#282. 'Red One'
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The main event is Red One, the $250-300 million Dwayne Johnson/Chris Evans Christmas action-comedy about the North Pole's head of security teaming with a rogue thief to rescue a kidnapped Santa (J.K. Simmons). JVL gives an ecstatic "big boy review," calling it an instant Christmas classic propelled by Simmons as the definitive, yoked-and-world-weary Santa, The Rock playing the absurdity with total Clint Eastwood straightness, and Chris Evans charming rather than smarmy, though he admits the Krampus-lair second act sags. Sonny pushes back hard, praising the film's underlying ideas (a Men-in-Black-style mythological-creatures agency, a Fatman-esque theme about Santa's powerlessness to fix the world) but savaging its look, arguing the entire movie is shot on cheap-looking green screen except for the one practically-built Krampus sequence, which is the only part that "looks real." Mike casts himself as the "synthesis" between JVL's thesis and Sonny's antithesis, loving the prologue/payoff plotting, the world-building, and J.K. Simmons, while griping about the draggy Krampus detour, the casual profanity for a kids' movie, and the implausibly hot beach extras in the Aruba scene. Before getting to the review the trio spends the opening stretch dissecting the new James Gunn Superman trailer (JVL likens the JSA characters to "Hanna-Barbera background cartoons," and the two of them nerd out at length on the history of the reviled Guy Gardner Green Lantern), plus box office chat covering Moana 2, Wicked, Kraven the Hunter, and The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (which Mike wants to review and Sonny keeps deflecting). The back half is a three-round Christmas Movie Draft put to a listener vote: favorite Christmas movie (Sonny: A Christmas Story, JVL: Elf, Mike: A Muppet Christmas Carol), a "maybe it's a Christmas movie" round (Mike: Die Hard, JVL: Family Switch, Sonny: Metropolitan), and worst Christmas movie (Sonny: Polar Express, JVL: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Mike: Love Actually), with JVL and Sonny mockingly declaring Mike the runaway "winner." They close with a tangent on Timothée Chalamet, whose media-tour charm has flipped Sonny's long-standing dislike of the actor ahead of A Complete Unknown.
From the show notes
Interesting split amongst the guys on this one. Plus: A Christmas Movie Draft! We'll send out a poll later today with voting options. Vote here on the Christmas Draft: https://www.patreon.com/posts/who-won-film-118440295?utm_campaign=patron_engagement&utm_source=post_link&post_id=118440295&token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJyZWRpc19rZXkiOiJpYTI6NDAyYmRkODgtNjdiZS00MTU5LWE0OGQtODIxN2VhMTBjNGRiIiwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTE4NDQwMjk1LCJwYXRyb25faWQiOjQ1NzIwMTYxfQ.iLHMTLQLPPL0NjpM2quiJAIfYjkwBsSPGsxQtjv-Adg&utm_id=beac2a69-8f6d-4e40-9fd0-210b73f762a5&utm_medium=email
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00Who plays welcome to the North Pole come again? Last night red one also known as Saint Nicholas of Myra was abducted Are you saying Santa Claus has been kidnapped? You're the best tracker in the world. You're gonna help us find him. I work alone. You used to I'm not gonna like you I can tell right away out of everyone here. I like you the least
Mike00:00:30Welcome to the sub beacon podcast I am your co-host Mike Warren joining me as always are my two co-hosts who are definitely on the list Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch Join us over at sub beacon.com. Tell your friends and family that they can listen to the show only at sub beacon.com Join the conversation In the comments, it's always fun. It's always lively And you can only do it at sub beacon.com when you become a patron. There are new episodes on Friday mornings At sub beacon.com. We're gonna be talking about red one later in the show But first, you know what? I don't want to hear how you guys are doing We're dispensing with all of that talk for this very special Christmas episode But JVL you want to talk a little bit About this new Superman trailer that as we are recording Dropped this morning Superman bleeds
JVL00:01:40That's the most important thing, right? We start with this long, long, slow shot Coming in to where Superman is lying in the snow And his lip is bloody and his nose is bloody And he whistles and it turns out we're getting We're finally getting to Superman We're finally getting a Superman story with crypto in it Crypto the superdog Just what everybody always hoped for
Sonny00:02:08Bitcoin the superdog
JVL00:02:08Yeah, yeah And then we get Mr. Terrific and Hawk Girl And Guy Gardner Green Lantern Oh boy, don't we all love Guy Gardner
Mike00:02:20Are these supposed to be people I recognize? Because they vaguely look like characters On the background of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon But like I don't know Who are they?
JVL00:02:30Justice Society JSA This is the Justice Society of America Not really the Justice League Justice Society And it just looks like absolute shit This is James Gunn
Sonny00:02:45Yeah, you're a James Gunn guy, right? You like James Gunn You don't like Gardens of the Galaxy, didn't you?
JVL00:02:51No, I'm not anti-Gunn But I am not a pro-Gunnite When it's like from James Gunn The director of the Gardens of the Galaxy trilogy Does anybody regard the Guardians of the Galaxy movies as a trilogy? As a cohesive multi-movie piece of storytelling which spans No, they got a fucking talking tree and a little raccoon who shoots stuff because he's angry and people thought that that was deeply amusing for one movie
Mike00:03:22People love those movies They're all enormous hits
JVL00:03:26Then they went and made two cash grabs after that Like that
Sonny00:03:29I'll defend James Gunn's honor here Go ahead, Sonny I like the Guardians of the Galaxy movies just fine and I do think there's a kind of cohesive story Maybe not that cohesive because the problem is you have to jam all these things into the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe
JVL00:03:50Yeah, there's no cohesive story There is no trilogy in any of the Marvel stories We don't need to talk about this
Sonny00:03:55It does star the best Chris though Chris Pratt So that's... It's got that going for it
JVL00:04:01So this thing and we have I don't know who the actor is who's playing Superman but I will say the first thing that struck me was that A. He is apparently seven feet tall but B. For the first time ever they managed to make him look radically different from Clark Kent to Superman and they do it with the hair and I have to say that I quite enjoyed that the idea that somebody finally figured out a way to make it so that we can like oh yeah this is how nobody realizes that he's actually Superman. It's not just like glasses on
Mike00:04:38glasses off. So Clark Kent has like a mop of like Gen Z hair right?
Sonny00:04:43Yes. He's got like a big broccoli top. Broccoli top
Mike00:04:48that's what it is and he's slicked back when he's
JVL00:04:52Superman. What did you guys think about it? Who is Lois? Who is the actress playing Lois? It's Rachel Brosnahan
Mike00:04:57The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
JVL00:04:59I have no idea who that is
Sonny00:04:59Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
JVL00:05:01So I don't know. What do you guys think? Did you say this looks like a fresh take? I'd like to see that Sonny, what did you think?
