Thomas and Frank sink to new lows while discussing a baffling deep-sea adventure and a boring wartime drama.
First, Thomas reviews "Sphere" (1998). Then, Frank reviews "Memphis Belle" (1990)
It's a perilous 90s Double Feature, and it starts right now!
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Meet Your Double Feature is a double-blind movie review podcast hosted by brothers Thomas and Frank. Thomas is an event producer and broadcaster from Chicago. Frank is an independent filmmaker living in Los Angeles.
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For full episodes, written reviews and more, visit our website at https://www.MeetYourDoubleFeature.com/
For more information on where to watch "Nate and Moriah in Venice" (which Frank co-produced!), visit https://www.sardonicmp.com/
Follow us on Socials at:
Instagram.com/meetyourdoublefeature
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Music for tonight's show licensed through Soundstripe
"The Shakedown" by Dresden, The Flamingo
"Soul Tonic" by Cast of Characters
"Sophistikitty" by Cast of Characters
(00:00) Intro
(00:39) Sphere (1998)
(57:06) Memphis Belle (1990)
(01:31:51) Final Scores and Wrap-Up
(01:43:15) Outro
00:00:09
Tonight on Meet Your Double Feature, a Navy research team
00:00:13
travels to the bottom of the ocean to investigate a
00:00:16
mysterious alien spacecraft in Sphere.
00:00:19
Then a World War 2 Air Force bomber travels deep into enemy
00:00:23
territory to complete its final mission in Memphis Belle.
00:00:28
It's a perilous 90s double feature, and it starts right
00:00:32
now. Hello, and welcome to Meet Your
00:00:41
Double Feature, a double-blind movie review podcast.
00:00:44
My name is Thomas, joined as always by my brother Frank.
00:00:46
Frank, how's it going? Excellent.
00:00:49
That's not what I usually say. That's not what I usually say,
00:00:55
is it? Bill and Ted, come on.
00:00:58
Tubular. Tubular.
00:00:59
Yeah. Bodacious.
00:01:00
All right, Anyway, welcome back to the show.
00:01:03
Frank usually says he's excited. That's why I got confused.
00:01:06
We're back here for what I think is episode 10 of season 1 for
00:01:09
Meet Your Double feature. Now, Frank, folks at home might
00:01:12
not see any significance in that, but a long time ago, when
00:01:16
I first told you I wanted to make a podcast, this was
00:01:18
already. Years ago, you bought me a book
00:01:20
for Christmas called So you want to Start a Podcast, which felt
00:01:23
passive aggressive, but I read it.
00:01:25
I. Don't don't actually remember
00:01:28
that but. Literally call So you wanna
00:01:31
start a podcast? Parentheses idiot.
00:01:35
Just open it up and just like, good luck loser.
00:01:40
It's actually a pop up book, but there was a statistic in there
00:01:43
that I remember from way back then that was I think 90 plus
00:01:46
percent of podcasts never make it past 10 episodes.
00:01:51
Like that was the cut off where most people I think realize that
00:01:54
it's either too much work because it's not most likely not
00:01:57
their job at that point, they can't make time for it or they
00:01:59
just realize it's not as fun as they thought it was going to be
00:02:02
or you know, any number of factors.
00:02:03
But for us, this is episode 10 and we also had a bonus review
00:02:08
go out about Tron Aries, which means after today we'll have
00:02:11
beaten the record. We're in the top 10%.
00:02:14
Oh, we did it all right. I'd like to thank the Academy.
00:02:17
Like to thank the Academy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:02:19
I'm sure that the monetization mummy's mummy monetization
00:02:22
mummy's going to come rolling in.
00:02:26
Anyway, that's a small threshold for the show.
00:02:29
So very happy about that. This will technically be our
00:02:31
11th episode to go out, but today is episode 10 of our main
00:02:34
programming. So for anybody who's listened to
00:02:36
every episode so far, of course want to say thanks.
00:02:39
And we'll keep doing this as long as we can.
00:02:41
Still fun for us. Yep, still excited.
00:02:45
All right, well for anybody who maybe this is their first time
00:02:47
listening, I'll go ahead and quickly recap how Meet Your
00:02:50
Double Feature works. The way things go on our show is
00:02:52
that every episode Frank and I both ask the other to watch and
00:02:55
review a movie that neither of us has ever seen before.
00:02:58
We then give each film a score out of 10 to find out who
00:03:01
between us gave the better blind movie recommendation.
00:03:04
We also keep track of the cumulative scores for all the
00:03:06
movies that we've recommended right now as we come in towards
00:03:10
the last couple episodes in our first season, Frank, we're like
00:03:12
almost tied. I think it's like one point
00:03:14
separates us in the Season 1 totals.
00:03:17
It's anybody's game. Yeah, it's it's a nail biter.
00:03:21
It's a nail biter. Yeah.
00:03:22
So I think we have tonight's episode and then two more.
00:03:27
And so episode 12 will be like the Season 1 finale.
00:03:29
And then we'll probably have some in between content before
00:03:32
just resetting the board for Season 2.
00:03:34
But all of that said, why don't we get into the reviews for
00:03:36
tonight's episode? Frank, can you remind the folks
00:03:39
at home the film you asked me to watch for this one?
00:03:42
Yeah, let me just look it up real quick to remind.
00:03:45
Look it up. Check the notes.
00:03:50
Oh yes, I knew the whole time. Yeah, 1998's sphere.
00:03:55
Sphere, the film title that will test the quality of your podcast
00:03:59
microphone. Because that is.
00:04:00
Really going to light up the pop filter I think.
00:04:04
A little peek behind the curtain there.
00:04:05
I, I think at the end of the last episode, I pitched this as
00:04:09
a movie that I thought you and I had maybe caught like 10 minutes
00:04:12
of on TV once. Did that turn out to be the
00:04:15
case, or was I completely off about that?
00:04:18
I, to quote Gandalf the Grey, have no memory of this place.
00:04:22
Not a single frame of sphere was familiar to me at all.
00:04:25
Good, good, great. OK.
00:04:27
All right. I don't remember the story.
00:04:29
There are other films where that has been the case of like, oh,
00:04:31
we caught part of it, like in a hotel room once and then never
00:04:34
saw the rest or like, on a family vacation or something.
00:04:36
But yeah, I don't know what this story is.
