Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, y'all. My name is Dustin and welcome to the first ever episode of Dustin Likes Movies, my new podcast where I just watch movies and then talk about it. I have no idea if anyone cares about this, if anyone will ever even listen to this, but if you do, thank you so much for clicking on it.
[00:00:18] I don't know, I just like movies and I just need. I just want to talk about it. So these will be spoiler free reviews every single week. And I'm going to talk about five movies in this episode. In my first episode. This is hopefully not going to be the worst thing you've ever heard in your entire life. Feels very weird doing this. I've never done a podcast before, so this is my very first attempt at doing just that. Feels very weird to just be talking directly into a microphone with no video as part of that. In this episode we are going to be talking about, in order, Heretic, Anora, Elevation, Memoir of a Snail, and Here, which actually came out last week, but that was the only movie that I saw that came out last week. So I grouped it in with some of this week's releases. I did not get a chance to watch every movie that came out this week. For some reason, seven or eight films that I wanted to see decided the second week of November is an excellent chance to do that. I assume they didn't really want to be in the horror horror window of October, but also didn't really want to go up against the giants that are coming down the pipe, such as Gladiator 2 and Wicked and Moana 2. And that's coming out at Thanksgiving, I believe. And then you get into the December releases like Mufasa and even like Sonic the Hedgehog 3, to be honest. Like, so some of these movies would have gotten lost in the shuffle. So this is kind of a weird placement. But. But enough about that. Let's start with talking about Heretic. So this movie was the first one I wanted to talk about here because I feel like this is probably the biggest release of the weekend. I think this is the one that most people probably saw this past weekend. By the way, if you enjoy anything in this podcast or there's movies you want me to review in the future or you have feedback for me, you can let me know at Instagram and Twitter at. Yeah, that Dustin. So that is my Twitter account where you can yell at me if you really don't enjoy what I'm talking about here. But let's start talking about Heretic now. I keep calling it either Here or Hereditary and so very similar title to some of those movies. This, of course, stars Hugh Grant and what I believe is his first ever horror movie. I cannot remember another horror movie that Hugh Grant was in.
[00:02:42] And he is something. Can't really spoil it here, but two Mormon missionaries, played by Sophie Thatcher and Chloe east, knock on his door because he has said that he is interested in learning about the Church of Latter Day Saints. And so they come to proselytize to him. And according to the trailer, he has a little experiment that he is running. And that is about as far as I can get into the plot. 90% of. Of this movie and the plot and lines and everything involved is these three actors. And they did an incredible job. Obviously, Hugh Grant standing out above them. He's been doing this a long time. And just the gusto that he has in explaining his hypotheses to these young girls about their religion, about religion in general, and kind of setting the stage for what the back half and the third act of this movie is. He is great. I've always loved Hugh Grant and watching him come to a horror thriller film like this has been really interesting. Sophie Thatcher is. I'm glad that we get to be here to watch her on the rise. So I first saw her in yellow jackets, but I keep feeling like I see her in more and more things.
[00:03:59] She was the makeup artist in. What horror movie was she a makeup artist in recently? Maxine. That was it. I had to look it up. So she. She's a. She makes the mask in Maxine. She's also in the upcoming companion movie, which I'm excited to see with Huey from the Boys Young Jack Quaid. So that should be quite the entertaining movie, at least from the trailer. And then Chloe East. I have not actually seen Chloe east in a movie before. I thought she did great. So let's talk a little bit about Sophie and Chloe's characters in this. You have Sophie Thatcher as Sister Barnes and Chloe east as Sister Paxton. And they are young missionaries going into Hugh Grant's house to talk to him about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And there is a promise, I feel like that's made to the audience subtly near the beginning of the movie that either really pays off by the end or doesn't pay off at all. I actually can't decide which one is which with this. So Sister Barnes, played by Thatcher, is kind of this. She. She comes across as a skeptic. The way that the film actually shows her kind of depicts her, even without dialogue, as a bit of a Skeptic. Maybe she doesn't buy in as much as Sister Paxton does. Sister Paxton is full blonde, full sorry, full bl, Full steam ahead. Mormon, you know, died in the wool. Sister Barnes. Not as much. At least it doesn't seem like. And then as the story unravels, those two kind of switch a little bit. And it, it, it, it feels like it should pay off more as the movie goes on, but it's not really thrown in your face about it. And by the end, I don't even know. Without spoiling anything if that is even the true case, did either of them ever change their opinions on anything going forward? I'm not entirely certain. So how much did our protagonist actually change in the film? I don't know. It almost feels like it's left up to interpretation a little bit, to the point where I don't even really know what the ending actually is. Maybe that's kind of what the ending is supposed to do because it gets people like me talking about it, but I don't really know. The film is really interesting. It's very dialogue heavy, especially in this kind of middle section of the movie. Once they get into Hugh Grant's house and they start talking to him about religion, that is where it could for a lot of people really start to get too wordy. Did not for me because the performances were good because religion and religious debate has always interested me. So that doesn't really scare me away too much. But I think there is going to be a certain percentage of people that get into this film and see them debating ideas and see them talking about different things. That Hugh Grant's character links to religion and really gets bored or gets confused or feels it's redundant.
