314: The Quintessentials: SORCERER (1977) - w/ Special Guest Dan Kelly!
Welcome to the inaugural episode of our new podcast series “The Quintessentials”!
Here we will be identifying and excavating a sub canon of important films that, for whatever reason, have been lost to time or overshadowed by their more popular or successful counterparts in a a chosen filmmaker’s oeuvre. These are the b-sides, the rarities, the deep dive picks… And while they’re almost never the most well known or celebrated selections in a body of work, they might just be–covertly–the filmmaker’s most instructive, stylistically-defining, and quintessential artistic statements.
For our first episode we figured we’d start with a layup- William Friedkin’s genre-defying 1977 masterpiece SORCERER.
Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
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309: AFI #60 - DUCK SOUP (1933)
“Calling all nations. This is Rufus T. Firefly coming to you through the courtesy of the enemy. We're in a mess folks, we're in a mess. Rush to Freedonia! Three men and one woman are trapped in a building! Send help at once! If you can't send help, send two more women!”
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308: Oeuvre - The 3rd Age of JOHN MCTIERNAN - 1999 - 2003
We’re wrapping up our series on the career of one, John McTiernan, with a bang. Even if you haven’t seen or don’t care about the man’s relatively inauspicious, forgotten, “late period” films, consider joining us for an episode in which we reckon with some unexpected revelations and speculate about the potential for McT’s third act…
We’re referring to this third age as the “Spiral into Self-Inflicted Exile”.
-THE 13TH WARRIOR (1999)
-ROLLERBALL (2002)
-BASIC (2003)
(special thanks to Mr. Beau Marks — a true gentleman and longtime friend and collaborator of John McTiernan — for consulting on this series)
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305: Retrospectating 1999 - A Year in Review
We’re going back to ‘99 ONE MORE TIME to organize our thoughts about the inaugural “retrospectating” series, the cosmic significance of the year in question, and whether or not decade-cappers consistently produce the best cinematic output.
And now we play the waiting game… Let’s all agree to meet back here in 2029 to take another look at that red letter year on the occasion of its 30th birthday…
Talkin’ 1999 just never gets old.
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304: Oscar and Matt's 2020 Oscar Predictions (and Matt Predictions)
We’re back from the winter hiatus just in time to submit our official Oscar predictions and lock in the choices that will determine the winner of our yearly WLM wager.
Join us as we break down all 24 categories, get foolishly optimistic about PARASITE’s chance to make history on Oscar night, and even outline a few additions and subtractions we’d love to see implemented with respect to the future slate of categories.
We’re mere hours away from Hollywood’s biggest night! Whether the big prize goes to 1917 or PARASITE, it’s just important to remember that MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL has more Oscar nominations than UNCUT GEMS. Stew on that, get comfortable with the fact that you’re going to die someday, and just give in to the annual, bizarre, intoxicating power of Oscar weekend… Just let it happen.
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Grain of Salt: Matt's Top 10 Films of 2019
One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2019 was to to embrace a new discipline of brevity in my writing- to tighten up my emails, my blog posts, and my essays. So, in the spirit of excising the fluff, the flab, and the streamofconsciousness drivel, I submit to you my ever-so-slightly-slimmer-best-of-the-year-list for 2019.
As usual, the quality films were frustratingly-backloaded into a fraught year that could have used some artistic catharsis earlier on. Regardless, the cinema of 2019 effectively landed an emotional rollercoaster of a decade with grace, sophistication, and the promise of what we could expect in the 2020s.
303: Oscar & Matt's Top 10s of 2019
It’s our annual ode to opinions.
We do it every year. We love it. What more do you need to know?
Listen in and leave comments. We value YOUR opinion. We treasure your friendship!
2019, we hardly knew ye….
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302: Retrospectating 1999 - ANY GIVEN SUNDAY (w/ Special Guest Dan Kelly!)
So here we are…
We’ve finally come to the end of our year-long Retrospectating 1999 series and we’re bringing this thing in for a landing with the help of special guest Dan Kelly. He joins us for a bonus episode to celebrate Oliver Stone’s misunderstood masterpiece ANY GIVEN SUNDAY on the occasion of its 20th anniversary. It’s a fun one to end the series on, even if concluding this feature is quite bittersweet.
Thanks for hanging with us through this crazy game of inches, WLM family.
