#89. 'Nightmare Alley' (HBO Max, Hulu)
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
Vic and JVL skip the usual "how was your weekend" banter, teasing that it's being saved for a "very special" bonus episode, before diving into a long opening tangent covering the Phantom Menace trailer reveal (which played before Meet Joe Black in 1999), the 1996 ALCS Jeffrey Maier fan-interference play, the Academy's new fan-voted Twitter "people's choice" award and its decision to move eight categories off the live broadcast, The Batman's Little Caesars bat-shaped pizza-calzone tie-in, and box office (Uncharted #1 with $44M, followed by Dog and Spider-Man: No Way Home). The main event is Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley, a Best Picture nominee adapting the same 1946 novel as the 1947 Tyrone Power film. Sonny gives it a big-boy review, calling it GDT's best film since Pan's Labyrinth and praising the black-and-white theatrical cut in particular: Bradley Cooper plays drifter Stan Carlisle, who learns carnival grift and the dark secret of the "geek" show from Willem Dafoe, then reinvents himself as a high-society mentalist in Buffalo before being conned in turn by Cate Blanchett's psychiatrist, Dr. Lilith Ritter. Vic likes it too, awarding quadrant scores of A (plot) / C (duration) / A (violence-action) / D (sex-nudity) for an overall B-minus, and admires the art-deco production design (especially Blanchett's office). JVL is the outlier — he admires Cooper's long, near-silent opening stretch and Dafoe's performance but says he found the ending's twist (that Cooper's character becomes the new geek) telegraphed far too early, and, taping the episode as Russia invades Ukraine, says he simply doesn't have the appetite for the film's unrelenting bleakness right now. The trio close by debating whether Rooney Mara or Kate Mara "wins" a greater-than/less-than showdown and correcting a prior mix-up of Ed Zwick's Defiance.
From the show notes
A bit of a grab-bag opening before the guys discuss the feel-good movie of the year, Nightmare Alley . Saving the weekend chatter for the bonus on Monday; you won't want to miss that.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00Is it a beast? Or is it a man? You're locked because tonight you will see him feed. Come on in and find out. Is he man or beast?
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, I normally say, how are we? But I believe we are saving the how are we's and how was our weekends for the bonus episode next Monday. Isn't that correct, Sonny? That is my understanding as well. We've got
Sonny00:01:24a very special, very special bonus episode coming up. I think people are really going to enjoy it. I know I enjoyed prepping for it. Oh, yes. So did I.
JVL00:01:35So, so very cold.
Vic00:01:38Yes, yes, yes. We took a gamble with this decision. One of the, one of the things I was thinking about, well, we'll save it. We'll save it.
JVL00:01:49Save it. Save it for the bonus episode.
Vic00:01:49But this is going to be, you know what though? I mean, but the suspense is going to be driving listeners crazy. And the whole point of this is, this is like our version of the annual pledge drive. You want to find out what happened? Well, but the problem is. You got to subscribe.
Sonny00:02:02Well, but the problem is the, the, the folks who, who, who, who don't subscribe will get the iTunes episode two weeks from now. That's not how it works, really. That's not, that's not really how it works, but it's fine.
Vic00:02:14You need it now. You, you got it. It's like, it's, it would be like having to wait for the Phantom Menace. You know what was that? What, you know what that was like JVL.
Sonny00:02:22I was, it was funny. I was reading the new Chuck Klosterman book on the nineties and he has a whole, he has a whole little, Yeah. He has a couple of pages on the Phantom Menace trailer reveal.
JVL00:02:34It was amazing. People, people going to meet Joe Black. The trailer reveal. The, the fog, right? The creatures coming out of the fog. I had no idea what I was listening to. No, no, no, no, no. Yes, yes.
Sonny00:02:43Like the, the, the, the people going to see, you guys did this, right? Yes. The people going to see meet Joe Black and then like leaving the theater. I don't, I don't think that was.
JVL00:02:50Sonny, we went to meet Joe Black to have anonymous gay sex. Oh. We did not go to see that movie just to watch a trailer for a Star War.
Sonny00:02:58It was like that scene in the movie. The last time you went to the Dupont Five.
Vic00:03:01It was like that scene in the Pelican, the Pelican Brief, you know, where the, uh, the, the, the, the Supreme Court Justice goes in and then Stanley Tucci strangles him. That was like us.
Sonny00:03:10Yeah, that's why we went to see meet Joe Black. Not because. That's way less embarrassing, frankly.
Vic00:03:15Yeah, and we went through the whole movie to see it again because once was not enough. And I tell you what.
JVL00:03:21Well, also, you thought Claire Ferlani was going to take her shirt off. Yeah, she was quite creamy. You were convinced that Claire Ferlani was going to.
Vic00:03:26What rated? It's a PG-13 movie. You know, PG-13, if it was, if it was in the 80s, oh yeah, you could have seen Full Frontal back then. That was PG-13. Um, what I remember, I'll tell you what I remember because, uh, it was the trailer. You, it's not like you went to YouTube and could see the trailer, right? I mean, you just had to go to YouTube, right? You had to go there to see that. Nobody, nobody would know until you saw it.
JVL00:03:51The Uptown said on the giant marquee under meet Joe Black, it said Phantom Menace trailer.
Vic00:03:58Do you remember? I remember like the girls who went there to see it as a romantic movie, like to see, and then it was like, who are these other, who were all these other like nerds?
JVL00:04:07No, there were, there were like, I do remember that there were like, I don't know, five or 10, you know, 20 something girls who went up for girls night and everybody else was neckbeard guy.
Vic00:04:16Everybody else was shmeep shmeep, and I remember, you know, after the, that's a JBL, that's a JBL language.
JVL00:04:28This is like, get the spooky.
Vic00:04:29This is, you know, for me a JBL, every relationship has its own language. Oh, I got another one for you, JBL, uh, limp biscuit, limp. It's hard to explain that. It's hard to explain.
JVL00:04:40Oh, I wasn't going to just go limp. That's a good one.
Vic00:04:46It's so, and there's no other way to say it. It's that good. And you can't, it's too much to explain. So, uh, I don't know, three people who might know that what that means.
Sonny00:04:55Sickos. Yes.
Vic00:04:57But I'll tell you what really quickly on the trailer. I remember wanting to be very excited and the mist as JBL mentions, and then. The whole thing, right? It explodes like the, the, the, the music and everything else. And then you saw clips of Jake Lloyd and you saw, um, Jar Jar Binks get his tongue stuck in the electric, the, the, you know, the electrical rays. And then we saw it again at the end. And I remember trying to convince myself, Hmm, that looks interesting.
JVL00:05:29It was Darth Maul with the double lightsaber. Oh yeah.
Vic00:05:32That was, okay. Well then that's good.
JVL00:05:34I was like, come on. We blacked out at that. Cause when he put it on, remember in that scene, Ray Park is staring straight at the camera. One side goes out. All right.
Vic00:05:43And then, then the other side comes out, double lightsaber, mind blown.
Sonny00:05:49Not the only thing lightsaber and, uh, we, we, I don't think anybody could have believed
JVL00:05:58that Jake Lloyd would have been an integral part of that movie. Right? In what, in what way?
Sonny00:06:05Well, but he was, he, everyone knew he was going to be Anakin. He's in all the, he was in all the posters.
JVL00:06:10The posters. Yes. But we assumed that he would simply be dragged from scene to scene, like a piece of furniture. Not that he'd be a character with lines of dialogue, but he would be the MacGuffin.
Vic00:06:21Oh, no, no, I, no, I, I, uh, I was prepared for, I just wasn't prepared for the acting per se. And I feel bad for him. I've read about his. Oh yeah.
Sonny00:06:30It was not. It was not. It was not fair to him. No.
