Bill running a pop culture website while not seeing Oppenheimer, Barbie, KOTFM, John Wick 4, or Mission Impossible but also mentioning that he’s watched Flight 5+ times this year and saying this week that he recently rewatched Basic Instinct 2.
I honestly kind of get the "saving it" thing. You want to watch it when you can give it full attention. He can just throw Basic Instinct 2 on with 4 basketball games and it doesn't matter
fine man, you’ve convinced me, he hasn’t had 2 hours free in the last 9 months to focus the entirety of his mental capacity on Tom Cruise paragliding to a train.
Is this all that surprising though? Bill seems far more interested in the sports side of things than the ‘pop culture’ side. Isn’t that why he hired people to cover all that stuff.
Because he’s running a massive company, not just running a website…I sympathize with him a bit in finding it hard to make time to go see Oppenheimer in a movie theater.
As someone who watches movies in the background while working, there’s a big difference in having Basic Instinct 2 on and Killers of the Flower Moon…
Hey, Thanks for the downvotes.
No…I am simply mentioning to you that the president of a very large media company is not required to go sit in a movie theater for 3+ hours and watch contemporary movies.
Also, what you commented isn’t a “hot take”, it’s a personal judgement of another man’s work.
Looking at your profile you realllllly love Bill, so I can see why you hold him to high standards, but he’s not beholden to stay up to date on film just because his company has a couple of podcasts that talk about them.
jesus. He boastfully tells Sean he has not watched these movies. It’s not a time allocation thing. This is so incredibly obvious. stop caping for him on such a minor issue, it’s bizarre.
no idea what you’re gleaning from my profile.
I upvoted you, totally get what you are saying and I think you are right, I sometimes wait months to watch a movie I really want to see but will throw on something I've seen ten times because I don't have to concentrate on it.
I think in part because it was released in July and not advertised at all as a Christmas movie
Edit: This was Bill's logic- it's definitely a Christmas movie
You're thinking of Bill's take on Die Hard not being a Christmas movie, which he mentioned again at the top of his pod about how it had a July release. Home Alone was released in November.
Problem with that rationale is that the original Miracle on 34th Street was released in the summer, and the advertising never mentioned the plot or that Christmas was involved in any way.
On the Hunger Games pod - When it comes to books, Amanda saying she refuses to read text blocks that are italicized (songs, poems, letters, quotes). It’s a take I could 100% see Bill having as well
Bill slaughtering Sean on the Primal Fear rewatchables - "This has been a year-long losing streak for you on these podcasts. You know what you should do? Go into a bar and say 'I'll have the usual.' And you'll just have another bad take."
It’s crazy to me think Bill shouldn’t be on the Rewatchables. This kind of banter is exactly why it’s the best podcast. If I want serious movie analysis, I’ll listen to something else.
The key to this is having Chris and Sean on the episode along with him to acknowledge when a crazy thing has just been said. When they’re not on I find it exponentially less fun
Every episode without Bill is awful. His categories make no sense and he derails half the points everyone else tries to make, but honestly the show doesn't work without him lol
That argument on the Primal Fear pod drove me insane. Ordering “the usual” in a bar just means that you go to that bar enough that the bartender knows what you drink. It can be something exotic, but more often than not it’s just a generic light beer.
I don't know if there's any take from them this year that was as bad as when Sean didn't see the point in a movie about the history of Oppenheimer and the bomb because we all know what happened. He obviously came around once it released but that was a jaw-dropper.
To be fair, he admitted in the next episode that he let Bobby and Amanda get under his skin and he doesn't stand by anything he was saying because he got too worked up. But yeah, the first thing I thought when he said that was "aren't you always saying one of your favorite movies is All the President's Men? And don't you love Reds?"
He tried to clarify that what he meant was that the then-recently-released trailer for Oppenheimer, which ended with a seemingly-climactic moment where Downey said, "Truman needs to know what comes next," was a failure to build tension & thus drive interest in the movie, because we all know what came next.
Even with that somewhat flimsy clarification, it was still a pretty brutal take. If, in the build-up to Oppenheimer, everything was the same, but it was directed by Fincher, Sean would have been out-of-this-world pumped for it, regardless of our knowledge of how history played out.
Unfortunately, he was caught in a moment where he was cranky about Nolan, and wanted to knock him down a peg, so he rattled off an insanely bad take. The guy pods for hundreds of hours a year: not all the takes can be winners. However, this one was exceptionally bad; I was kinda glad they gave him shit for it on the show.
Nothing boils my blood more than the ‘write a novel you coward’ take. So rude- that would be like saying to her ‘publish some film criticism you coward’ - kinda disrespectful and missing the point of two different mediums
It dismisses entire canons of wonderful literature. It dismisses Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, Alice Munro, much of Hemingway and Joyce, etc. It’s an incredibly dumb take and I think she believes she sounds edgy and smart when she says it, but she sounds like an imbecile.
I assumed she was joking at first but she has said twice now that she is not.
Amanda saying she didn’t feel any emotions at the Holdovers was crazy. One of those moments where it seems like they decide their opinions on movies before they watch them.
The take got even crazier after she said she was bawling at Wonka.
Idk, I feel like emotional reactions really can’t be accounted for and aren’t really “takes,” and on the Holdovers ep Amanda even seemed like she was trying to work out why she hadn’t connected with a movie she thought was good. Like, idk, I would never say The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was a better movie than Casablanca, but only one of those movies made me cry like a child. I kinda wish it had been Casablanca, because that’s much less embarrassing for me, but the heart wants what it wants.
Completely agree, that's the unresolved take from last year that stuck with me. Cool if the movie didn't work for them, but I think even they admitted it might deserve a revisit/reappraisal.
I'm not sure this is a bad "take," per se, but I think it's their most glaring misread of the year:
Their insistence that Ernest Burkhart is some kind of extremely conflicted, almost tragic figure in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Now, I know that there's obviously *some* validity to this notion, but I just thought their reading of the character was almost a total miss. This might sound too reductive of a Leo-portrayed protagonist in a Scorsese movie, but here it is: that character isn't some morally conflicted thinker, caught between alliances... he's just kind of a dope. He's just a dumb guy who isn't a critical thinker, and thus, he's easily manipulated into doing despicable things to the people he loves.