00:04:38
I'm not sure if it ever happened.
00:04:40
All right, never mind. Disregard everything.
00:04:43
Disregard. There is no personal connection
00:04:46
to this film. So what do you think?
00:04:50
Sphere, Yeah, sphere sucks. I'll just.
00:04:54
Yeah, OK. So but like, in a way that's at
00:04:57
least interesting to talk about, which is good for us.
00:04:59
For contents, I looked at the IMDb trivia when I was done
00:05:03
watching Sphere and the first anecdote on there was that
00:05:07
Dustin Hoffman, critically acclaimed actor, the star of the
00:05:09
film said that in his opinion, the version of Sphere that was
00:05:14
released in theaters was, quote, unfinished.
00:05:21
I think in his mind there was more to be done, but budget and
00:05:25
release windows caught up to them.
00:05:27
And in his mind, the star of the movie admitted that he thought
00:05:30
the movie was not a finished product when it hit theaters.
00:05:33
And I got to say spot on, Mr. Hoffman.
00:05:36
Oh really? Like it.
00:05:37
Like it actually feels like an incomplete film in some way.
00:05:42
It feels like an incomplete edit of a film like.
00:05:45
Budget wise, Sphere is actually a fairly impressive looking
00:05:49
science fiction film for the late 90's.
00:05:52
The premise of the movie is that Dustin Hoffman is a psychologist
00:05:57
who is brought in to a secret government arrangement taking
00:06:01
place in like the middle of the Pacific Ocean where they tell
00:06:04
him that they think they've encountered an alien spacecraft
00:06:08
crashed at the bottom of the ocean that they think has been
00:06:10
there for like, hundreds of years.
00:06:12
And they want to put together a team of like, leading minds to
00:06:16
essentially initiate first contact with the alien that
00:06:19
might still be in there. So that's like your set up.
00:06:22
So it's like a big underwater movie.
00:06:24
And I got to say, this follows in the tradition of big
00:06:26
underwater movies and that it is awful.
00:06:28
Oh wait, what's another bad big underwater movie?
00:06:31
So many. I mean, maybe these will be more
00:06:33
controversial, but like, have you ever seen The Abyss?
00:06:36
James Cameron's The Abyss. I don't think I have actually.
00:06:39
That movie, This one even like Water World, any time you
00:06:45
actually have to have your actors like in the water
00:06:48
underwater for extended sequences, I feel like you could
00:06:50
just see how visibly tired and frustrated everybody is by all
00:06:54
of it. And it never creates a movie
00:06:57
with like a fun vibe. It always just feels like dour
00:07:00
and annoying and it just translates in almost every
00:07:04
occasion and Sphere is no different.
00:07:05
It's a very visually impressive movie.
00:07:07
It's not like it looks bad. There's some great computer
00:07:10
effects and there are a lot of interesting, legit underwater
00:07:13
photography that they probably filmed in some giant pool
00:07:17
somewhere in Hollywood. So that's not the problem.
00:07:20
It's more so that the film has a terrible script and an awful
00:07:23
story. Oh wow, terrible script and
00:07:26
awful. Are we talking bad dialogue?
00:07:28
Is that one of the? Really bad dialogue like Sphere
00:07:32
is in a camp. You'll recognize in that it is
00:07:35
based on a novel written by Michael Crichton, who several of
00:07:40
his films have been turned or several of his novels have been
00:07:42
turned into films, most famously Jurassic Park in the 90s, only a
00:07:46
few years before this. I think.
00:07:47
Another is Armageddon, a bunch of stuff, but Sphere is like
00:07:53
dumb Jurassic Park, or maybe like dumb James Cameron's
00:08:00
Aliens. What, in that it's a similar
00:08:03
narrative but just done poorly? Yeah, like, similar in certain
00:08:08
respects. Like the whole first part of
00:08:10
Sphere has a pace to it that if done better, could have
00:08:14
resembled the opening act of Jurassic Park because we kick
00:08:18
off with this element of mystery.
00:08:19
Again. The opening of the movie is
00:08:21
Dustin Hoffman wakes up in the passenger seat of like a two
00:08:24
person helicopter that is flying out into the middle of the
00:08:27
Pacific, taking him to the location for some unknown
00:08:30
mission. He's been called in by the
00:08:31
government because he's just an expert psychologist.
00:08:34
First of all, who on Earth falls asleep on a helicopter?
00:08:39
Like a teeny tiny helicopter flying out over the ocean?
00:08:42
You expect me to believe this man just nodded off?
00:08:46
No, absolutely not. I also a a lot of movies will
00:08:49
will do that. And I remember I had, I had a
00:08:51
film professor who would always be like, why would you ever show
00:08:55
your like character on screen, like, like sleeping or falling
00:08:59
asleep? Because that's just going to,
00:09:01
like, incite your audience to do the same, you know, to like,
00:09:04
feel like pretty much sleepy and tired.
00:09:07
Yeah, we don't. The movie kind of opens as he
00:09:10
opens his eyes, so we don't get too much of that.
00:09:12
But it does immediately. You know, this is my first time
00:09:14
watching it. I was like, OK, is that in there
00:09:16
as like the opening? Because this is going to be some
00:09:18
weird, like it was all a dream kind of story and it's not.
00:09:21
So I again, I don't actually know why that's how the movie
00:09:23
opens. It just find it funny because
00:09:25
Dustin Hoffman's character in the film is not like laid back
00:09:28
and unfazed. He's a fairly anxious 50 year
00:09:31
old psychologist in the middle of the ocean talking to an
00:09:33
alien. Like he's not cool or suave, but
00:09:36
he's just like straight chilling in the back of his helicopter
00:09:39
even though instead he'd probably be like seasick.
00:09:41
Like, oh, so they do they do meet an alien though, that they
00:09:44
talk to. That's that's interesting.
00:09:46
At least I'm looking. Forward to hearing about that.
00:09:48
OK, in a way they do that. The the premise of Sphere
00:09:51
intentionally changes like 3 times.
00:09:53
You don't really land on what the real premise of the movie is
00:09:56
until like an hour into it, which is another point against
00:09:59
it I would say. I mean, it maybe could have been
00:10:01
done well, but this opening framing device, again, try to
00:10:06
picture this in contrast, like the beginning of Jurassic Park,
00:10:08
the like introduction of characters and then lead up to
00:10:10
that big moment where they actually see the living
00:10:12
dinosaurs and everybody freaks out.
