Critically Acclaimed #398 | Onslaught, The Runner, Fall 2: Deadpoint, By Any Means

0:00Greetings friends, welcome back to the critically acclaimed podcast, the film review podcast hosted by two really good film critics. That's me, my co-host here. We occasionally make a noise. We make a lot of whimpering noises, that's for sure. My name is Whitney Sybold, I film critic, I contribute to a slash film and with me as always is my scintillating intelligent and devastatingly handsome co-host William White-on-Toe introduced yourself. Thank you. Oh, you're quite. My name, yes, don't thank you. Let me have this. Okay, let me have my moment. Hi everybody, my name is William Bibbiani, I am a film critic, I write for the web and everybody

1:02calls me bibs and this week on critically acclaimed. We are reviewing on slot, the latest film from Adam Wiengard, director of your next to the guest on the last two legendary Godzilla movies. We've got the runner, new Amazon Prime Thriller starring Gal Gadot. We've got Fall 2 Dead Point, which is the sequel to Fall 1 Life Point and the historical drama slash thriller by any means. That's it. We're not doing like a 12 in 1 catch up special or a huge pile of film reviews, just usual amount. Yeah, that was good stuff. And yeah, I think the big release of this week probably saved to say, although it could be a surprise, who knows, we're doing this what we have the box office results. But I think the big film is probably on slot. Yeah. On slot is a new ultra violent kind of low budget genre thing from Adam Wiengard and

2:06Simon Barrett. Now, they made quite a few like low budget genre films when they were just getting started and then they segwayed into bigger blockbuster material. But there are one to punch in like the early 2010s of your next, which is a very, very smart like slasher slash siege picture. And the guest, which is a little harder to quantify. It's like half condemnation of America's like a military policy. Half isn't Dan Stevens, the sexiest human alive. And half, like what if Captain America was Michael Myers? And that's fucking cool. Yeah, the guest was one of the best films of its year. It's I do like to qualify it as a Captain America picture because partway through the movie and this kind of comes out of left field. It's revealed that the Dan Stevens character is part of some kind of vaguely sketched out

3:08super soldier program. Like he's been programmed to be a killing machine. So he's like this crazed serial killer, but he used to work in the army. And even though it's not there's only like one or two things that connect the guest to this new picture onslaught. They are of a piece. They all feel like if they're not necessarily directly connected, they are definitely like in the same type of slightly exaggerated world in which this kind of thing happens. It's not like a broadly cartoonish world necessarily, but it's definitely in a very arch B movie zone where everyone who is a badass acts like a super badass and everyone who is like an ex army or Marine Corps so and so is clearly the protagonist of an action movie. It's a work for the government. Of course there's a conspiracy that you're trying to cover up. But if you're none of those things, you're probably like a normal person who has caught

4:11up in the crossfire with some bullshit. I am a huge fan of your next and the guest which I typically recuse myself from reviewing because even though when it first came out, I reviewed it. I call it one of the best movies of its year. I think it's actually one of the best movies of that decade. For years, I ended up working with one of that film stars, Brendan Meyer, on the movie trivia schmodan. In fact, I actually betray you in order to form a team with him. And there was a lot of drama involved. And so he's not involved with onslaught. And again, my thoughts on the guest were very well known, but I thought it was important to keep praising the film now that I have a connection to it. I wouldn't say that connection is severed, but we don't work together anymore. So I'm still going to not gush too much. But again, my thoughts are well articulated. I think the guest is Adam Wingard's best film. I really enjoy his legendary monsters movies.

5:15He did Godzilla vs Kong. And he did Godzilla x Kong. The new empire. The new empire, those subtitles mean nothing. And it came out within two weeks of Ghostbusters, the Frozen Empire, which is weird because there's an ice monster in secret empire. Is that what we just said? There's a lot of forgotten. The new empire is the title. And yeah, there's an ice dragon in that movie. And part of the new Ghostbusters film was called Frozen Empire is about being frozen. And a few people remember this, but there was also a crime picture that came out that same weekend that was just called Empire. If you remember that one at all. Which is funny because there's a movie that's opening this week called The Runner. And there's a movie opening next week called Runner. And both films are about people racing the clock to save a child's life.

6:20And it's very hyper specific. So it's always weird how that happens. But in any case, Adam Wingard has now moved away from the blockbuster realm. And I feel like normally when an indie or a genre filmmaker moves into a blockbuster realm and they return, there's this attitude where it's like, aha, I get to go back to my roots where no one can tell me what to do. Right? Right. But his Godzilla movies were fucking wild. They were full of like weird random shit. It doesn't feel like anyone was telling him no. Let's get King Kong a power glove and have him beat other giant apes to death using a baby ape. And I'm like, what the fuck? Awesome. Awesome. But what the fuck? He gets to use the actors he likes working with. He got to work with Dan Stevens for the most recent one. He played this rock and roll Kaiju dentist. And then Rebecca Hall, who evidently is very good friends with Dan Stevens.

7:24I got to appear in those Godzilla films as well. She's also an onslaught. And you even listen to the music in those Godzilla pictures. Adam Wingard's very fond of that kind of electronic, very synth heavy, like kind of John Carpenter derives score. And that was, I mean, that's all over onslaught, of course. But that's kind of an element of the Godzilla pictures as well. So he's going back low budget because onslaught, surely that didn't cost a lot. I'd be worried if it did. I mean, I'm sure it wasn't as cheap as, you know, I feel like there's the movie that, the types of movies that onslaught is harkening back to these kinds of sort of 80s genre-bending films. The kind of films John Carpenter would do, Escape from New York. Yeah, yeah. The big trouble little China is not the same extent, but certainly that sort of genre play. And those films were often like very low budget. And here he's like, he's clearly comfortable, but he's playing in that space where we are

8:28keeping things very ground level, even though the story is taking place against a larger backdrop. The plot of the film is very simple. Andrea Arhania is plays a military sniper who is now living in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere in the desert. And she's got PTSD. She's got a cache of weapons. And at the beginning of the movie, her ex-husband drops off their daughter and says, listen, I tried to call you. I need to go out of town. Someone needs to take care of her. And she's just like, ah, man, but she takes her anyway. And then there's a countdown. And the countdown is a little non-specific as to what it's counting down to, but when we introduce the B plot, it's clear we're counting down to the quote unquote onslaught, where Dan Stevens, not playing his character from the guest, which I'm a little disappointed about, but he's playing a mad scientist like left over from was a project paper clip

9:34or Operation Paperclip. Yeah, a project paper clip. That was the real life project to bring Nazi scientists out of the Nazi party and into the American governmental scientific institutions. Yeah, one of the great shames of our government's history and that's saying something. But, or at least in the last 100 years, actually, no, I don't even shit. We've done some shit. I don't even know if that stopped ten anymore. That's bad. Um, anyway, he is doing what all mad scientists do, building super soldiers, because no one has ever read a comic book or played a video game. And he is turning war criminals like people who snapped in a war zone and started like killing civilians into unstoppable like zombie Jason Voorhees rage monsters, um, because

10:40it seemed like a good idea at the time. And of course that will back that backfire spectacularly very quickly in the movie to the impact effect the bad fire so badly, I thought he did it on purpose. And then that he let the soldiers out. Yeah, I thought maybe that was like the plot because there's this whole thing about how like Michael Bean shows up with like a platoon of mercenaries and they're going to like sort of test the field readiness of the super soldiers. And that goes really, really bad. And I thought, okay, maybe Dan Stevens intended for this to happen. And that's why he's so mad. But based on the way the story goes, I don't think that's what was intended at all. In a long story short, they end up, you know, absconding into the open world. And they are making a b-line for that trailer park, which is more of a coincidence than anything else, but they are headed in that direction, killing everything they see. And there is also a government agent who is called into service randomly because there's

11:48an emergency while he's high on Molly. And so he's got to do all of the sort of the cleanup and like take care of the conspiracy shit while he's high, which is a fun setup that I don't think they do very much with. And it all builds to like sort of a third act climax where Adirahonia and a few other characters, including a regionalville Johnson from Die Hard and The Voice of the Shredder Fam, their vets and they fight off these other vets. And that's the movie. It's very simple in many ways. Yeah, it takes place mostly in this very hopeless trailer park out in the middle of nowhere. There's only like maybe a dozen people living their max, most of them are veterans. And the Adirahonia character is very, even though she has PTSD, she's like kind of content with the remoteness of it, even though it's kind of a hard scrap of life and the generators

12:52don't always work and she doesn't have any food around. She's still like living with guns. The character isn't like incredibly rich or anything, but I did like the character. Sam, I think she's great. I think they make a convincing case that she's a big action star in this movie. I'd like to see more of her in that role. Good. That's well done. She's amazing. Good for her. And we have some like pretty broadly sketch. One of the veterans is played by Eric Wareheim of Tim at Eric fame and he plays kind of this like loser character. He has a line early on about how he can't make rent because his ex wife locked up his prize bonsai trees. There's little quirks and little character bits. They're minimal, but they're in there and I appreciate that. It's not even that the quirks are minimal. It's that the number of characters is minimal because we introduce the Eric Wareheim character and he's, is Eric Wareheim, right? That's the other one. Eric Wareheim, yeah.