[00:07:16] I did not feel that way, but I definitely think, you know, it at times could feel like you're watching two people or three people have a religious debate, which is kind of the center point of the film. I understand that it's kind of not really in the promise of the trailer and the film, but it shouldn't. You shouldn't be surprised it's in there. There's also some really funny moments in this movie, which was surprising.
[00:07:44] They the. The movie realizes at times that it is, in the eternal words of that Family Guy episode, kind of insisting upon itself. And it does do a pretty good job of taking a step back and being like, this is stupid. The characters literally will say that to each other. This is dumb. This doesn't make sense. You're wrong.
[00:08:05] Things like that. There is definitely some, some humor in the Film.
[00:08:10] If you watch Terrifier 3, it's not quite as slapstick as when, you know, Art was hitting Sienna in the head, but it feels kind of like that at times. There is definitely some humor built into the script. There's also some very strange camera shots. Not bad I said the word strange. I actually like them. But there's a lot of close ups, a lot of characters taking up a fourth of the screen, a third of the screen, with there not being, at least to me, anything in the background that it's trying to show creeping into the frame or show us to really like jump scare us. There's no real jump scares in this film. So I thought that was interesting the way that they actually filmed the movie. And I would be interested to, you know, hear from the director of photography and the actual director of the movie as to why they chose some of the shots they did, other than their cool and creative, what it actually means for the movie. So this movie, you know, I, I was sold on Hugh Grant being in a horror movie at all, but the premise was interesting as well as the scene in the trailer where he has the two doors, right? And he says belief disbelief on those two doors. And I was curious. My hook was what's behind those doors?
[00:09:27] So I thought that each girl, the reason there was two protagonists is so each girl could pick a door, go through the door and then we could see what Hugh Grant's character has in store for those who believe and those who disbelieve. And I have to admit I was a bit disappointed by what happens on the other side of those doors. Again, no spoilers here, but I don't know, I, I almost feel like I expected some kind of like saw kind of situation going on there, like some kind of trials and tribulations that these young messiah prophets, you know, they're not, they're just people from the church, but that these people supposedly maybe hand selected by God, would have to go through in order to get out from under Hugh Grant's rule and under his house.
[00:10:23] You know, we're going to put your faith to the test kind of a thing. And that didn't exactly happen the way I expected it to, which is both a negative and a positive.
[00:10:35] I think the, the film would have leaned into the horror elements of the genre had it done that. It instead pulled back and turned into more of a mystery thriller, which I thought was interesting.
[00:10:50] I didn't totally love the full reveal at the end as to what is actually going on here, but I did have fun on that. Kind of journey of Hugh Grant leading these two young women through different thought tests and puzzles, and me trying to figure out what in the hell is actually going on. So I thought this film was fun. It's definitely not going to be for everybody. It's definitely not one of the best horror movies I've seen. But it was refreshing to see Hugh Grant on screen at all, let alone in a new genre for him, and to see two young actresses really doing their all. I mean, all three of these actors really, really did well in this film. I. I really loved all three of them. I hadn't seen Chloe east before, but I'd be interested to see more performances by her in the future. So if I had to give it a grade, I would probably give Heretic a B plus. Next up is the movie that I was most looking forward to this past weekend, even though Heretic is the first one we're reviewing here. This is my most anticipated maybe of November, to be honest with you. And that was A Nora. So A Nora is about Mikey Madison as the titular character, Anora, also called Annie. In the film. She is a stripper in New York City who is, you know, not living the greatest life. You could say. Not only is she a stripper, she's also living with her sister. They don't seem too close. She. She lives right under a train. It's very loud in this. This house that doesn't seem like it's in the best neighborhood. You know, it just. It doesn't seem like things are going great. And then she meets this Russian oligarch. I guess this.