JVL00:06:34No, it wasn't. And what happened to him was not fair to him. Okay. So you, you rub a lamp and an evil genie comes out and he's gonna turn you.
Sonny00:06:41He's bearded. He's got glasses. And he says, I have to resurrect my film franchise, but I need a sacrifice.
JVL00:06:46He's gonna turn you into either Jake Lloyd or Steve Bartman. Oh, wow. Which, which of those two would you rather be?
Vic00:06:58Well, no, and I, I, I'd be Jake Lloyd, cuz you get a check unless your parents absconded with the check. I can't remember what happened.
Sonny00:07:06Look, you could, you could make the case for being Jake Lloyd because Jake Lloyd at least can do the, the, uh, festival circuit for the rest of his life. Right. Yeah.
Vic00:07:15He can do that. Yeah. And there might be people who will for, you know, over time people are like, Hey, you know what?
Sonny00:07:20I felt bad for you. Well, uh, the Ahmed Best, uh, reappraisal has already happened. You guys saw this, right? How like the guy who played Jar Jar Binks.
Vic00:07:26Oh.
Sonny00:07:27Um, the guy who played Jar Jar Binks. The guy who played Jar Jar Binks, you know, and like, like got death threats from Star Wars fans for years, like has basically been reappraised and he has been accepted into the fold. And like, everybody feels really bad for how they treated him in 2042. That's going to happen with Rose, but very, but once I know, but that already has happened with like the, the, the, the, there was like the, there, well, there, there are factions now. There, there, there, there are more factions in the Star Wars universe than there used to be, I think.
Vic00:07:55Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Sonny00:07:58Well, but, uh, yeah. Yeah. I would rather be, I would rather be Jake Lloyd. Yes. Cause like Bartman had to like, Bartman had to like go into protective custody, right?
Vic00:08:03Yeah. Plus he was already an old dude. You know what I mean? I don't know. I don't know.
JVL00:08:08His life was over.
Vic00:08:09Yeah. I don't know. He was like 25, I think. I don't know. He was a, he was a 20 something. He didn't look, well, he, he looks like this average schmo. And I, I mean, I don't know what you do with yourself at that point, except for if you do want it, you'd have to go live in Chicago. No, you'd have to go. Yeah. Uh, who are they playing against? Go to that city.
Sonny00:08:26Whatever, whatever happened to that shit head, Jeffrey Mayer. Can we, did he remind me?
JVL00:08:30Oh, so you were an Orioles fans. That's why. Right. So Jeffrey Mayer is the kid who in the fall of 1997, it was either 96 or 97. I know that it was 97. Oh, he leaned. No, no. I'm sorry. Sorry. No fall of 96. Yes. Because it was right after I watched that game, uh, after graduating from college, um, he leaned over and stood up. Stole the home run ball to lift the Yankees over the, uh, the world.
Sonny00:08:59Oh, right. And then the outfielder like points up immediately. Yeah. Like somebody has reached into the field of play and interfered with this ball. That's right. And the umpires are like home run.
JVL00:09:08No, no, but you're missing the key part of this. When, when the Orioles outfielder does that young Jeffrey Mayer, like he's like he's Bobby Heenan or something from professional wrestling, look, looks around with this innocent, what, what are you talking about? What do you, I didn't do anything. Oh right. This whole full act as if he was, you know, like raised from, from the womb to be an asshole Yankee fan. And by age 10 had already figured out how to do it. He mastered it. Do you remember who loved Jeffrey Mayer?
Vic00:09:43David Tell.
JVL00:09:44Oh. David Tell.
Vic00:09:46Well, he was it.
JVL00:09:47Yeah. Yankee. He was a Yankee. Jerk wad Yankee. Wonderful human being, but a degenerate Yankees fan. Just loved it.
Vic00:09:56Yeah. Came in through the clutch. Okay. Uh, Sonny, you wanted to talk about, this was on Twitter, apparently the Oscars before the show, uh, they're going to get the people involved and there's going to be a people's
Sonny00:10:09vote.
Vic00:10:10So explain, explain.
Sonny00:10:12I don't understand exactly how it works cause it's not like they have a poll. They don't have like a, you know, Twitter poll at, at the Academy Awards Oscar page. But if you use a hashtag and you, you say the name of the movie that you like. Um, whoever gets the most mentions is gonna, you know, win, win these awards. And I don't think they're actual statues.
JVL00:10:31I think it's like, uh, the, the, the, so like the people's choice award.
Sonny00:10:35It's kind of, it's like, it's like the MTV blockbuster rewards or whatever, right? It's like the, it's like the people's choice, blockbuster, MTV awards, remember that one
Vic00:10:44best.
Sonny00:10:45It's like hashtag, hashtag most, most tongue in the mouth. Yes. Yes. Okay.
Vic00:10:53And then you pick the movie, right? Kind of Oscars.
Sonny00:10:55Yeah. So the, the, the Academy has done this because they're freaked out because Spider-Man no way home only got one nomination. Um, and, uh, what was it for special effects, special effects. Yeah. And they're like, oh, nobody's gonna watch the show cause it's, you know, a bunch of movies nobody's heard of. Um, and I, they remember the Academy does this every, every so often they freak out. Like so after the dark night did not get a best picture nomination after the dark night was obviously robbed of a best picture nomination in 2008. Right. Uh, the, the Academy was like, all right, we're expanding the number of best picture nominations to 10. There will be 10, uh, best picture nominees. And then they, they tweaked it again. So it was like as many as 10, but you know, it'd have to be somewhere between five and 10. And this year I think they're going back to this year. I think they went back to, it has to be 10, but anyway, like they get, they get, they get freaked out. They get freaked out. They're like, oh, nobody's gonna watch these movies. Cause you know, we're not picking enough popular movies and I find the whole thing weird. Um, I find the whole thing slightly weird and like so prone to gaming as to be not what's even the point. So, I mean like the two, the two, I think biggest, the two, the two number one contenders right now are the terrible Cinderella movie that came out on Amazon, uh, starring, starring, uh, the Camilla Cabello, Camilla Cabello was Camilla Camillo and the drag, the drag racing guy, Snyder cut, Snyder cut, not eligible Snyder cut, Snyder cut, not eligible because it didn't because it be no. You can't, you cannot nominate a director's cut of a film. This is actually a rule. You cannot nominate a director's cut that comes out after the original cut cannot be nominated for the number two choice award for right for the people.
JVL00:12:36I'm sorry. We have rules for the people's choice tweeting hash tag awards, JVL.
Sonny00:12:42You were very close. You were very close because the number two option army of the dead, the Zack Snyder, the Zack Snyder zombie, Las Vegas heist, epic army of the dead. Um, so anyway, but like Spider-Man, no way home, Spider-Man, no way home, nowhere in the conversation. Nobody's nobody's there are, there are no organized campaigns to get this. And like the, the academy has made an enormous mistake a by doing this through Twitter because Twitter is the devil's playground, but B just doing it at all. Like I, I, the other, what are the other movies that are nominated? One of them is dune, which is the second biggest box office hit of the year. I think you could say fairly. The second biggest domestic in terms of domestic ed. Yeah. It grows $400 million worldwide. That is, that is, uh, nothing to sneeze at in, in today's dollars, not if you're not including the Marvel movies, if you're not including like Shang Shi and, and, uh, so
JVL00:13:42that's like not including a whole bunch of other movies is what you're saying.