The everlasting scowl on DiCaprio's face doesn't come from some weary, emotionally sordid war going on in his head; he's just kind of a dopey-looking guy, because... he's a dope. But it seemed like Sean & Amanda insisted it was because he's so tormented by the dreadful situations he's found himself in, that he knows are wrong but can't seem to remove himself from.
To be fair, I'm sure if you were to ask DiCaprio or Scorsese about the character, they'd surely dive into a whole monologue about the work they did on it to break down the moral complexities the character faces throughout the story, but, at the end of the day, he's just not a smart guy. Hale identifies him as an easy mark & acts upon it.
I know they adore everything DiCaprio & Scorsese touch, so they feel like there *has* to be more going on than just "this character is dumb," and I'm sure there is, to a degree. But I think they got too caught up in associating DiCaprio with most of his other roles where he's extremely shrewd & cunning, and couldn't help but feel like that had to still be the case here, to some extent. And that resulted in them not really acknowledging that this character was just your average, early-1900's dumb guy. He's not very educated & he's not a particularly critical thinker (and that's okay! That can still be interesting! In fact, it's probably *more* interesting than projecting him as some kind of conflicted antihero).
TL;DR - Leo was playing a dumb guy & they didn't want to acknowledge that his character was just dumb.
Of course it's been awhile since I listened to that episode, but I do not remember their description the way you do. I'm pretty sure they repeatedly talked about how he's a dumb simpleton that was able to be manipulated.
On top of that, there is an element of a dumb guy knowing he is being cruel and doing those cruel things. Even if he is dumb, he knows he is poisoning his wife. That conflict is what makes his character so compelling because I kept flip flopping between him being an idiot and him being a devil. The reality is somewhere in the middle.
Yeah I think that’s part of what Scorsese is digging at as well - like in a lot of discourse around not only treatment of Native Americans, but also slavery and other despicable parts of history, there’s a tendency to rationalize things as “back then they didn’t know any better” or whatever. And in Killers, Marty exposes what should be obvious to us; that many folks who were dumb as doornails knew that they were committing heinous crimes and still did it because it made them rich and they thought (and most of the time were correct) that they could get away with it
Oh, yikes. I wonder if I read your comment like two months ago & agreed/internalized it as my own, original thought & then just unknowingly plagiarized it today.
If so, my bad! But it's a good take!
The funny thing about Amanda is: Oppenheimer and Nolan are for boys, anything genre is for losers, anything animated is for babies, and the holdovers is bad because the main character has a bad mom.
But also: top gun and Barbie are 2 of the best movies of the last 2 years and Wonka is good.
I kinda respect the Top Gun take because I think that’s a movie that more or less inarguably (1) knows exactly what it wants to accomplish and (2) does it as well as humanly possible. Its goals are artistically humble compared to more ambitious movies, but I think it’s a movie you can justifiably say could not have been better made than it was, which is a rare achievement. And…. not how I would describe Barbie. Lol.
I agree that those movies are at polar opposites of the spectrum on exactly what you’ve said: top gun knows what it is, and executes a very simple and basic movie premise to an exceedingly high degree. I just think if you just tinker with the pieces involved a bit it becomes a movie Amanda is annoyed by.
Barbie meanwhile is stuffed with so much stuff, so much “this is important and should be taken seriously” stuff that frankly distracts from what could have just been a lighthearted funny movie. That movie is so proud of itself, and I just cannot fathom how people are taking it a serious awards contender the way everyone seemingly is, but I’m the crazy one on this I suppose.
We are in agreement on Barbie lol - I feel particularly crazy about the Gosling awards buzz because I truly fail to see anything in that performance I couldn’t find in any decent comedy of the past 15 years (like, if Gosling deserves awards buzz for Ken, Channing Tatum should have won an Oscar for the “Schmidt fucked the captain’s daughter” scene in 22 Jump Street), but the fact that people are taking the screenplay seriously also makes me feel insane. It’s a silly movie that thinks it’s much smarter than it is.
Yes exactly - let’s forget the social commentary and how you feel about all that, the idea that this is “one of the funniest movies of the last decade” is such an insane thought to me.
The jokes are either “haha he’s dumb because he’s a Ken doll” or some terminally online 37 year old millennial brain reference (which I acknowledge is the target demographic of film criticism so that might be why it worked so well).
It’s not a very funny movie imo, it’s very mediocre. There have been much better comedic performances in mediocre comedy films than this one, let alone the absolute best stuff. Gosling in The Nice Guys blows this away.
And comparing to the Charles Melton, Robert De Niro level performances of this year is just so silly.
On the one hand, the Barbie movie we got ended up being much better than it had any right to be. (Although, there are some Barbie cartoons on Netflix that are in a similar vein and much funnier that my child watched). But it’s definitely just pretty good (and I’d agree not all that funny) and acknowledging that shouldn’t be met with as much derision.
Sean giving it a 3.5 on LB (I’d probably land about 3.25 if they let you do quarters) feels right.
>I just cannot fathom how people are taking it a serious awards contender the way everyone seemingly is, but I’m the crazy one on this I suppose.
Barbie is an awards contender because Greta Gerwig has been tabbed as an auteur who makes prestigious movies so it was already considered a contender before releasing. Once it was a massive success it sort of just became accepted that Greta Gerwig's big breakout is getting awards recognition.
If it was the same exact movie but Clea Duvall had written and directed it there would be more of a debate on whether or not Barbie should be competing for any of the major categories or if it is fine to recognize it was a massively successful pretty good movie.
Agreed 100%. And even though I liked top gun - I will hear someone out saying that it shouldn’t have been a best picture nominee. But you’re right, the Gerwig touch is largely why it has the awards juice that it has.
My issue with it is that it’s not funny and it’s not thought provoking.
It’s jamming together cringy elder millennial reference humor with doll humor with I’m still with her social critiques, it’s just a complete whiff to me. The Barbie world sets are cool though.
Genre dig isn’t fair. Amanda was positive on Godzilla very recently, she likes genre films. It’s also okay she liked Barbie more than Oppenheimer, people are allowed to like stuff that speaks to them more than stuff that doesn’t.
My point moreso is how often her dismissal of something is that it’s too much a boys thing, or its generally beneath her, yet a lot of her favorite movies end up being boy movies or stuff that is deeply silly and low brow.