Sonny00:05:10Well as everyone knows I'm a Zack Snyder partisan so I like the Man of Steel like kind of like idea of Superman as a god and everyone isn't quite sure what to do with him like I prefer that version of the character Superman because Superman is a deeply uninteresting character to me like the superpower guy who you know he saves the people and he you know everyone looks up to him and like I don't care about that I find
Mike00:05:38I find him
Sonny00:05:40I've always found him boring. Just a boring character so I don't really care that much about this. I will say I am I am glad that this movie is exposing people to Guy Gardner. JBL you said you had Guy Gardner thoughts right because I when I was growing up when I started reading I didn't read a ton of DC comics frankly in the in the late 80s early 90s I was always a Marvel Spider-Man guy but the my first exposure to Green the Green Lantern was the Guy Gardner Green Lantern who is the worst character who's ever been made like the as far as I'm concerned the one of the worst characters ever not just from a like the character is annoying though he is annoying he's like this like tough talking New Yorker asshole sort of guy I think I can't remember exactly where he's from but he's like he's like I'm brash I'm brash Guy Gardner and I'm not like Hal Jordan who was a stick in the mud goody goody I'm tough and mean and I'm a I got attitude he's from that era of comics which I don't I never quite worked for me I I even prefer Kyle Rayner to him I much prefer Kyle Rayner but the but the problem with Guy Gardner isn't just that he's a poorly conceived character it's that he's the dumbest looking character that has ever been made he's
JVL00:07:03got that bowl haircut yeah
Sonny00:07:05he's got that orange bowl cut around his head and good on
Mike00:07:09that was the Green Lantern that's Green Lantern
Sonny00:07:12Guy Gardner and he's fat
JVL00:07:15too which I kind of like I like that he's cast as a fatty it's uh
Sonny00:07:19yeah Nathan Fillion is playing him I like I have I have to say I am in favor of exposing people to this particular brand of DC
JVL00:07:27stupidity all right I'm sorry but I have to take over here for a minute okay I'm sorry JVL people just fast forward if you don't hear about this in the last 15 or 20 years we have been treated routinely to bouts of outrage as beloved comic book characters are recast right and feel like oh how can you make Thor a woman how can you make Spider-Man black this is all woke this is blah blah blah right you see these culture wars all the time and people who like make money in conservatism ink doing that have no understanding that comic books have been recasting characters in an attempt to chase new audiences and money for forever you know there there were two Green Lanterns before we got to Guy Gardner there was a Jay Garrick flash right from the Silver Age to the Modern Age and the Modern Age they recap Modern Age being like 19 late 1970s or they just started recasting characters and they're like yeah Jay Garrick is the flash man now Barry Allen is the flash and sometimes this went well and sometimes it went horribly wrong and the worst recasting in the history of superheroes has got to be Guy Gardner yes what happened is this in the 1980s the DC was convinced that they were too stodgy and too stuck in the Silver Age they needed to appeal to today's rebellious youth the people who are out there skateboarding and riding their BMX bikes who didn't like authority and Hal Jordan who was just this test pilot extreme extreme exactly and so they come up with Guy Gardner and the idea is he's got this kind of punk rock bowl haircut and he wears a leather jacket and he snarls and he's almost like an anti-hero now put aside this is the Green Lantern Corps and what the Green Lantern Corps looks for is virtue and a lack of fear never mind Guy Gardner and everybody fucking hates him
Sonny00:09:41hated him
JVL00:09:43one of the most hated and I would say we finally got a few years ago writer Tom King took the a very very minor DC character called the Human Target and did a 12 issue maxi series for I cannot recommend it highly enough it is one of the best comic book slash graphic novel things ever but among the amazing things in it is that he brings in Guy Gardner and he writes the Guy Gardner character the way every single fan wanted it which is that he is an absolutely moronic abusive boyfriend and he eventually gets killed and he gets killed because of his own fucking stupidity and as I read the human target when that happened I was just like jumping around cheering they killed Guy Gardner for us yes yes of course Guy Gardner is the kind of guy who would beat his girlfriend he's a
Sonny00:10:43jackass that's the fan service
JVL00:10:45you want that is the fan service I want and I'm a little hopeful actually that James Gunn might do something like that with Guy Gardner in this movie
Sonny00:10:53I think it's a safe bet honestly cause that like Fillion remember he's in Guardian 3 I think he plays like a he plays like a kind of a asshole space cop in the in that and I don't yeah he's very briefly in it no I think look I there's all sorts of stuff Nicholas Holt as Lex Luthor
JVL00:11:16I like Nicholas Holt
Sonny00:11:17I don't know it could be good my question about this movie is I don't even really care about the movie qua movie I'm just curious how it does because this is coming out July 11th I think it's coming out July 11th which means it is going to come out on the heels of a series of disastrous Sony's Spider-Man extended universe movies right in the last 18 months or so we've had for all of which were bad the the Marvel universe has been kind of on hiatus like a couple of TV shows they haven't really they haven't had a movie but they've got two coming out next year they've got Captain America Brave New World and Thunderbolts both
JVL00:12:01of which look like dog shit
Sonny00:12:03I will say both of which I have heard very mixed things about I'll just put it that way that's that's all that's all sad I I don't I don't have high hopes for either of those and I think that there's a decent chance they get that that people do not like them put it that way which means you will have you will basically but then also look we you know Deadpool and Wolverine did 1.5 billion dollars or whatever uh and um uh you know the Batman did fine and you know like there there it's not it's not like I comic book fatigue is real ish but it definitely depends on the quality of the picture that said
JVL00:12:45Superman is Deadpool Wolverine and the Batman both sucked
Sonny00:12:49well I mean I I tend to agree with you but those were also fairly well received by both critics and fans alike so I like I don't know what to say terrible I don't know what to say uh the the um the the the other thing to consider here is that I like I am never sure how a Superman movie is gonna do like Superman Returns grossed about 200 million dollars Man of Steel grossed 290 something like that um you know I don't know I like I don't know that people are interested I like I don't know if enough people are interested in Superman to justify spending 300 million dollars on a Super Man movie I'll put it that way um and I'm curious to see how it
Mike00:13:33how it plays what they should do is they should they what they should have done was made a Lois and Clark the new adventures of Superman movie that's the Superman that's the Superman I want to well it's not really the Superman I want to see that's the Lois Lane I want to see Terry they're real
JVL00:13:48so tell me Michael what did you think of it did you did your little peenie go no no it doesn't react that way to movies