00:10:14
For Sphere, we have Dustin Hoffman being brought in.
00:10:17
He's trying to talk to the helicopter pilot.
00:10:18
He's like, do you know what's going on?
00:10:20
And the helicopter pilot says, no, like I thought you would
00:10:22
know. But then when they land at their
00:10:24
destination, it's just like a Navy ship in the middle of the
00:10:27
ocean. And he's like, what's going on?
00:10:29
What's going on? And they just shove him into
00:10:30
like some quarters and they don't come get him until later.
00:10:33
In the meantime, he sees a couple of other people there
00:10:35
that he recognizes like other leading experts. 1 is like an
00:10:39
astrophysicist, 1 is a renowned mathematician, and I think the
00:10:42
other is a biochemist. So it's like this varied team of
00:10:45
experts who Dustin Hoffenhall personally knows.
00:10:48
And he's like, what's going on? Why are we here?
00:10:50
And then like the very next scene, they're just like alien
00:10:53
ship spot of the ocean alien. Ship Wait, why does he know?
00:10:57
Why would he know those people from those completely different
00:11:00
disciplines? That is intentional.
00:11:02
And also, again, probably where the court could see that the
00:11:04
movie loses me like right off the bat.
00:11:06
So First off, we we squander any opportunity to build up to what
00:11:10
is a fairly impressive visual of them going like thousands of
00:11:15
feet underwater to this underwater habitat to live in
00:11:18
and then leaving from there to go into this massive hull of a
00:11:21
crashed alien ship. They just spoiled the whole
00:11:23
game. They're like alien ship, duh.
00:11:26
And it's like, OK, why did we, why did we create this pretense
00:11:29
that it was something else only to almost immediately give it
00:11:32
away without using that as time to build characters?
00:11:36
Like again, Jurassic Park? It'd be like if they show Doctor
00:11:39
Grant like a video capture of the dinosaur, like the second he
00:11:41
shows up in the movie anyway. So that part's lame.
00:11:47
I thought that was a waste of opportunity.
00:11:49
Like there's some intrigue for like 5 minutes and then it's
00:11:52
it's gone. The reason to your question,
00:11:54
Frank, why Dostin Hoffman knew these other experts is because
00:11:58
he reveals, or rather someone reveals back to him, that at one
00:12:02
point in a previous government administration, Dustin Hoffman
00:12:05
had been asked to write a briefing for the government
00:12:07
about how to handle a first contact situation as just like a
00:12:11
psychological expert. And he admits to one of the
00:12:14
other characters played by Samuel Jackson, that he just
00:12:17
fudged the whole thing because he thought it was stupid.
00:12:19
He did no real research, he just wrote down a bunch of pseudo
00:12:23
scientific nonsense about like well you need a mathematician
00:12:26
because that's probably our shared language is mathematics
00:12:28
and well I guess you need a biochemist.
00:12:30
And when looking for specific recommendations, he just wrote
00:12:33
down people he knew. OK, so he just happened to
00:12:36
already know these people and that's how they all wound up
00:12:39
here to get that's that's lazy. That's lazy script ready.
00:12:44
Indeed, lazy and uninteresting. Like, oh.
00:12:47
Exactly. Uninteresting is a great way to
00:12:49
go. It's like, wow, that's dull,
00:12:51
huh? Like these guys all know each
00:12:53
other. We don't get to have any of the
00:12:55
initial conflict of the meeting and having to explain their
00:12:57
characters. The other three, because this is
00:12:59
most of the cast, It's very small cast movie.
00:13:02
The mathematician is Samuel Jackson, who I would say gives
00:13:05
the best performance in the movie because he knows what kind
00:13:07
of silly movie he's in. So good for him.
00:13:10
Sharon Stone is the biochemist. She gives a horrible
00:13:13
performance, Not her fault she has some of the worst dialogue
00:13:17
in the movie and just doesn't know what to do with it.
00:13:20
And then the other guy on their main team of four is Liev
00:13:25
Schreiber, who I guess maybe most people would know from the
00:13:27
Ray Donovan TV show. Or a Saber tooth for a minute.
00:13:31
A hot minute. I I know him a Saber tooth.
00:13:33
He's always Saber tooth to me. Always Saber to you.
00:13:36
Liev Schreiber is a astrophysicist who is like
00:13:39
younger than the other characters and a little more
00:13:41
like anxious. He's always trying to prove
00:13:43
himself that he's like a spark guy 'cause he's got like
00:13:45
imposter syndrome. That's our four person cast.
00:13:47
They take this team of experts down who the main character
00:13:50
admits almost immediately are not the right people for the job
00:13:53
and their entire approach is wrong.
00:13:55
But he doesn't tell anybody this, even though he's just been
00:13:57
told there's an actual alien they have to go talk to because
00:14:00
in his, in his words. Well, that would be fraud if I
00:14:03
admitted that I made all of this up.
00:14:06
So in order to dodge personal consequences, he just ignores
00:14:09
it. And even though he admits this
00:14:11
to the other characters, they don't care either.
00:14:13
He tells Samuel Jackson immediately.
00:14:14
He's like, hey, you really don't need to be here.
00:14:17
I've roped you into a situation that's above all of our heads,
00:14:20
even though we're not qualified to handle it.
00:14:22
And Samuel Jackson's just like, ah, alien ship.
00:14:25
Would that be? How is that fraud?
00:14:28
Like, I don't know that that that seems loose too.
00:14:31
Like yeah, loose. Is the problem.
00:14:33
He just says like, well, I can't admit it.
00:14:36
And it's like, OK. Like you definitely could.
00:14:39
You absolutely could. I mean, I don't think it's a
00:14:42
plot hole that the US government would rely on this like 20 year
00:14:46
old report from one guy about how to handle first contact if
00:14:49
they were panicked and if it just was like a pressing
00:14:51
situation like governments being silly and bureaucratic,
00:14:54
whatever. That's not even really the plot
00:14:56
hole. It's more So what a dumb set up
00:14:59
for this premise to not even be like a second act thing.
00:15:03
They immediately tell you, oh, this is all gibberish, we're not
00:15:05
the right people for the job, and then our approach doesn't
00:15:07
make any sense before they even have begun the approach.