[00:12:39] This young guy is 21 years old. And his name. I need to remember it now because I forgot it is Ivan. They call him Vanya, which is, I don't know, the Russian way of saying his name, maybe. And he is the son of someone we don't really know. We know his name. I'm gonna go into. I have no idea. These Russian names, dude. No clue. Not even gonna try. I'm looking at the cast listing right now, dude. The dad's name is Nikolai Zakharov. That's the character's name. The actor's name is Alexei. Sara Bryant, probably murdered. That. That's probably not how you're. That's not how you say that. So I'm not really going to delve too much into these Russian names. I apologize. But he meets Vanya, who is the son to Nikolai Zakharov, who is, I don't know, weapons dealer, a murderer. I don't know. He's a very Powerful man, and people are afraid of him. But Annie doesn't know that, nor does she care, because she meets Vanya, and he's young and he looks like Timothee Chalamet. So I guess he's attractive. And she falls in love with his lifestyle, with his money, with his power, with his ability to travel, his free nature. And they end up kind of hitting it off. And we see it in the trailer, so it's not a spoiler here. They get married in Las Vegas at a little white chapel, the famed Little White Chapel in Las Vegas. So they get married there when some henchmen who work for his father show up, demand that the wedding be annulled. And then that gets into the back two thirds or so of the film. And, you know, I kind of like Heretic, like a lot of movies, like every movie, I have kind of an expectation, kind of a thought of how the plot is going to go. I don't know how the plot is going to go, but I've seen enough movies and I know enough about story structure and whatever. You kind of expect certain things to happen. Like in Heretic, I expected, you know, when they went through the door, certain things to be happening. I expected when those henchmen to show up, certain things were going to happen. I was under the impression that these two young lovebirds, who, you know, he's only into her for her beauty, she's only into him for his money, they would go on the run, running from these henchmen. You know, maybe in dramatic fashion, maybe in romantic fashion, maybe in comedy fashion, maybe in a Venn diagram of all three. But they would run off through the city on this kind of chase thing, whatever, and they would actually realize they fall in love with each other during it. And that would be the plot. That would be what the film is about. And that is what I kind of wanted to see. My favorite music video of all time is after the Party by the Menzingers, one of my favorite bands. And the entire music video is nothing but these two young people being in love, showing the highs and lows of their life in Philly. And they don't have the best life. They fight, they have sex, they do drugs, they go to parties. You know, they're trying on clothes, they steal from these clothes stores. Like, it's not the greatest, most pure love story in the world, but because it's kind of a dirty love story where there's. They're poor and they're fighting, and whatever I really like is my favorite music video of all Time. I love the story it tells. I'm underselling it by a lot. Please end up watching after the Party by the Menzingers. But I kind of thought this film would be along those lines and it is not. At least not in the way I expected it to be. It should be stated up front, Mikey. Madison is fantastic. She is so charismatic. She fills up the entire screen when she's on it with her personality. She's loud, she's confident, she's hot as fuck. She's so hot. Which you gotta be if you're supposed to be this hot stripper that this Russian oligarch sees and wants to make his bride, right?
[00:16:50] She's every bit of all of those things. She also shows at times some quiet insecurities, which I thought was really nice. And a really deeper level to that character that by the end of the film really kind of pay off. And those insecurities kind of like a fissure begin to crack and grow and grow and grow as the film goes on and as she starts to realize things about Vanya, about herself and them together and maybe even her place in the world and what she can offer the world. So I thought that was what's such a good portrayal of that. The problem with that is if you think of the movie in a typical three act structure. The middle act of the movie was my favorite. And she is not the driving force of that as much. So that is when the henchmen actually come into the picture, literally and figuratively they come into the film. And dude, it is so funny. It is so. I did not expect to laugh as much as I did. I saw this film with my friend Chris and there were two girls directly behind us and a couple kind of like to my like 7 or 8 o'clock and then another couple a couple rows down in front of us. So just four couples I guess. And especially the two girls behind us really laughed a lot during this part. It was very funny. It felt this would have been a fantastic movie to watch in front of a full. With a full theater. I did not get that. Unfortunately. This was the Friday night, I think 8:30 or 9:00.