Mike00:14:03uh no I I whatever I don't I don't give a shit like I don't care like Superman was never my bag baby and like I I much prefer Batman I'm much much more interested in Batman as a character Superman again I mean I'm not I'm not kidding when I say I liked Lois and Clark the new adventures of Superman we watch that every Sunday in my house growing up I like the first Superman movie like the original Superman movies uh the Richard Donner movies and like I don't really need any more Superman Man of Steel I liked Man of Steel quite a bit but like this is this like does nothing for me I don't know any of these characters I don't really care about any of the actors in it either and um and so like it it I watched it and it was like a wave of like like nothingness over me I don't care that's not good I know we will see it for this show but it's like it's like any other movie okay I'll go see it I might like it I might not but I don't care
JVL00:15:18I just want to make one final observation so I told you guys a few weeks ago about Absolute Batman the Absolute Batman comic book oh yeah and there was also an Absolute Wonder Woman and an Absolute Superman and I thought the first issue of Absolute Superman was really quite good and it is also a wholesale reimagining of the character in the same way that Absolute Batman is and in it the basic idea is that Superman's outlook on the world is much closer to Batman's like and in fact in the Absolute Universe Batman is a little more optimistic and the Superman character is a little more avenging angel and and he's not, I don't think he's a reporter like they just dispensed with all the journalism bullshit because it's 2024 like that is no longer a glamorous thing and it's actually weird to shackle your characters to that profession just because it seemed interesting in 1937 um and I, having read Absolute Superman this reimagining of the character did not feel fresh at all and I was just like I don't know man, I've already moved on to like a really interesting new Superman and this is just like, this is clearly like hey we're doing something new with Superman but it's still like, it's like okay but it's crypto and the Justice Society, this is warmed over
Sonny00:16:56yeah I do kind of wonder what Clark Kent's job at the Daily Planet is going to look like in this new movie is he going to be responsible for doing like 15 breaking news items a day does he have a newsletter is it like Clark Kent's he's a podcaster Metropolis Roundup, you know
JVL00:17:17he's a podcaster now Sonny
Sonny00:17:18I joked on Twitter that you know Peter Parker in the new Spider-Man movies doesn't really work at the Daily Bugle he like has no, there's no association there but he should start his own sub-station stack and like it's just it's just his photography of Spider-Man he could like go viral for having a Spider-Man but then like have no subscribers he'd be like he has like 27 paying subscribers while like the J. Jonah newsletter has like 10,000 subscribers just publishing day after day of Spider-Man's a menace, he's the worst you know, it would be very funny that would be good
JVL00:17:54I would see that, that would be great see this is why we killed dude Shatten so we could do 17 minutes on a two and a half minute trailer
Mike00:18:02I could do a few more minutes on Lane Smith as the greatest Perry White but we won't go there, let's move on cause we're gonna do something else fun cause this is like our Christmas episode this is like, this is our episode before Christmas so we were discussing in the text thread. Wait, do you wanna do the draft first or after? I think we should do should we do our movie review first and then do the draft
JVL00:18:29boy review? Cause the draft is gonna be the most fun part of the show, so we should build
Mike00:18:33to that. Oh, okay, well why don't we do that then? Oh, you're
Sonny00:18:37throwing Mike for a loop here! I mean
Mike00:18:39No, no, you know what it is? It's I'm calling an audible Omaha! Omaha! Exactly, I'm Omaha in this shit Let's do, but okay, but before we move on to that we really should do a quick box office talk because Moana 2 is number one at the box office, followed by Wicked, followed by Kraven the Hunter a new entry at number three, followed by Gladiator 2, followed by The Lord of the Rings, The War of the Rohirrim a movie that I would like to watch for this show but nobody else seems to want to, so we'll move on. So that rounds out the top five How much did Kraven make? In box office Kraven made $11 million
JVL00:19:18How did it make that much?
Sonny00:19:23People need to go see something I just want to highlight the Lord of the Rings, The War of the Rohirrim which Mike was like, we should do that You were very insistent in the text, you were like I really want to see this, I really and I was trying to dissuade him I was trying to gently dissuade him from it because first of all, Warner Brothers is dumping this without any promotion whatsoever. They're like they are not touching this. There was a story
Mike00:19:45My online Tolkien community would beg to differ with that. There was
Sonny00:19:48a story that Warner Brothers leaked to Deadline or somebody that was like we fast-tracked this because we were going to lose the rights to it, so sorry sorry guys, no it's not very good, but we had to get something out there, we had to get some pile of shit out there to not lose the rights, but the it also grossed, I think it grossed less on how many screens is this on? It's on 2600 screens. It grossed less on 2600 screens than Interstellar did in its re-release on 135 screens the week before. Wow I just want to say that the reason we're not doing the War of the Rohirrim is because it seemed I haven't seen it. Mike, you should go see it and let us know. Hold on
Mike00:20:37but I just want to object to your heuristic here because we review shit movies all the time on this on this podcast, on this August podcast, so like the fact that it's a piece of crap and not doing very well we also review movies that don't do very well, so that's all I'll say about that, but no no we can move on, we can move on, talk about how bad Craven is, Moana 2 is, you know, over $335 million dollars, it's you know, what else? What else do we have to say about the box office?
Sonny00:21:14Red 1 grossed $92 million so far domestically, is that good? Is that good? Even though it's
JVL00:21:21out on streaming already? Well I mean
Sonny00:21:23it didn't gross that much this weekend, it grossed
JVL00:21:24No, no, but I'm saying, like that's pretty, you know
Sonny00:21:27It's holding fine, I mean it's actually, it's only down 40% despite being in on streaming on Prime Video so, you know, I don't know
Mike00:21:37Alright, well let's quickly move on and talk about the movie Red 1 we all saw it, Sonny you want to give us a big boy review of Red 1? Well I wanted to
Sonny00:21:51I wanted to see if JVL wanted to give us the big boy review because he was very high on this movie he was very high on this movie in our text chat and I don't want to go first here because I want to I'll just lay my cards on the table. I didn't love this movie but I like some things about it and I'm curious what it was that really that JVL really loved about it. JVL can you give us a big boy review?
JVL00:22:16Red 1 stars The Rock, Dwayne Johnson as Callum Drift which was probably his alternate character name for the Fast and Furious movies he is an elf who is essentially head of the North Pole Secret Service protecting Santa Claus and early in the movie we also meet separately the second best Chris Chris Evans who's playing just a guy named Jack. Jack may or may not be from New York he occasionally has a very bad New York accent but then it'll go away. Like a Jersey accent? I can't. No
Sonny00:22:59I couldn't quite tell what was going on. Anyway Jack is
JVL00:23:01a rogue and a kind of industrial espionage guy and we see this in a sequence in which he. And a petty thief. And a petty thief in which he is sabotaging some technical type seismologist office. He's hacking. Hacking. Whatever. And in the process stealing literal candy from a literal baby which I enjoyed frankly. Anyway the point is unknowingly Jack is helping some shadowy nefarious person who then goes and kidnaps Santa Claus out from underneath Callum Drift's nose. And all of this is happening when Callum is one day from retirement. Just like any great buddy cop movie. He's too old for this shit and he is ready to retire.