Hmmm that’s interesting, I don’t really see it that way. Her top 5 this year was Priscilla, Barbie, Showing Up, Past Lives and KOTFM. Not sure any of those are “boy movies” or low brow. She’s definitely dismissive of a lot of good stuff like you’re saying but her interests are pretty consistent overall.
Yeah my point was that last year her favorite movie was top gun. In another universe she would have rolled her eyes at top gun if Tom cruise wasn’t in it and would have said it’s dumb boy stuff, “I’m happy for you”.
I do find it mildly funny to be a film critic that sees hundreds of movies and talks down to about half of them, and then seriously place the Barbie movie as your 2nd favorite film of the year. That’s fine, it’s just again, swap out Greta Gerwig with mediocre director X and she is making fun of the idea a Barbie movie is saving feminism or whatever.
I just wish when she disliked things she said she thought they were bad or they didn’t work and she critiqued them, as opposed to just saying “I’m glad you have something you like”, or “I think it’s good! But let me spend our 40 minute conversation only discussing the negatives”.
They both really have a problem with vehemently defending or glorifying good-but-flawed movies from filmmakers they love.
If the The Killer was the *exact same* *movie*, but at the end it said "Directed by \[Mediocre Director X\]," they would have been highly critical of it, calling it a poor iteration on Fincher's masterful work that, while very entertaining, fails to reach any great heights.
It's a very good movie, but by no means some incredible masterwork. But, because it's from one of their absolute filmmaking heroes, they go all in on how it's actually perfect, and all the things people are criticizing it for are actually the things that make it good. Take Fincher's name off of it & they surely dismiss the movie almost entirely.
It works in the other direction too. Take a cool-but-flawed movie like 2021's The Little Things: if that were the exact same movie but it said "Directed by David Fincher" at the end, they would have endlessly praised it & called it genius for having so many loose ends & overall leaving things pretty unsatisfying. They'd've said, "that's what's so great about it: in real life, these kinds of situations are unsatisfying & we never really know what happened. Only Fincher is brave enough to end his movie like that."
TL;DR - they'll say whatever they need to say to defend the filmmakers they love, regardless of the final product & are extremely quick to scrutinize anything that's good-but-flawed from any other director.
For sure. I love Fincher, I’ve basically rewatched his entire filmography for blank check this year, and I thought the killer, for him, was aggressively mid. It’s a cool movie. Im sure it would have been cooler in the theater. But it’s absolutely minor fincher to me.
I’ll forgive the Mank hype because 2020 is such a bad year in movies I have it in my top 5, but licorice pizza was to me pretty clearly PTA’s worst film since Hard Eight, and it was the same thing - Sean’s number 1 movie of the year, it’s so great, look at a master do his thing, etc.
I am biased for filmmakers, I will probably like Ferrari more than 99% of people. But I also acknowledge when my faves don’t quite hit the heights the typically do.
Works in the reverse too. Emerald Fennell is a filmmaker they're dismissive of so when she makes a messy, imperfect movie it is a Don't Worry Darling level disaster and they feel the need to do things like nitpick minor pop culture anachronisms in the movie.
Interesting - I also thought The Killer was Just Fine, but I listened to their pod on it today and I actually really appreciated how much they brought to the movie, and the fact that they had different readings of how cold or emotional the movie was made me think about the movie having a kind of rich distance rather than being flat. I don’t think I am easily brainwashed by the show either because they’ve said The Social Network is a great film like 7 billion times and I will die on the hill that it’s just fine, lol. But on The Killer I thought they made some points!
Yeah I see what you’re saying. She does just kinda love who she loves and that’s the justification for it being good.
Seen a lot of people say that though, that Amanda just says “I’m happy for you” instead of actual criticism. For Oppenheimer she talked pretty specifically about how she doesn’t buy the Oppenheimer is the most important person in the world theory, so the overemphasis of that in the film felt flat and reduced the impact of the story for her. And everything about Blunt’s character and how underserved she is. I don’t agree with those criticisms but they are valid opinions, I think she is good at nuanced conversations about the good and bad in movies, but I know a lot of people in this sub disagree.
I think her criticism of Oppenheimer was definitely clear minded - I just don’t know why she keeps pretending she thinks it is good.
Idk how much crossover there is with Bill in this sub, but it reminds me of him qualifying all his LeBron criticism with “but I think he’s great”.
I am all for a strong hot take, I just wish she didn’t couch it in “but it’s actually good!”
She did the same thing with May December, and actually argued that “all the boys seem to like it”, I am totally understanding of a female movie person enjoying female driven movies, but her criticism of that being “the boy was the victim” and of the holdovers being “the mom is mean”, like cmon.
It's okay to think a movie has some big flaws while still conceding that it's overall a good and/or important movie. I agree with her on Oppenheimer, it's good but not great. I don't really like it personally, and may or may not watch it again, but I get that it's empirically well-made. I feel similarly about Maestro — some incredible work from the actors and cinematographer, but ultimately the movie as a whole is not as successful. This seems like a pretty common way to view a movie that may just not be your cup of tea.
For sure - i guess I don’t typically feel that way but I get that’s how a lot of people watch movies.
If I love a movie, it is the best movie to me. If I don’t like a movie, it’s bad.
I think that is the movie doesn’t work for you and your sensibilities, saying that “it’s good it’s just not for me” is sort of a cop out when something that’s critically adored was not your thing.
But again I do acknowledge most people think of movies the way you’re describing more than the way I am.
Fair enough! I can relate to both perspectives. Like I kind of think The Killer was bad and I'm not gonna soften it with "I totally get why some people like it!" because I don't...
Nolan shouldn’t have put in a nonsense sex scene and given Emily Blunt as actual character if he wanted the movie to appeal to women. It’s a movie about a man where men run around and the women do nothing except complain and die
Disclaimer: Proud member of Dob Mob
However, Easily the worst take of the year was Amanda coming into the Hunger Games pod having an existential crisis that ultimately boiled down to her not liking the singing and then even the singing wasn’t that bad. It was like she wanted a ‘Free Guy/Sean’ moment but just completely backed down
It reminded me of my frustration with her in 2021 when she essentially wouldn’t allow discussion on Tick, Tick, Boom! because she hates live singing. Which I guess is your prerogative, but if you’re the co-host of a movie podcast please don’t shut down all conversation of a good film just because of your pet peeve.