[00:18:36] And yeah, there was only like eight or nine of us in there, like I said. But man, this part was so funny. There's a running gag with a guy who has a concussion. There's a fight scene. It goes, it flies against type. So whatever you think is going to happen when they show up, that is not what happens. And watching her react to it, but mostly them reacting to her and to. The situation is very funny. It goes on a really long time. This movie is about 2 hours and 20 minutes long. This part goes on for easily 40 or 45 of those minutes. Definitely felt like parts of it could be trimmed down a little bit to make everything hit a little quicker. But it's. It almost goes for realism more than.
[00:19:25] I. I don't know it.
[00:19:27] There are times where it feels like it's all one shot. I know it's not, but rec.
[00:19:35] What's the word? Not recollecting.
[00:19:38] Remembering. That's dummy. That's the word. Remembering it. Now back it. My picture, Mental picture is of one continuous camera roll. Which, again, is not how that worked. I know that. But, yeah, it felt like we were just watching these characters in that moment, absorbing information, coming to realizations about stuff and then setting out on the action, which I think is why it feels so long. When they go after that, I guess, without spoiling anything, they go in search of what they're looking for and they're going to different locations. That's when it really started to feel like it was dragging on. But again, showed the realism, showed the bonding of the people looking. So I don't know, I do feel like probably about 10 or 15 minutes maybe of the movie could be trimmed. Trim the fat just a little bit. And I think the overall film experience would have improved for that.
[00:20:37] Again, I thought all the cast of characters that include those henchmen really nailed it. I thought they were all really good at what they were trying to do in these scenes and getting that across in either a funny or scary or loving manner. However you want to actually look at that.
[00:20:58] The film does have a message it's trying to get across.
[00:21:03] It's kind of weaving, weaving. Wove, wove. It's kind of woven through the film and never really made explicit until the final scene, which I thought was a really interesting way to tell the story because they did not want to beat you over the head with it. But at the same time, it ends in a way that really kind of takes you aback when you're watching the film. So the film is, you know, it's a stripper who falls for a man with power, with money, and she kind of becomes enamored by his lifestyle. How much of it is him? How much of it is lifestyle? We're never really told. I think that's kind of left up to interpretation. But I got the feeling, you know, it starts off 100% lifestyle and then kind of chips away to maybe, like. I don't know, 75% lifestyle, 25% him by the end of it. But I'm just kind of making that up. I don't actually know.
[00:22:03] And it's really interesting because the film is probably about something and I'm a guy, so I don't actually know something in the realm of female empowerment, of what women can offer the world, what women offer men, how men view women and this kind of social power dynamic between men and between women and how women view themselves and view themselves in relationship to men in the world. Now I say all that believing that do I feel like I really understood exactly 100% nail on the head, what this film was trying to tell me. No, I don't. And I say tell me because of the final scene. The final scene really made me go like, oh, this is. This isn't just a story. We're not just watching a movie. We are watching a movie with something to say. And I did not feel that before the very final shot of the film. If you've seen this movie, I think you know exactly what I'm talking about.
[00:23:13] But there's something to do with Power Diamond Power dynamics there. And I'm not exactly sure of what it is trying to say. Maybe I'm stupid or maybe I'm just a guy and I haven't experienced whatever exactly it is that the film is talking about there. But did want to mention that because I think it's worth mentioning.
[00:23:33] But I really enjoyed this movie. Of all of the movies I saw this weekend, this was my favorite one. Didn't quite live up to my expectations for it, whatever those may have been. Not just the plot, but again, dear my favorite part of this film. Mikey wasn't really the most active part of that.
[00:23:54] I guess I can't really say that because they're reacting to her. So that would make her active, right? Is that how that works? I don't know.
[00:24:01] But yeah, if I had to give a final rating of Anora, it would be an A minus. The next movie up is Elevation. No pun intended.
[00:24:12] Get it? Movie up.
[00:24:14] Elevation.