?00:23:59And
JVL00:23:59so the security service at the North Pole goes and brings in Jack because he's their only lead and they assign him to work backwards through the people who hired him to help them find Santa. And he and The Rock do a buddy cop movie and it is mostly action movie but it's an action comedy. It's basically a kid friendly action comedy although the word shit is used probably five times and there's one almost fuck they cut before they get to the fuck and I think asshole is used twice. Now in my family we don't really care about cursing because the shit that Shannon and I say to the children is just you know we were good for like three kids but by kid number four all the filters were off. I found I found this movie to be utterly delightful. It is not a perfect movie. It's not a great movie. The second act is quite flabby. They we get to we get to meet Krampus because it turns out all of these mythological creatures are real like the Headless Horseman is real. Krampus is real. The Christmas Witch is real and when we get to the Krampus's lair things slow down a little bit and you could probably take 15 minutes off this movie. Very easily. But then once you're in the third act everything's fine again and it's reasonably tight and the movie is the movie is really propelled by two things. Three things actually. The first is J.K. Simmons as Santa Claus. I now believe that J.K. Simmons is the definitive Santa Claus in everywhere. He plays Santa Claus as this absolutely yoked guy who is just always working out and lifting weights and he is at once world weary and yet utterly optimistic and it's just fantastic. He is described by The Rock's character at one point as a singular force in the universe and that winds up being about right. He's great. The Rock is wonderful because he plays his character 100% straight. So this movie is ridiculousness upon ridiculousness upon ridiculousness and The Rock plays it as if he's Clint Eastwood in The Line of Fire and that is again, it's just comedy gold because he is never breaking. You know, there's no Rock winking at the camera there's no like and I think that makes it work fantastic. One of the other members of the security force is this gigantic polar bear whose name is I think Garcia Garcia or Sanchez and you know and The Rock when he's talking he's like, you know, he just was like, yeah Garcia, you need you on my six, you know with these which again idea of a polar bear having a Hispanic surname when polar bears are only in the North Pole as far as one can get on the planet Earth from South America just it's hysterical. I'm sorry. It's very very funny and and the third pillar. This is Chris Evans who is absolutely charming as this roguish character in ways that if you had dropped Ryan Reynolds into the role would have been insufferable and so it is imagine this is a part that could have been cast as a Ryan Reynolds part and I then would have wanted to like slit his throat after
Sonny00:27:5915 minutes but the Chris Evans thing and it is it really
JVL00:28:03works because he's everything is a little underplayed and he doesn't do the smarmy. He does he does charming but not smarmy and I I don't know like I was charmed by it. Shannon liked it and everybody from G money all the way up to to flash was totally entertained by it and so I declare red one an instant Christmas classic that just happened to cost like 300 million dollars. So
Sonny00:28:32here's I want to Mike can I go or do you want to do you want to go
Mike00:28:36thank you very much. No no JVL you go you know JVL did a great job Sonny. I want to hear your thoughts.
Sonny00:28:44I have I so here are the things I liked about it. Here are the things I liked about I want to I want to be very clear that I didn't I didn't hate this movie because there there are interesting ideas within it. JVL kind of glosses over this but the most the most like kind of entertaining and like properly underbaked. I say underbaked but it's it's because it's not like the main thrust of the thing. But the the most interesting thing about this is this idea of like an international government organization that's like keeping track of all of these different mythological creatures but that's not the center of the movie. It's like it's just like it's a thing that they kind of like talk to sometimes Lucy Lou is in charge of it or whatever and
JVL00:29:28she men in black mythological men in black
Sonny00:29:30right except like it's not about them except it's there. They're just they're very much tertiary characters here and I and I like that because it suggests this whole broader thing could be a cinematic universe. There's a whole thing that can be done here, but it's not it's not the point of the thing and I had I like there's a version of this movie that spends like 40 minutes on lore of the mythological creatures and that would be bad and boring. Nobody wants that and this this handles that just about perfectly. I like the idea of I like the this this movie borrows a little bit. I mean, I wouldn't say it borrows from I'm not saying there's any, you know, ripping off or anything, but this movie reminds me a little bit of Fat Man in the sense that it is there's this idea of Santa Claus as somebody who sees bad things happening, but has no power to stop the bad things from happening. He is he is merely passing judgment and is unable to make things better. And that's actually that's actually the whole thematic core of the conflict of the film between Santa on the one hand and Krampus slash the Christmas Witch on the other hand. Right. So like the plot of this movie is the Christmas Witch who's played by Kiernan Shipka, the little girl from Mad Men plays the Christmas Witch. She she kidnaps Santa Claus and she wants to she wants to imprison in a snow globe every person on the naughty list. No matter how naughty, no matter how naughty, there are like levels of naughty. There's like, you know, somebody who litters on the street and somebody who commits murder. They're like their levels. It's like misdemeanors versus felonies. She wants to imprison all of them in snow globes. And Santa's like, that's not my job. That is not our job. That's not what we're doing here. And I again, I find this kind of interesting as a thematic ideological conflict. So what I'm saying is this movie doesn't have a script problem. A lot of movies like this have script problems. A lot of the rock streaming movies have script problems, right? Movies like Red Notice or whatever like he he has he has had a tendency in recent years to make movies that are not very good. And I also think this movie is not very good, frankly, but it's not it's not because of the script and it's not because of the plotting. It's not really even because of the acting. The acting is all I think pretty good. The problem is that this movie looks like total dog shit. It looks like total dog shit from moment zero to moment minute 125 like this movie looks like trash through the whole thing with one exception. And this is where I most strongly disagree with JBL. That section in Cramp is his mansion or layer, whatever, wherever the
JVL00:32:32place. The practical effects because everybody's wearing prosthetics looks good. Everyone. So
Sonny00:32:36so this this is the only sequence this is the only sequence in the movie where I kind of set up and was like, oh, things actually look good here. And it's because it was shot on a real set, not a real location, but a real set with like real physical things and everybody has prosthetics on. It's it reminded me a bit of what was the the role playing game, the Dungeons and Dragons movie that the other Chris was in Chris. Chris Pine was in it reminded me a little bit of that because like that movie has some great practical design, right? Like great character design. Great. And this whole sequence is like the Star Wars Cantina slash Dungeons and Dragons, you know idea and it and I would just like enjoyed looking at it all. I enjoyed looking at it all because it all looked real and you compare that to every other moment in this film which is like every single thing is shot against a green screen. There's a sequence in the Bahamas or Aruba. They go to Aruba and the the beach is fake. The sun is fake. The sky is fake. Everything has like the wrong lighting and shading. Everything looks empty and flat. The tits on the extras are fake. It's got some great bikini shots, but you know again weird for a kid's movie. Totally. Weird for a kid's movie. But like the but like the the fight in that sequence is is there actually it's interesting. There are two distinct fights. The first fight isn't terrible, right? It's Dwayne Johnson who is again he's an elf and he's showing off his elf power which is to make himself small and then big and then he's real strong and whatever. But like when he's fighting against other real people it looks kind of interesting because you get the proper sizing, right? You get like he looks small versus the guys and then he looks big. But then there is a sequence where he fights a bunch of CGI snowmen and he does the same thing, the shrinking and the enlarging, but it's hard to actually tell what's going on because the proportions are all wrong. Like I don't know what a snowman looks like. Is he small compared to the snowman? Is he big compared to the snowman? It doesn't it doesn't work. And like that that sequence is a million times worse at the end of the movie where they fight against the Christmas witch and she's like a 30 foot tall ogre and he's doing this shrinking and enlarging thing. It's like I can't tell any difference between, like your proportions are all wrong Size proportions only make sense if he's fighting against somebody the same size as him. Like this is a, just, it is it is a, it is a very big, and again that whole sequence, everything in the North Pole looks fake. Everything in the North Pole looks fake. It's all green screen, empty weightless Agreed. Except for the weight room And so look, and here's the thing and this is like, maybe it's not fair to the movie. Maybe it's not fair to say this but like it's, it is again, it's exactly like Red Notice, where you have a movie between Red Notice and Red One the red, I am sorry