13:52Eric Wareheim and he's quirky. Okay, cool. Reginald Folle Johnson. He's got like dignity and then everyone else at this trailer park is a vague notion of a person. Well they're background characters. Then we know they're like any any slasher movie and this is a slasher movie for to be sure. The a lot of the main characters aren't really well sketched out because we know that they're, you know, they're worm food pretty, pretty much. I think there's a difference between not well sketched out and clearly sketched out. And what I mean is that if you look at a lot of slasher movies, even not particularly good ones that I think make more of an impression on onslaught. I'm not a big fan of this film. I think if you look at like a lot of slasher films, you'll see a lot of characters who have very little depth, but are very clearly articulated. This guy is the sleazy guy. This guy is the big bully jock.

14:53This lady is the nerdy librarian type. And yeah, these are cliches. I'm not calling it great writing, but as you say, they're fodder. They're here to be killed, but you need to have some impression of them. They're at least an archetype. And I feel as though with the exception of the three main characters and the little girl, this is a slasher movie where almost everyone who dies is a character that I couldn't tell you literally one thing about them. Like not even they're a nerd. Like I don't know anything about them. And as a result, you know, the sort of the fun violence of it feels less like we're killing these like sort of two-dimensional cartoon characters and there's a certain superficial pleasure to be taken in that because the movie only takes itself so seriously. And it becomes more about just killing lots of random people. And I think that changes the tone. And it makes it less of a slasher and makes it more of like a tragic tale of mass murder

15:57in a way that I found a lot of fun. Maybe less fun, but I think that plays into what kind of the point of this movie. It's a slasher movie. But and I'll say this, sometimes a slasher movie is only as good as it's slasher. If you have a really charismatic monster, you're going to be drawn into it even if the film is kind of mediocre overall. Some people have like project a lot of character on to say it like Jason Voorhees just by sort of his movements and the people he chooses to kill. I watch some of those old slasher and I don't like necessarily see a lot of character in the killers. I just sort of see these forces of nature. What I like about the killers in this and there's three of them. They escape the super soldier program. We didn't pause to mention that Dan Stevens is playing a weird little guy. He's got like, he's like really overacting. He's got a glass high and this really bizarre hairdo and he's like engaged in this SNM

17:00relationship with the Rebecca Hall character. So clearly there's like this element of madness running through this movie and where these killers came from. And when the killers appear, we see them mostly in silhouette. These soldiers that are just armed to the teeth. They have guns or chainsaws or cleavers, whatever they can get their hands on. And we see their silhouettes and we see just their pupils glowing in the darkness. And their film in such a way that they're actually really nightmarish and terrifying in a way I appreciated. Sure. And but what we have is more than just slasher monsters who are out to sort of kill teenagers who have sex or you know, or some kind of like demonic figure. These are products of the American military. So what there's what this movie is doing is equating the horrors of war and that tragic mass murder you were talking about with a slasher movie. And I think the coldness of it is actually a very important point that when it comes to

18:01combat and murder on the battlefield, it is kind of senseless. And these soldiers aren't discerning. They just bring death wherever they go. There's a scene early on where we see some characters that we haven't really got to know very well yet at like a convenience store at a gas station. And it's just a massacre. These people come in and just start killing. And we don't know if there's any sort of rhyme or reason to it. And really that's all war is. It just sort of charges into places and kills. And I found that to be not profound, but at least it had a point. Well, I don't disagree with the point. I think the movie's stance is pretty clear. What I think what I'm disagreeing with is that it plays like a slasher. I don't think it does. I think it has slasher elements. But I actually think it has a lot more in common structurally with a siege picture because we are there was like, there's literally a countdown to a confrontation where a bunch of guys are going to move into a place and kill everyone in that place.

19:05And we spent the majority of the movie setting up those people and their environments of that this big. It's the same thing as like the end of the two towers or problematic movie, but structurally extremely sound Zulu or assault on precinct 13 and other John Carpenter movie where we're just building and building and building to like an epic confrontation. And I found the actual confrontation once we got there to be extremely underwhelming because all the other characters except for like the main three make no impression and they're dispatched very quickly. And as a result, it ends up feeling just basically like, and here's three people versus three people. And they don't do anything terribly clever with that climax and it all just kind of just kind of stops after a while. Like I literally thought like there's a moment in the film where like some people come in and you think maybe like, oh no, the reinforcements have arrived in a bad way. Or whatever. And then they were just basically like, oh, and we're just wrapping this up now.

20:06And I'm like, I thought the third act was just getting started. And I was actually really disappointed by how like minimal the genre element was because yes, your point is well taken about the way that the military dehumanizes people, a, their own soldiers and b, the people's soldiers are intended to kill and that does real harm to people abroad and at home. But I also feel like that was a point that was made in a far more articulate, let alone entertaining manner in the guest. And as a result, even just thematically, this feels pretty repetitive to me and a little underwhelming. Well, the only thing that I think that the message stands just fine, what the part that really upset me was, well, it didn't upset me. But the thing I can really kind of agree with you on is that it did start to feel a little underwhelming. The fact that it was just a siege picture at a trailer park and didn't sort of explode

21:07on a much larger level, I expected the action to be so much bigger and crazier than it ended up being. It was on such a small scale. It did start make me start wondering why these killer soldiers were focusing for so long on this particular trailer park when they could have gone into a city center or like a mall and just started laying waste to people. Or if they had started the movie with that and like they were kind of making their way to smaller and smaller towns, the fact that this handler character, the one that was on drugs and is on the killer's trail, didn't come in and affect the plot in any kind of way. It was also really perfuxery. That felt like, that's just like, it, that, that feels like a bad joke. You know, it's almost like, I know, I've seen a lot of really terrible B pictures that follow that kind of structure where they set something up and they don't bother to pay it off. But the thing about those B pictures is they're bad. So what we have here is some bad decisions going into this movie.

22:09Now, I did like this film, however, because it does have this kind of crazy driving quality that I did appreciate. And I did like the violence with the soldiers. I liked how much blood there was. They didn't hold back when it come to actual murder in this picture. And and really I got a hand at to those killers because they were just truly utterly terrifying in ways that I don't see in a lot of slasher films these days. I think the cinematographer's sound design helps a lot with that. Like I don't know. That's for sure. I don't really like this movie very much, but he's such a good storyteller. I just don't think he's got a very good story this time. Yeah. The filming is really dynamic. There's a lot of like fast edits. It's super stylish. So the violence is like really keeps things going along. And I think the energy remains high throughout which I appreciate. I don't know. I also I think every time we're running into characters that we're not going to develop or have say interest, had say or do interesting things.

23:10And then those characters die very anticlimatically and unceremoniously. I did find that kind of boring. Because not only was it boring, it was boring and it didn't build anything. Because again, that's a seed picture structure. You're introducing characters. You're introducing geography. You're introducing subplots. So that when the action finally kicks in in the second half or even the last third of the movie, everything comes to a head. And we know how we know where all the pieces on the chessboard are. And then we're about to see the filmmakers like final end game. And we're about to be blown away like at the end of searching for Bobby Fisher. And I wasn't. I just thought it would end it in a very it built up to a very frankly kind of routine finale. I thought we were going to go into some weird fucking territory. And I don't think it takes itself seriously enough to be as muted as it is. And I think it is set. It's taking itself so like wackily in some regards that it's odd that it's holding itself back in so many ways.

24:13I agree with that. And another upsetting element was that even if you only if you look really character carefully, will you see connections between this film and the guest? And in fact, there's if you stayed for the credits, there's like images and newspaper clips that they put next to the credits is the credits role. And there is a passing reference on one of those little chirons that's just in the credits to something called project David, which was the name of Dan Stevens character from the last. So this is is technically in the same universe, but not in any kind of meaningful way. I kind of hoped that Dan Stevens plays this like kind of kooky Nazi mad scientist that there would be at least some kind of reference to oh yes, I have eight clones of myself, like something. I honestly think it's really make it more explicit. I honestly thought and again, we're talking about like, oh, why wasn't this movie part of a shared cinematic universe, which feels a little unlike us, but it's right there.