[00:24:16] Sorry. I hated it the second I realized it. Elevation stars Anthony Mackey as Will, a man who has a sick son with something, I don't know, some kind of lung issue or something. And his filters for his breathing machine are running out.
[00:24:32] They are in Colorado, above 8,000ft. And his little community, his little settlement is there for the specific reason that these monsters three years ago came crawling out of the ground and started killing like 95% of the world's population. But for some reason, they cannot go above 8,000ft. But of course, in order to get the medicine for his son, he must venture down below the 8,000 foot line to a hospital in Boulder, Colorado, and get the supplies there and make it back while avoiding the monsters. Along with him are Morena back, whose name I feel I can never say right as Nina and Maddie Hassan as Katie.
[00:25:17] Let me go ahead and say at the beginning I thought Moreno back was fantastic in this movie. This movie, which I'm proud to say is a tight 90. We love tight 90s around here.
[00:25:30] I thought she was the best. She had the best character development, she had the best lines. She said all the F words in this movie, like pretty much all of them.
[00:25:41] She was the coolest character, she had the coolest story. She was the best actor in this film, the best reactions. I thought she was absolutely fantastic this entire film from beginning to end. And I would highly recommend it just if you're a fan of her work. Some of the other stuff she has done over the years, definitely give this one a shot in order just to see her. I really do think she's that good in it. In a movie that is fairly predictable, which I'll get to here in a second.
[00:26:13] Maddie Hassan. Hassan was. Was really good as Katie. You know, she's. She's kind of the tag along here.
[00:26:22] She is the best friend of Anthony Mackie's character, Will, her wife or his wife, who you learned very early on is no longer around and you'll find out why as the film goes on. But, you know, she. She's fine.
[00:26:41] I think she's kind of the connective tissue for a lot of this film between Nina, who is Marina Baccarin's character, and Will. And so she kind of gets to be the connective tissue to keep those two characters in each other's orbit. And I think she does a really good job at that. And some things transpire in the movie that make me care about her, which is good. When you have a tight 90 movie with no prior lore involved in it and you care about certain characters. I think that that says a lot about the actor that is involved in being that character. I do have to say I didn't think Anthony Mackie did the most compelling job here. Everything I've ever seen him in, he's been fantastic. Black Mirror, you know, the Marvel movies, whatever it is that I've seen him. And he's always been so good. And he just felt very flat in this film, which, you know, he kind of expresses away at A certain part in the movie where he's like, you know, I stopped caring about the world or whatever, but I don't know, the performance felt a little flat to me. A guy who's never acted before in his entire life. So, you know, what the hell do I know? But, yeah, especially when you. When you're opposite background. And her really great work in this film. I don't know, I just wanted a little bit more from Anthony Mackie. Now we're going to talk about the plot for a minute. You know, it's a pretty predictable plot.
[00:28:09] When you watch the trailer, I think, you know, I got that. At least where I was like, okay, like, I. I know what this movie is, right? I know I've seen this movie before.
[00:28:19] They need something, they have to go into the zombie. The town overrun by zombies or like, it's monsters in this case, but, you know, the last of us dying, light walking dead, whatever. They have to go and get supplies at the school that's been overrun by the monsters. How are they going to get in and get out without any casualties? Some high drama involved in there while still learning a little bit about themselves, a little bit about the monsters.
[00:28:44] Yeah, that's all in there. It's exactly what you think it is.
[00:28:48] You know, predictability isn't always bad. This is an entertaining movie, but I don't know, I would have liked a little bit more unpredictability in there. The thing that I really did not like, especially the beginning of this movie, is it was very much like, tell don't show.
[00:29:08] So, you know, I know if you are a father, you love your son. I don't need to see you cradling him, kissing him, telling you, telling him, I love you, I love you, I love you. I get it.
[00:29:21] Not that that is the greatest sin in the world, but it was a lot of that, especially early on in the film where it felt a lot more of tell don't show, which is not the way I feel like it should be. You're basically, you know, I mean, I don't know, you're showing it, obviously, but it's more of a writer's term where instead of showing me he cares, which you are, by him holding. I don't know. It sounds stupid when I say it out loud, but it's kind of hard to really explain in a podcast, which is the whole point of me doing this.