Sonny00:13:46That's right. I mean, that's what I'm saying. Like the reason I'm saying reasonable picks here. Reasonable picks. They're not going to pick the fast and the furious movie, right? They're going to, they're going to pick a dune. Um, but then also like, don't look up, right. Don't look up is the, uh, Netflix warming as a, but instead it's comments crashing into the earth. It's super political and it's, oh, you know, everything is, everything is dumb and bad. Um, but the, that, that movie, that movie, that's the second most popular movie in Netflix history. Okay. That's the second most popular movie in Netflix history after a red notice. Remember red notice? That's the number one, but don't look up number two. Like lots of people have seen the movies that have been nominated for best picture. Just not the biggest movie of, you know, the, the last half decade, I got to say in every
JVL00:14:36case. So weird. People are always fighting the last war. The changes never were. I mean, when we went to 10 nominees, what it meant was we got another four movies that nobody had ever seen.
Sonny00:14:48Yes, that is, that's true ish, except like three years. So two or three years ago, Joker got nominated, right? Joker grossed a billion dollars. That was, that was the one, that was a big hit. That was a big hit. Didn't win though, did it?
JVL00:15:00No, it didn't win. Well, none of these movies are ever going to win.
Sonny00:15:02None of these movies are ever going to win best pictures. Spider-Man no way home. Even if it got nominated, it was never going to win best picture Joker, not going to win best picture. Like it's going to be, you know, moonlight or whatever.
JVL00:15:13So is the, explain to me the fall, the Cinderella and the, the army of the dead or whatever that is, whatever the movie is, is this like, do you remember the year in American idol? When there was an organized campaign to keep the worst kid in it, there's like some Indian
Vic00:15:31kid. Oh no. Um, oh, oh, you mean? Yes. Yes.
JVL00:15:36Yes.
Vic00:15:37Or something. Never, never watched America. Yes.
JVL00:15:40It was like Zendaya, but it wasn't Zendaya. So he was like some 17 year old Indian kid who could not hold a tune in a bucket. Right. And there was an organized campaign, uh, among the, the online types to keep him in as a troll of American. I don't. And it got very uncomfortable for the producers of American idol. After like seven weeks of this Zaya, his name was because they're sending home people who are pretty good singers. And this kid is still there. So he doesn't want, he doesn't want to be there, right? He's embarrassed by it. Like, you know, he's got to keep singing and embarrassing himself and the people have chosen.
Vic00:16:15So, so is that what this thing is with Cinderella because all those genuine, they, it's genuine.
Sonny00:16:21No, no. Yeah. It's genuine. There are people who really love that terrible Cinderella movie and there are people who really love that great Zack Snyder movie and like they're, they, you know, they are either
JVL00:16:32of those things are true.
Sonny00:16:33They're doing, they're waging war on the D and the digital battleground, you know, uh, I would have said the Cinderella movie great power conflict of our, our moment.
Vic00:16:43I would have said the Cinderella movie with Lily James, I'm just surprised there's no
JVL00:16:48other cult following movie that, yeah, then it's probably why those two. What is the cult following of those two unless it's a troll?
Sonny00:16:58No, no, but this is the problem with Twitter is that like a very small number of people, if you have a thousand people voting 20 times a day, cause you can vote as many as 20 times a day, you have a thousand people voting 20 times a day. That's 20,000 votes. And there's only like, there's only, you know, there's only going to be a couple hundred thousand votes for either of these things because nobody cares about this dumb. And this is, so this is the big problem. This is the big problem, right? The Academy is trying to get people who have stopped watching the show to come back. We need to get people, we need popular movies to get people to come back and watch the show. And one of the other things that they've done is they've decided to move eight of the awards off air and they're going to, they're going to award them before the show.
JVL00:17:35They don't want normal people up on stage.
Sonny00:17:37So they don't want, they don't want normal people, but some of the pretty people here, here are some of the statues that they're, they're not going to be giving out live on the air. Best editing, best score, best score best.
JVL00:17:48How can you, how can you have an, have you seen the people who write scores Sonny?
Sonny00:17:52That's not the point. They look like us. You're going to have a show where people are like, what's the point of an award show? If you're not going to show the awards, if you're not going to show the lifetime achievement awards to Samuel L. Jackson, you know, you don't want, you don't want Sam Jackson giving a speech. You're set.
Vic00:18:08You're on your show. Hold on. You're saying the lifetime achievement is not being shown.
Sonny00:18:11No, they have. They haven't done it in years. They haven't done it in like a decade. They haven't shown the lifetime achievement.
Vic00:18:17Irving Thalberg. The Irving Thalberg.
Sonny00:18:19No, those are all, those are all, those are all off sites. Those are all like days before. Like why would you, why would you bother? Giving Samuel L. Jackson a lifetime achievement award if he's not going to give a speech live on your, if he's not going to drive a motherfucking snakes bomb on, on your show live on the air. Why would you even bother with that? Like what's the point? That's really sad. I like, so this is, so this is, this is the problem is that I don't think they have any idea what they're doing with the show. They really need to, they, and this is if I can, if I can, uh, get philosophical for a moment. Sure. They need to like J.R.R. Tolkien. That's what the elves do. They need to go west and diminish. Let the award show become a shell of itself and maintain it to get on the little boat instead of, instead of this blockbuster people's choice, nonsense.
JVL00:19:08So I love the idea that the, the old people who run the academy awards have decided that the way to get the youngs back watching it as well, we'll go on to the Twitter, which a something the youngs have all left. Right. So the idea that then they'll have to watch our show to find out who, who won not understanding that five seconds after they announce who won, it'll just be on Twitter. Yeah. Anybody wants to find you to say they're not gonna watch the show. They'll watch Twitter. Right. So I've seen it. It's so perfect. Uh, but yes, this is look, these things should go back to being what they used to be, which is an industry confab. Yeah. That's right. That's all it is. Get off TV. Go back.
Vic00:19:52I would love, I would love to have seen the ones from like the fifties. I think it would've been very interesting to see that, uh, question is there, are there hosts for this? Who are they? Totally.
Sonny00:20:03There's three hosts. There's Amy Schumer. She's gonna do this. Just have Tina Fey and Amy Poehler do it. Like they did. They did the Emmys for a bunch of years. They were, they were fine. But like this weird, this weird tri-partite, oh, Wanda Sykes is the other one, but like if you're gonna, if you're gonna have a, if you're gonna do the N and like each one gets an hour. And they're each gonna like headline the hour. I, the whole thing is so dumb. I just don't, nobody cares about the hosts. Nobody cares about the montages. Nobody cares about the musical numbers. Yes. Just give us, all we want are the awards.
JVL00:20:39What do you think the odds are that they pick their hosts based on follower count on Twitter?
Sonny00:20:44It's not, it's not small.
Vic00:20:46It's not the, the chances are not small.
JVL00:20:48This Wanda Sykes has 1.6 million Twitter follows.
Sonny00:20:52So they should just have Wanda Sykes do the whole show. Cause again, Wanda Sykes is actually funny. Like Wanda Sykes is a, is a, you know, an actual could actually host a gap. Vic Mattis.
Vic00:21:02Do it. Oh, I do it. I have almost 75 MC. Yeah. Uh, so, um, the go back to the Twitter thing that they're doing, right. For the people to decide, isn't there a thing like best scene? Is that true? Best scenes.
Sonny00:21:16You get to add what your best, uh, best. I can't remember. It's some, it's some dumb, it's like best, uh, glorious moment in filmmaking.
Vic00:21:23Good. Hashtag Lea Seydoux, French dispatch. Would that work?
Sonny00:21:28There you go. That's good. There you go. That that's you could, you should start a viral campaign on Reddit in glorious black and white.
Vic00:21:36Yeah. Okay. Oh, for chance. A little more. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Do you remember every time I think about the, the, the, the people's choice award, the blockbuster award, all I can think about is Mike Myers on the, in the actor's studio, because it's the kind of thing that SNL would have spoofed and they've done spoofs of the actor's studio. But when he, and, and Mike Myers is great, he's, he's an amazing, he's, he's a great talent. He's there's no question. He's a great talent. But when James Lipton has to read, you know, the intro before he comes out and he lists like all the characters he's played fat bastard, you know, and then, and then it's like, and winner of the blockbuster entertainment award and.