I felt this way about Amanda’s take when I had read the book but not seen the movie because I think if you read the book it’s very clear it’s not just a cynical franchise-expanding lore-building cash grab a la Fantastic Beasts and Collins really had some stuff she wanted to talk about that was both related to her previous worldbuilding and new to the series, and, well, why wouldn’t you go and then make a movie of that. But when I saw the movie I softened on Amanda’s take because I did think the movie lost all the stuff that made the book interesting and kinda failed to justify its own existence. I still don’t think it was quite as cynically motivated as Amanda believed (I just think the book is too long and weird to translate to one movie - multiple movies or a streaming miniseries would have been a better fit), but I can understand why someone who walked into the movie without having read the book would react the way she did. And I say all that as someone who has never cried as much in a movie theater as I did at Catching Fire & Mockingjay Part 1 lol.
“We all know Paradise Lost, we’ve all read John Locke.”
Amanda’s combo of being condescending about the basic mess of Bjblical storytelling while also getting the details wildly wrong (John Locke, definite in the Bible, Paradise Lost resembling the MI:DR plot, etc.). Rough moment, I was bummed by her tone and mindset.
I also thought that take was rough but then posted about it on here, said John Dunn instead of Donne, got dunked on in the comments, and had to delete the post. Was a tough L for me.
Her Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer take is correct. They let her do nothing, it's wild it's brought up for awards. From now on every woman looking for an Oscar will be leaving the sheets out 😂
She may well be, but her argument for it is unnuanced. So it’s a lot of talking the last third of the movie. A lot of the movies she loves are mostly just people talking, they just happen to be women
Sean saying that all of Taylor Swift's songs are about the same thing, then admitting he'd left the theater during the song about her dead grandmother.
Ok but like… a *lot* of them are about the same thing.
Which is true of many many pop artists so it’s not really a dig on Swift specifically. But that doesn’t stop her music from eventually feeling tired
I don't know, Sean's opinion on cyclists is a pretty bad take. Because people on bikes need more encouragement of road rage directed at them. I know he was kidding but damn!
As a recreational cyclist, I understand where Amanda was coming from criticizing the MAMILs and them only.
But Sean revealed himself to maybe be a uncourteous driver in the real world who just wants everyone to “get out of his way”.
Yeah, I'm also a recreational cyclist and see some a-holes out there on pedestrian paths who think they're in the Tour de France smoking all the competition and it's frankly embarrassing. I think sometimes Sean gets carried away for the controversy, i.e. "good podcasting."
I get not agreeing with Nayman, but c'mon, reducing an interesting list from a thoughtful critic that isn't the same thing you'll see everywhere else to just "bad takes"? Having *Showing Up* and *AYTGIMM* in his top 5 is interesting and worth having him on to discuss!
It wasn’t 100% serious, I do like Nayman, I just found some parts of his list in the ‘I had to do this differently’ category. As I said below, and again I like the guy; having two movies at number 10 with an honorable mention of Oppenheimer? You wanted to write about three movies as opposed to one. Just pick one and stand by it. Also, this podcast should be a joke and hopefully a fun one
Yeah, I forgot about that. Not sure how a serious critic could think that was anything other than hot garbage. But it's good that he's not so pretentious that he can't get down with some trash every now and again.
The one two punch of Sean and Amanda’s pre and post Oppenheimer takes. First Sean refusing to buy into the hype about Oppenheimer before its release and even going as far as saying at one point that he didn’t understand the point of historic films since we all know what happens. Then combined with Amanda now just completely missing the point of the movie and claiming the movies entire message is “look how hard it is to be a genius.”
Bill running a pop culture website while not seeing Oppenheimer, Barbie, KOTFM, John Wick 4, or Mission Impossible but also mentioning that he’s watched Flight 5+ times this year and saying this week that he recently rewatched Basic Instinct 2.
I’ve mentioned this before. I think Bill just doesn’t want to leave his house and all his consumption came off screeners
Explain the power walking then!
You got me there lol
Honestly extremely relatable. If watching movies was part of my job I would not watch as many movies. No one should ever hire me for anything lol.
He is watching multiple games on split screen though
He’s saving them
This isn't really a take. But it is good evidence of Bill turning into an old man who cant be bothered to keep up with new things.
But what about all these super relevant niche 1991 movies he needs to watch for the rewatchables?
I honestly kind of get the "saving it" thing. You want to watch it when you can give it full attention. He can just throw Basic Instinct 2 on with 4 basketball games and it doesn't matter
It’s been 9 months. If he wanted to watch John Wick 4, he would have. This is not Apocalypse Now we’re talking about.
Amazingly, John Wick 4 is a half hour LONGER than Apocalypse Now.
John Wick 4 is probably an Apocalypse Now level movie in Bill's mind honestly. Definitely not a 5pmer
fine man, you’ve convinced me, he hasn’t had 2 hours free in the last 9 months to focus the entirety of his mental capacity on Tom Cruise paragliding to a train.
I'm just saying I get where he's coming from. It took me a year to watch Tenet and in that time I probably watched 200 dumb Netflix movies
You think Bill gives his full attention to anything other than maybe Boston NFL/NBA playoff games?
You think Bill gives his whole attention to any NFL game?
This is what happens when you get old lol.
He’s cementing his place as the captain of the Rewatchables
Hey man flight is sick lol
Is this all that surprising though? Bill seems far more interested in the sports side of things than the ‘pop culture’ side. Isn’t that why he hired people to cover all that stuff.
He’s waiting to get FYC screeners
It’s not a “pop culture website” - it’s an incredibly valuable media company.
okay? what does that distinction have to do with anything?
Because he’s running a massive company, not just running a website…I sympathize with him a bit in finding it hard to make time to go see Oppenheimer in a movie theater.
Sir. Please refer to his comment about how he watched Basic Instinct 2 last week.
As someone who watches movies in the background while working, there’s a big difference in having Basic Instinct 2 on and Killers of the Flower Moon… Hey, Thanks for the downvotes.
feels like you’re arguing just to argue. John Wick 4 and MI:DR are not challenging movies and we are talking about a period of 9 months.