25:15Like the opportunity is there and there's so much fun you could do. Like I think there is absolutely a way to conclude this film and I'd be surprised if it didn't occur to them and I don't know why if it did, they decided not to maybe just the logistics didn't work out. I feel like there is like a sort of like an Avengers ending to this that would have allowed the characters who survived this film to team up with the characters who survived your next and the guest and create a kind of like clandestine, you know, I don't know black ops team or something. And I would have fucking cheered for that. I would have forgiven so much if at the end of the movie like Dan Stevens from the guest and what was your name from? Sharny Vincent from from your next they just like drove up in a car and just opened the door and said get in. I would have been like, yeah, like fuck yeah, because they wanted to do sequels to both of those movies. I had Simon Barrett on one of our old podcast ones and he was talking about how you know,

26:19they had this idea for a sequel to your next which would actually be inspired by the female convict scorpion movies and that would have been fucking wild. Like that would have been very cool, but your next even though it was like a critical success wasn't a big hit and I feel like the guest was also critical success was a more modest hit and I don't know. I would have thought like this would have been an opportunity for them to go just just kind of nuts with it. And weirdly, this feels more pulled back creatively, not just than your next and the guest, but then the Godzilla movies. Those Godzilla movies are nuts. Those Godzilla movies all kind of like Godzilla rolls up into the Colosseum like a cat in a cardboard box. Like that's just weird shit that happens and here we get a shootout at a convenience store and yeah, it's brutal. It's not very creative. So I found this movie to be a little underwhelming. It's not terrible.

27:19And I bet that there are people who have this might be a case of expectation, but I honestly just don't think it functions terribly well on its own. And I think if this was like the first Wingard movie I saw, I would be like, I see the potential here, but I don't see this film working. Yeah, I agree with that point. Even though this is like Adam Wingard's like tenth movie because he's done a lot of low budget horror films prior to your next. And he always played out on the edge. He did films like Otto Orotic. Did he do one of those VHS pictures? I think it was an auto-orotic. I don't think he directed that one, did he? I think he directed that one. Okay, hold on, look that up just to be just so we can be sure. Yeah. Otto Orotic. Oh, this is going to be a fun Google search. I'm running under the watch. You can also look up Adam Wingard. Okay, no, here we go. We were both right. It was co-directed by Adam Wingard and also Joe Swanberg.

28:23Okay. And it was also co-written by Swanberg Wingard and Simon Barrett. So they're all part of an enclave. But yeah. Yeah. But I agree. I think if this had been, it feels like a first film, which is weird because this is not his first movie. It feels like he's trying to get away with something, is trying stuff for the first time. But yeah, he's already done multiple blockbusters. He did those Godzilla pictures. He also did a Blair Witch sequel. So he's playing with... Which I think is underrated a little bit. I like that Blair Witch sequel. It's not amazing, but I thought it was a pretty solid, you know, just supernatural, found footage movie in its own right. Yeah. So, not sure exactly what he was trying to do with onslaught. Other than maybe he wanted to be bloody again. Like it's been a while since he's dealt with this much gourd violence. He just wanted to do something really violent. And it's certainly violent. It'll scratch your violence, itch. Yeah. But yeah, it does feel pretty low rent for something at this point in his career.

29:26All right. Well, speaking of low rent, let's talk about the runner. The runner is a new thriller. It's an Amazon Prime original, Star Skullgidot, and it was directed by Kevin MacDonald, not the one from Kids in the Hall. But the Oscar winning, I think I'm going to Oscar for a documentary and then he's also in my other films as well. But this is one of those movies where the bad guy refuses to do his job and he would much rather like force the hero to do it for them, which always sounds like a cooler thing than it actually is. And actually it's just like you're not in control of anything. Like it's just absolute chaos here. You're not like I mean, one thing if you were just like jigsaw and you were doing it for your own kicks, but like you were hired to do a job. And if I were the person who hired you and I found out instead of just killing a guy,

30:29which you could do very easily, I'm going to like because the plot of this movie is Galkadot is a, she's a lawyer. And in her latest case, there's like a really rich guy who was accused of murdering some people and Damien Lewis, great actor, calls her on the phone and says, a kidnapped your son. And if you don't run across London, you can't take a car. Why? Because it's a movie. There's no good reason for it. You need to run across London and kill the star witness before he goes to the trial. Or I'll kill your son. And like again, if this is just Damien Lewis getting his rocks off, I believe it because people don't always make smart choices if it's just for their own like evil pleasure. He was hired to do this. And then later we find out his contingency plan is like a wily coyote bomb like with like three sticks of dynamite taped together with like a clock and some wires.

31:30And it's like, and it's like listen, that's an ineligant solution. That would have worked. You would be done by 11 a.m. and you could go about your day. And instead we're doing this bullshit. If there's just the premise alone makes no sense. And it's this and this is a premise you've seen in a hundred movies before. There's nothing striking or notable or creative about this setup. And it doesn't play fair because these types of movies are supposed to be really taught. In fact, this takes place mostly in real time. There's a countdown clock on the camera that the nine years in time to time. Oh yeah. Yeah. So it's more or less in real time. And but then the film like doesn't really have strict rules about what she's supposed to do or where she's supposed to be. The we're kind of barking orders. I have to do this and you have to do this. But later in the film, we'll learn that and this is and I hate this because rather than

32:32to give us this information at up front, actually hide this information from us until the very end when it real when we realize that she's actually been kind of like working against this evil collar all the time. She's had a plan that she's been doing, but they kind of kept it camera. And it doesn't feel like playing fair. You're right. It's not playing fair. There's not this kind of sense of taught immediacy, even though it takes place in real time. Right. There's a literal ticking clock and it's not adding tension. How do you even fucking do that? And oh God, I hate this so much. Because here's something this movie with the premise, the premise of this movie, it's super fucking contrived. And I could accept super fucking contrived if again, it felt like practicality wasn't the point of the villain scheme, but even setting that aside, ultimately all we're doing is creating an environment for the hook of the film to happen. And the hook is this, what if your child was in danger and you had to physically run

33:38for 90 minutes to save their life? Now that right there is an exciting idea. It's not a story yet, but it's an exciting idea. And it's visceral. It's a run-low run without like the time displacement fantasy element. And with that, you want a propulsive storyline. You want to have this character constantly running, racing, solving problems, running into unexpected difficulties and having to like parkour their way around shit. Like it is a absolute sprint of a premise. And the movie fails to take any advantage of that in a variety of ways. One, except for one sequence where Gal Gadot someone steals her cell phone on a subway, right as she's getting off of it. So she has to run as fast as she can to the next subway stop before the subway gets there.

34:40And that's clearly a scene where Kevin Macdonald thought, okay, I need to pull out all the stops. We need to really feel the momentum here. The rest of the film, she's doing a light jog. Like her son is going to die. Where's the immediacy of like Tom Cruise running at the end of mission impossible three? Where's the immediacy of Frank and Peptanta in run-low-low run? Those are people who are racing to save a loved one's life. Gal Gadot cannot be fucking bothered. But the other thing, and you brought this, you brought this up to them. I think it's smart. It's dull because there's nothing in the middle. She's just running from one side of London to another. Well, Damian Lewis is like talking shit into her ear. There's the reason why a film like, I don't know, look at something like diehark with a vengeance movie, which is aged weirdly, but it's still very exciting. There is many challenges in the middle. It's not just I'm racing here and I got to get there by the end of the film. It's like in the meantime, I need to do this. And even if that's just maybe like whittled down their will, like I need to like, here's what you're going to do.

35:43You're getting really cocky. If you don't rob a convenience store right now, I am going to kill your kit. You know, like that kind of thing would be like, oh shit. So like now there's like, there's another challenge that it needs to be done quickly. And you know, when a character has to make decisions very quickly in a very panicky state, they're prone to making mistakes. And so this one could have had a huge chaotic energy. And instead it feels very, very dull. And a big part of this is also gal Gadada. It's not a good actor. Can we, can we just say it? It's been so long to take him to perform. Like he was good in the first wonder woman. I'll give her the first wonder. But I think she's really good in that. I haven't seen her good since. And even I said at the time when that first wonder woman came out that, you know, I was closing my eyes. Maybe and maybe this is just a prejudice of mine, but I was closing my eyes and picturing an actress like somebody with a lot of personality, like Julie strain in the role of wonder woman, just this gigantic cartoonish actress in this

36:45superhero role. And I'm seeing gal Gadada just giving you know, a fine performance, but it's kind of like low in charisma. She's supposed to be playing it kind of dignified. And it's okay. She's pulling that off at least. But no, I wanted something like somebody a lot bigger. And ever since it's like, I'm waiting for her to like sort of break out again. It's like, where is it? Where's, where's the energy? Where's the craziness? And here she is in a film where, okay, you're now given license to play it big. You're in this panic situation. You're in this contrived action movie scenario. Somebody's talking in your earpiece. You can yell into the mid-air. You can do whatever you like. I'm sure. And she's just a person. Yeah. Just a lady. I feel like gal Gadada. There's a lot of movie stars. And we've talked about this a lot. There's a lot of movie stars who have a limited range. But if they find a role that caters to that range, they can be wonderful.