JVL00:22:16Winner of the Nickelodeon kids favorite award, 2007.
Vic00:22:24Yeah. That's, that's what it was. So, ah.
Sonny00:22:27Michael Myers. How did it feel to be slimed?
Vic00:22:31Right. That's it. It was scrumptily. What was the word that Will Ferrell said? Scrumptily-icious or something like that.
Sonny00:22:38It was scrumptily-umptious. Yes.
Vic00:22:40Um, okay.
Sonny00:22:41But the best one of those, the best one of those on SNL was the, uh, the, when Billy Bob Thornton was hosting and he, and he, and, uh, Will Ferrell kept asking questions about Armageddon and he was like, William Robert. Thornton in 1997, you were in the greatest film in the history of cinema, Armageddon. And it's like, it's like five questions in a row. And eventually Billy Bob's like, why do you keep asking me about this movie? It sucked. I hated it. I just, that's, that's what I think about every time.
Vic00:23:12Yeah. Yeah. Not, not Sling Blade. Um, uh, and then the end, but in the MTV choice, that's, that's actually some, those are two different awards, right? I mean, the MTV one was the, it was at the moon.
Sonny00:23:22Well, there was the MTV movie award. And then there was MTV music video awards. Those are two different. Oh right.
Vic00:23:28VMAs. Yeah. The VMAs. But the, the movie awards were.
JVL00:23:32Popcorn and the astronaut with the flag.
Vic00:23:33That's, that's the, that's right. And that's the one where, I mean, I made a joke earlier, but that really was like. The best kiss.
JVL00:23:38It was Drew Barrymore and some, it's all, the best kiss is always like two girls.
Vic00:23:42Yes. But wasn't it cruel? It was Cruel Intentions, right? That one. It ought to have been. With, with the two, with. Sarah Michelle Gellar and like Selma. Selma Blair. Yeah. That was a very good, I, that movie did so well on the quadrants. It was. It was. It was. That movie, that is a great movie. It was off the charts. Speaking of which, over the weekend, Uncharted took the top of the spot bot, blah, blah, blah, blah. Top spot at the box office. Oh, you almost had it. Almost had it. For 40, $44 million, followed by Dog. I don't know what that is. With 14.9 million and in third place, Spider-Man No Way Home with seven and a half million dollars. Tom Holland in first and third place.
Sonny00:24:21Well, this is, it's interesting. Yes. What are your office thoughts, Sonny? Do you remember the movie that dethroned Titanic from the number one spot at the box office?
JVL00:24:31Man in the Iron Mask.
Sonny00:24:32Man in the Iron Mask. Leonardo DiCaprio's follow up film to that. So it was. That's impressive, JVL. It's not exactly the same because Spider-Man No Way Home hasn't been number one this whole time, obviously. Right. A couple other things have come in and out, but it is still, it is still very much at the top of the box office in terms of proximity to number one. Yes.
JVL00:24:53I believe they rushed. Man in the Iron Mask out specifically to capitalize on Titanic. Like it was not slotted until much later, but they figured, look, there's Leonardo mania.
Sonny00:25:04First off, this movie's terrible. Second off, we've got Leonardo DiCaprio mania.
JVL00:25:09Cause it was a while, like the beach, right? Is another one of those movies where it's just like, it's got Leonardo, get out there.
Vic00:25:14Oh yeah. There was so much excitement about it and I didn't see it. And the reason I didn't see it's because, and cause, oh, the trailer looks interesting, but it was because JVL. Um, much like other movies that I haven't seen, he'll just give me the rundown and tell me, and it sounds awful. And then, and I won't see it. So this was the case because, uh, you described, what was that Sonny?
Sonny00:25:35It's a good quadrant movie.
Vic00:25:36Oh, okay. Uh, the only thing I remember, okay, the, well, I'll just leave it at that. Hold on. I'll be right back.
JVL00:25:45Um, the, the daily motion beach scenes, uh, only, uh, Oleana or girl, the, the w what's her name?
Sonny00:25:53Yeah. The, the hot French girl who takes her top off.
JVL00:25:56No, no. The vaguely androgynous girl who's in French Tilda Swinton, Tilda Swinton is the one. Yeah.
Sonny00:26:03You don't want any of that. I'm so confused. Uh, no JBL. You told me not exclusively at my friend, you, you told me there was like a video game
Vic00:26:11sequence.
Sonny00:26:12Yes. Oh, that movie. So first off that, that was not a movie that got rushed out because Leonardo was popular. That was a movie that, uh, it was like his big followup to Titanic that came out in 2000,
JVL00:26:24I think.
Sonny00:26:25Yeah. Yeah. Um, or 2001. Uh, and it was also Danny Boyle's follow up to not train spotting, but I guess a life less ordinary. Oh yeah. It was like the movie that was supposed to get him back on track and didn't re he was off track until 28 days later. Um, but, uh, but the, but no, that was, that was like, that was like Leo's next big movie. I think he got like $20 million forward or something. Like it was the, the movie failed, the movie failed because it had the, the weight of like enormous expectations on it, but it is, uh, there, there are two, there are several notable things about it. First of all, good. It's a good movie. I enjoy it. Second off it was written, it was based on the book by Alex Garland, who I think co-wrote, uh, who I think co-wrote the script and Alex Garland of course went on to make X Machina. Um, and, uh, devs, he was the show runner on that, but also he wrote, uh, the judge dread, um, re reboots remake. Anyway, I like Alex Garland a lot. I think he's, I think he's exceptionally talented. Um, really sunshine was the other way. It was such, it was, he, he wrote, uh, Danny Boyle's sunshine.
Vic00:27:31Yeah. Uh, related to box office, uh, thoughts, theater thoughts, JVL, you had some big theater thoughts and concerns.
JVL00:27:39What's going on? It all, it all then peered out as it turns out. So, uh, early this week I was looking around for things to go to see this weekend and both of the theaters near me and AMC and Alamo had nothing scheduled, they had a total of four things scheduled for this weekend and I just couldn't figure out what, what was going on. Yeah. And, but now right before we got on the air, it turns out they're, they're fully booked up.
Sonny00:28:05So yeah, I was, I was gonna say when we were, when we were chatting the other day, I was gonna say, you should probably check on Monday or Tuesday, cuz a lot of the times they don't have the weekend movies. So they just didn't provide the lineup until, until.
Vic00:28:16Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No story. Sorry. But, but, uh, there is, but you were discussing Sonny, uh, the lineup of movies, everything's been pushed back again.
Sonny00:28:26Some stuff has been pushed back.
Vic00:28:28I mean the, uh, obviously except the Batman, which is, well, there's the Batman, which
Sonny00:28:31is coming out and the Batman is gonna have theaters to itself for like a month. Yeah. Which seems to be the future. It's gonna, every comic book movie is gonna get a month of exclusive runs in the theater. And that's, that's, uh, what we're gonna have for the rest of our lives.
JVL00:28:44It also has an exclusive tie in with little Caesars where they have, have you gotten the
Sonny00:28:48Batman pizza yet?
JVL00:28:50It's not, it's not just a pizza.
Sonny00:28:52Pizza slash calzone.
JVL00:28:53It's a pizza slash calzone.
Sonny00:28:54It's a pizza slash calzone in the shape kind of of a bat. I guess.
JVL00:28:58Look, it's happening. It's like a bat.
Sonny00:29:00It is happening in my house. It's in the shape of a bat.
Vic00:29:02It's happening in your house. You have to get it. I need to, I need, I need a review. Of what this is.