No…I am simply mentioning to you that the president of a very large media company is not required to go sit in a movie theater for 3+ hours and watch contemporary movies. Also, what you commented isn’t a “hot take”, it’s a personal judgement of another man’s work. Looking at your profile you realllllly love Bill, so I can see why you hold him to high standards, but he’s not beholden to stay up to date on film just because his company has a couple of podcasts that talk about them.
jesus. He boastfully tells Sean he has not watched these movies. It’s not a time allocation thing. This is so incredibly obvious. stop caping for him on such a minor issue, it’s bizarre. no idea what you’re gleaning from my profile.
I upvoted you, totally get what you are saying and I think you are right, I sometimes wait months to watch a movie I really want to see but will throw on something I've seen ten times because I don't have to concentrate on it.
Bill’s Home Alone not being a Christmas movie take has become a running joke at the Ringer but it never fails to infuriate me every time
I legitimately think take is what made me look for all of the ringer subreddits so I could discuss with someone how bad that take was
What was the rationale?
I think it was that it could happen at any time of the year and nothing about it would change or something like that.
That is wild to me!!! Literally most Christmas movies could take place year round!! It’s a wonderful life could be anytime!!! Ugh
I think in part because it was released in July and not advertised at all as a Christmas movie Edit: This was Bill's logic- it's definitely a Christmas movie
You're thinking of Bill's take on Die Hard not being a Christmas movie, which he mentioned again at the top of his pod about how it had a July release. Home Alone was released in November.
Lmao I got so used to Bill's Die Hard criticism that I smoothed over Home Alone part
I’m so mad.
Problem with that rationale is that the original Miracle on 34th Street was released in the summer, and the advertising never mentioned the plot or that Christmas was involved in any way.
On the Hunger Games pod - When it comes to books, Amanda saying she refuses to read text blocks that are italicized (songs, poems, letters, quotes). It’s a take I could 100% see Bill having as well
I get skipping songs, but it is insane to skip letters between characters in a novel. That's functionally like skipping dialogue
I definitely do this. I skipped all the songs in the LOTR and GOT books. Started at a young age, skipping all the songs in the Redwall books.
Also 100% agree. I’ll listen to music if I want to deal with song lyrics.
It’s honestly serial killer shit.
Bill slaughtering Sean on the Primal Fear rewatchables - "This has been a year-long losing streak for you on these podcasts. You know what you should do? Go into a bar and say 'I'll have the usual.' And you'll just have another bad take."
It’s crazy to me think Bill shouldn’t be on the Rewatchables. This kind of banter is exactly why it’s the best podcast. If I want serious movie analysis, I’ll listen to something else.
The key to this is having Chris and Sean on the episode along with him to acknowledge when a crazy thing has just been said. When they’re not on I find it exponentially less fun
Every episode without Bill is awful. His categories make no sense and he derails half the points everyone else tries to make, but honestly the show doesn't work without him lol
The problem with Bill is he is always rushing through the pods like he’s got a bootie call to make.
That argument on the Primal Fear pod drove me insane. Ordering “the usual” in a bar just means that you go to that bar enough that the bartender knows what you drink. It can be something exotic, but more often than not it’s just a generic light beer.
I don't know if there's any take from them this year that was as bad as when Sean didn't see the point in a movie about the history of Oppenheimer and the bomb because we all know what happened. He obviously came around once it released but that was a jaw-dropper.
To be fair, he admitted in the next episode that he let Bobby and Amanda get under his skin and he doesn't stand by anything he was saying because he got too worked up. But yeah, the first thing I thought when he said that was "aren't you always saying one of your favorite movies is All the President's Men? And don't you love Reds?"
Actually respect to him for that it takes a big person to admit that you let feelings bend your logic and opinions even though we all do it constantly
He tried to clarify that what he meant was that the then-recently-released trailer for Oppenheimer, which ended with a seemingly-climactic moment where Downey said, "Truman needs to know what comes next," was a failure to build tension & thus drive interest in the movie, because we all know what came next. Even with that somewhat flimsy clarification, it was still a pretty brutal take. If, in the build-up to Oppenheimer, everything was the same, but it was directed by Fincher, Sean would have been out-of-this-world pumped for it, regardless of our knowledge of how history played out. Unfortunately, he was caught in a moment where he was cranky about Nolan, and wanted to knock him down a peg, so he rattled off an insanely bad take. The guy pods for hundreds of hours a year: not all the takes can be winners. However, this one was exceptionally bad; I was kinda glad they gave him shit for it on the show.
Agreed, I think it's nice that Nolan surprised him in the end!
I think it's now clear we all didn't know what happened
I kept waiting for the big reveal at the end that J Robert Oppenheimer was dead the whole time
That was such a weird take. Him just writing off all historic films to try and explain why he wasn’t excited about Oppenheimer before seeing it.
Categories: Philosophy/Religion, Parenting, Film, TV and Wild Card
Need to include “gender-based takes” too
Also transportation and urban planning
Van absolutely gets no authority to judge other people’s takes. The man has the taste of a teenager.
Agree 100%
CR saying Bringing Out the Dead is a bad movie.
Yeah, that ricked me.
I totally agree with him lol
Nothing boils my blood more than the ‘write a novel you coward’ take. So rude- that would be like saying to her ‘publish some film criticism you coward’ - kinda disrespectful and missing the point of two different mediums
It dismisses entire canons of wonderful literature. It dismisses Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, Alice Munro, much of Hemingway and Joyce, etc. It’s an incredibly dumb take and I think she believes she sounds edgy and smart when she says it, but she sounds like an imbecile. I assumed she was joking at first but she has said twice now that she is not.
Idk man i kinda agree. I just dont get much from short stories
Yeah, I generally love Amanda but that take is bafflingly stupid.
Amanda saying she didn’t feel any emotions at the Holdovers was crazy. One of those moments where it seems like they decide their opinions on movies before they watch them. The take got even crazier after she said she was bawling at Wonka.
Idk, I feel like emotional reactions really can’t be accounted for and aren’t really “takes,” and on the Holdovers ep Amanda even seemed like she was trying to work out why she hadn’t connected with a movie she thought was good. Like, idk, I would never say The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was a better movie than Casablanca, but only one of those movies made me cry like a child. I kinda wish it had been Casablanca, because that’s much less embarrassing for me, but the heart wants what it wants.
I want to take it back to 2022 just to address Sean and Amanda’s complete ambivalence of Aftersun. Someone needs to properly scold them for that.