[00:29:56] But I don't know, it felt like a little bit expositional dump through actions instead of us kind of figuring it out on our own through Subtext, if that makes sense. I also, you know, the movie's rated R. Why the hell is this movie rated R? Has no business being rated R. This is a PG13 movie through and through. I have no idea why it's rated R. There's not any blood or gore in the film. There's no sex in the film. The only thing I can think, they literally say the F word like five times. And this is a podcast, I can cuss. They say fuck like five times.
[00:30:37] Why? Like, if I don't, I feel like you, I feel like this is PG13 coded the whole time.
[00:30:46] If it's going to be rated R, you got to lean into the R rating, right? You got to show more. Like you have more freedom under an R rating. Instead you just say fuck like four more times than you could in a PG13 movie. I don't know. Pretty weird that they didn't cut that down to PG 13 at some point in the editing process or reshoots or whatever. It's did not need to be rated R like the previous films. Kind of my hook for this film was, what are these monsters? Why are they here? And why can they not go above 8,000ft? That is such an interesting premise.
[00:31:29] Like when you see that in the trailer, I was like, oh, 8,000ft, like that's such an odd number.
[00:31:37] And I'm glad to report they do answer all of those questions.
[00:31:41] And I really liked the answer. It made sense, it was interesting, it was thought provoking as to why they cannot go above 8,000ft. And it sets up a sequel like this film makes. No hiding its intention of a sequel here.
[00:32:04] They absolutely are like, hey, we want to make the second movie too. And there's a part of me depending on what they have plans that was like, hey man, you should have just made this PG13 and made it a two hour movie and just put what you were going to kind of do in that sequel in this one. I thought that would have been good, you know, would have ruined my whole tight 90 love that I have. But I don't really know if you're going to get that sequel. And now I'm curious as to what the hell you were going to do. So pretty interesting. You have a sequel ready to go, you have a movie with an interesting premise, with a really interesting payoff of that premise. Trap it behind an R rated movie, put it out on a crowded weekend and don't really broadcast it too much. I haven't really seen any ads for it other than at the movie theater. So kind of interesting. I'll give Elevation a B. I thought it was a solid movie held up by an interesting premise and incredible acting by Morena Baccarin. Didn't really understand the rating. Didn't like Anthony Maggie's portrayal too much. Didn't feel like he was really, I don't know, there with me. At times it's kind of strange and really curious to see what ends up happening if there's an elevation to next movie I want to talk about is Memoir of a Snail. Now, this movie absolutely shocked the hell out of me. I did not know it existed until like four hours before I saw it. I was looking through my Regal Unlimited app, saw a screenshot of this with the movie times. I was like, wait, what is this? Clicked on it, read a little bit of the description, decided I would give it a shot and I am very, very glad that I did so. Memoir of a Snail is an Australian animated film.
[00:33:50] It is in the style of this, like stop motion, almost claymation, Tim Burton kind of style, and it's really interesting. It's a rated R film, which is odd. You don't think of these films very much as an R rating, but this one was. This film is written and directed by Adam Elliott and stars Sarah Snook as Grace Poodle Pudel, a young girl in 1970s Melbourne, Australia. She lives with her twin brother Gilbert and their father Percy, and she narrates the entirety of the film. What you see on the screen is always couched in her narration, told from almost the end of the movie, and it kind of goes through her life. It's a memoir, right? So of these fictional character and it talks about her struggles and her triumphs in life. And, you know, it's kind of. She has a very flat affect throughout the film as she's talking about things, but a really nice voice, which is nice because, you know, if you're going to listen to someone talk for over an hour and a half, they better have a nice voice. Even though it's Australian, a lot of this film feels very American. It feels very relatable, and I think that is really good. There's definitely some Australian stuff here. You can't really escape some. Some of the Australian references, but really there's not a whole lot happening that I feel like is unrelatable to other people. And unlike Elevation, it actually earns its R rating. There's no real language I can think of, but some of the claymation things have nudity, which is fun.
[00:35:43] This film, Memoir of a Snail is, you know, you find out why she likes snails, how she turns into a snail mentally, how she collects snails, and how that affects her life for the better and for the worse. As you see her go through her life, as you see her brother go through his life, and again, the trials and tribulations they go through as well as the triumphs. This film really feels like a celebration of all of human life. There's a Louis CK Bit where he talks about life and how every bad thing that's ever happened in life is in life. So for you to say life is great is not totally true because all the bad stuff is there, too.