Sonny00:29:06It's in the, it's in the shape, it's in the shape of a bat, like from the clone tanks from alien resurrection. Yes. When you get the pizza, it says, kill me. It says, kill me. That's what happens to it.
Vic00:29:20That's a strange tie in to the Batman.
Sonny00:29:23It looks terrible. It looks, have you seen, have you seen like the IRL pictures of it, like getting it to their house?
JVL00:29:30Yeah.
Sonny00:29:31Do you mean the pizza or the movie? The pizza, the pizza, the pizza slash calzone. You think it looks worse than the movie? Shaped like a bat signal. Well, the movie looks amazing. Matt Reeves, you like those planet of the apes movies, don't you? No.
Vic00:29:43Oh. I watched the trailer and I thought, ah.
Sonny00:29:45Do you like Cloverfield?
Vic00:29:46Didn't you? No. But, and this has got the Riddler in it. Yeah, Batman is. It's going to be, it's really dark. I mean, it was very dark. I mean, it looks dark already. It's dark.
Sonny00:29:55It's dark.
Vic00:29:56It looks like a David Fincher movie. It's just like, yes, that's right. Okay. So we'll see.
JVL00:30:00I just hope they tell us how he became the Batman though, because I, I just feel like people don't really understand his origin.
Sonny00:30:08One day they're going to throw a curve ball and Martha and Thomas Wayne are going to be alive when he's like a 40 year old man, he's going to have to like go, talk to his mom and dad. Yeah.
Vic00:30:18They were hiding out all this time. Who is the Alfred this time? It's Andy Serkis. Yeah. Goodness. Okay. Andy Serkis. Well, we were talking about Oscars earlier and we are talking about Oscars in a way for the main part of our show. This week we're discussing Nightmare Alley, which has been nominated for best picture, Sonny.
Sonny00:30:42Best picture, best production design. That's right. Some other, maybe cinematography.
Vic00:30:46Wow. So multiple noms, multiple noms.
Sonny00:30:48It's got four or five noms.
Vic00:30:49This is a remake of a 1947 movie that starred Tyrone Power.
Sonny00:30:54Well, it's a new adaptation of the 1946 novel by James William Gresham. Okay.
Vic00:31:02Yes.
Sonny00:31:03Okay. I'm actually reading the book right now because I quite enjoyed both this version and the 1947 version starring Tyrone Power. Okay.
Vic00:31:09Is the 1947 version, is it the same story? Same ending? Everything's the same?
Sonny00:31:13Yes. Interesting. Less graphic, I assume? Same basic story, less graphic. Yeah. Less graphic. But the ending is actually very different. The ending is very different.
Vic00:31:21Okay. We'll save that for a second here. Yeah. We're going to talk about this week, directed by Guillermo del Toro. I thought about it, but I still think The Revenant is a better movie, although I did like this more than Roma. Sonny, how about a big boy review?
Sonny00:31:34You son of a bitch. Not all Hispanic directors are the same, Vic. How dare you? Not all Mexican directors are the same.
Vic00:31:43I worked on that one, too. I actually had to find the movies. There was two different ones. You did a good job. I did. I did.
Sonny00:31:49That was Cuarón. You did a good job. En Arrito. All right. So, Nightmare Alley, as Vic said, is directed by Guillermo del Toro, and the knock on Guillermo del Toro has always been that he is a great set designer, but not necessarily a great filmmaker, not necessarily a great director. And I think that is a fair knock a lot of the time. I think Pan's Labyrinth is a great movie, but both of the Hellboys are better looking than they are films, and the same goes for The Shape of Water, which is a movie I didn't really like at all, but neither here nor there. But I think this is his best movie since Pan's Labyrinth that stars Bradley Cooper as Stan Carlyle, who is a drifter who hooks up with a circus sideshow carnival act while he's doing it. And he learns the tricks of the trade, he learns, you know, the importance of reading people and blah, blah, blah, and how to scam people, most importantly. But he also learns the most important thing that he learns is the secret of creating a geek show, how to create a geek show. He learns this from Willem Dafoe. He was playing like the head of the carnival. And Willem Dafoe is fantastic in this. Willem Dafoe, good year. Willem Dafoe. Very good year. He's great. He's been interesting. Anyway, long story short, Stanton Carlyle becomes the great Stanton up in the metropolis of Buffalo after leaving the circus with his lady friend, Rooney Mara, goes up there, starts working the high society. Starts, you know, scamming them out of money and doing a spook show with them. And hooks up with a psychiatrist named Lilith, Dr. Lilith Ritter, very biblical name, little on the nose perhaps. But she is played by Cate Blanchett, the great Cate Blanchett.
JVL00:33:43One of the great actresses of our time.
Sonny00:33:46One of the singular talents of our time, Cate Blanchett, and the question becomes who is scamming who? So there are actually two versions of this movie out. There's a color one that you can watch that on online. There was also a black and white one that was playing in theaters. I thought so.
Vic00:34:07I was so confused and I thought I could have sworn people were talking about this thing in black and white.
Sonny00:34:12So I've seen both. I saw the color version by a streaming link when it was doing the award season rounds. And I thought it was fine. I thought it was okay. I saw it in theaters in the black and white cut and I was I was like, I was much more impressed by it. I was much more blown away the the light and the color. There's something to be said for seeing Bradley Cooper's eyes totally drained of color because he he has he has a very strange affect. He has a very he has kind of I don't want to say he has dead eyes because that's not right. But he has eyes that can go dead. And when he is doing that. Kind of dead eyed stare into the camera on a giant screen in black and white. It is. It is something else. Wow. I don't know. I like this movie a lot. I like I thought I thought it I thought it gets to something very real about humanity and our desire to fool not only others but ourselves. And I think that it does a very good job of demonstrating some of the rot underlying much of our lives. And the the. Sorry.
JVL00:35:28Could you unpack that?
Sonny00:35:29No, I can't. The the the the the performances in this film. All fantastic. I love Bradley Cooper. I think he is always exceptionally good. Great Georgetown performance. That's right. He's he's from from the D.C. went to school in D.C..
Vic00:35:46Yeah, that's right. A couple years younger than me.
Sonny00:35:48And so listen, anyway, I love that I quite I quite enjoy this movie. I think it is. I think it is very good. And it is it is like again, it is like other Guillermo del Toro movies in that it has these really brutal moments of violence, these like flashes and punctuations of like extreme gore. And sometimes I don't think he earns that like I don't think I don't think he really earned it in The Shape of Water, which is a movie that was kind of too hopeful for for what he was doing there. And I don't think he really earned it in Crimson Peak either, which had these like very flashy moments of super. Gory violence. But here they worked perfectly. I thought I thought they I thought they drove home the the the the again, the the kind of viciousness at the heart of it. And as so you mentioned the end, I mean, do we want to wait to talk about the end or yeah,
Vic00:36:41wait a little bit. I was like, let's thank you, by the way, Sonny.
Sonny00:36:44That was very. So anyway, that's I liked it a lot. I like this movie a lot. If you have a chance to catch the black and white version, you should. I imagine they'll release that on disc. But, you know, who knows?
Vic00:36:54JVL, I assume you like me did not see the earlier version or read the book or knew what this was about.
JVL00:37:06No idea.
Vic00:37:07I honestly. Okay.
JVL00:37:09You jumped right in then. Okay. When you guys said Nightmare Alley, I thought we were watching a slasher flick. I wasn't sure either.
Vic00:37:14What what did you think? Didn't like it. Oh. In what sense? I'm sorry.
JVL00:37:20Dark world. The world is a dark enough place, right? Mm hmm. I do not need to go down Heart of Darkness. The Great Depression version. The Great Depression Carney version of Heart of Darkness. I don't need that. In my life.
Vic00:37:37I know. I know.