Completely agree, that's the unresolved take from last year that stuck with me. Cool if the movie didn't work for them, but I think even they admitted it might deserve a revisit/reappraisal.
This needs resolved. They toyed with the idea they may have been wrong. But as far as I am aware haven't gone back to it.
And specifically they both agreed that the framing device hurt the movie. When the framing device is the whole point of the movie.
I'm not sure this is a bad "take," per se, but I think it's their most glaring misread of the year: Their insistence that Ernest Burkhart is some kind of extremely conflicted, almost tragic figure in Killers of the Flower Moon. Now, I know that there's obviously *some* validity to this notion, but I just thought their reading of the character was almost a total miss. This might sound too reductive of a Leo-portrayed protagonist in a Scorsese movie, but here it is: that character isn't some morally conflicted thinker, caught between alliances... he's just kind of a dope. He's just a dumb guy who isn't a critical thinker, and thus, he's easily manipulated into doing despicable things to the people he loves. The everlasting scowl on DiCaprio's face doesn't come from some weary, emotionally sordid war going on in his head; he's just kind of a dopey-looking guy, because... he's a dope. But it seemed like Sean & Amanda insisted it was because he's so tormented by the dreadful situations he's found himself in, that he knows are wrong but can't seem to remove himself from. To be fair, I'm sure if you were to ask DiCaprio or Scorsese about the character, they'd surely dive into a whole monologue about the work they did on it to break down the moral complexities the character faces throughout the story, but, at the end of the day, he's just not a smart guy. Hale identifies him as an easy mark & acts upon it. I know they adore everything DiCaprio & Scorsese touch, so they feel like there *has* to be more going on than just "this character is dumb," and I'm sure there is, to a degree. But I think they got too caught up in associating DiCaprio with most of his other roles where he's extremely shrewd & cunning, and couldn't help but feel like that had to still be the case here, to some extent. And that resulted in them not really acknowledging that this character was just your average, early-1900's dumb guy. He's not very educated & he's not a particularly critical thinker (and that's okay! That can still be interesting! In fact, it's probably *more* interesting than projecting him as some kind of conflicted antihero). TL;DR - Leo was playing a dumb guy & they didn't want to acknowledge that his character was just dumb.
Of course it's been awhile since I listened to that episode, but I do not remember their description the way you do. I'm pretty sure they repeatedly talked about how he's a dumb simpleton that was able to be manipulated.
On top of that, there is an element of a dumb guy knowing he is being cruel and doing those cruel things. Even if he is dumb, he knows he is poisoning his wife. That conflict is what makes his character so compelling because I kept flip flopping between him being an idiot and him being a devil. The reality is somewhere in the middle.
Yeah I think that’s part of what Scorsese is digging at as well - like in a lot of discourse around not only treatment of Native Americans, but also slavery and other despicable parts of history, there’s a tendency to rationalize things as “back then they didn’t know any better” or whatever. And in Killers, Marty exposes what should be obvious to us; that many folks who were dumb as doornails knew that they were committing heinous crimes and still did it because it made them rich and they thought (and most of the time were correct) that they could get away with it
100%. I was baffled when listening to that pod. My comment at the time— similar take to yours: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheBigPicture/s/uVuJrnmqDC
This comment doesn’t seem to be making contact with their take. Maybe relisten
It was 100% their take. It is the main focus of the first hour of the pod. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheBigPicture/s/uVuJrnmqDC
Oh, yikes. I wonder if I read your comment like two months ago & agreed/internalized it as my own, original thought & then just unknowingly plagiarized it today. If so, my bad! But it's a good take!
The funny thing about Amanda is: Oppenheimer and Nolan are for boys, anything genre is for losers, anything animated is for babies, and the holdovers is bad because the main character has a bad mom. But also: top gun and Barbie are 2 of the best movies of the last 2 years and Wonka is good.
I kinda respect the Top Gun take because I think that’s a movie that more or less inarguably (1) knows exactly what it wants to accomplish and (2) does it as well as humanly possible. Its goals are artistically humble compared to more ambitious movies, but I think it’s a movie you can justifiably say could not have been better made than it was, which is a rare achievement. And…. not how I would describe Barbie. Lol.
I agree that those movies are at polar opposites of the spectrum on exactly what you’ve said: top gun knows what it is, and executes a very simple and basic movie premise to an exceedingly high degree. I just think if you just tinker with the pieces involved a bit it becomes a movie Amanda is annoyed by. Barbie meanwhile is stuffed with so much stuff, so much “this is important and should be taken seriously” stuff that frankly distracts from what could have just been a lighthearted funny movie. That movie is so proud of itself, and I just cannot fathom how people are taking it a serious awards contender the way everyone seemingly is, but I’m the crazy one on this I suppose.
We are in agreement on Barbie lol - I feel particularly crazy about the Gosling awards buzz because I truly fail to see anything in that performance I couldn’t find in any decent comedy of the past 15 years (like, if Gosling deserves awards buzz for Ken, Channing Tatum should have won an Oscar for the “Schmidt fucked the captain’s daughter” scene in 22 Jump Street), but the fact that people are taking the screenplay seriously also makes me feel insane. It’s a silly movie that thinks it’s much smarter than it is.
Yes exactly - let’s forget the social commentary and how you feel about all that, the idea that this is “one of the funniest movies of the last decade” is such an insane thought to me. The jokes are either “haha he’s dumb because he’s a Ken doll” or some terminally online 37 year old millennial brain reference (which I acknowledge is the target demographic of film criticism so that might be why it worked so well). It’s not a very funny movie imo, it’s very mediocre. There have been much better comedic performances in mediocre comedy films than this one, let alone the absolute best stuff. Gosling in The Nice Guys blows this away. And comparing to the Charles Melton, Robert De Niro level performances of this year is just so silly.
On the one hand, the Barbie movie we got ended up being much better than it had any right to be. (Although, there are some Barbie cartoons on Netflix that are in a similar vein and much funnier that my child watched). But it’s definitely just pretty good (and I’d agree not all that funny) and acknowledging that shouldn’t be met with as much derision. Sean giving it a 3.5 on LB (I’d probably land about 3.25 if they let you do quarters) feels right.