[00:36:29] And this. This film almost feels like kind of an extension of that. Like, life is so weird and full of interesting characters and moments and just. It's weird and it's bad and bad things happen. But you know what? Good things happen, too. And the life that you think you're going to live may not actually happen the way you expect it to happen. And maybe that's okay. And maybe, you know, we're all different and that's okay, too.
[00:37:05] I really had no idea where this film was going to go from scene to scene. It kept throwing left hooks at me. It kept me on my heels. Right when you think like, oh, okay, I know how I know what's going to happen. No, you don't. I bet you you don't. It's really interesting. It proves that this art form of stop motion, which they even reference in the film itself, which is funny. Stop motion is for kids, or could be for kids. It really expands the idea of that art form. This film had incredible writing, incredible characterization. There are some really, really strong characters in this film that you are going to think about for a really long time.
[00:37:50] Characters like, you know, you have Grayson Gilbert as the twins. You have Pinky, you have Ruth, who is Gilbert's foster mother.
[00:37:59] There's just a lot of characters and moments in this film that I'm going to be thinking about for a long time. I don't think it's quite a perfect film. I don't know what that would even look like. It's 94 minutes long, though. Do love that. But you can feel how much love was put into this film and this story and these characters. And so there's not a whole lot to talk about with performances or camera shots or any of that because of the nature of this film. But, man, if you got a chance to watch it, I would highly recommend it. It's probably my favorite animated film of the year. Again, it's Stop Motion. So calling it animated is kind of not true, at least the way we typically think of animated films. But, yeah, I really, really enjoyed this one. I would give it a solid A. And last but not least, I want to talk about here. So here is a movie starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright that actually came out November 1st. So it came out last week, but it was the only film that came out that week. And even though I was going to start this podcast at the beginning of November with that film, there was no other films to talk about. And I didn't want my first episode to be, like, 10 minutes long, so figured I would drop it at the end of this episode.
[00:39:19] This film is kind of exactly what I thought it would be, at least in the way that it made me feel about the film. You know, there are several plots going on at once. This is a film that takes place in one solid location. So it's almost like the camera is, like, built into the house at times, which I'm sure in the actual set it probably was. But this feels like.
[00:39:46] Like, once you get past the beginning of the film with volcano and dinosaurs and a meteor falling, there's a quick CGI field montage until the building of the house, and then including, by the way, the most realistic squirrel animation in cinema history. Shout out to that squirrel. Shout out to the artist that made that squirrel. It was cool. But, yeah, after that, it really feels like this camera is just permanently set there and kind of like a slideshow. You get to see different things happening in the house. Not linearly. Linearly, you see things happen with different time periods bleeding into each other.
[00:40:25] I did, like, the editing of just cutting a little square into the current frame. You're watching the new scene that's about to come up is taking place behind that one, and then it fades into the one that was behind it. And that happens time and time again.
[00:40:43] The way the script is set up, the way the lines are, it makes it seem like the scenes are reacting to each other.
[00:40:50] The way I've heard time referred to one time is that time isn't happening on a timeline. Right? So it's not. There's no future or past. It's all happening at once.
[00:41:04] And this film is shot in a way that kind of embodies that. Where you are watching a scene set in this room in the 1920s, and then it's now with, you know, in the 2000s, and then it goes to the 1940s, and then it goes to, like, Ben Franklin times, and then it comes back into the 80s. And it's all happening now, it feels like.
[00:41:28] And I said it's all take place in this house. It all takes place in this living room of this house. You don't even really see any other rooms of the house at all. The camera, like I said, is locked off. It is like it is built into the fabric of time itself right there. And we're watching it all unfold. I've been watching a lot of this. Sounds like a pivot, but I promise it's not. I've been watching a lot of near death experience videos on YouTube recently. Don't know why. You watch one thing on YouTube and it just starts recommending you all kinds of stuff. But now I'm watching a lot of near death experience videos and a lot of them talk about having a life review where right before you die you see your life quote, unquote, flash before your eyes. But really you kind of get to relive some of the more important moments from your life. And this film really almost feels like this houses, this rooms life review like it feels like this house is about to get demolished. And right before it dies, it's watching everything that's happened again in this frenetic kind of pacing of memory after memory after memory. Maybe not in order, but they're connected in some way and it's drifting through.