Mike00:35:38in the red universe, compare this to Red Notice JVL, JVL, JVL, hold on
Sonny00:35:42in the red universe, the red expanded cinematic universe that The Rock has found himself in he, the budgets for these two movies is like half a billion dollars it's like, I mean literally they have spent, it's an avatar two companies have spent half a billion dollars on these movies and they look like they were shot in my closet with green screen curtains set up around the walls, I, they look like absolute dog shit, and I'm sorry, like I refuse to let that pass, like
JVL00:36:12did your kids like it? So I didn't show it
Sonny00:36:14to my kids, cause I wasn't sure, because I had heard look, I had heard that it was pretty, pretty borderline for kids and like, I wasn't, I wanted to see it first, I think that they'd probably be fine with it, um, but I uh I don't know man, I like, I I watch this movie and it makes me angry to think that like, here's a movie that you could've made for probably 80 million dollars and it would've looked exactly the same and instead it's, it's, as you say it's an avatar, and like I why? Why is this happening? Um, so you know look, my, my complaints about the film have as much to do with its backstory as much as anything else but at the end of the day, I hated how it looked. I just, visually it, it annoyed me on a very deep level
JVL00:37:02I just enjoyed everything else about it Michael, surely you man of the people, loved it
Mike00:37:08JVL, your view on Red One is the thesis Sonny, yours is the antithesis and I like to think, again, as the man of the people I am the synthesis
Sonny00:37:22I loved
Mike00:37:24this movie except for all the things that Sonny raised, which I hated about it so although I have some slightly different changes that I would make to it so first off, I thought, I also thought the middle sequence really sagged with Krampus despite it looking good despite it looking good I it was so long and so unnecessary and in fact my doctoring of the script here is like to make it like a five minute sequence where there's no other creatures, where Krampus is like living alone and like they just go and they're spooked by like the spooky place where Krampus lives and they fail they fail to get him to come along, but they plant a little seed that they eventually do in his brain that maybe I need to go save my brother but the whole like Krampus slapping game, like it's just it was funny in the moment I just didn't need it and it really could have cut the movie down it just dragged in that, yeah Krampus schlomp or whatever it's called so so I, that would be my change I loved the world building and the myth making in this movie I agree that having Mora or whatever it was the mythological creature shield group, like just like a thing that everybody accepts and like Chris Evans is sort of like, has to just kind of keep up and accept it too, just to keep going really, I mean it really helped propel the story along so I love that aspect of it. My favorite part of this movie and Sonny is going to object that it didn't look good and I agree it didn't look good, but I thought the payoff at the very end of the movie, which demonstrates the answer to the question that is posed at the beginning of the movie, the beginning of the movie starts with a flashback to a prologue where Chris Evans as a little boy who's an orphan, I guess reveals to his cousins that Santa is not real and brings up all these questions, this standard questions. How could he do it in one night? How can he get down the chimney? Blah, blah, blah. And I think the movie does a great job of paying that off because the very end demonstrates how he does it and it demonstrates it with whatever you want to call it, technology, magic, that has been sprinkled throughout the movie, which is seen through the character of The Rock. We don't see Santa because Santa's locked up for most of the movie. But you don't know that what the movie is doing is sort of putting the breadcrumbs so that payoff works. And I love that. I thought it was well plotted. And it's a wholly
JVL00:40:42original vision for how Santa works, right? I've never seen anything like that before.
Mike00:40:48Yes. The closest is like in terms of spirit is like some of the stuff in the Tim Allen Santa Claus movie in terms of like the changing of the physical world to accommodate Santa. But but I totally agree. It's it was very it was certainly unique. So I love that. I agree. Like J.K. Simmons love J.K. Simmons. I mean, he's great. I love the
JVL00:41:14heavy him. Yes.
Mike00:41:16Exactly. That whole thing was I loved him as like a as a as an iron pumping you know, guy who like but who also like just eats cookies constantly like in the both he and the rock play it straight and it's and it works so well. And it's like you just accept that J.K. Simmons is President Santa and the rock is the rock is the head of the Secret Service. And so that was terrific. I I'm not sure that the rock is strictly an elf because aren't there elf creatures in the background who are like short. They kind of look like Harry Potter house elves unclear. He's not an elf. He's just like a magical creature. So fact check Sonny.
Sonny00:42:05One thing this movie does not do well is explain precisely what the rock is.
JVL00:42:14We know he's hundreds of years old.
Sonny00:42:16He's hundreds of years old. In fact
JVL00:42:18he's too old for this shit. And he
Sonny00:42:20and he has a power which is again getting smaller and larger. It's it's not clear to me if he's some sort of if he if he's a mummy god if he's like what it what is his deal exactly. I don't know. It doesn't matter that much. It doesn't like that's that's it. Look this I again I Mike you raise a great point with the the prologue at the beginning and the payoff at the end. It's a well plotted movie. It's like I did there again I I frequently finding find myself saying why why would anybody make this movie. And I don't find myself saying that with this movie. It's just how it was made that is
Mike00:43:00aggravating. Well well and I and I do think that I do think however that the way it was made show does show a couple weaknesses. We don't need a big battle with the with the evil witch at the end where she's a where she's you know Maleficent or whatever it is like that that's necessary. I don't like all of that. I I again I mentioned the thing about the Krampus like like diversion thing. There was like a little too many bad guys to kind of follow Nick crawls like kind of got an interesting little part in this but this brings me to some of the things I didn't like again the the cursing we are much more British in our household and I think you guys are on the cursing. So this is not a movie. I would show my kids because I mean look they watch like Home Alone like there's curse words in that but it was the sort of it was the frequency of the shits and a couple assholes too casual and I didn't like it and it was unnecessary and so was the TNA particularly in the Aruba scene like there's no reason for this it's also unbelievable like the people who are at the beach at Aruba. They're not all like hotties at Christmas time like give me a break like that's ridiculous like there's no flab at all. Give me a break that's where you draw
Sonny00:44:29that's where you draw the realism line you're like you're like yes I believe Santa doing calisthenics on rooftops and burning four million calories on Christmas Eve but
Mike00:44:44yeah but where are the fatties
Sonny00:44:46where are the fat chicks
Mike00:44:49I can't control where my suspension of disbelief fell apart but that's
Sonny00:44:54where it happened to believe the big things you gotta believe the small things exactly that's my point that's how it works
Mike00:45:01so anyway but I loved I will say I loved maybe it's just where I am in my life and with my kids but I thought the emotion of the father son relationship was very well done I just I appreciated I appreciated the message behind it as well I thought it was a very there was a Christmas Carol aspect of it and the last thing I'll say is I love seeing Bonnie Hunt and I love seeing the waitress
JVL00:45:32and that's all
Sonny00:45:33Bonnie Hunt yes
JVL00:45:36and I would say the one piece of casting that I I yearned for in this and I want to see if you guys have the same reaction when I say it Krampus I wanted to be David Harbour yes totally