00:15:10
Yeah, yeah. And then Sharon Stone comes in.
00:15:13
She's like, you're telling me we're some kind of
00:15:14
astrophysicist, marine biologist squad like.
00:15:17
We're Oh my God. OK, I have a Suicide Squad
00:15:21
reference note in here, do you remember?
00:15:24
Glad we're on the same. Page yes, there was a very memed
00:15:28
line from the like the bad Suicide Squad movie where
00:15:31
they're trying to deduce one of the characters and the guy says
00:15:34
something like I would advise not getting killed by her.
00:15:38
Her sword steals the souls of its victims.
00:15:41
Yep. I appreciate the accent that you
00:15:42
flew on through on me too, Yeah. Especially she was turning into
00:15:46
me trying to do accents even though I never do that.
00:15:48
Like, that's not OK. I didn't write down a specific
00:15:53
example, but Sharon Stone talks like that the whole movie.
00:15:57
Like she has to give these over long expository sentences to get
00:16:02
information across, but they all like run for too long and it
00:16:05
doesn't sound like anything this person would ever say.
00:16:08
Like it feels so compacted into a piece of dialogue that there's
00:16:11
no way to deliver it naturally unless you're like, like playing
00:16:15
with the material or making it into multiple sentences.
00:16:18
So she's got a whole lot of I would advise not getting killed
00:16:20
by her going on in this movie. That's that's rough.
00:16:25
That's rough for her Turnstone very competent actress, but
00:16:29
they're. All good.
00:16:30
This is like a good cast, but again, I think only Samuel
00:16:34
Jackson had like enough experience being in dumb movies
00:16:37
to be like I know what to do. He was in Jurassic Park.
00:16:40
He. Was like, that's a good point.
00:16:42
Hold on to your butts. Anyway, so that's like the first
00:16:45
part of the premise I have trouble with is like, why would
00:16:47
you not just let this be 4 characters who meet over the
00:16:49
course of the movie? Or why would you not like, use
00:16:52
that tension as like, a secret that he has to keep or, you
00:16:55
know, something with, like, stakes?
00:16:56
Because in the end, there's no consequence to his reveal
00:16:59
because he never tells the Navy. And after a certain point, it
00:17:02
doesn't matter. So like, why is that part of it
00:17:03
that Dustin Hoffman fudged his way through a government?
00:17:06
Briefing, well, it's like, I mean they.
00:17:09
Asked him and he was like, I don't know these guys like
00:17:12
there's nobody else. They're just like, why are we
00:17:14
just trusting what Dustin Hoffman says?
00:17:16
Yeah, exactly. I don't know why they went.
00:17:18
They didn't like if it's an old briefing too, why they wouldn't
00:17:20
ask somebody new that already works directly for the
00:17:23
government because you end up giving pretty massive security
00:17:25
clearance. Here's the other part that
00:17:26
doesn't make sense. They found an alien ship at the
00:17:29
bottom of the ocean. They assume because there's like
00:17:32
vibrations coming from it, that it's like active somehow.
00:17:35
So there might be an alien in there.
00:17:36
So their plan, the US Navy's plan for first contact is to
00:17:40
take these four people who have no training in deep sea diving,
00:17:44
taking them thousands of feet underwater with one Navy
00:17:48
commander guy and two support staff, and that's it.
00:17:53
That's the team to meet an alien for the first time.
00:17:56
Yeah. This is also kind of reminded me
00:17:58
of, is it Deep Impact or Armageddon?
00:18:01
I want to say Armageddon is the which one?
00:18:04
Has. Yeah.
00:18:04
Armageddon. Yeah, Armageddon is Bruce
00:18:06
Willis, where they send like regular oil rig drillers to go
00:18:10
mine an asteroid, right? Yeah, same problem.
00:18:13
Feels like that, yeah. In Armageddon, to my
00:18:16
recollection, they try to spin it as like nobody else knows how
00:18:19
to do the job. Like we would have an easier
00:18:21
time training you guys to be astronauts than training an
00:18:23
astronaut to drill things, I guess.
00:18:25
Whereas in Sphere, nothing necessitates these four people
00:18:29
physically going to the bottom of the ocean.
00:18:31
Why would they not be brought in as consultants and then send a
00:18:35
highly equipped team of like Navy divers to go inside the
00:18:39
ship? Yeah, it sounds just like
00:18:41
whoever's in charge of this whole operation, which just like
00:18:43
I, I'm, I'm totally unqualified to be here.
00:18:46
I've no idea what to do like. Yeah, which, again, that could
00:18:50
be a plot point in the movie, but it's not addressed in a way
00:18:52
that, like, really leans into how absurd that is.
00:18:55
Like, why is they such minimal staff?
00:18:57
I think there's one throwaway line about it, but they have a
00:18:59
portable underwater habitat for the crew to use as a base of
00:19:04
operations while they survey the ship.
00:19:06
And I'm guessing it was just a size limitation.
00:19:08
But like, why though? This is the discovery of alien
00:19:12
intelligence on Earth that is supposedly been underwater for
00:19:15
hundreds of years. But it's from the future, most
00:19:17
likely. I don't know.
00:19:18
So they send these people down. And again, they're like, hey,
00:19:21
Dustin Hoffman, you're 50 years old, I think, and very, like,
00:19:24
emotionally frail. I think we can put you in one of
00:19:27
these pressure suits and give you 6 hours of training and
00:19:29
you'll be fine. Yeah, yeah.
00:19:30
You know what this needed? It needed like, like a human
00:19:33
antagonist character who was like trying to like rush this
00:19:37
whole operation so that he got credit for it, you know, to kind
00:19:40
of give it some sense of reason behind why this is all happening
00:19:45
as opposed to just nothing. You need momentum.
00:19:48
You need a momentum behind this series of of actions where like
00:19:51
Dustin Hoffman's like, Oh my God, this is what they want us
00:19:53
here for. And they're like whisking them
00:19:55
away like we have to move now. Something that is like maybe
00:19:59
another country's navy's on the way, and they're like, we need
00:20:01
America to get credit for talking to aliens or else the
00:20:04
Ruskies are going to get here. The Ruskies.
00:20:08
It boggles the imagination. And as soon as the movie's
00:20:10
kicking off, you're just left with all these, like, logistical
00:20:12
questions, which is a terrible state of mind to be in.