[00:42:48] I'm sure that's not the intention of the film. There's no indication that it's being demolished or anything. But that. That's kind of a feeling I got watching it. In a weird way. It almost feels like a play. It almost feels like we are the audience watching as the sets are moved around and things come and go and characters pop in and out and we get to see the characters age and de. Age and age again.
[00:43:11] You know, it's Tom Hanks and it is Robin Wright, so it's Forest and Ginny once again. And they're fine. They're both great actors. But you know, the. The way that. The way the film is kind of set up, they. They go through some things, but I don't really know if the characters themselves really go through too, too much until we start to see Tom and Robin in older age. I think that's when we start to see them really flex their muscle. Paul Bettany, on the other hand, who we see by the house as a new soldier with a GI Bill fresh from World War II. I thought he acted his ass off. I thought he was so impressive in this film. The standout for me in this film for sure. Both as a young father, new father, newlywed, and also as an old man towards the end of the film as he goes through a certain change and a certain growth that you don't expect while watching the film. Again, not really. It's not really in a linear order, but we do, at least when it comes to Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, we do kind of see it mostly in order, I believe. So I thought that was really interesting.
[00:44:24] You know, there's grounded moments where it lets you know what's going on. You know, there's the Pearl harbor announcement, there's the mention of the Lazy Boy, there's the Beatles on Sullivan. So like there's some things going on that kind of let you know about when things are until you get a bigger grasp on what's going on with the characters and their relationship to the world. It's a, you know, at times very saccharine film, very smallsy. It makes you want to, you know, hug your loved ones and think about your life and what your life would look like and the rooms you've been in. And it definitely does that. I knew that going into the film that that was kind of its message and kind of what it wanted us to do. And I thought it did that very well. It didn't really do anything else for me. I. I do really appreciate the creative drive to shoot something like this where, you know, the camera is the same and the events are what changes instead of the camera bouncing from location to location. So I will always shout out some creative ways of trying to tell the story and it mostly worked for me. But I'm sad to report, I feel like this film will kind of fade away with time. I don't think there's a whole lot happening here that people are going to be talking about a long time from now. And I don't quite think it is going to reach the cultural impact that Tom Hanks and Robin Wright's previous film did in Forrest Gump, which came out 30 years ago, which is crazy. I feel so old sometimes.
[00:45:59] There was a couple of times where there was a noticeable green screen going on and one or two ADR issues with some voiceover problems. I did think that the de aging that they did on Tom Hanks and Robin Wright was really good at times. Like it was so weird to see big era Tom Hanks on the screen again in a new role. Like that was actually kind of mind boggling. I. I thought they did a really good job. And of course with these two actors, they're so prolific They've been around so long. They do have a lot of face models and stuff from previous films and TV shows to actually use for those characters. But still getting that to work and not look absolutely terrifying or weird, but actually fits in with the color grading and the green screen and the ages they were supposed to be.
[00:46:54] I don't know, I thought they did a really good job with that. So that is my review of here. I would probably give it about a C plus as far as my personal opinion on it. You know, it's not really going to stand the test of time like I did, but it's absolutely good for what it was. It delivered on what I thought was going to be there. And shout out to Paul Bettany, you monster. What a great performance by him. And that concludes the first episode of Dustin likes movies. This was super weird. I hope it wasn't too weird for you guys. I hope it, you know, mostly sounded okay.
[00:47:31] Yeah, I've never actually sat down at a just a microphone and talked for like 40 something minutes before. I'll go back and edit it just a little bit to cut a few things out. But yeah, this, this was, this was interesting. So I hope you enjoyed it. Again, if there's anything you'd like to say to me about the films or what films I should watch this upcoming week, let me know at. Yeah, that Dustin on Twitter. I'm also on Instagram under the same handle next week. The films I have slated for this review are Red One, A Real Pain, the Best Christmas Pageant Ever Blitz and small things like these. The last three of those films actually came out this past weekend, but I didn't get a chance to get around and watch them. So two new ones, three old ones in this upcoming week. I hope you guys have a great week and let me know what movies you are seeing this week and what you thought of these films as well on social media. So thank you so much for listening. So sorry. Used to have a YouTube channel. Gotta get over the Bad Habit. But thank you so much for listening and I'll see you guys next week. Bye.