37:47Like Schwarzenegger is not a great actor. But within a very, within a very narrow window of either unapologetic masculinity or conversely, apologetic masculinity and something that kind of makes fun of that. Like I don't know, kindergarten, copper twins. He can be great. He can be legitimately like charismatic and fun to watch and build a character who we, even if we don't think they're complicated, we find them endearing. But then you take them out of that wheelhouse and they don't know what to do. You watch film like junior and it's like, oh, no, you do not know how to play sensitive and maternal. That's not your thing. I feel like Wonder Woman, the original Wonder Woman played into Gal Gadada's very specific strengths. I think she is good at looking like she takes herself very seriously. And if the material warrants that, she can get away with that. And Wonder Woman definitely qualifies.

38:47The other thing I think she's good at, I think the movie, I think the movie really flies on this contrast, the original Wonder Woman, is that she's got a lot of dignity, but she's also a fish out of water. And that's something that I think, I believe it. If you tell me that Gal Gadada looks like she doesn't belong, I would be like, yeah, no, I believe that. I believe that she's, she's not like the person who should be in this situation right now. Like Wonder Woman at a department store is a scene Gal Gadada can play. But in the runner, she's supposed to be in her element and she still feels at a place. The opening like her first line at dialogue in this movie is an unparaphraising, but it's it's this straightforward. I have a big trial today and I'm a bit nervous. Okay. And the way she delivers that line, it's like no one told her what nervous means.

39:48It's just like I have a big trial today and I'm a bit nervous. And I'm like, can we put something behind that? In her defense, the script to this movie, like sucks out loud. It's so bad. There's so much bad dialogue in this movie. I was even like texting you lines while I was watching because I watched it on at home on a screener. It's like, so it's like, this is how ridiculous this movie is. Like you can't fathom how much blood there is in a human body. Okay. That's that's kind of a visceral line if you're talking to like a serial killer and they've cut people open and they they're surprised at how much somebody blood. And then she repeats that line later to a random character. Did you know that the human body contains more blood than you can fathom? And I'm like, isn't it like four to six point, isn't it four point five to six points? Like, I think I think I know that I know it's four to six liters.

40:48I think it's more like 10 to 12. Or liters. That's right. But that's right. I'm sorry. Wrong wrong unitive measure. I wasn't that's quite a bit of blood. I'm not saying that's not a lot of blood. And if I saw all of that blood just kind of coming out of somebody at once, one of my first thoughts would be, huh, that's a lot of blood. I would also be responding very emotionally and very logically to that point. I was like, oh my God, we got to get we got to tie this up. We got to call 911, whatever. But like still, yeah, it's a lot. But yeah, it feels like the kind of thing that she is only thinking about academically. And yeah, it's a bad script. And this is like a particularly bad script. But yeah, there are also a lot of movies with bad scripts that are fun to watch because the people making them, even if they're saddled with a not very good script or even a terrible script or even just cheesy dialogue, understand what it is about the material that made us want to make this movie in the first place.

41:49So I feel like there's a version of this movie. All right, that was made like on the fly like maybe even without permits, like all throughout. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, as sort of go out into the street and shoot guerrillas. Now that'd be really exciting because these people don't know what's going on. Yeah, exactly. So like almost done in like a Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie where it's like, how did they get away with this? Like that would have been really cool. Even if the dialogue sucks, there would have been this like, oh my God, a camp, I think they did this or it feels real because again, the simple thrill of it is seeing someone race against the clock in a public to save someone's life. So they're highly motivated. They're deeply emotional. They're not necessarily making the best choices and they have to constantly move. Like that right there could work, even if the script was crap, just if it felt like it had momentum and it doesn't. And it's such a weird misfire because there's so many simple things you could have

42:50done to make this story work. And there's one other thing this movie brought up that and it's not really just this movie, but while I was watching it because it wasn't engaging me intellectually and I had time to ponder. There's a bit at the beginning of this movie where Damien Lewis calls Gal Gadot and he says, I have your son and then he puts the son on the phone. And this one talks about it. It's like, oh, this guy gave me ice cream. And I was like, did we never have the talk about strangers with this kid? But then we find out that the kid has been in a he put the kid in a diabetic coma, right? That's right. So she wasn't talking to the kid and he says, it's one, it's, it's amazing. What you can do with AI. And I feel like, you know, there's a lot of technology that when it is invented, filmmakers get really excited because we can use this as a plot point in a movie.

43:51Oh, the internet exists. We're going to do a whole bunch of internet thrillers, all of a sudden, like the net and fear.com. Yeah. But there's also technology that when it is invented, it makes a screenwriter's job harder. And cell phones are the ear example of this because everything got way more convenient. You know, you don't have to drive across. Separate characters anymore, you know, because they have a phone now that can just get vital information with the touch of a button that after race somewhere and tells them what in person. Yeah. Oh, no. Susan's husband is the killer. We got to drive over there. Susan, your husband's the killer. Thanks. Boom. Done. So I wasn't very convenient for daily life. But in a movie, it can really rob a story of tension if you're not careful until a lot of movies. When a cell phone would be a problem to the story, they neutralize it. I'm out of batteries. I'm out of service. It fell on the water. Whatever. Something. Um, AI, I think is going to create a similar kind of problem for screenwriters because at the beginning of this movie, they back, I says, I've kidnapped your son.

44:53And I've already told you he talked to you through AI. So yeah, he cannot convincingly give proof of life, which is what you need in a kidnapping thriller because otherwise the hero doesn't know that the person who was kidnapped isn't dead already. And that's very important. That's why you have I need, I need to be able to see a picture with them with like today's newspaper. Boom. There, that proves it, right? But now not only could Photoshop do that, but I could do that really easily. And even later when he like shows her like a video of the kid, that could have been AI too. For all, for all she knows, the kids still at school. And he's just hacked her phone so she can't call them like the teacher calls. That could be Damien Lewis too. You cannot convince a character as convincingly that a larger than life situation is real anymore because so many of the things, though many of the tools that a writer has to make the violence make the danger feel like it's actually happening. So many things can no longer be trusted.

45:54We cannot trust our reality. And so just even the basic premise of this falls apart. And I just wish they hadn't mentioned it. You know, to say it took place five years ago, problem solved. Or, or, you know, if the screenwriter is now budding up against this idea that AI is now going to make proof of life or any kind of video evidence suspect, you have to now start staging scenes where I need proof of life. And I need to see my son in person. Now that the killer also has to go through the all of these contrivances to get the kid to a public place where, you know, Gal Gadot can like see him or see him through a piece of a pan of glass or a close to a killer or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that's interesting because like that creates an interesting dialogue about the world that we live in that artificial intelligence has fucked this over with where we can no longer like we were having trouble believing reality anyway, just because of like political spin and publications that have a very distinct

46:56unapologetic slant in one direction or another. But if you can't tell your movie without, if you can't tell the story of your movie without removing the technological devices that make everything so much easier without removing a cell phone without removing like the need or without removing the ability to get something done when you're not in person. That's a condemnation of everything going on technologically right now. You know, like we can't do this movie unless we do it in person anymore. And that's the way we used to have to do it when Hitchcock was alive. You know, so I would just think that's again, the movie is not good for bringing that up, but every movie is going to have to deal with it. On some point, this closure day had the same problem at the end. Oh, we're revealing all of this video about aliens to the world on the news. And I'm like, I don't think most people on the planet would be willing to take that completely in face value.

47:56Right? I think we'll release a question. That's... I remember reading a couple of reviews about disclosure day about how this, it's like a message of hope and it's say, we're finally going to break through all of the BS. And people will see this news story that will unify them. It's like, have you been paying attention to the way the news works for the last 15 years? It's going to crack through the cynicism. No, it won't. No. We're going to go back to that. Most trusted of sources, a local news station. It's like what? There's like one live... One live VDR in disclosure day where someone says, we checked, it's not AI. And I'm like, nah, that's not enough. I don't buy that at all. Nope. Yeah, Superman had the same problem. Like Lex Luthor revealed that Superman's parents weren't benevolent. It actually sent him to Earth to conquer it and he never knew that. They have to have a line from Mr. Terrific who's like the super smart superhero. Where he says, I know the guys who broke this, that's real.