Sonny00:45:52I can see that but I actually I really like the guy they picked as Krampus who I like you guys did you did you guys watch Game of Thrones no no Mike did you watch Game of Thrones so the guy they picked to play Krampus is this like red-headed giant guy like he's not an actual giant but he's like he's like you know six six four and he like he's very funny on Game of Thrones yeah yeah yeah yeah that guy I like him a lot I thought he was very good again I thought he was fine I'm shocked I the Krampus stuff is the best stuff in the movie as far as I'm concerned
Mike00:46:22okay well I I will say so yeah Nick Kroll like I don't know like I didn't want to like spend too much time it's like out of that whole like he's just it was kind of an interesting choice to put him like in this movie but I will say I did laugh at like once he be he was not funny to me until he became you know until he was like channeling the witch so this witch actress this witch actress she she was who is she she was on Mad Men because like I've never seen her before
Sonny00:46:58yeah yeah she's Kiernan ship
JVL00:47:00did you watch Mad Men no
Sonny00:47:01okay well if you didn't watch Mad Men then you won't know who she is because that was her biggest role but she she was she was Don Draper's daughter in Mad Men so like she would she was on that show from like age 6 to 16 or something like that you know like oh same actress played same actress yeah yeah so she she was on she was on that show she's she's been in like four things this this year she was in let's see she was in long legs for like a scene um she was in uh the last show girl which is the new Pamela Anderson movie that's coming out she was in something else um hold on I'm gonna look it up
Mike00:47:39when they showed her face
Sonny00:47:42she was in twisters she was in twisters for like uh again like one
Mike00:47:46scene um like when they showed her face it was that thing that they sometimes do in movies which there's probably a term for where they like where it's like they reveal who the character is and it's also like a reveal to the audience like a meta reveal to the audience of who the actor is and they did that for her and I was kind of like I don't know who that is so yeah
Sonny00:48:11that's fine I mean she's not she's not like a big star or anything it's got
Mike00:48:16it okay so I didn't know if it was supposed to have a bigger impression on me than that it did
Sonny00:48:20but um no it is it is a like kind of a weird interesting casting thing it's the sort of thing that like again if you're spending $250 million on a movie why not get get get uh get like Cate Blanchett or somebody you know get Aquafina get Aquafina get Aquafina is Grilla a real thing is that is are Christmas Rich a real mythology thing I don't know
Mike00:48:45I don't know but I do like I did like how this movie like really leaned into like uh yes Grilla is it's an Icelandic uh it's an Icelandic um folk creature um uh oh and yeah prosetta okay um in uh interesting um I do like how it leaned into all of like the Nordic creepy Christmas winter uh mythology that's good that's good that's good shit needs to be mine I think uh that's all the time we're going to give to the movie but we still have a draft to do gentlemen draft all right uh let's do this Christmas movie draft so we have kind of an interesting uh idea for this uh and and uh to to try to kind of shake up the draft here so what we're going to be picking we're going to pick in three movies each we're going to do it our traditional Sub-Beacon State draft um so the the first round we're going to be picking like a Christmas movie that's obviously a Christmas movie that's like there's no question that it is a Christmas movie and it's supposed to be a good or great your favorite Christmas movie
Sonny00:49:54your favorite Christmas movie
Mike00:49:55the second round is you also want to pick a great movie uh but it's going to be a movie that is sort of on the bubble of whether or not it is a Christmas movie um I think we all kind of have an idea of what that what might qualify for that uh and then the third round you want to pick the worst Christmas movie and it could be the one that you hate the most because it's overplayed it could be the one that's like actual just dog shit in terms of movie or really any any anything um do we do we understand the rules gentlemen we yeah I think so okay all right we got this okay all right uh so our random order that we're going to be doing this in to start us off that the order is one Sonny to JVL three me so in the first round Sonny will get the first selection in the second round I will get the first selection in the third round that would uh it will go back to uh to I get no no yeah and then you get the first again is that how it works yeah okay uh all right so so uh with that let's commence the Christmas movie uh draft and Sonny you have first selection in the first round obviously Christmas
Sonny00:51:10movie this is this is a hard one because there's so many great uh movies to choose from and I you know you could go you go a lot of different ways with this uh I'm gonna go I'm gonna go with the movie that I watch with my family and kids and it plays on TNT for 24 hours and that's a Christmas story it's I like I love a Christmas story love it and it uh it it never gets old it's it's delightfully episodic like some people are like oh this movie you know it's just a bunch of things that happen like yes it's like real life that's what it's like it's like this is like real life
Mike00:51:46uh I love it and you can turn it on at any point in T on TNT and like
Sonny00:51:49pick it up in the street you turn it on at any point watch it you when commercial comes on you turn it off you go do something else it's it's great it's perfect Christmas movie
Mike00:51:58all right there's your selection JVL can you duplicate picks no no no no every
Sonny00:52:07movie can only pick to be picked once
Mike00:52:10even in different rounds
Sonny00:52:12even in different rounds
JVL00:52:13so JVL you cannot pick a Christmas story for no not for this round but for a different round could I pick yeah
Sonny00:52:19you can't do that uh elf
JVL00:52:21elf I
Sonny00:52:23uh I I don't
JVL00:52:25elf is a very nice little movie and it works for everybody my only complaint about elf is that it is slightly in our house at least overplayed because unlike you Sonny I do not believe that there are uh just a multitude of of great or even good Christmas movies I believe most of them are quite bad and so the ones that are good we just reach for them over and over and over again if I could go maybe two years without seeing elf I might like it even more than I do now um but elf is uh again I just don't think I've ever met somebody who saw elf and didn't like it you can put it on and at least everybody in the room is gonna be like yeah elf I like that oh yeah yeah
Mike00:53:19it's sort of like the last new entry into like the family I mean some people that's not what I think I but I have other other things that I could say but we'll talk about that later okay sorry sorry let's keep this draft moving all right so now it's my selection I probably I feel like I've talked about this on this show before but my number one Christmas movie is not just uh my favorite Christmas movie it's one of my favorite movies period full stop a Muppet Christmas Carol it is an excellent adaptation a faithful adaptation if you will of the original Charles Dickens novel and um I'm a sucker for the Muppets I just think they're funny and this is sort of this is like peak Muppets everybody was working really hard on this movie because Jim Henson had just died and there was a sense that like his legacy uh needed to be you know the torch needed to be maintained and Michael Caine does the right makes the right actorly choice of just treating every every Muppet like it's a real character and treating this movie with sincerity and it's it's a beautiful movie and terrific songs if you're watching it on Disney Plus there is an option to include the song where Ebenezer and Belle sing and talk about their love falling apart on the bridge if you just click it it will remove that song and that which removes a very important middle part of the movie and makes the reprise of that song at the very end of the movie make no sense so go into it before you watch it and click that so sorry I just that's a PSA
JVL00:55:11we watched Muppet Christmas Carol last week yeah I thought it was mid not bad
Mike00:55:20how dare you sir we're not discussing this yet we're not discussing this yet okay let's move on in the draft so Sonny you've got everybody's first round picks
Sonny00:55:33I got them all written down here
Mike00:55:35these are the bubble movies the arguably a Christmas movie Christmas movies and I'm just going to take advantage of my
JVL00:55:46selection in this
Mike00:55:48yippee-ki-yay yippee-ki-yay motherfucker die hard it's I mean you just got to take it if you got the first choice in this round you got to take die hard it's great movie I argue it is a Christmas movie but it's also just we've talked about it before it is the it is what starts the modern action flick and it arguably like nobody nobody ever topped it
