30 minutes tops six hours you know and then gildan says i can buy us more time if i like start a big forest fire but you know the clients have to be bought in on this uh i know the whole thing honestly felt to me like the process of uh building a website and you know launching while dealing with your you know developers and contractors yeah it was totally it was great and you know you're right it has a leading lady probably a lead character problem character but lady problem but i it really is an ensemble piece i mean i know angelina jolie is the the the picture on the poster but this is a movie about six characters and they're in three pairs and we we spend a lot of time with each of the pairs and i cared about all of them a lot i was happy to spend every time we jumped to one of the other pairs i was happy to
Vic00:44:41go there uh it was great no you know it'd be great terrible it would be great if we had a go back to every episode that we did a movie and then created a chart of the three of us and either thumbs up or thumbs down on movies it's really interesting to see which movies we align with like it's usually two to one sometimes it's all three but usually it's two to one in different ways i think that's fascinating i'm surprised at each you know
JVL00:45:14victorino the way math works it's almost always going to be either two to one or all three never
Vic00:45:19know i mean we might all like a movie there are no we every now it's always going to be two to one or all three yes but that's how this works most of the time it's like but it's like unpredictable who it is i i would not have guessed you like this movie compared to all of the the bad action
JVL00:45:36movies versus last week's movie which was very much all the bad action movies that we've watched this year uh like the the jessica chastain movie and you know all these things which really were just poorly made movies i know this was great the writing was great uh the characters were great the ensemble was great i will it'll be interesting you're right to see
Vic00:45:59what uh find out what captain bill dwyer thinks about this movie or his friends uh years ago i did this for the standard where i uh i interviewed his uh unit uh at the station for like it was like a it was like a firefighter's cookout cookoff competition thing and i did it as a casual but i remember we were sitting around and they were talking about their favorite movies at the time this is some time ago right yes well this is funny because they talked about i think the more recent movie was ladder 49 which had i think john travolta was in that and they said yeah it was more realistic but the truth is their guilty pleasure movie as ridiculous as it is is backdraft because you know it has all these ridiculous lines about shadow and the flame is alive and the whole thing and they and they use lines they throw lines out all the time except for that like the battalion was an old guy he liked the towering inferno but everybody else was saying it was backdraft i also remember in that conversation talking asking them about their uh toughest situations that they've been in and some of them talked about being on the rooftop of the pentagon on 9 11. and then they were also talking about like when a floor gives way underneath underneath them and but then it was funny because then one of them was like oh well yeah who hasn't had that happen to them where the floor gives way and i was like yeah yeah who has it
JVL00:47:23sometimes you're editing a piece and then the piece gets held to the next day which is a lot
Vic00:47:29like with terrible annoying writers who hasn't had to deal with that which i mean basically the
JVL00:47:34samesies in terms of work i think it's totally right totally right you didn't sonny you didn't love it when aiden gillen gets shot at the end by the the pregnant survival instructor and she rushes out of cover with her gun and he's lying there he just yeah i mean for no reason he just wait a fucking minute and he doesn't even know what he's gonna say you know he's just so frustrated that all this thing has fallen apart around him no and here's the thing here's the
Sonny00:48:04thing i didn't like about that i seen is that i thought i thought it was a cop out to have her shoot him when he reaches for his gun again i think she would have just put him down of course
JVL00:48:18she would have but she was out of not out of him that's why she she goes to rack it back she's gonna shoot him while he's down and she's gonna kill him and it turns out she's out so they they're both racing to reload she's 100 gonna kill him that's why she racks the bolt what did she do
Vic00:48:34in the in their house in their cabin with the uh was it a fire extinguisher bear spray bear spray
JVL00:48:40and she's because he says you haven't so she sprays it sprays it into the fire to light it
Vic00:48:46and then turns it around throws it around at him because it's funny that he's half melted face
JVL00:48:50that's he's he's uh he's harvey dent yeah that was crazy that was the end i you guys are too too hard on this i will remind you it's better it's
Sonny00:49:01better than without remorse that's for sure which was also written by taylor sheridan and was out on amazon prime a couple weeks ago and it's terrible sonny you liked aquaman if you go back
JVL00:49:12to the aquaman episode remember i did not killing i did not you were like that's great it's got
Sonny00:49:18it's fine it's fine it's it's it's doing a different sort of thing when they're in the desert ah i was too insane yeah when they when they when they had that great version when they had that great version of africa by pitbull it's awesome i take it back now that was good
Vic00:49:36uh okay i think we're i think we're good do you have any other thoughts on it okay um
Sonny00:49:43i believe jason momoa is aquaman more than i believe angelina jolie as a smokejumper i'll
Vic00:49:53smoke show oh they can't see me i'm pointing to you when she tells when she tells the kid