00:20:15
Totally. And like, your main character,
00:20:16
too, Dustin Hoffman, should be your, like, anchor in terms of
00:20:20
like, voice of reason or like, you know, yeah, like you said,
00:20:24
if something's pushing them all along down this path, you need
00:20:27
somebody at the center, like your POV character to be like,
00:20:31
to be like, the moral compass for everyone involved.
00:20:33
But instead, he's just like, well, I don't want to get sued,
00:20:35
so I guess I'll go in there. That's what he's.
00:20:38
Just like I just hear so I don't get fined.
00:20:40
That's the set up for. The movie, which is so dumb, but
00:20:44
again, I think it's all like. I think the book probably
00:20:48
handles this a lot better. The version of events that we
00:20:51
get in the movie feels like they had a conclusion they wanted to
00:20:53
reach and they had to reverse engineer the setup to get these
00:20:57
people into this space. Because what happens is the 4
00:21:00
characters and the one Navy guy and their two support staff go
00:21:04
underwater to the habitat with their six hours of training.
00:21:07
And then they go inside the ship And right away the whole thing
00:21:10
starts to play out as almost like a sci-fi horror type setup
00:21:14
because they go inside and they're like asking all these
00:21:16
questions. They are wondering why the ship
00:21:18
is completely intact if it's somehow crashed from outer
00:21:20
space. And they theorize that it must
00:21:22
be made of some really strong material, that it wasn't
00:21:24
damaged. But then one of the people like,
00:21:27
bangs on a wall with like a wrench and it like visibly marks
00:21:30
it up. And they're like, well, that
00:21:31
doesn't make sense. This looks like it's not any
00:21:33
more sturdy than regular metals that we have.
00:21:36
And then they go inside and they're like, well, if it's 300
00:21:38
years old and it's full of aliens, why do I see human
00:21:41
footprints in here? Like all these weird little
00:21:43
beats of things that are not what they seem?
00:21:46
And then what we ultimately find out by like 2025 minutes in is
00:21:51
that the spaceship is not an alien spaceship, it's a human
00:21:54
spaceship from the future. All right.
00:21:57
Well, I'm intrigued. That's interesting.
00:21:59
So we've changed premises. But again, the the specific
00:22:02
examples are like the dumbest things, 'cause this is dumb.
00:22:05
Jurassic Park. Like, I think the first firm
00:22:09
confirmation they get is that one of the characters, like, is
00:22:12
sitting on something and then he gets up and realizes that it's a
00:22:14
sign that says like trash. Like he sits on a garbage can
00:22:18
that's in English and he's like, oh.
00:22:21
Yeah, I also like the scientific approach of smashing the thing
00:22:24
with a wrench or whatever, like you said, Like check this out.
00:22:29
Yeah, Nobody knows what they're doing.
00:22:31
Like, Dustin Hoffman's performance in the movie is
00:22:33
mostly that he's like, even though he's supposed to be the
00:22:35
psychologist who kind of understands people's brains,
00:22:38
he's always kind of anxious and asking all these questions.
00:22:40
Like, they clearly don't know how anything works.
00:22:42
They're walking on the sea floor to get to the thing, and he's
00:22:45
just like, shouldn't my mask be fogging up?
00:22:47
And they're like, yes, Mr. Hoffman, that's fine.
00:22:49
And then he's like, what about the bubbles?
00:22:52
He just doesn't understand any of this.
00:22:55
This keeps like I'm just picturing.
00:22:56
He keeps asking that helicopter pilot keeps going back to him.
00:22:59
You know what's going on here. Do you?
00:23:00
Can I get? My helicopter friend on.
00:23:06
The phone, he's the real expert here.
00:23:07
I want to talk to him. Yeah, I want to talk to Mr.
00:23:09
Helly. So yeah, that whole thing is
00:23:12
like a really lazy set up. And then ultimately they find
00:23:15
like a human astronaut corpse inside the ship and they see
00:23:20
that there's like, it starts to sound almost like a Star Trek
00:23:22
episode for a minute, which is where my interest started to
00:23:24
come back. Because they're like, well,
00:23:25
we're looking at the ship's logs and the dates on the ship logs
00:23:28
go all the way into like the twenty 40s, which because I
00:23:31
guess by then we'll have hyper advanced spaceships that are
00:23:34
unrecognizable to the human eye now.
00:23:36
We're almost there. I think the next thing they find
00:23:39
out is that they look at one of the captain's logs, essentially,
00:23:43
and they see that the ship encountered some anomaly in
00:23:45
space that somehow got the crew all killed and got their ship
00:23:49
sent backwards in time, presumably through like a black
00:23:52
hole. And that's why it's there.
00:23:54
So that's why it's both futuristic, but it's been at the
00:23:56
bottom of the ocean for a super long time.
00:23:59
Yeah, like you said, we're we're getting into interesting sci-fi
00:24:03
territory, which I'm not mad about, but I'm curious to see
00:24:06
how they mess this up and make it uninteresting.
00:24:09
The biggest problem is that the movie always stacks dramatic
00:24:13
beats that are extremely redundant or unnecessary because
00:24:16
the premise starts with there's an alien at the bottom of the
00:24:18
ocean. The big twist in act one is Oh
00:24:21
no this was a human spaceship. The twist 2 minutes later is
00:24:25
there's an alien in the ship though.
00:24:27
OK, see now how did we get there?
00:24:29
Exactly. Town to the core of the ship and
00:24:33
they determined that these future astronauts found a giant
00:24:37
sphere that is some sort of living alien creature thingy.
00:24:41
It's like a giant champagne gold sphere in the center of the ship
00:24:46
that is completely featureless and perfectly round.
00:24:48
That's where the title comes from.
00:24:52
It's a metaphor or something. No, it's literal.
00:24:55
It's a sphere, what you said. Do you know what's going on
00:25:02
here? Yeah.
00:25:04
Mr. Helicopter. So they find the sphere.
00:25:09
They presume that something must have happened with this thing
00:25:13
that maybe made the astronauts go crazy and kill each other.
00:25:16
Pretty standard sci-fi once again.
00:25:18
Now we're back at the original premise, but we just took a
00:25:20
detour for no reason to get there.