48:58And I'm just like, that's pretty fucking thin. We can't trust it. We can't trust it. We just literally can't. Anyway, the runner is quite bad. I have two more movies to review. Yeah, it's so bad. Oh, and one just... Oh, yeah. I guess I've made this point already. But yeah, that they have seen near the end where we're introduced to information that we weren't made privy to earlier in the movie. And it's supposed to be a real-time thriller. It's like, you need to show her... You need to set up and pay off. You can't just sort of blindside us with that crap. You know what you're gonna do? If you're gonna do a thing where... Oh, if the camera angle had been reversed, we would have seen her, like, I don't know, like leave a message or like whisper to a guy or something like that. Seeing her try to do that would be fun. You can keep that in. It makes her seem smart, right? But what you could do if you're playful, and this is something where I think you need like a filmmaker with like an imbush quality like Sam Raimi, someone who is taking some kind of maniacal glee

50:00in making the protagonist's life harder. If we saw like, what if she like left a message, like she was able to quickly jot down a message and hand it to somebody, but then as she like ran away thinking, oh, thank God, I got the message out. He like crumpled it up without reading it and threw it in a trash can. But then maybe later in the movie, you could see that the guy that that person was talking to who saw the altercation after she ran away and we were outside of her like field of vision. He looked at the note because it seemed suspicious and he read it. And so things actually worked out like you could have your cake you needed to. You can see her try and it would make her appear more intelligent throughout the film. And then still make it feel like it's not gonna work. And then still give us the reveal that it did in a satisfying way. Yeah, yeah. There are so many ways to do this right. This is one of those movies actually. I would, if you're an aspiring filmmaker

51:00and you want to know how thrillers work, don't watch a thriller that works. Watch something like The Runner because it doesn't work and you're only going to be able to see the things that don't work. You're going to be seeing the lack of charisma from the lead actress. You're going to be seeing the implausibilities in the plot. You're going to be seeing and hearing the truly terrible dialogue. You're going to be showing understanding why it is important to parse out pieces of information in a certain way. Is there a way this movie could be good? Sure, but it's so unoriginal. It's the only way it's going to be good is if you make it really, really stylish because there's not any original ideas in this. Or a major reward. Yeah, or rewrite it. So there's some novel twist in it. I can't say what that would be, but a lot of artists when they get started, and this is extremely common and it's totally understandable and I'm not criticizing it. But a lot of artists when they get started, they start by sort of, sorry, even imitating their influences.

52:00Like, I want to write horror and I'm extremely influenced by a growl and po. A lot of your early works might you might try doing a post story, right? It's what you know. And then gradually as you do that, you find your own voice. I maintain that I think it's important to watch, read, listen to whatever you are forming to the classics. But I think it's a much more exciting exercise. Or at the very least, a very valid alternative. Instead of saying, listen, like my favorite thriller is, I don't know, Strangers on a Train. So I'm going to make a Strangers on a Train-type movie. What about, what have you did this instead? Take a movie that does not work, like the runner. And instead of trying to make something like something you like, fix this. Take the basic premise. And do it right because you can tell everything that's wrong with it. And now all I got to do is fix it. Think of this movie as your first draft. Now granted, you might not be able to sell that, depending on like,

53:04I mean, maybe if you take like the basic premise and then just change everything else. But I think it's a writing exercise that could be really useful in like a screenwriting class or something like, you know? I've heard it, uh, positive before that of a final film project at film school should be to remake a really bad movie. Like here's the, here remake the room. Yeah. remake troll too, you know, these notoriously bad movies. remake them, make them good. What can you do with these ideas? And I think that's going to be a much more valuable lesson in filmmaking the way, uh, the business works. Yeah. Then watching it all the in my Bergman picture. One of my favorite assignments I ever had in film schools. So great. Uh, it was an, uh, an editing class. And they brought in the raw footage. Like all the takes they said cut print it for a not, it was terrible. But a not very good TV movie, right? With some kind of cops and robbers thing.

54:04And they said there are two different scenes. You can pick either one. I'm not going to show you the way it was originally edited. You're going to edit this scene together so that it's coherent. There's character beats. The plot moves forward. Everything is clear and exciting. Bloody plot. And then it was really great. And so everyone and was really interesting because we watched everyone's pieces. And everyone did something slightly different with the exact same material. Because we all had different ideas. I was storytelling work. But then and this was the great part because it was a TV movie. And an old school TV movie not like an HBO original, but like a network film. Because a network TV movie has to accommodate commercial breaks and has the comedy commercial breaks at a regular interval. Like I forget what it is, but it's like five and a half minutes. You get five and a half minutes and then you get like a 90 second commercial break. Um, yeah. So what the professor did was they watched like the piece that I did. And I did this like conversation about cops trying to figure out like the killer's motive.

55:06And I thought I did a good job. I still think if I watched that footage again, that that scene would play really, really great. And then he was like, hey, this is really, really good. We need you to cut it by 30 seconds. And that's exactly what they do. Because damn it, we need time for another commercial. So you need to find where in this pretty tightly constructed scene, you need to make room for 30 seconds. And that might end up meaning the scene doesn't work as well. But that's the path you got to follow because compromises are part of this industry. Yeah. So for sure. Yeah. So I think working on those adverse conditions and maybe trying to fix something that doesn't work or or I think that's a very, very, very good exercise. And I think the runner, you're right. I think the runner is an ideal film to play with this. Because there's not a lot you could do that wouldn't improve it. That's not a lot. Well, and it's also it's such familiar material. Yeah. You know how to sort of you know what you're handling. And you know how to toy with it a little bit.

56:06So yeah, if we have any aspiring filmmakers out there, we encourage you to re-edit the runner. Yeah. Re-edit or rewrite it. We write it up fine too. Or you write, yeah. Or if that's too much effort and I realize that's asking you to rewrite like a hundred page screenplay and that's feels like a lot. Don't don't rewrite it. Just rewrite the outline. Right. Like figure out like how do you how do you take like you know every scene is it's own little index card. And I don't know how many index cards the movie would have off the top of my head. Let's say let's say let's say a hundred. Not even that. That's probably we can condense it. Let's say it's got 60. All right. Fix the outline from the basic skeleton of it. Find a way to make this work better. And I think you can do it. Or potentially you could even look at the outline. You could look at the skeleton and say you know what the skeleton isn't the problem. The skeleton is it's got flaws but it's it's not like you don't need to change it a lot. It's all the stuff on top of it.

57:09It's all the style. It's all the editing. It's all the acting. It's it's like the weird. You know opportunities missed. And I think that's a good lesson to learn too. But we should move on. So a couple of years ago there was a pretty darn good thriller called Fall. And Fall was about excuse me. Two young women, one of whom was like a thrill-seeking influencer like watch me as I climb this mountain or whatever. And she convinced her best friend to climb to the top of this like super tall rickety TV tower out in the middle of the desert that's already been decommissioned. Just to do it just for the thrill to feel alive. And then when they get to the top of it and it's like it's it's like a needle like there's no no structure or anything. When they get to the top of it the like the ladder beneath them breaks

58:10and there's no way to get down. And now they're stuck. I don't know how far like 2000 feet up or whatever in the middle of fucking nowhere the cell phones don't work obviously it's middle of the desert. And they're fucked. Well why wouldn't they work they're closer to the satellites. I don't fucking know dude. Anyway my point is that's another example right a phone would ruin that movie. Your phone works like hey coach. So help me they send rescue services. You're home in two hours. Okay. Right. But like again you have to you have to work that out and otherwise the premise doesn't work. But we want the premise to work because it is scary to imagine yourself on top of a very tall very rickety structure with like maybe five square feet of room to stand on. Like that's terrifying and the way that fall was filmed that I'm sure a lot of it was faked but like it might have even been entirely faked and it was just pretty convincing. But because they're in the middle of the desert there's nothing behind them.

59:11We are constantly hyper aware of the height. And if you have any fear of heights or even if you just don't like the idea of falling from them which is where I stand I'm like I'm not really afraid to be high up but I really don't want to fall. Fair. Fair. So fall even though it's not a particularly ingenious film it makes a lot out of a solid setup. A solid visceral setup. It did pretty well and now we have a sequel it's called Fall 2 Dead Point and Fall 2 Dead Point. It doesn't quite follow the die hard to mode but it's pretty close. You right recall that okay die hard was John McLean trapped in a building with terrorists and die hard to was John McLean trapped in an airport with terrorist. And well you know not terrorists but bad guys. I think the first time there were there were thieves but everyone thought it was but you don't want to be there's trapped in a yes contained location with a bunch of bad guys.