Happy holidays and we’ll see you in the next decade!
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301: Retrospectating 1999 - THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY / MAGNOLIA (w/ Special Guest Ryan Julio!)
As we near the end of our Retrospectating 1999 series we’ve come to a long-awaited double-header:
Anthony Minghella’s THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY and Paul Thomas Anderson’s MAGNOLIA.
These films have very little in common besides the fact that they both feature the most important cinematic Phillips of 1999 (Seymour Hoffman and Baker Hall) and both premiered in late December of that year. But on this week’s episode–featuring special guest Ryan Julio in his 3rd WLM appearance–we dig deeper into other potential similarities and even fabricate scandalous conspiracy theories about filmmaker/composer relationships and histories.
It’s a post-Christmas miracle!
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300: The Top 10 Films of the 2010s Lists (Featuring 10 Special Guest Contributors!)
What a long, strange trip it’s been.
It took us nearly a decade to get there but we’re extremely excited to announce that we’ve officially made it to 300 episodes on the We Like Movies Podcast feed!
In honor of the occasion we’ve invited back the ten beautiful individuals who have guested on the podcast over the years to share their thoughts on the greatest films of the last decade. Since we started this journey in October of 2010 (reviewing The Social Network, no less) and hit 300 episodes just shy of 2020, we decided it made sense to spend this week creating the definitive “WLM Best of the 2010s List”.
So, between our two lists and our ten guests’ lists there are 120 individual film picks in play. We’ve assigned a point system that works in contrary order to the ranking number. In other words, ranking ten on a list gets a film one point, ranking nine is worth two points, and so on. But a film has to have been mentioned on at least two lists in order to qualify for points. Using this highly sophisticated balloting system we will seek to create a MASTER LIST.
But first, join us as we scrutinize the individual lists, wax affectionate about our wonderfully-opinionated contributors, and take a walk down memory lane to reminisce about how this whole podcasting journey got started.
We are We Like Movies and we’re SO elated and grateful to still be liking movies (and each other) after 300 glorious episodes!
Thanks to YOU, WLM family. Here’s to 300 more.
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297: Present Tense- JOKER Provokes, Phillips and Phoenix Progress, and Scorsese Draws a Line in the Sand
We keep our recent streak of passionate but level-headed disagreement rolling with a spirited discussion about Todd Phillips’s JOKER- a film that is either a dangerous and controversial call to violent action or merely a dark and disposable comic book novelty.
Or maybe it’s both.
Or maybe it’s neither!
Give it some thought, give us a listen, and don’t forget to sound off in the comments section.
Viva la discourse!
(And don’t forget, WLM is a podcast for people who have seen the films. We spoil early. We spoil often. Fair warns.)
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296: Retrospectating 1999 - THE LIMEY / THREE KINGS
20 years ago this week, 2 of the Sundance Film Festival’s favorite sons both leveled-up with their respective genre exercises and experienced creative breakthroughs. Yet, for some reason, Steven Soderbergh’s melancholy daylight noir, The Limey and David O. Russell’s Heller-esque military satire, Three Kings rarely get mentioned in the same breath as either director’s later successes.
We’re here to change all of that with dual reappraisals and hosannahs in a podcast ode to the first week of 1999!
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295: Present Tense- Admiring AD ASTRA and Commencing the Awards Conversation
———Editor’s Note: Apologies for the tardiness of this episode. It was supposed to be out earlier this week but technical issues led to the late posting. But it sounds great now and we’re really proud of the conversation. Thanks for listening!———
We’re talkin’ Ad Astra, we’re talkin’ box office, we’re talkin’ festival reactions, and we’re talkin’ awards predictions.
We talk, you listen, you comment, we read… It’s the podcasting circle of life!
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294: Retrospectating 1999 - AMERICAN BEAUTY
It’s a complicated movie with a complicated legacy. These are complicated times.
So it’s going to take a complex conversation to properly excavate the Best Picture winner from 1999 on the week of its 20th anniversary. Join us as we celebrate and ruminate [on] American Beauty, a film that–for better or for worse–defined the end of a decade and a bygone era of incorrigible ennui.
Listen closer. This is a complicated one.