00:25:22
The next part of the movie is so confusing even to recollect
00:25:25
because Sphere the film has a terrible sense of like pacing
00:25:30
and timing. It legitimately uses chapter
00:25:33
titles to transition between scenes and just skip
00:25:36
indeterminate amounts of time. Oh, how many are there?
00:25:40
How many of those do we get? Don't worry, I wrote every
00:25:42
single one of them down. Oh, oh, oh, OK, titled director.
00:25:45
Oh, OK, gotcha. These are title cards, like
00:25:48
black text, white font title cards that originally I thought
00:25:52
we're just location titles because the first one just says
00:25:55
the surface right when the movie begins.
00:25:57
And then they go down and we get one that says the deep.
00:26:00
And then the third one is the spacecraft.
00:26:02
And so I'm like, OK, there you go three titles.
00:26:05
We're showing the descent. But then like a a few minutes
00:26:08
later we get one that just says the analysis.
00:26:10
And it's like, well, hold on, these aren't these aren't
00:26:14
locations anymore. Now we're just doing stuff.
00:26:17
Yeah, I'm starting to understand what Dustin Hoffman was saying
00:26:20
about the film being unfinished, because this feels like they
00:26:24
are, like you said as well. It's like they got into editing
00:26:26
and they're just like, well, this is just missing pieces.
00:26:28
So we just have to like, throw this in there, I guess.
00:26:31
But it it also seems like it doesn't make things any more
00:26:33
clear than it would have been otherwise.
00:26:36
I would say it's less so because some of these scenes feel like
00:26:38
they must happen immediately after each other, but the
00:26:41
characters behave as if more time has passed then would make
00:26:43
sense. And I think that as we get
00:26:45
closer to the end of the movie, some of that is like intentional
00:26:48
because it turns from regular sci-fi into more of like a
00:26:51
psychological thriller. But it makes the movie feel
00:26:55
really slow and plodding when we'll get to a beat like that
00:26:58
and then just be like, anyway, we're back in the habitat and
00:27:00
it's like, well, what was this sphere?
00:27:01
Like, why are we back inside the underwater station?
00:27:05
What about this sphere? And and then it just has to do
00:27:07
stuff like that sometimes where it doesn't know how to get us to
00:27:10
the next scene visually. So it's just like, anyway, put a
00:27:15
title card up there. One of them just says the power.
00:27:19
What is that? What is that supposed to like?
00:27:23
One of them just says like insert title here.
00:27:25
Yeah, insert title card here. There's like a dozen of them.
00:27:29
They happen way too frequently. There's some that are only like
00:27:31
2 or 3 minutes apart. Wow, that is I I have never seen
00:27:36
that in a film before like that. That's I just saw the new
00:27:41
Frankenstein film recently and that has like chapter titles but
00:27:44
there's like I think 2. I think it just splits the movie
00:27:47
into essentially 2 parts. Yeah, doing, like Act 123 doing,
00:27:51
you know, two or three little title cards is fine.
00:27:53
This movie, I think, has almost a dozen.
00:27:55
And they start being less and less informative and seeming
00:27:58
less and less motivated, but rather, they're just like, ways
00:28:01
to stitch together scenes. Like, there's one later in the
00:28:03
movie that's a scene between Dustin Hoffman and Sharon Stone
00:28:07
where they're interacting in a space, and then the scene ends.
00:28:10
And then the very next scene is Sharon Stone being like, hey,
00:28:12
Dustin Hoffman, can you come over here?
00:28:14
And it's like a different part of the space station, and an
00:28:17
indeterminate amount of time has passed.
00:28:19
And it feels like they were just about to have an argument, but
00:28:21
then I guess that didn't happen. And now something else is
00:28:23
happening. Like it's not intentionally
00:28:27
jarring in the way that it wants to be.
00:28:28
It wants to disorient the viewer because the mental state of
00:28:31
these characters is deteriorating.
00:28:33
But functionally, as a person watching the movie, you're just
00:28:35
left feeling like you're seeing this out of.
00:28:37
Order Yeah, I'm just picturing it's like cutting the characters
00:28:40
off mid sentence like she's like, hey, doesn't I mean it's
00:28:42
just like title card drops in the middle of like.
00:28:46
Just the helicopter, it's. Just too much.
00:28:50
So that's the problem with Sphere overall.
00:28:53
I mean, like this premise, what I've gotten you through in
00:28:55
recapping the story. Like we still haven't arrived at
00:28:57
the premise of Sphere Wait. What hell?
00:29:00
Yes. We're still not there.
00:29:02
We're like 40 minutes in. We still don't know what the
00:29:05
movie's about. Because what ultimately happens
00:29:08
is that they go back to their ship and Samuel Jackson has this
00:29:13
conversation with Dustin Hoffman where he's like, I think we're
00:29:15
all going to die down here. And Justin Hoffman's like, what
00:29:18
are you talking about? Why would that happen?
00:29:19
And he's like, it's basic deduction.
00:29:21
If these people went into space 50 years from now and
00:29:26
encountered this dangerous, unknown life form that on their
00:29:29
own ship's log says it's unidentified, and then it
00:29:31
crashed back down here and we found it.
00:29:33
There's no way we ever make it back up to the surface to tell
00:29:36
anyone that this happened because otherwise, by the time
00:29:39
the year 2040 came, there'd be a record of this.
00:29:41
So he's subscribing to a specific interpretation of time
00:29:44
travel, which is the time is all continuous.
00:29:46
He's a mathematician, so it's like consistent with his
00:29:48
character that he believes there's no way any of them
00:29:51
survive or else these events would have never transpired in
00:29:55
the future. Does that make sense?
00:29:56
Yeah, and now we're back. He did the math.
00:29:58
We're back into. Interesting.
00:29:59
He did. The math sci-fi territory.
00:30:03
OK. And once again, when Samuel
00:30:04
Jackson is on screen, I buy the stupidity of the movie because I
00:30:07
feel like it's internally consistent the way he talks
00:30:09
about it. It's mostly how the rest of the
00:30:11
movie plays out that just feels lazy and like half finished
00:30:14
moving forward with the story. Samuel Jackson, I think his
00:30:17
character's name is Harry, which comes up in a tertiary way.