1:00:17There's a line in die hard to colon die harder that was basically how can the same shit happen to the same guy twice. And it really and it really does out loud. Which is which he needs to because if he didn't bring that up we would constantly be thinking it like that's something right something happens twice it's a coincidence right. Like oh I can't believe I've only been in two accidents in my life and they were both on Figueroa road or whatever like it's like that then there's that great line of dialogue from and it's from an episode of Phineas and Ferb. Yeah yeah yeah like if I had a nickel for every time this happens well it only have two nickels but it's still weird that it happened twice. Exactly so you just need someone to mention that and you can kind of get away you can't you can't do it too many times but two you get away with two so and this one one of the care and the movie expects you to know this going in so if you don't want to know what happened at the end of fall I'll be vague but

1:01:19if you don't want to know you're going to want to skip ahead. At the end of fall only one of the characters makes it. Okay at the beginning of this movie we see a montage of people talking about the survivor and the person who didn't make it and then we cut to the deceased woman's sister and she is not a thrill-seeker she was very uncomfortable with like her sister was like hey let's jump out of a plane together and she's like that was very traumatizing for her it's not her back and she's mourning her sister she loved her sister but she has no interest in the things that she did and so she's actually giving away you're selling a lot of her stuff and after the you know sort of media frenzy over how novel and experience they went through was there's a lot of interest people are very people kind of swarming her. She ends up selling a lot of her sister's old stuff like her old car or whatever to one of her sister's friends and her sister's friends

1:02:22finds in that bunch of stuff it's not a bucket list it's called a bucket list which is kind of funny okay and it's a big big scrapbook of all the super fucking dangerous shit she wants to do before she dies and then the best friend says hey to honor your sister's memory why don't we do one of these all right I'm like okay see now that's that's that's you know and to be fair the sister says that sounds like a terrible idea I don't want to do that but then she like starts having like bad dreams and stuff and things this might be cathartic so okay a little thin but I think you can it's it's in a good enough excuse for the movie to happen right I guess I'm with you yeah I'm with you yeah I know the thing that they decide to do is called a plank walk there is a mountain and I don't think it's a I could be wrong I tried to look this up I don't think it's a real mountain but I think it's based on a real mountain in Thailand where you climb to the top of this fucking

1:03:22mountain and then along the edge of a mountain someone has installed wooden planks that you can like just sort of walk along the edge of the mountain like the sheer rock face and of course they've been there forever and they're rickety and it looks like my idea of hell like it's the absolute it's something I would I wouldn't climb that TV tower but I sure as fuck wouldn't do this there's no fucking way kudos to all you thrill seekers who are into this kind of thing more power to you be safe but I would never fucking do this um so they go to Thailand they find a guide who will take them even though it's illegal it's off season and they said like if there's rain there's rock slides it's considered more dangerous but if you give me five thousand dollars I'll do it I'll take you up there okay they climb up there they do the plank walk and sure enough there is a rock slide

1:04:26and the rock slide doesn't just like take out like the planks in front of them and it doesn't just takes out the planks behind them it takes up planks on both sides and now they there's nowhere for them to fucking go and they have to decide are we going to like they have ideas about how to send help like they have like a laser pointer that they hope can maybe reach like a campsite down at the ground but they don't know um okay it's like they're not they're they're trying to solve the problem and I'll give them credit for that um but ultimately they're fucked and that is a scary proposition and I I wouldn't like to be in that situation and I'm curious how they're going to get out of this one so I'm with you fall to dead point I actually think you kind of work there is a problem this movie has and it's fundamental to its premise um and I think if if I hadn't seen the original fall I wouldn't be thinking about it so much where because the original fall took place at the top

1:05:30of a TV tower in the middle of nowhere and every single angle you got in the characters accentuated our feelings of anxiety of aquaphobia um in fall two they're up against a sheer rock face and a lot of this movie looks like you could have just filmed it on a soundstage and again maybe fall one was and maybe fall one was and it was just really good green screen or something I don't know but it didn't feel like it but here it's like we're just not getting this constant sense of erica that the first one had uh and it diminishes it especially in the second act and then the third act admittedly does go in a different direction than last time it gets pretty fucking ridiculous if I'm being honest but was ridiculous in a fun way so I'll let it go um so listen it's not great it is a pretty repetitive if you've seen the original fall and I think if you've seen the original fall recently it's gonna amplify that but if you saw fall when it came out and you haven't revisited it I think this is gonna play pretty good and

1:06:33the last thing I'll say about it and then I'm curious if you have any thoughts is uh fall two and three are being filmed either back-to-back right at the same time and there is a cliffhanger forgive me at the end of this movie and I'm I'm not 100% sure what they're getting at but if it's what I think they're getting at I really want to see the next one because it sounds fucking ludicrous and I'm okay and I'm totally on board for it and I hope they go in the extreme nonsense melodramatic direction I think they're going in and I really want to fucking see that and I hope I'm right and I hope it's not just uh same shit happened again like no no no I want you to do the the thing that it seems like you're setting up that sounds like a terrible idea but I haven't seen that movie before and I want you to do it so I'm hopeful hopeful the next one goes even out here but

1:07:34yeah I folded it away it's not bad what are your thoughts what are my thoughts on this movie that I didn't see it but like you know like I'm curious if anything we talked about is of interest to you if you have any questions about it or it brings up a thought you have a kind of well the I'm fond of filmmakers who can sort of get a lot of tension out of those single locales the problem is I think there's so many movies like this now that maybe we've explored everything that can be done and if I think what a lot of these movies depend on kind of their actual accuracy to like the science of wilderness survival like I'm trapped at the top of a pole you're gonna have to show me a lot of different angles to really give me that you know the fear of heights or you're gonna have to show how long it's gonna take before like oh

1:08:35no my shoe fell off and okay well just let it go it's you know we can't get it back and then like four minutes later in the movie you show the shoe hitting the ground you know really kind of accentuates yeah fair enough yeah well maybe but you know just kind of give give me a good sense as to the actual reality of the danger and then if somebody is like a skilled wilderness survival show them trying clever things to survive yeah show me what it's like for them to you know build a shelter in the woods or fight off a wolf for you know find water in a place that has no water or fight off a shark when there's lost in the ocean whatever it is you you have to make it really kind of visceral and if it looks cheap then it's not gonna work yeah I saw a film kind of like in this subgenre I think I saw them both actually the 47 meters down movies yeah

1:09:35where people are lost under under the ocean it's like oh god it's a pretty like in a shark cage in the sharks everywhere yeah yeah and and they have to survive underwater oh no like they're really fucked then and I think a big error with that film was in order to film it you can't really show you can't really film at the bottom of the open ocean with real sharks yeah so they had to really make everything look really murky in like a controlled water tank so they did film underwater but at the same time I can't see anything so I think this is a neat premise but I'm not getting really involved with it because I know it because it looks really fake I feel like I feel like the first 47 meters down a particular got away with that especially if you watched it on the big screen because on the big screen you're like in a void it's almost like watching the movie gravity right it's just like yeah maybe you can't see around you but also there's not much to see except maybe your shark and it just kind of amplifies the sense of like hellish hopelessness in that but I do

1:10:42agree that I think that this exact formula like one or two people are really fucked and they're isolated and it's not like there's a villain doing it to them they just have to survive an impossible situation maybe with the animal predator or something you brought a 47 meters down that's also the shallows which is a very good movie and there was also a movie that came out earlier this year called killer whale which co-starred Virginia Gardener who was also one of the stars of the original fall and oh interesting killer whale is just combining the shallows and fall you are trapped with one person you're isolated in this film they're trapped on a rock in a lagoon with an extremely pissed off orca whale and if they get in the water the work of whale tries to kill them boom okay very simple and I think it's not on watch it's kind of fun but as you watch it if

1:11:46you remember the movie fall you realize this is the same dramatic structure in every way the fights they have the revelations they have the part of the movie where one of the characters it's like it's now or never if I keep waiting I'm gonna be like too dehydrated or not have enough energy to make an actual run for it and save my own life that kind of thing yeah it hits at the exact same moment in the film more or less and so you realize that there is a real limitation so far at least to that formula and you need to find some other way to get around it or the all of these movies are going to get repetitive and we're not gonna use it anymore now fortunately I don't think these have hit enough of a zeitgeist it's not like there's it's not like a found footage movie but there was like one every couple of weeks and we got tired of the tropes really really fast aren't that many of these but if you like these they do start feeling really same very quickly you're right about them yeah yeah there's one coming out later this year it's called whale fall which sounds like yeah