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290: Retrospectating 1999 - THE SIXTH SENSE
In the tenth installment in our ongoing series about 1999 we revisit M. Night Shyamalan’s zeitgeist-rattling supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense; a film we had previously covered in our AFI Top 100 series and had been disproportionately hard on. This time around we look at the film with fresh eyes, examine its relationship to the horror movies that bookended it on the calendar (The Blair Witch Project and Stir of Echoes respectively), and even find time to throw some love toward under-appreciated gems Arlington Road and Deep Blue Sea- both of which also turned twenty last month to zero fanfare. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s gonna be a bumpy M. Night.
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Grain of Salt - The Death of “The Filmmaker Farm System”: Examining the Implications of the Fringe-to-Franchise Pipeline
(Originally published 12/1/17)
Every aspiring filmmaker has a fantasy of how they would like their career to progress. Even those who wouldn’t admit it to their colleagues or family members have still spent hours daydreaming about directing an elaborate crane movement across a sea of costumed extras, delivering an inspired creative note that unlocks the potential for a brilliant performance, accepting a prize at Sundance or Cannes or on the glittering Oscar stage, fame, wealth, legacy, immortality... Wannabe filmmakers (even those with fiercely independent aspirations) who claim to have never visualized their own successes are, at best, lying to themselves. And while his name has become synonymous with a certain kind of mainstream, studio fare it would be hard to argue that Christopher Nolan’s career path has been anything but the Platonic Ideal of a creative and commercial Hollywood success story.
Nolan rose to prominence at the turn of the 21st century- “breaking through” with the kind of low budget fare that exemplified the spirit of the grassroots independent film movement of the 1990s. His perfectly-executed hopscotch from obscurity to golden boy anointment might be the most elegant example of the transition ever performed. He cut his teeth on the black and white, Super 16, DIY, shoestring, genre lark, Following when he was in his mid 20s. Following led to Slamdance, Slamdance led to industry attention, industry attention led to financing, financing led to Memento, Memento led to Sundance, Sundance led to studios, studios led to Insomnia, Insomnia led to movie stars and budgets, movie stars and budgets led to Batman Begins and so on... In less than seven years Nolan went from spending his weekends single-taking 16mm short ends to rebooting a superhero franchise with Oscar winners in the ancillary roles. And while the legend of Nolan’s rise to prominence is inspiring in its trajectory, it wasn’t necessarily uncommon at the time. Few careers have been as consistent or distinct as Nolan’s but there are scores of filmmakers from Linklater to Bigelow who dutifully climbed the ladder from indie ghetto to mainstream success to awards recognition to the holy grail of artistic autonomy.
287: Retrospectating 1999 - EYES WIDE SHUT
We’re a week late for our 20th anniversary celebration of Stanley Kubrick’s provocative final masterpiece, Eyes Wide Shut. But the added buffer gave us more time to stew and reflect upon the truly bizarre cultural real estate that the film occupies in the the filmmaker’s career, in Cruise and Kidman’s respective filmographies, and within the weird and wonderful contextual sphere of the summer of 1999.
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Grain of Salt - The Midnight Ride of the Monoculture: Excavating the Confluence of Avengers: EndGame of Thrones Weekend
Dear Mr. Fantasy play us a tune
Something to make us all happy
Do anything, take us out of this gloom
Sing a song, play guitar, make it snappy
You are the one who can make us all laugh
But doing that you break out in tears
Please don't be sad if it was a straight mind you had
We wouldn't have known you all these years
Something remarkable happened last weekend. Something that is unprecedented in the history of popular culture. Something that may never happen again. Something that quite likely signposts the end of an epoch or more likely signals the beginning of another. The confluence of events occurring between Wednesday, April 24th, 2019 when Avengers: Endgame opened in most countries around the world (interestingly enough, the United States was one of the last countries to open the film–two days later–perhaps inadvertently acting as reminder that it’s no longer the dominant global box office force) and Sunday, April 28th, 2019 when HBO aired the Game of Thrones episode “The Long Night” (in which the much-heralded Battle of Winterfell finally played out over the course of an epic 82-minute “telefeature”), may someday be remembered by historians as the last time that a true “monocultural” media event took place. And one in which the two dominant forms of mass entertainment–cinema and television–reached the maximum number of viewers and achieved the apex of their own cultural relevance in the same watershed weekend. Movies and TV may never again be this individually impactful–co-existing simultaneously and autonomously–as they were over the five day stretch in question.