JVL00:37:39You have very strong feelings on Carney's too.
Sonny00:37:40Yeah. But that's just me. Wait.
JVL00:37:43You don't like Carney's? So Victorino, were you? Did you? Did you? Carney.
?00:37:48Small hands.
JVL00:37:49Yes. Very good.
Vic00:37:51Did you follow it all, Vic? Did I follow it all? Yeah. I thought so.
JVL00:37:56Yes.
Vic00:37:57He's not actually talking to the dead people. Did you get? Did you pick that up on that? Oh. Oh. So mean. So mean. Well, if you want to know what my quadrant's going, we'll flip back to you because obviously I'll be quick. I like this movie. But as the quadrant, quad, quadrant. You are such a mystery. Quadrant, quad, quadrant. It really depends. Sometimes the quadrants take on a very sort of Sotomayor interpretation and other days, Stephen Alito, Samuel Alito, I think Stephen's the son. But here we go. The plot was an A. I got it. There was no confusion by me. Pretty straightforward. Except for the end and the recording device, but clearly he was the mark. Okay. They're always looking for the mark. He's the mark. She's playing him. She recorded in blackmail because then the money's actually just singles and stuff like that, which could be useful in certain settings, but it's not helpful for him and the whole deal. Okay. Duration was a C. It's a two and a half hour movie, although there are certain movies that felt much longer and were shorter, right? I feel like Moonfall was that way for me. I can't remember anything further back anymore. Action violence, I give it an A. You're right. It's graphic for the scenes that they're ... You know why? Because it's interesting and it's ... Like, Moonfall has a lot of action. It's boring as fuck, okay, because it's just whatever. This thing, Richard Jennings is his name? Practical. Practical. Practical effects. He's got a nose.
Sonny00:39:24Well, I mean, you hear it, the crunch, and then when you look at it, it's like punches. It's like doing the, you know, "Palm, palm up to the nose," drove it right into his brain.
Vic00:39:35Yes. Okay. And of course, he ripped the chicken's head off in the beginning there. I mean, it's all very visceral, the chicken's head being ripped off, right? But I do have a question. It could have gotten an A plus, but I have great concern over this, which is how much of the blood and the violence and the violence- Yeah. Fire is CGI. I think that's CGI fire, man.
JVL00:39:58I think it's- In the house? 100%. Angelina Jolie. That's CGI fire. Angelina Jolie.
Sonny00:40:04100%. If you don't like CGI fire, don't watch the last episode of Reacher, by the way.
JVL00:40:09Look, with CGI, honestly, I don't know- Lots of CGI. I don't know anything about insurance rates on productions, but I have to imagine that the money you can save on insurance in a production by not doing practical fire has to be enormous.
Vic00:40:22But it's gotta be better. It's gotta be better than this. It's just like, okay, you've lost me. I mean, I know the whole thing is fake. I'm sorry. Victorino, go to Sex Nudity. Oh, yeah. Wait. Hold on. Give me a movie like Backdraft.
?00:40:35Oh.
Vic00:40:36Pyrotechnics. You want to be able to feel the flame coming off the screen. Yes. No. No. It's a creature. It's alive. It's breathing. Sex Nudity is a D. There's a bathtub scene, but Rooney Mara's in it. It's rated R. Come on. You could do better. Okay. So the overall grade is about a B. I'm sorry. Sorry. D. Oh, no. No. No. A. C. A. D. gives you about a B minus. 2.25. That's holding on. That is barely holding on to B minus. It is. It is. You could say it's a C plus, but I'll give it a C. I'll give it a B minus. It's original. Well, it's not original. But for me, it was refreshing. And I like it.
Sonny00:41:142.25.
Vic00:41:15That's a B minus. Yeah. 2.25. It's a B minus. But I did like it. I did like it. I did like it. It's different than a superhero movie. Yeah. That was good. It's not this crazy thing about the moon coming through. It was real.
Sonny00:41:28It was real.
Vic00:41:29It was real and human. And you know what? It's dark. It was real and human because we're all wicked on the inside, JVL.
JVL00:41:33I don't understand.
Vic00:41:34As a Catholic. Kate is with JVL. Kate did not. Kate watched it with me. She's with JVL. She said she was up all night. I slept like a baby. Maybe it was the jet lag. Oh, there's a little teaser for you. But I was totally fine with it. And yeah, it's dark, but you know what? I mean, it's probably the way it really was back in the thirties. By the way, really quickly. And I want to flip to in the carny world. I want to flip back to JVL on this. The world of carnies and circuses, that's basically where the hamburger became popular. And five guys, it was not, but that's where it's like a little beef patty between two slices of bread. Here you go. You know, for a nickel. Is that true? Is that what it is? I mean, they would serve them outside of factories.
JVL00:42:26It wasn't beef, right?
Vic00:42:27I mean, what was it? Right? It's some form of... It's meat. It's a meat product. Was it dead dwarves? It's not prime.
Sonny00:42:34What did you say? Dead dwarves? The midgets who like got used up in the freak show. They grinded them.
Vic00:42:38Yes, they grinded them. The manimal. Chuck them in the meat grinder. The opium addict manimal, they grind them in the end. Okay. So JVL...
Sonny00:42:46That's what the monkey, that's what the monkey's turning?
Vic00:42:49Yes. That's what he's turning. You don't want to know. You don't want to know what's in there. It's just nothing. It was just not... It was...
JVL00:42:57Did you like it? I don't need... I don't need dark. Look, I understand. I understand perfectly well why people would like it. It is very noirish. Yeah.
Sonny00:43:07This is like a very... It's based on a very famous classic noir. Yeah. Almost like gothic.
JVL00:43:14Right. You know?
Vic00:43:16And...
JVL00:43:17I could see this in black and white. Yeah. You know, "Defoe" was fantastic in it. Bradley Cooper is very, very good. The thing that I liked... The single thing I liked most about it is how we go almost 15 minutes without Bradley Cooper speaking. Yeah. Yeah. And he just... People keep talking to him and he doesn't respond to anybody. He's just... He sort of silently nods or he waits for some other event to happen so he doesn't have to respond because he's reading the room. I really enjoyed that aspect of it. Toni Collette's great. David Straithairn is great. Toni Collette. David Straithairn. David Straithairn is fantastic. Mary Steenburgen.
Sonny00:43:56Mary Steenburgen's good. But I...
Vic00:43:58I thought she was Mary Todd Lincoln in this. It was very Mary Todd Lincoln.
JVL00:44:03I will say this. Can we talk about the end now or no?
Sonny00:44:07Okay. Sure.
JVL00:44:09We can talk about the end. The denouement was telegraphed so completely that I feel like there's a balance that... So the whole movie really hangs on the ending. Right? The whole... The mess... Everything about the movie has to be complete by... With the ending. It's completed by the ending. And... Is it all right for me to really spoil things? Right?
Sonny00:44:37Yeah. Okay. Sure. So this carnival... It's on HBO Max and Hulu.
JVL00:44:42If people wanna watch it, stop listening. Go watch it. This carnival has an act called The Geek. The Geek is this half man, half animal creature who is kept in a cage and what we find out is that he's just a drunk and the guy who runs the carnival... Finds a drunk and tricks him into becoming imprisoned and becoming a slave. And they laced the booze even with... By giving him booze, it's laced with an opiate. Opium. Opium. And that a geek dies and then you gotta find a new geek, you gotta convince some other idiot alcoholic to become a geek and at the very end of this movie, Bradley Cooper's character who has insisted that he would never touch alcohol, turns out the reason he doesn't touch alcohol is because his dad was an alcoholic and the minute he touches alcohol, he himself becomes an alcoholic and then he becomes the geek at the end and there is a delicate balance between having to earn a twist and also have the twist hit you in a, in a way that surprises you, but then after you've seen it, it makes sense, right? This is the, the, this is a movie that is rivally dependent upon its twist ending landing and I, the, the minute, the minute Bradley Cooper goes and shares a cigarette with the geek, which happens in like minute 25 of the movie, I thought to myself, oh, he's gonna wind up in the cage at the end.