00:30:20
So Harry goes down to the sphere when everyone else is hanging
00:30:23
out back on their spaceship. And once again this is treated
00:30:25
as something very mundane. Even though that would involve
00:30:27
him putting on a deep sea diving suit, hooking himself up, going
00:30:30
out into the ocean, going to the ocean floor, getting inside the
00:30:33
ship, and going all the way to the center.
00:30:35
But they treat it as just like he went into the other room, he
00:30:37
goes and visits the sphere. Hang on, time out.
00:30:39
So he leaves. He leaves the ship and goes to
00:30:43
the surface, he said. Not the surface.
00:30:45
He goes to the spaceship that's on the water.
00:30:47
From where? From there.
00:30:49
Like underwater habitat that they're like, posted up in.
00:30:53
Oh, OK. 'Cause I was just, I'm like, at
00:30:55
that point, just go like disprove your own theory.
00:30:58
Just go upstairs and be like, hey, there's an alien down here.
00:31:00
Like, let's tell everybody like. Exactly.
00:31:03
You know. So he goes in and goes up to the
00:31:07
sphere when nobody else is around.
00:31:09
And this creates a problem because there's this other
00:31:12
ticking clock element that the movie decides to introduce and
00:31:15
then immediately make redundant where the six person crew under
00:31:18
the water gets a notification that there's a storm coming on
00:31:21
the surface level. So they all need to either go
00:31:23
back to the surface immediately or they're going to have to stay
00:31:27
down there for the duration of this like monsoon storm that's
00:31:30
going to last for several days. So they're like, well, I guess
00:31:32
we all have to go back up now. And everybody's like, yeah, I
00:31:35
guess that's OK. Like whatever, We don't, you
00:31:37
know, we don't get to get stuck down here.
00:31:39
But then Samuel Jackson goes off on his own, goes up to the
00:31:43
sphere and they see on their little video camera that he
00:31:45
like, disappears. And they're like, oh, Oh no, he
00:31:48
went inside the sphere. Like that's no good.
00:31:51
And so Dustin Hoffman goes to retrieve him.
00:31:53
But then when he gets there, Jackson's body is just on the
00:31:56
ground. So he just, we just cut to
00:31:58
another chapter title. Then he's back on the ship.
00:32:00
So we've introduced that we can't leave because there's a
00:32:03
storm, but also we can't leave because Samuel Jackson got lost
00:32:07
inside the sphere. And the Navy guy is like, well,
00:32:09
I can't leave a civilian down here to die.
00:32:11
I'll get I might be unaccountable.
00:32:13
So it's like multiple redundant layers of like, we can't leave.
00:32:17
We have to stay here. And then in the middle of that
00:32:20
same sequence, they had previously said, like, please
00:32:24
send down the like thing to bring us back to the surface.
00:32:27
But then they're like, oh, the ship that was supposed to take
00:32:29
us all back up got turned away by something like the storm
00:32:32
hasn't arrived yet. But for some reason, our rescue
00:32:34
boat never came to get us. And it's like, so that's three
00:32:38
different reasons why we can't go back up to the surface.
00:32:41
Yeah, yeah, this is this is. Hang on, I got to rewind a
00:32:44
little bit here. So Sam Jackson went to where the
00:32:47
sphere was and disappeared. But then they found his body and
00:32:51
he was dead or. Not dead.
00:32:53
That's The funny thing. And there's another element of
00:32:55
the movie just being like Undramatic.
00:32:56
It's like, Oh no, he's disappeared.
00:32:58
Go get him. Dustin Hoffman.
00:32:59
Hoffman goes down. He's right there.
00:33:01
He's unconscious, but he's right there.
00:33:02
And they're just like, oh, OK, let's bring him back to the
00:33:05
habitat because I guess nothing interesting is going to happen
00:33:09
in this movie. They're like Dodge Bullet there,
00:33:12
almost had something. Bullet So then do you understand
00:33:17
my point though, that like, why do we have to have three
00:33:19
different, mostly redundant reasons for why they're stuck
00:33:22
down in their little submersible instead of being able to go back
00:33:24
home? Yeah, exactly.
00:33:26
Again, this this I feel like could have been fixed by the
00:33:29
same thing if you had like some ambitious kind of like
00:33:34
antagonist character who is like, oh, we got to cover this
00:33:36
whole thing up. You know, we can't let him come
00:33:38
back up to the surface. People find out what we're doing
00:33:40
or something like that. Like so it would just be one
00:33:42
thing and would add like. One idea instead, from the
00:33:46
movies perspective, it's there's a big storm and we lost Sam
00:33:50
Jackson. Oh wait, no, we didn't.
00:33:51
And the thing that was going to come get us left anyway.
00:33:54
Also, come to think of it, they also have a submarine at the
00:33:57
bottom that they can use to go up at any time.
00:33:59
So I don't know. I don't know why any of those
00:34:01
are problems. So they can go up to the and
00:34:04
they have a sub they can take them up to the surface.
00:34:06
They have a sub because that's another ticking clock element.
00:34:09
It's like we have to upload recordings to a submarine
00:34:13
attached to our like underwater house.
00:34:16
And if we don't updated every 12 hours, it will leave without us
00:34:21
because it's designed as a fail safe if we die down here so that
00:34:24
the footage will surface and they'll be able to figure out
00:34:26
what happened. So that's like a whole separate
00:34:29
plot element that functionally doesn't really come into play in
00:34:32
the way you would assume. That's overcomplicated.
00:34:35
That's way too much. Overcomplicated as heck.
00:34:39
Like this is confusing me and I saw the movie and so I'm sure
00:34:42
that anybody who is not is like, what is he even talking about?
00:34:45
But like, that's what this movie's problem is.
00:34:46
It's disorientingly stupid. It sounds like a Weird Al song.
00:34:53
It does. Anyway question SO.
00:34:56
Far yeah, yeah, yeah. Like what?
00:34:58
Let's no, you keep going. I want to you give me more
00:35:02
'cause I'm like, I'm still trying to like visualize like
00:35:07
what are they even trying to accomplish at this point?
00:35:08
They're trying to still figure out what this is or what.
00:35:12
Is there an alien on the ship that they're aware of like?
00:35:15
They only have a small window where the goal is, let's go back
00:35:18
to the surface to dodge the storm.
00:35:20
In the span of a few minutes, we have the scene where Sam Jackson
00:35:22
goes into the sphere and then pops back out and their rescue
00:35:25
sub doesn't come to get them. At that point, they realized
00:35:28
that the storm has now arrived, so they're stuck regardless and
00:35:31
they're not trying to do anything at this point.