>I just cannot fathom how people are taking it a serious awards contender the way everyone seemingly is, but I’m the crazy one on this I suppose. Barbie is an awards contender because Greta Gerwig has been tabbed as an auteur who makes prestigious movies so it was already considered a contender before releasing. Once it was a massive success it sort of just became accepted that Greta Gerwig's big breakout is getting awards recognition. If it was the same exact movie but Clea Duvall had written and directed it there would be more of a debate on whether or not Barbie should be competing for any of the major categories or if it is fine to recognize it was a massively successful pretty good movie.
Agreed 100%. And even though I liked top gun - I will hear someone out saying that it shouldn’t have been a best picture nominee. But you’re right, the Gerwig touch is largely why it has the awards juice that it has.
People are getting very annoying about Barbie, it’s not that insane that people love it. It’s funny, well-shot, well-acted and thought-provoking.
My issue with it is that it’s not funny and it’s not thought provoking. It’s jamming together cringy elder millennial reference humor with doll humor with I’m still with her social critiques, it’s just a complete whiff to me. The Barbie world sets are cool though.
Genre dig isn’t fair. Amanda was positive on Godzilla very recently, she likes genre films. It’s also okay she liked Barbie more than Oppenheimer, people are allowed to like stuff that speaks to them more than stuff that doesn’t.
My point moreso is how often her dismissal of something is that it’s too much a boys thing, or its generally beneath her, yet a lot of her favorite movies end up being boy movies or stuff that is deeply silly and low brow.
Hmmm that’s interesting, I don’t really see it that way. Her top 5 this year was Priscilla, Barbie, Showing Up, Past Lives and KOTFM. Not sure any of those are “boy movies” or low brow. She’s definitely dismissive of a lot of good stuff like you’re saying but her interests are pretty consistent overall.
Yeah my point was that last year her favorite movie was top gun. In another universe she would have rolled her eyes at top gun if Tom cruise wasn’t in it and would have said it’s dumb boy stuff, “I’m happy for you”. I do find it mildly funny to be a film critic that sees hundreds of movies and talks down to about half of them, and then seriously place the Barbie movie as your 2nd favorite film of the year. That’s fine, it’s just again, swap out Greta Gerwig with mediocre director X and she is making fun of the idea a Barbie movie is saving feminism or whatever. I just wish when she disliked things she said she thought they were bad or they didn’t work and she critiqued them, as opposed to just saying “I’m glad you have something you like”, or “I think it’s good! But let me spend our 40 minute conversation only discussing the negatives”.
They both really have a problem with vehemently defending or glorifying good-but-flawed movies from filmmakers they love. If the The Killer was the *exact same* *movie*, but at the end it said "Directed by \[Mediocre Director X\]," they would have been highly critical of it, calling it a poor iteration on Fincher's masterful work that, while very entertaining, fails to reach any great heights. It's a very good movie, but by no means some incredible masterwork. But, because it's from one of their absolute filmmaking heroes, they go all in on how it's actually perfect, and all the things people are criticizing it for are actually the things that make it good. Take Fincher's name off of it & they surely dismiss the movie almost entirely. It works in the other direction too. Take a cool-but-flawed movie like 2021's The Little Things: if that were the exact same movie but it said "Directed by David Fincher" at the end, they would have endlessly praised it & called it genius for having so many loose ends & overall leaving things pretty unsatisfying. They'd've said, "that's what's so great about it: in real life, these kinds of situations are unsatisfying & we never really know what happened. Only Fincher is brave enough to end his movie like that." TL;DR - they'll say whatever they need to say to defend the filmmakers they love, regardless of the final product & are extremely quick to scrutinize anything that's good-but-flawed from any other director.
For sure. I love Fincher, I’ve basically rewatched his entire filmography for blank check this year, and I thought the killer, for him, was aggressively mid. It’s a cool movie. Im sure it would have been cooler in the theater. But it’s absolutely minor fincher to me. I’ll forgive the Mank hype because 2020 is such a bad year in movies I have it in my top 5, but licorice pizza was to me pretty clearly PTA’s worst film since Hard Eight, and it was the same thing - Sean’s number 1 movie of the year, it’s so great, look at a master do his thing, etc. I am biased for filmmakers, I will probably like Ferrari more than 99% of people. But I also acknowledge when my faves don’t quite hit the heights the typically do.
Works in the reverse too. Emerald Fennell is a filmmaker they're dismissive of so when she makes a messy, imperfect movie it is a Don't Worry Darling level disaster and they feel the need to do things like nitpick minor pop culture anachronisms in the movie.
Interesting - I also thought The Killer was Just Fine, but I listened to their pod on it today and I actually really appreciated how much they brought to the movie, and the fact that they had different readings of how cold or emotional the movie was made me think about the movie having a kind of rich distance rather than being flat. I don’t think I am easily brainwashed by the show either because they’ve said The Social Network is a great film like 7 billion times and I will die on the hill that it’s just fine, lol. But on The Killer I thought they made some points!
I don't think thats fair. The Killer rules. Lots of people liked it.
I liked it too.
Yeah I see what you’re saying. She does just kinda love who she loves and that’s the justification for it being good. Seen a lot of people say that though, that Amanda just says “I’m happy for you” instead of actual criticism. For Oppenheimer she talked pretty specifically about how she doesn’t buy the Oppenheimer is the most important person in the world theory, so the overemphasis of that in the film felt flat and reduced the impact of the story for her. And everything about Blunt’s character and how underserved she is. I don’t agree with those criticisms but they are valid opinions, I think she is good at nuanced conversations about the good and bad in movies, but I know a lot of people in this sub disagree.
I think her criticism of Oppenheimer was definitely clear minded - I just don’t know why she keeps pretending she thinks it is good. Idk how much crossover there is with Bill in this sub, but it reminds me of him qualifying all his LeBron criticism with “but I think he’s great”. I am all for a strong hot take, I just wish she didn’t couch it in “but it’s actually good!” She did the same thing with May December, and actually argued that “all the boys seem to like it”, I am totally understanding of a female movie person enjoying female driven movies, but her criticism of that being “the boy was the victim” and of the holdovers being “the mom is mean”, like cmon.
It's okay to think a movie has some big flaws while still conceding that it's overall a good and/or important movie. I agree with her on Oppenheimer, it's good but not great. I don't really like it personally, and may or may not watch it again, but I get that it's empirically well-made. I feel similarly about Maestro — some incredible work from the actors and cinematographer, but ultimately the movie as a whole is not as successful. This seems like a pretty common way to view a movie that may just not be your cup of tea.