1:12:52killer whale falling but no it's just about a guy who is swallowed by a squid and then the squid is swallowed by a whale and most of the movie takes place in the whales stomach yeah as he's trying to figure out how to survive like that's fucking awesome yeah that's like that that is absurd and I can't wait to see it because how the fuck are you gonna do that I'm sure honestly the trailer is gets an incredible sense of scale out of that like you just the way the like I was like it's like every night I used to have nightmares about monster the whale from Pinocchio when I was a kid just because that movie made him seem so terrifying and so gigantic that my little brain couldn't comprehend something not only this gigantic but wanting to kill me something about that seems so so one holy and whale fall is just like man if I if that movie came out when I was five I would still be fucking dramatized by it sounds so fucking cool I hope it's good I don't know monster in live action I'm super stoked for that one and I try not to anticipate movies but I make

1:13:55the occasional exception and that's one of them all right lastly there's another new film uh this is a film uh called by any means and it is a historical crime drama thriller it's kind of like dancing at the edge of a bunch of different uh uh sort of related genres it's not more one than the others but uh basically there's an interesting historical anecdote during the 1960s when there was uh I mean not that it was new but there was a lot of violence in the south directed towards civil rights activists uh and apparently a couple of times the FBI had an interesting solution to their problems because okay so these like activists went missing or this civil rights

1:14:55leader was killed but nobody's talking because they were killed by the clan and everyone is either terrified of pissing them off and being the next on their murder list or they're sympathetic and they're keeping them out shut on on principle so even if like you know when to be Johnson and Jake or Hoover are actually breathing down there and that can say hey you guys got to solve this problem you gotta find these missing people you gotta catch this killer nothing is working and apparently and there's some like you know the bait over how true this is but apparently uh at some point they decided to enlist a mafia hitman named Greg Scarpa to come down to the south and do whatever the fuck it takes to solve the problem uh and you know what that sounds like a hell of a premise for a movie right yeah well and they team him up with a young FBI agent one of the

1:15:59few black agents uh at the time uh that uh Greg Scarpa is played by Mark Walberg and if that revelation made you win yeah he's the worst part of the movie uh but uh but the protagonist is a fictionalized version of an FBI agent uh and he's played by Yaya Abdul Matin the second and that's a great actor he's awesome yeah I like him a lot yeah and I've been trying to get you to watch Wonder Man because that's ultimately well it's a superhero show it's mostly just about out of work actors and he fucking is amazing in it um so yeah he's playing a fictional character a fictional ized character and he's at a crossroads he wants to be uh uh sort of uh uh he he wants to believe in justice he joined the FBI because he wants to be part of the solution and he wants to break through the barriers and he wants uh black people to be in positions of power with in law enforcement and

1:17:00try to you know change from within nobbel in nobbel idea um but then like he'll go to a crime scene and he'll show his badge and the white cops will say I didn't see that you need to go like uh his power is only perceived as indeed all police power is yeah but in his case so many people are so unbelievably fucking racist that they will threaten the life of an FBI agent because they know they can get away with it because they're white and this is obviously extremely demoralizing to them and then he has partnered up with a mafia hitman who has been told you can kill whoever you need to kill yeah you can beat anyone up you can do whatever the fuck you do as long as the problem has solved and so he ends up like they you know if they're they're sort of an original odd couple kind of situation and the best parts of this movie are when yaya Abdul-Mateen the second is uh

1:18:09he's at a loss like he doesn't like he knows that what the Mark Walbert character is doing is wrong or at least the wrong way to do it but also this is the power that has been denied him that every other FBI agent would have and he's finally allowed to like there's a scene where they're trying to track down who purchased a gun from this gun store and the guns are even has a sign that says white suddenly and yaya Abdul-Mateen the second's character he walks in and the guy is like barely talking to him he shocks that he claims he's a police officer he's an FBI agent and Mark Walbert basically just says you know what the fuck you want to him and so he's able to beat the guy up and you can tell he's just like this is so fucking cathartic um but he stops short of like really really doing any serious damage and that's when Mark Walbert is like okay I'll do serious fucking damage and beats him up even more yeah and that's the interesting part of the movie is a character who should have power has been denied power and then this very unusual situation is able to have it in a way that

1:19:14makes them feel very conflicted yeah because because he knows he likes the power but he knows it's unethical and the audience does too like there's there's a part of me that doesn't give a shit because I'm sorry man this is the clan we're talking about those are bad yeah that's the clan those are bad guys like the clan is like Nazis or zombies as far as I'm concerned in a movie they're so unequivocal I'm sorry unequivicable in their evil and frankly in real life that I don't really care like oh no Mark Walbert killed the clansmen it's like okay well we know that guy killed somebody we know he'd do it again like you know I know my sympathy is at least as I'm watching a movie you know I'm I'm on the hitman side in this particular one you know I can only get so mad at that so this movie is really dancing on the knife edge between being like kind of a serious historical drama and very pulpy because even though it's based on a true story or allegedly true story

1:20:17it's a pulpy true story and I kept watching this movie and thinking this movie is okay it's directed by a filmmaker named oh I want to make sure if I don't their last name right I think I'm forgetting which valid it is elegance braton I almost said Breton it's Breton and elegance braton is like you know they're very talented they they have a lot of very slick smart effective direction but tonally sometimes it shifts from pulpy to not pulpy and a movie is always sure what it's going to be but I'm as I'm watching this movie I'm thinking to myself this movie is just okay it's fine I'm involved I think yeah I've built it in the second it's really carrying it and he's great um there the family of the civil rights leader who was killed in the in the movie this name was Vernon Dahmer he's played by John Carlo Esposito in the film they are apparently very unhappy with this film they don't think it was handled very well and I'm willing to believe there in that case but I keep thinking myself from the sound of it they're they're turning it into

1:21:22like Hollywood pulp a lot of it is and they're trying not to be sometimes but the pulpy and it's kind of overwhelmed it and I feel like you've you've found a good historic Atlantic that right this is this is where like you're doing your research you're reading a newspaper article and you're like oh shit that's a movie we should make that movie but this is a situation where the best thing you can do if you really must make this into a movie is to fictionalize all of it just fictionalize all of it and also make it a fucking TV show if this was a show about about a black FBI agent in the 1960s teaming up with an Italian American mafia hitman by the way Mark Wilbur not convincing Italian American but teaming up with an Italian American hitman in the 60s to exact extra due digital justice on the clan every week I'm there I would watch that show that shows sounds fucking awesome so it's like it's almost good it's almost I guess it's good but I think it's

1:22:26almost great and there are pieces of it that are again the Lee performances fantastic but yeah it's just it doesn't quite find the right consistent tone and it's frustrating because like it's like do we want to be serious do we want to be kind of an action revenge you know film and if it's really serious like if it's really kind of down to earth and gritty and violent and we're really kind of focusing on the dubious ethics of this but we're kind of like morally on the right side because you are dealing with the clan then the violence I think would with a tone like that be necessarily a little bit anticlimactic or because what you want is that violent catharsis you want to see movie violence being used to correct an actual social injustice and I think if it's too serious you're going to undercut that that need for that visceral thrill however

1:23:31if you do all pulp you run the risk of a disrespecting the actual people involved exactly especially when they're real people yeah by turning yeah by turning the real deaths into movie schlock and also you run the risk of making it into something really stupid which I like a good stupid movie I've I've praised him many a great stupid movie on this podcast but if it's too stupid that's a problem well especially considering the subject matter right if we're like oh this this movie about like a boxing match on a space station between a human and an alien is stupid and we're like and care that sounds fine but once you're talking about the civil rights movement then you're playing with fire and you're probably going to get burned yeah like that's a very heavy topic it's very important topic and if you were making it up if you were telling a fictional story in that environment you could probably get away with it more but when you're incorporating a real life murder that's probably not going to work like it's probably going to be seen at least by some as

1:24:38disrespectful especially if it's not like specifically about them and it's about like these like fictional fictional agent and like his like odd couple relationship with mafia hitman it's just feels like you know we're not really focusing on what was actually important about the history here so again I think of this was I think the best solution for this movie if you're going to really make tell this story about the FBI enlisting a mafia hitman to do whatever the fuck he wanted to fight the clan which is a fucking awesome idea for a story um fictionalize the shit out of it I think that's the best way to go I think that would have really really helped and then you could have gotten away with it we could have enjoyed more of the cathartic revenge violence because it's a little bit more distanced from the real life horrors that the story in the film is springing off of because it was in response to a genuine tragedy and not and and even the ineffictional context it