Vic00:46:08Oh, I did not think that at all. I'm not even being compassionate.
JVL00:46:12I'm hoping for him to be good and then when he and Ram Dafoe have this long conversation about how do you trick somebody into becoming a geek? I was just like, oh, right. Yeah.
Vic00:46:22That's cause you're gonna trick. That's amazing. I did not know this at all until the end and he said, I wait, what? Okay. That was my reaction.
JVL00:46:30Whatever. That that's small, but that's not my real complaint. My real complaint is just that I don't need this level of, I mean, you know, we're taping this, this show and, uh, Ukraine is being invaded and hundreds of thousands of people are gonna die. Like I don't need, I don't need more darkness in my life right now.
Sonny00:46:46So that's how.
JVL00:46:47So jackass next week, I guess maybe jackass is what that's even darker. What the world needs. That's even darker. You will not want to, you will not want to live after that.
Sonny00:46:55I understand that. So two, since we're talking about the ending, so the, the ending in this movie is much closer to the book. My is my understanding. I haven't finished the book yet, but is, is it Hughes pretty closely to the, the end of the, the, uh, the book, um, the original movie starring Tyrone power has a very different ending, um, where, uh, first off, there is no, there is no big speech about how you make a geek. Um, it's, I don't think I can't, I, I might be wrong about this. But, but it's not, it's not as, it is not as like drawn out and deliberate as the big, you know, kind of lunch counter question.
Vic00:47:29Uh, yeah. Uh, is this a movie, the original that you can see on Amazon?
Sonny00:47:35It's on criterion channel. It might be available for rental on Amazon. I don't know, but it's, it's on, it's on the criterion channel or at least it was as of, uh, last month. Maybe it's not anymore, but the, uh, but it's, it's, it's on, it is available on streaming. If you are one of the a hundred thousand people who subscribed to the criterion channel. Uh, so the, in the, in, in, in the first movie, uh, the, uh, he starts drinking and he becomes, he becomes an alcoholic and he winds up in the geek show. He winds up, he still winds up in the geek show, but instead of closing on his face, you know, like accepting his fate as the, you know, the born sucker. Right. Um, it ends with the, in, in the Rooney Mara character, but you know, not Rooney Mara obviously on the 1947 version. Uh, like come rush rushing into the carnival and saving him, you know, the, the power of true love redeeming him. And I, I, I would be curious to get JBL's take on that version because it's so it's, it's, it's like, it's, it's a real, it's very sappy.
JVL00:48:39That's a 1947 movie, right?
Sonny00:48:41It's a 19. It's a movie from 1947.
JVL00:48:43Right. Uh, you could see, had it been made in 1958 or 1960, maybe it would have been more hard boiled. Right. And they would, and certainly by 70. Now that, that makes sense. Um, I don't, I don't know. I mean, did you Sonny, I am, I don't think I've ever heard you talk about the human condition before. I, I'd like to go back to that.
Sonny00:49:06The human condition is, uh, you get a little bonus here, a little seminar full of, full of darkness. And like, this is, I, I, I think people are basically, uh, evil. Um, and the, the only thing keeping us from like really turning against each other are the, the strictures of society, um, and the threat, the threat of force by whether it's the FBI kicking in your door, cause you've stolen a DVD off the internet, uh, or whatever, like I, like the, the threat of the threat of state violence, um, uh, and other social violences, uh, is the only thing keeping us all in line. Um, and I think this movie does a very good job of getting at the, the heart of grifter dome, which I think is a, again, I think is a not insubstantial. Problem in our, uh, current moment.
Vic00:49:57Yeah. Um, there are, did you like the, you know, you mentioned gear, Guillermo del Toro and, and, and, and known for set design and stuff. Did you enjoy the sets?
?00:50:06Oh yeah.
Sonny00:50:07It's great. I mean, it's a great looking movie. Yeah. I like, I, I met even JBL. Yeah. Oh, totally. Like more, more even than the carnival scene, the, the set I liked the most was Kate Blanchett's office. Oh, that amazing art deco. Yeah. Um, like. Yeah. Super stylized shelf and like lounge chairs and all the, all the, you know, uh, little details around the, I, I thought it was, it's like, I, it's like the office I would want to live in while I'm stealing money from the rubes who come and tell me their secrets.
Vic00:50:38Yeah. You gotta record them. Uh, the, the nightclub and the hotel where they're staying, uh, it's very much, I mean, I lived in a, the Kennedy Warren is an art deco building in Washington, DC, and it's all that very much sound that was built in the 1930s. Um, and I thought it almost had a weird shining feel to it in the style, because I think the inside of the, uh, the, um, the overlook was also very art deco at that time. And, um, you know, there are a lot of comparisons to that. As for the cast, you mentioned the cast. I think it's great. Ron Perlman is great. There are moments where these characters are very, you know, uh, they're very likable and then other times where, you know, they just complete the complete empathy. Like the geek has said, oh, don't worry about him, you know, but otherwise he seems so likable. I, I, I'd love to have a stage.
Sonny00:51:23Don't pretend you have a conscience now.
Vic00:51:25Right. Right. Uh, and everybody is great. And then we get to Cate Blanchett and I was perfectly fine. I was willing to go down this road. It's like, oh yeah, she's playing this role. Very noir Lilith, the whole thing, as you said, on the nose. But then I keep on thinking about what our friend pod said, uh, and it started to make
JVL00:51:48me question, is she, is she really that good?
Vic00:51:53Is this, is this, you know, the difference as you, you mentioned this from time to time with certain performances, is she acting or is she doing an impression?
JVL00:52:01She's I'm sorry. So our whole thing for the last couple of weeks, sorry, Cate Blanchett is because John Padoritz hates Cate Blanchett and we were, we were razzing him. I think she's genuinely great. And I, I go to Thor Ragnarok in which she plays the villain and she's wearing these ridiculous antlers. And a cat suit. And she's got this weird eye shadow underneath her eyes, hot goth, unbelievable hot goth. And there's this amazing scene with her and, uh, who's, who's the Australian dude who is the horseman and the Lord of the rings who plays the, oh yeah, I don't know his name,
Vic00:52:42but I know he becomes her like right-hand man.
JVL00:52:45Right. And anyway, and so she, she offers him the job of being her executioner. He goes executioner. Carl something. Right. He goes execution. What? What am I supposed to execute?
Vic00:52:58And she says like, well, you know, my vision, but mostly people it's, it's so funny.
JVL00:53:08I mean, she's yeah. I'm sorry. Urban Carl urban. Yeah. Yeah. It's Carl urban. You know, she's great. I'm sorry.
Sonny00:53:17She's great. She's great. There's no, no need to apologize.
JVL00:53:20I don't know.
Sonny00:53:21Uh, it's great. And Lord of the rings.
JVL00:53:23Yes. Oh yes. Galadriel. Great. And Kate Leopold. Great. In pushing tin. Kate Leopold. Kate Leopold, where she's with a young Hugh Jackman. The two of them are Australian act very, very early in their, in their careers.
Vic00:53:37What is she? What, uh, who is she? Kate Leopold.
JVL00:53:40They're, uh, is that, or no, maybe they're not Caden. That's Meg Ryan. You thinking Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman? There's a young Hugh Jackman and Cate Blanchett movie where they're like put there's sailing a glass palace down a river.
Sonny00:53:52Oh, oh, oh, oh.