JVL00:56:13so die hard JVL so I got a real choice here and I don't know what to do what I want to pick is Carol so Carol which is the secret lesbian love movie starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara in which the two of them get it on over and over and over and where's the
Mike00:56:39streaming for the audience for our listeners
JVL00:56:41I do not recall Carol being a Christmas movie but the Rotten Tomatoes ranking of 100 Christmas movies has Carol is the number nine Christmas movie of all time sure really sure all I can think of is that this list was done algorithmically and that there is some Christmas movie called Carol C-A-R-O-L about Christmas caroling
Sonny00:57:09Carol takes place during Christmas it's nominally a Christmassy it's at least it's not a Christmas movie at all but it's a movie that's set during Christmas so much like
Mike00:57:21the very first line in the plot of the Wikipedia page the plot section says during the Christmas season of 1952
JVL00:57:29boom there you go there it is but I'm not going to take Carol because the truth is you cannot watch that with the whole family that is a hard R but I will say Cate Blanchett is one of my fetish objects so that's
Mike00:57:45there it is this is the Christmas episode
JVL00:57:47JV but what I'm going to say is I'm going to say family switch so family switch is a new entry is a direct to streaming and I say that it is a marginal Christmas movie because I believe it was originally shot with zero Christmas in it and was then like reconceived of as can we make this Christmas somehow and so they like reshot three scenes and CGI'd in some Christmas trees and places perfect it is Jennifer Garner and Ed Helms and just imagine Freaky Friday but with an entire family and except that everything in the movie is better than it needs to be this should be a piece of crap streaming production and it's not like the writing is sharper and better than it needs to be all of the actors are better than they need to be and it winds up being delightful and again unlike Carol fun for the whole family
Mike00:58:51can I make a quick diversion just to ask about this phenomenon of the people switching bodies movie which like yeah has so much has so many more iterations than anybody could whatever thought of when Freaky Friday came out whatever 40 years ago 50 years ago like what what is it are they all offshoots of like the Prince and the Popper like is that is the Prince of the Popper actually the origin of this or or is it like Freaky Friday and like everybody's just riffing off that it's like an interesting
JVL00:59:21oh I think the Prince of the Popper totally is totally different genre okay that's a that's a trading places genre which is different than a body swap drama which is different
Mike00:59:33okay all right yeah all right sorry we don't need to go down anymore I mean in a way Carol might
JVL00:59:37be considered a body swap drama sorry getting swapped
Mike00:59:42all right Sonny go ahead
Sonny00:59:45so I have two I have two options here I could go with the Carol's right there I go with the populist choice and go with the populist choice because they're you know if I really wanted to win this thing if I if all I cared about was winning this draft I don't care about
JVL00:59:59all I do is win win
Sonny01:00:00I don't care about winning winning is winning's not what I I would pick I would pick Gremlins I pick Gremlins because Gremlins is beloved it's set during Christmas it has a great story about a dad coming down a chimney dressed in Santa and breaking his neck it's got the whole it's got the whole Christmas patina a great movie everyone loves Gremlins I'm not going to pick Gremlins though not going to pick Gremlins I'm instead going to pick Whit Stillman 1990 classic Metropolitan which takes place during the Christmas break of an indeterminate period in New York City and is just a series of conversations about amongst 20 somethings about their lives and their futures and the state of the world I love it I love it so much I watch it I've watched it every Christmas for the last five years and your kids
JVL01:00:50just really just kids
Sonny01:00:51kids do not watch this but I will say for the first time this year for the first time this year my wife was like hey do you want to watch that uh that with Stillman movie you like I was like yes I do want to watch that let's go watch it
Mike01:01:03the sacrifices we make
Sonny01:01:05metropolitan number one all number one kind of Christmas movie kind of Christmas movie
Mike01:01:11okay Sonny you got all those written down because we we got to move on to round I do
Sonny01:01:15I do I'm writing everything down
Mike01:01:17all right just hey relax relax all right it's Christmas stop asking
Sonny01:01:23stop asking questions I know how to run a draft I've run more drafts I've run more drafts and you've been alive for Warren
Mike01:01:31okay pipe down all right third round third round and Sonny you're going to start us off here this is worst Christmas movie and and again is it bad is it you just hate it is it overplayed it's it's up to you it's it's uh you know for drafters choice Sonny
Sonny01:01:49worst Christmas movie Polar Express Polar fuck this movie fuck Polar Express and they're dead-eyed zombie characters I dislike I greatly dislike this movie not again not on a plotting level or anything like that but because of how it looks and how it looks is terrifying terrifying CGI monster Tom Hanks haunts my nightmares I don't want that I don't want those dead-eyed clammy skin people anywhere near me or my loved ones Polar Express you go straight to hell
Mike01:02:24Wow tell us how you I never actually seen Polar Express so I just take your word for it JVL a
JVL01:02:33Christmas story you're not really I just hold on you can't pick it but you
Mike01:02:45could tell us why it's bad and then you pick something else the worst
JVL01:02:49most overrated piece of crap I've ever seen there's nothing funny in it there's nothing funny in it in fact I'm pulling makes me want to take a like Texas Chainsaw Murder the entire family I hate those people all so much so again if I'm not allowed to take that I I think I I'm worried about recency bias because part of me wants to say Hot Frosty which is in the running for one of the worst movies I've ever seen sure except that I don't like nobody will five people have seen that movie total and maybe ten more will see it over the course of the next century like that movie is just going to disappear so I think I'm going to go Christmas Vacation sorry Father Harrison
Mike01:03:38how dare you
JVL01:03:41we tried re-watching that movie with the family last week before we tried watching Muppet Christmas Carol we got about 30 minutes in and before the kids were like can we not do this this and it hit me because we were watching it like I kept chuckling over the course of the first 30 minutes and when the kids begged me to turn it off I realized that the only reason I was chuckling were member berries that's it there is nothing funny in it it's crude it's unbelievably broad it is Chevy Chase at his absolute most insipid this was the first time that I understand what his castmates thought about him in the first season of Saturday Night Live how they just absolutely had total disdain for him he is self-satisfied and bad he's bad in this movie, he's not funny I'm sorry, he's not funny and it's like borderline this is a movie that is borderline not quite appropriate for kids I just it is not the worst Christmas movie ever made there are many others out there but somehow this thing exists in people's pantheon and they should be shamed for that choice I'm talking to you Father Harrison
Mike01:05:15you should be shamed for your choice you can't shame me that's one of my tops
Sonny01:05:20I'm closer to JVL on this than I am on Mike, I rewatched it let me pull it up on Letterboxd I rewatched it five years ago it was the last time I rewatched it I watch it every year it may have actually been the first time I sat down and watched it start to finish because National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is a perfect example of like a Christmas story like a movie where you kind of pop in for 20 or 30 minutes and you pop out when the commercial hits and watching it from start to finish I was like this is episodic in a bad way it's like a bunch of it's like a half a bunch of jokes strung together they're not even full jokes it's like half jokes strung together the last 30 minutes once they get to the actual Christmas dinner part is like pretty good because it's like a whole coherent stream of events but everything up until that is like and you can get away with that you can get away with that sort of thing in a road trip movie which is why National Lampoon's Vacation works because they are going across the country and you stop in certain places you have a discreet comedic adventure you move on to the next thing but when the action of the film takes place entirely in your house much harder and I don't think they entirely pull it off and yes, Chevy Chase is charmless in this movie I do still enjoy Randy Quaid as the grotesque cousin cousin Eddie I like him I like him Shitter was full that sort of thing
JVL01:07:01it's so quotable
Sonny01:07:03Julia Julie Dreyfuss is in this movie
JVL01:07:05and it's wild seeing her, isn't it? how old is she? is she like 18 in this movie? is this pre-Saturday Night Live?