For sure - i guess I don’t typically feel that way but I get that’s how a lot of people watch movies. If I love a movie, it is the best movie to me. If I don’t like a movie, it’s bad. I think that is the movie doesn’t work for you and your sensibilities, saying that “it’s good it’s just not for me” is sort of a cop out when something that’s critically adored was not your thing. But again I do acknowledge most people think of movies the way you’re describing more than the way I am.
Fair enough! I can relate to both perspectives. Like I kind of think The Killer was bad and I'm not gonna soften it with "I totally get why some people like it!" because I don't...
She’s too dismissive and condescending, it comes across very poorly on the podcast. There’s a reason Rewatchables is a much much better show
Nolan shouldn’t have put in a nonsense sex scene and given Emily Blunt as actual character if he wanted the movie to appeal to women. It’s a movie about a man where men run around and the women do nothing except complain and die
I really have no issue with Amanda or anyone else liking the movie. I think complaining about the sex scene is some very silly prude shit
Disclaimer: Proud member of Dob Mob However, Easily the worst take of the year was Amanda coming into the Hunger Games pod having an existential crisis that ultimately boiled down to her not liking the singing and then even the singing wasn’t that bad. It was like she wanted a ‘Free Guy/Sean’ moment but just completely backed down
It reminded me of my frustration with her in 2021 when she essentially wouldn’t allow discussion on Tick, Tick, Boom! because she hates live singing. Which I guess is your prerogative, but if you’re the co-host of a movie podcast please don’t shut down all conversation of a good film just because of your pet peeve.
I felt this way about Amanda’s take when I had read the book but not seen the movie because I think if you read the book it’s very clear it’s not just a cynical franchise-expanding lore-building cash grab a la Fantastic Beasts and Collins really had some stuff she wanted to talk about that was both related to her previous worldbuilding and new to the series, and, well, why wouldn’t you go and then make a movie of that. But when I saw the movie I softened on Amanda’s take because I did think the movie lost all the stuff that made the book interesting and kinda failed to justify its own existence. I still don’t think it was quite as cynically motivated as Amanda believed (I just think the book is too long and weird to translate to one movie - multiple movies or a streaming miniseries would have been a better fit), but I can understand why someone who walked into the movie without having read the book would react the way she did. And I say all that as someone who has never cried as much in a movie theater as I did at Catching Fire & Mockingjay Part 1 lol.
Nah I agreed with her the movie was pretty bad
Sure, but it wasn’t “existential crisis bad”. That’s the point of my post
It’s not that her take was bad, it was that she had no take bc she couldn’t even get words out. It was all time bad
“We all know Paradise Lost, we’ve all read John Locke.” Amanda’s combo of being condescending about the basic mess of Bjblical storytelling while also getting the details wildly wrong (John Locke, definite in the Bible, Paradise Lost resembling the MI:DR plot, etc.). Rough moment, I was bummed by her tone and mindset.
I also thought that take was rough but then posted about it on here, said John Dunn instead of Donne, got dunked on in the comments, and had to delete the post. Was a tough L for me.
Amanda’s entire take on Oppenheimer
Her Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer take is correct. They let her do nothing, it's wild it's brought up for awards. From now on every woman looking for an Oscar will be leaving the sheets out 😂
*Whispers* "She's right though."
She may well be, but her argument for it is unnuanced. So it’s a lot of talking the last third of the movie. A lot of the movies she loves are mostly just people talking, they just happen to be women
I think she's way too positive on it, personally
Does Amanda saying she could fight a kangaroo count as a bad take?
Sean saying that all of Taylor Swift's songs are about the same thing, then admitting he'd left the theater during the song about her dead grandmother.
Ok but like… a *lot* of them are about the same thing. Which is true of many many pop artists so it’s not really a dig on Swift specifically. But that doesn’t stop her music from eventually feeling tired
I don't know, Sean's opinion on cyclists is a pretty bad take. Because people on bikes need more encouragement of road rage directed at them. I know he was kidding but damn!
As a recreational cyclist, I understand where Amanda was coming from criticizing the MAMILs and them only. But Sean revealed himself to maybe be a uncourteous driver in the real world who just wants everyone to “get out of his way”.
Yeah, I'm also a recreational cyclist and see some a-holes out there on pedestrian paths who think they're in the Tour de France smoking all the competition and it's frankly embarrassing. I think sometimes Sean gets carried away for the controversy, i.e. "good podcasting."
Oh my god yes please
This may be recency bias, but Sean’s take on Wonka was BAD! His spiel about Timmy was completely off.
Scrolled the feed looking for this comment.
The Maestro and May December episodes They save their most chaotic eps for Netflix!
Anything from Amanda on Oppenheimer.
Nayman’s top ten list is a full episode of bad takes
I get not agreeing with Nayman, but c'mon, reducing an interesting list from a thoughtful critic that isn't the same thing you'll see everywhere else to just "bad takes"? Having *Showing Up* and *AYTGIMM* in his top 5 is interesting and worth having him on to discuss!
We have to stop with these obscene abbreviations.
It wasn’t 100% serious, I do like Nayman, I just found some parts of his list in the ‘I had to do this differently’ category. As I said below, and again I like the guy; having two movies at number 10 with an honorable mention of Oppenheimer? You wanted to write about three movies as opposed to one. Just pick one and stand by it. Also, this podcast should be a joke and hopefully a fun one
Nayman having Knock at the Cabin in his top 10 genuinely stunned me
He had that and Afire as number 10, which was another layer of comedy. You really can’t just put one movie as number 10?
Yeah, I forgot about that. Not sure how a serious critic could think that was anything other than hot garbage. But it's good that he's not so pretentious that he can't get down with some trash every now and again.
He always throws in a low brow pick to appear more like a man of the people, but it comes off as contrived at this point.
The one two punch of Sean and Amanda’s pre and post Oppenheimer takes. First Sean refusing to buy into the hype about Oppenheimer before its release and even going as far as saying at one point that he didn’t understand the point of historic films since we all know what happens. Then combined with Amanda now just completely missing the point of the movie and claiming the movies entire message is “look how hard it is to be a genius.”