JVL00:53:53Yeah. Okay. Yeah. She's she's great. And also she played Kate Hepburn too. I thought. She, she was in one of the all time great quadrant movies with Rooney Mara. Carol.
Sonny00:54:04Carol.
Vic00:54:05Oh, I would say, oh, mm. I can see that. You should go to Daily Lotion. Yes. Oh. That's one of my joke writers. I never, I didn't invent that. That's Josh Christensen, Daily Lotion. Uh, okay. Um, uh, I would say this, which is also interesting about, uh, the, the character of Stanton Carlisle, because you know, he's. He's the, he's technically the protagonist, right? He's, he's the guy we're following. It's not a good person. He is responsible for bad person responsible for six deaths.
Sonny00:54:33He's he's a bad person to inadvertently and everybody in this movie is a bad person.
JVL00:54:39Is Rooney Mara's character a bad person?
Sonny00:54:41Good question. Mara is still a bad person. She's a grifter who is, who is stealing from people and the carnival. Like she's, she's the least bad of the, I don't know, totally Colette.
Vic00:54:51I like her too. And what does she say? Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't spook them, right? Don't what?
Sonny00:54:56What's the term? What do they say?
Vic00:54:58She, the spook show.
Sonny00:54:59She doesn't want to, she tells, she points them off, but she's still, she's still grifting everybody.
Vic00:55:04The way I see it is that I'm paying for entertainment.
Sonny00:55:05Just, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Just, just understanding that you have, uh, uh, having enough self knowledge to know that you are a grifter who has a mark and that there's only so far you're going to take it does not make you apologize to them and like tell them that the, you know, there isn't actually a ghost over their shoulder. That doesn't make you a good person. It doesn't make you a good person.
Vic00:55:24I want to like somebody in this, somebody, somebody's got the best person.
Sonny00:55:29The best person in this is the guy from mind hunter, uh, and fight club, the guard Anderson. Yeah. Great. Great. The Grindel's guard. Uh, yeah. Terrifying. He's terrifying. He's the only, he's, he's the closest thing to a good person. I assume. I don't know. Maybe loyal. Yeah. He's loyal. And he is, uh, and he's correct on his read on everyone.
Vic00:55:48Yes. Now here's my question. Maybe they'll tell this in the book because he makes a reference to like he. How he's, you know, he owes him everything and he has a great line where that should, that should worry, you know, if you think about it, that should worry you or something to that effect. Uh, I want to know what Grindel saved him for like he, what, what was his story? That would be an interesting thing.
JVL00:56:06So we have, we have nightmare alley with his view of the Carney folk as every single one of them is a grifter and without realizing it also a mark, right? I think this is what you're getting at sunny, right? Is that every grifter is also a mark.
Sonny00:56:22Basically. Yes. Well, you don't want to fool yourself into thinking that you can't be the mark.
JVL00:56:28And that is intention with the greatest showman, which views the Carney folk, the circus folk as all just a big family who were intentionally providing entertainment.
Sonny00:56:41There's a reason that movement that re there's a reason, uh, the Hugh Jackman version of Carney's made $200 million or whatever, and this one made 10, I think I am a more inclined
JVL00:56:52to go. With the greatest showman view of humanity. How dare you?
Sonny00:56:56You don't actually believe it should be a reverse.
Vic00:57:00I can't believe this. Come on.
Sonny00:57:02Only I would believe you. The reason you don't like nightmare alley is because you realize that it is in tune with you because you understand that this is like a reflection of your truest idea of humanity.
Vic00:57:15Right, right, right. That's right. He looks at it. It's the way he was.
JVL00:57:19And before we get off of this, before we get off of this, I need a greater than lesser than sign. Sign from each of you, Rooney Mara.
Vic00:57:29Kate Mara. Oh, greater. Greater. Rooney Mara. Kater. The great Rudy Mara. Greater sign. Kate Mara. Kate Mara would be great. Kate Mara would be great in a in a Planet of the Apes movie. She wouldn't need any makeup.
?00:57:42What?
Sonny00:57:43She looks like a little. She looks like a little monkey.
JVL00:57:45She's like.
Sonny00:57:46She's like.
JVL00:57:47Oh, my goodness.
Sonny00:57:48That is the worst take you've ever had. I'm just talking about a face.
Vic00:57:56The rest of it's fine.
Sonny00:57:58I. It's. That's a tough one. Are we talking about. Are we talking? Not. Are we talking strictly about appearance? Are we talking about like. Rooney's at least human. Their value as a human being. Body of work, etc.
JVL00:58:09Oh. Value as a human being. That's what I meant.
Sonny00:58:12Now I feel bad. Well, I don't know either of them, so I can't possibly answer that question. I would. I think Rudy Mara has a more impressive body of work than Kate Mara.
JVL00:58:21I would say Rudy Mara. Is. Is. Has the advantage over Kate in that she has a very distinctive look, which allows her to. I mean, Kate Mara. I think Contra Victorino looks a lot like most starlets, like a very genetic attract
Sonny00:58:41him. Very generic. Crazy. Yeah. I don't know. Look at that nose.
Vic00:58:47I think it's a deranged. She looks like a monkey. Yeah, I'm not. I don't want to talk with my nose, but she's a hot monkey. But, you know. Nevertheless. Like one of those little.
JVL00:58:55Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll take that. You know, the first time I noticed Rooney Mara was in the social network.
Sonny00:59:01Yeah. Right.
JVL00:59:03Right. She has. She's in the opening. And in the closing scene. Yes. Yeah. One of these, you know, no small actors, only no small parts. Only small actors. That's right. Even in those two little scenes, I just thought to myself, I don't know who this actress is, but she's doing something interesting here with this part and something way more. But then the, then the movie really requires from that role. And I think about McKenzie, McKenzie Davis, what, what is the, the, the, right.
Sonny00:59:33Who. From Blade Runner 2049. Blade Runner 2049. Terminator. Dark Fate.
JVL00:59:38Right. Who. Oh yeah. Who I first noticed in the Martian, who has a very, very small part as one of the national people in the Martian, but yet she clearly has something going on, you know. Yes. And. No small part.
Sonny00:59:50I don't know. I think Kate Mara is pretty, pretty.
JVL00:59:52I'm sorry. Kate Mara is pretty great, but everything I've ever seen Kate Mara in, I've really liked her. So.
Sonny00:59:59Yeah. I think, I think Kate Mara.
JVL01:00:01She's, she's handicapped by looking like a generic starlet where Rooney Mara does not have that.
Vic01:00:08No.
?01:00:09No.
Vic01:00:10Spirit of the week corrections, shout outs. I have a, I have a correction. I'm, I'm, I'm drinking, drinking something new. Wow. I was in the.
JVL01:00:23The grocery store. Hardywood had a new concoction and I love Hardywood so much that I literally just buy anything they put out. I'll try it. This is a raspberry stout. It's fine. I like it. It's not great.
Vic01:00:37I wouldn't go crazy for it, but it's a, it's very nice. Like your fruit beers. Um, correction listener and friend Ryan Shinckel reminds us, uh, the Ed Zwick movie we were talking about with Danielle Craig was defiance. We said resistance. It's defiance.
Sonny01:00:50It's defiance. Yeah.
Vic01:00:52Okay. Um, that is all the time we're giving to this episode. Questions, comments, compliments, tweet us at Sonny Bunch at Victorino Mattis. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on Patrion. Just go to sub beacon.com. We're there. Tell your friends until next time, but I kind of can't wait for the bonus show because I
JVL01:01:17am so many questions for the two of you and we have questions for you and we were very concerned for you. It's going to be amazing.
Vic01:01:25Well, you know what they say, what happens on the bonus episode stays in the bonus episode.
Sonny01:01:29Ah, I'm sure it's fine.
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