Mike01:07:14no, no, this is post-Saturday Night Live pre-Seinfeld it's post-Saturday Night Live, pre-Seinfeld
Sonny01:07:21**Mike [01:07:22]:** so it's literally as as Seinfeld is getting off the ground
Sonny01:07:2720 years before, when did Seinfeld debut? was that 92?
Mike01:07:30it also debuted in 1989 but I'm sure this was filmed before so she was at that age she was 20 like 28 yeah Margot, love it well, anyway, that is it's appalling, JVL but whatever, I'm not here to drag you down I'm here to add my final pick to the list, and it's really hard because I recently re-watched The Holiday and it was so much dumber than I remember but I'm not going with that one, I'm gonna go with what's probably a pretty populist pick as my worst Christmas movie and that is Love Actually it's just not good I don't like these like big ensemble bunch of stories that sometimes connect and sometimes don't and the spirit of Love Actually is crap, it's bad these people are awful it's not funny boo, Love Actually
JVL01:08:40Can I recommend you watch Love Actually through a post-MeToo lens because basically it's all men cheating on their wives by sexually pursuing much younger employees in a way that is that movie is very problematic in ways which I guess maybe didn't seem problematic then but I think when I saw it, it felt problematic I was like, why is this person a hero? This doesn't make sense
Mike01:09:16Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman and even the ones who aren't doing that, like the British guys who go to America, who go to like Wisconsin just like, fuck girls it's all bullshit the only part of the movie that is like tolerable is Bill Nighy because it's like that's actually his whole character like this aging rock star who sings this terrible Christmas song like that's actually great. Laura Linney takes her clothes off that's tolerable
JVL01:09:48oh yeah, that's right love Laura Linney
Mike01:09:52hey, second look at Love Actually um laughter okay, so yeah we have our list, Sonny do you want to read through I know you wrote it all down, do you want to read through it just to remind the listeners you can vote on who won the draft in the comments
Sonny01:10:10alright first category was best Christmas movie Sonny picked A Christmas Story JBL picked Elf Mike Warren picked A Muppet Christmas Carol second category was maybe a Christmas movie marginal Christmas movie Mike picked Die Hard JBL picked The Family Switch Sonny picked Metropolitan worst Christmas movie and here you're judging who picked who actually picked the worst Christmas movie not who picked the best who picked the movie you disliked the most out of this that's how people should judge their vote here I picked, Sonny picked Polar Express JBL picked National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation Mike Warren picked Love Actually three solid picks there
JVL01:11:01it's pretty clear to me that Mike ran away with this thing yeah, I feel pretty good I don't think we even need to count the votes I think Mike is going to win this
Mike01:11:11let's just do it let's just do it for funsies
Sonny01:11:14everyone should vote against Mike on general principle he should not be allowed to win drafts that should not be a thing that happens
Mike01:11:21vote your conscience in your heart you know I'm right okay, well that's the end of the draft that's the end of the Christmas episode join us at subbeacon.com yeah, we're running long but it's Christmas it's a supersized episode no show next week, right?
JVL01:11:40yeah, we'll see we'll see, but probably not although I'm going to see Sonic 3 today on Fan Sneak Preview Thursday
Sonny01:11:49Fan Sneak Preview Thursday
JVL01:11:50G-Money has been vibrating with excitement for this for a month we bought our tickets a month ago we'll either unbelievably bad
Mike01:11:59what old disgusting Jim Carrey doesn't appeal to you where he's playing his old self alright, well we'll find out either next week or in 2025 how Sonic 3 went and so much more join us at subbeacon.com leave a comment and we'll talk to you next time so I do have to watch for my day job, I'm going to review the Bob Dylan movie so maybe we could do that in a future episode, what do you think? I've seen it so can I say something about Timothee Chalamet, who I have sort of disdained from afar just for being a little little boy actor who everybody, you know, is like Timothee Chalamet, I have seen him now both on on College Game Day and then on Theo Vaughn's podcast I don't watch or listen to Theo Vaughn's podcast but I saw a clip of it in which Timothee Chalamet comes across as so incredibly likable and kinda in a good way bro-y that I'm like it has totally changed my opinion, I don't know, up is down, black
Sonny01:13:21is white. The hardest thing I have had to, the hardest thing I have had to shift on in the last three years is my opinion of Timothee Chalamet Totally! Who I have always, I don't care for him I don't care for, I never liked him in any movies he was in, I always thought he was the worst part, like I didn't like Call Me By Your Name, I thought he was the worst part of The French Dispatch but he was good in the first part of Dune and he was pretty great in the second part of Dune and I'll say like his and his, you're right, his media appearances have all been like, he he's hit that, he's hit that movie star switch and it's very disconcerting to me as, again, as somebody who dislikes him on, or has disliked him on like a fairly like, base level just like, I don't like, I hated him in Lady Bird, I hated him in Little Women He was awful in Lady Bird. I was like, I like I just, I dislike his whole, I disliked his whole affect and something about it has like, has literally like a switch has flipped in, either in him or in me, or whatever, and I will say, look, he's in A Complete Unknown he is way too pretty to play young Bob Dylan, like he just, like he is a, he's he doesn't, he like, he's too attractive, however however, he's very good in the role for, I don't want to, I don't want to influence your, your judgment of the movie so I'll let you watch it, but maybe we can talk about it
Mike01:14:51after. Well, maybe he's grown up and, and Sonny maybe, maybe we've grown up too.
Sonny01:14:57I'm sure it's fine.
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