1:25:40would be a real tragedy but like you know in the fact that it was a real life tragedy adds another layer that hurts the film because the film doesn't want to be that serious right right like it's still serious but it doesn't want it still wants you to be able to enjoy Mark Wilberg beating up a plansman with the baseball bat which right which again you have to be able to go woohoo and not oh gosh this is all the world is just a violent and I'll say this right now casting Mark Wilberg as the guy who beats people up because they're racist when you know the history of Mark Walberg is a choice and yeah well and I'm like maybe this is him trying to kind of redeem himself for that or whatever but like it's still the character and I don't think I don't think it's thanks to him I can't remind anybody you know I would be like I think I think I'm still we're all still mad at him for it but like Jesus yeah the gangster character you know gets to go up against the clan but

1:26:49is the character also racist like maybe he has no stake in this maybe he is incredibly racist and he's just in it because he likes to beat up people well to what in the movie and that that could be another you know moral moral aspect like we're gonna hire this like total shit to do violence because he's only good at violence but he's but we're kind of wielding it for righteous cause like there's you know it's weird it's tricky ethics no it's weird and I think the movie does get into that a little bit because Wilberg's character I mean he hates the clan fuck those guys and he talks about how like he doesn't like if he thinks that the solution to the civil rights issues in the country is for people of color to rise up and kill the white people and they get into a debate about that because our protagonist believes in the words of Martin Luther King and the Mark Wilberg's character believes in not entirely accurate interpretation of what Malcolm X

1:27:50said but more along those lines and okay like so that makes the character a little interesting but he's also still a white guy with privilege and he's still pretty racist but he's racist in like a 48 hours kind of way or something or I'm not sure maybe I'm remembering that movie wrong but like you know just like he's racist but he doesn't want to hurt anybody he just has a bunch of racist ideas and that's not okay but considering that all the other white people in this movie are homicidal maniac clansmen it seems like well I mean that is technically the lesser of two evils like I think we can all agree on that at least but like yeah it's not great so like there but that's another thing where it's like that's a relationship you could explore week to week like I was remembering and it's weird that no one talks about it because it was a hit show I think the movie that comes to mind like it's Mississippi burning comes to mind but also in the heat of the night

1:28:55which is another murder mystery and that and that one it's actually like a who'd done it like you don't know who did it but great fucking movie Sydney Poitier and Rod Steiger and Rod Steiger is a racist who is trying to solve a murder in the south and Sydney Poitier plays a black cop from the city who gets involved and no I think it's the other way I think Sydney Poitier is there to investigate the murder and Rod Steiger gets involved well in any case it's well the Rod Steiger pulls him over but yeah it's a Rod Steiger's town let's they team up to yeah yeah they team up to solve a crime in this small racist town yeah yeah we were probably remembering this set up slightly wrong but that's the gist of it it's he's a city cop he's a small town sheriff the small town sheriff is racist but he's less racist than some other people and so he's still bad but maybe he could be a better person later and that's a great fucking movie yeah it led to multiple sequels and

1:30:00a hit TV show TV series yeah start aren't you fucking bunker like it was like a hit show one amies it ran for like five five season seven seasons it ran for a long time nobody talks about it anymore and I don't know why that is but like it was a big show and I feel like this is this should have been a show and it should have been a highly fictionalized show yeah but anyway it's it's a it's a real mixed bag of a movie I'm not sure if the good outweighs the bad but there's definitely good in bad in it and that is it that's let's review our films on the critically acclaimed scale as we always do we review films on a scale of from C- to C-plus where a C- is our lowest grade these are movies that are below average we don't recommend them for one reason or another or to one degree or another of passion a C is an average movie mixed bag or only so good overall and then a C-plus is a movie we recommend we think that's above average we think it's either good

1:31:01or really really great or fun or brilliant or any of those things on that note by any means boy isn't a C there are things that are really good about you I have to maintain the second like I don't know if it's like an Oscar performance or anything like that I don't think the movie supports it well enough for that but he's he's a real good showcase for him and then the rest of the movie has a lot of problems and I think your mile just gonna vary on how far it takes you but I don't think it's a total wash um fall to dead point is a high C I don't think it quite captures the acrophobic terror of the original but as like a low budget single location pot boiler I think it does what it needs to do and it's a reasonably good time and I would tell someone if he was I wouldn't tell anyone who wasn't interested in that to go see it but if that's the kind of movie you would like this is a good example of it and so I would say that's that's that's fitting um all right the runner the runner this is a C- this is one of the it really is the worst of the one

1:32:04of the worst of the year just in how utterly uncreative mediocre and bland it is it takes a bland already bland premise which needs a lot of style and personality to even work and shows you what happens when you don't have those things so you it's it's nothing it is just so bad and as such a terrible script the C- through and through it's a huge C- I think there are it's might be the worst major release of the year that is bad not because it is heartless in some way like there's like this it's not based on a bad idea it's just yeah poorly put together it's not racist it's not sexist it just sucks it can suck without having a matter of principle behind it it's just really badly constructed so yeah it's a big C- and then lastly I think we're gonna disagree on this one onslaught onslaught I'm gonna give a high C to onslaught it's not quite because we talked about all of the

1:33:05problems it it's not it doesn't go quite as crazy it doesn't have like as tight as script as I would have liked but I did like the killers I thought it was actually scary as a really high energy I liked the main characters like just the central figures and yeah by the left having a good time so yeah I'm gonna give it a C- I see I'm gonna give it I'm gonna give it a high C- I think there's there's the few things I like about it but I think overall it feels like a lot of build up to pretty big letdown and I feel like there's it the ideas were explored better in a previous film that was very very similarly specifically the guest and the sort of visceral genre thrills don't compensate for it I will say this I think Argera Hania is a really good lead and I wish the movie had given her more to work with or even just more action to do because I I would want to see that I think she's casting her was great but I don't think the actual

1:34:07storytelling was particularly interesting you're exciting even in a cheesy low budget B movie way yeah that's terrible it's not gonna it's not gonna make my worst of the year list or anything like that I just don't think it really works yeah um all right that is it for critically claimed think about it for listening thank you for joining us we'll be back next week with reviews of runner the other film full runner yeah this is the one that starts Alan Richardson and Owen Wilson as they race against the clock to save a child's life um well what's coming next week you got the documentary black zombie it's coming out oh practical magic two is coming out this week we're talking about practical magic two we got we got a couple there's a big big action picture called hope we'll be talking about yeah a green film from the director of the wailing um and uh yeah and also if you haven't checked the uh the latest podcast on her feed before this was a preview of a new

1:35:08patreon exclusive podcast that we have called episode p it is a podcast in which Whitney and I review the pilot episodes for popular shows that we never watched uh and the first episode is yeah we're we're banking on our ignorance this time rather than our knowledge there's just too much TV and I don't care how much you love TV everyone's got some big TV shows they never saw or at least call TV shows than I was so and so um we're movie guys we've watched a lot of TV but there's a lot of TV we missed and this gives us an opportunity to dip our toe in the water of something without you know committing to reviewing 100 episodes so the first episode of episode b is about dr. Quinn medicine woman a very long running feminist western that ran uh in the mid 90s and or early to mid 90s I guess and um yeah that was very very exciting it's a fun episode we hope you enjoyed and if you want to listen to more they're going to come out bi weekly exclusively to our patreon page at the five dollar tier the next episode is going to be about atom 12 uh but we also have uh episodes coming up for

1:36:09shows in a variety of different genres uh some of which are from very very popular series some we can first talk about them um and stick around for the next uh later sweet because I might uh we might be debuting another uh new idea for a podcast that will do on a regular summer regular basis and uh i don't want to jinx that by announcing it too early just in case it doesn't come together but I think it will um and uh of course if you want to talk about the thing be discussed on this episode you have any questions you want to ask me or Whitney about something relevant something irrelevant something about us our lives the industry films movie recommendations um whatever our email address is letters at criticallyclaimed.net we might reach your email on an upcoming episode of we've got mail Whitney what is our p o box yes and as a physical letter if you like send us a postcard send us an envelope full of chili to uh the critically claims network p o box 641565 Los Angeles California 9.006.00 and uh yeah and our patreon is patreon.com slash critically acclaimed network if

1:37:12you want to subscribe to episode b we also have a lot of other exclusive shows there we have a star trick show our Oscars show um we haven't released the newsletter in a little bit because i've been so busy but i'm writing one right now um it should probably be out if not by the time this episode goes live and shortly afterwards uh and uh that is free if you can't afford to subscribe to the patreon you can subscribe for free and at least get access to original writing and links to our latest work um that's right so thank you everybody for your subscribe we couldn't do this without you we wouldn't want to do this without you uh and it means a lot to us that you support the show uh and that is it for critically acclaimed thank you everybody for listening and never forget everyone is a critic i want to go to the midnight show i'm sorry what