JVL00:50:01to turn around so she could take her shirt off and his line to her is i don't care and she said do it anyway we've shared enough yeah come on you guys are nuts spirit of the
Vic00:50:14week what are you drinking there sonny i thought you're drinking what is it a beer diet dr pepper diet oh diet dr pepper you know official drink of texas they i saw diet dr pepper i was in the office today that's that's like one of your legacies thought about you thought
Sonny00:50:27about me huh i said wait a minute somebody used to drink that who was it uh corrections
Vic00:50:31shout outs uh i got an interesting one a listener reminded me that not do you remember we were talking about my classmate who was going to jail uh not all white criminal uh white collar criminals go to country club jail even though this guy probably will uh because michael avenatti do you remember where he had he got stuck lompoc rikers
JVL00:50:53oh new york yeah uh okay um i got a shout out go for it to my my main man ed condon who got me for my birthday an archie luxury review of my watch collection sunny please drop this link into the what either either you are either you love archie luxury or you don't and for anybody who loves watches and who knows archie luxury this is a delicacy
Sonny00:51:23but it's not a character from the guy richie movie for the record i felt like upon watching
JVL00:51:28this review on youtube i felt like john candy and splash running in with the penthouse going they put my letter in the penthouse they put my letter penthouse that's how i felt and victorino do you remember the title of john candy of course i do a lesbian no more yes
Vic00:51:45it's my it's my my second favorite john candy related thing like that is in trains planes automobiles he's in the airport at the gate and he's reading a smutty novel do you remember the name of the novel no canadian mountain and there was a woman in the front like at all fours there's a woman at all fours and he's just openly reading canadian mountain
Sonny00:52:08uh okay well thank you ed i'll put i'll put a link to this in in the in the show notes and i defy anyone to get through like four minutes of it because i watched about three
JVL00:52:23minutes of it so what is what is this jvl i don't know what is this like triumph is what you have to understand is he's like triumph the insult dog i didn't even i didn't even
Sonny00:52:31get to the insults though there was like so much preamble it just like kept going i was like god this thing is 15 minutes long get to the cut to the chase man jvl you don't
Vic00:52:40get do you get the the print uh news do you get print newspaper anymore no okay the wall street journal there was a full page ad i should have brought it down i don't know where it a full page ad in the back of the a section so that's a really as you know that's very expensive to pay for a whole thing for omega and it was a giant watch it's with a green face and it's called aqua terra or something like that i forget
JVL00:53:03what it's called the aqua terra yeah that's what it is yeah it looked very nice yeah the aqua terra is their version of the milgauss it's a sort of heavily boy if anyone can see
Vic00:53:15this okay well never mind thank you that is all the time we're giving to this episode questions comments compliments tweet us @SonnyBunch @VictorinoMatus again be sure to subscribe to us on patreon just go to subbeacon.com we're there tell your friends until next time
Sonny00:53:40does the aquaman wear an aqua terra
JVL00:53:42Victorino my octopus teacher
Sonny00:53:47i don't i want to i want to dive into this aqua terra thing because those are it's like it's water and land in the same name i don't understand it
JVL00:53:58you'll notice that i don't own a sea master aqua terra
Sonny00:54:04the sea master the sea master water land watch i don't understand is it is this also is it in the the movie with uh you know kevin costner water world no i'm sorry wow all right victorino
Vic00:54:19yes you know um uh we were thinking about what movie to do for this week and i was i had been thinking about my octopus teacher because uh uh but sonny you say this came out a couple of years ago and tell the people what it's
Sonny00:54:35about i think there's a lot well yeah there's a lot it was nominated for an oscar there
Vic00:54:38was a lot of okay well there was you know a lot of movies that get held over because
Sonny00:54:43of covid but uh it's been out i'm pretty sure i'll look it up there was a recent piece on
Vic00:54:48it in the journal and so my wife says we should we should watch this movie i said what i'm a great idea we could do it for the show and frankly i didn't know my wife was into that sort of thing uh and i just said you know i hope there's subtitles because i don't speak
JVL00:55:01japanese anime the the that was it that's all i got are you kidding no that's all i
Sonny00:55:09got i didn't see it september 7th 2020. oh that's right that's eight months ago so what's
JVL00:55:15about this we just guy who starts snorkeling yes yes and it's really taken with octopuses in south africa in south south africa africa africa africa africa
Vic00:55:28diploma does he have diplomatic immunity yes and he uh he's so taken with them
JVL00:55:33that he decides that maybe he's going to make a radical lifestyle change his words not mine and go down every single day to visit with this octopus that he
Sonny00:55:44finds and who he refers to as she and the whole thing has such
JVL00:55:53a troy mcclure vibe i can't even tell you i mean i i'm all i did was watch the trailer and so what i was dying to know was does he fuck the octopus oh my gosh
Vic00:56:05also the the suction i was scared because in the trailer he's letting it touch him doesn't it suck you and then just kill you like sucks the blood right
Sonny00:56:14out no i don't think that's how it works i know either way i'm sure it's fine
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