00:35:33
They're just trying to like pass the time.
00:35:35
That's good. Yeah, they're playing cards, but
00:35:38
Sam Jackson is acting funny, as you would assume.
00:35:41
He's acting real weird. They have all these scenes
00:35:43
around this kitchen table that looks really similar to the one
00:35:45
from the original Alien. Like the kind of like crew
00:35:48
quarters kitchen. Yeah.
00:35:50
This all sounds a lot like Alien.
00:35:52
It's dumb alien though, as we said at the beginning.
00:35:55
Not good. Alien with no forward momentum
00:35:57
and no likable characters. But Sam Jackson's acting funny
00:36:00
and you would think this would start to escalate because it's
00:36:02
an alien intelligence. Maybe Sam Jackson's going to
00:36:05
turn into like, an increasingly violent maniac.
00:36:08
No, the movie probably goes on for 20 plus more minutes after
00:36:12
Sam Jackson goes in the sphere before we even figure out what
00:36:14
that did to him. Oh my gosh, really?
00:36:17
Before it, yeah, I would say this is a two hour and 15 ish
00:36:21
minute movie. I think around the hour 20 mark
00:36:25
we start to get to a point where they're communicating with the
00:36:29
alien intelligence. That's how long it takes to get
00:36:32
to like what is still arguably not the premise of the movie.
00:36:36
You keep saying that. What do you mean?
00:36:42
Like it's supposed to be a mystery, but it doesn't play out
00:36:46
like 1 because you don't know what you're trying to solve for.
00:36:48
Like, you get this whole beat in the second act where you're two
00:36:51
more mathematically minded folks, Liev Schreiber and Sam
00:36:53
Jackson, see that There's all this weird mystery code showing
00:36:57
up on their sensors and screens, which they reverse engineer into
00:37:00
some sort of like language that they can communicate back with
00:37:03
and turn it into English. So they're like, oh, the thing
00:37:06
inside the sphere is trying to talk to us, I guess.
00:37:11
And so that's like a section in the second act is where you have
00:37:14
to communicate with this sort of childlike alien intelligence and
00:37:17
figure out what it wants. Dustin Hoffman makes an
00:37:20
observation that it seems to have emotions, which he finds
00:37:23
concerning because he's like, well, if this thing can have
00:37:25
emotions, it's been trapped underwater for 300 years, maybe
00:37:29
it's going to get angry. Like that's one of his big lines
00:37:32
before we randomly cut to a title cardigan.
00:37:36
That's just funny. He's just like emotions.
00:37:39
That's concerning. Don't like that I tell people to
00:37:42
avoid these. Yeah, you should just just bury
00:37:45
that as deep down as possible. Bury it way down at the bottom
00:37:47
of the ocean, for example. So they start talking to that
00:37:51
thing. And I do want to, I do want to
00:37:53
zoom in on this scene because I found it really funny.
00:37:55
Sam Jackson and Liev Schreiber, they're like your math guys, but
00:37:58
the function they serve in the story is that they're there to
00:38:01
bounce exposition off each other in a way that is not super
00:38:04
obvious, that it's being dumbed down.
00:38:06
Where they'll have one of them say something kind of smart
00:38:08
sounding, and then the other one will try to simplify it for like
00:38:10
the other characters. And that's how they get the
00:38:12
exposition across. But like, the end results of
00:38:15
that is like some of the worst, stupidest dialogue in a movie
00:38:18
I've seen in quite some time. Just between the two of them.
00:38:21
Between the two of them, just because of like, the writers of
00:38:24
the film aren't smart enough to portray the characters being
00:38:28
smart, you know what I mean? What do you have an example?
00:38:31
What do? They I got a great example.
00:38:33
I got a quote. I don't usually write down
00:38:35
quotes. But there we go.
00:38:36
They're trying to reverse engineer the code that the alien
00:38:39
creature who's just named Jerry. By the way, the alien's name
00:38:42
Jerry, it itself identifies as Jerry Hang.
00:38:46
On it introduces itself as Jerry.
00:38:50
Yeah, it says. Hi, I'm Jerry.
00:38:52
That's No, it doesn't. The Alien.
00:38:53
No, it does not. I'm.
00:38:56
Turning the turn. To the podcast, all this is
00:39:00
done. The movie Sphere is about an
00:39:03
alien called Jerry. Except it isn't.
00:39:05
We'll get to that. But they're talking to Jerry and
00:39:06
they're trying to figure out the code, to figure out like how
00:39:09
they could translate the numbers into something they can
00:39:11
understand. And at one point Sam Jackson
00:39:14
says that it's communicating a sequence of code base that's
00:39:18
like a spherical cipher. So rather like some sort of
00:39:23
three-dimensional number letter code.
00:39:25
And Lieb Schreiber's response is he's like, oh, so like a like a
00:39:30
keyboard language quote, but reflected in an orb spherically
00:39:35
a keyboard, but spherical. Take a keyboard, wrap it around
00:39:39
a sphere. Like he literally says three
00:39:42
times in a row. The thing that still doesn't
00:39:44
make sense? Is that the act?
00:39:47
That's the quote. That's the actual dialogue from
00:39:49
the film. Him.
00:39:50
Saying the three different iterations on that sentence that
00:39:53
don't clarify anything or is a quote from the movie.
00:39:57
Just want him to keep going just like OK so picture a keyboard
00:40:00
but also but also like you know a circle but like that but like
00:40:04
3 dimensional. Like it's a keyboard dimension.
00:40:07
So like when Mario went 3D? That's Mario 64, right?
00:40:11
Just pulls up like like PowerPoint presentation, like
00:40:15
here we go. That is that's upsetting.
00:40:18
That's just yes. It's upsetting.
00:40:20
This movie's upsetting. Like, it's not.
00:40:22
The dialogue is dumb, but in a way that's not funny.
00:40:24
It's just like, bafflingly stupid.
00:40:27
This this is the first time on this show where I like like
00:40:32
you're trying to explain the plot of this film to me and I
00:40:36
just can't can't wrap my head around it.
00:40:39
Like I can't. I don't understand what this
00:40:42
what's happening here? OK, I think I know how to help.
00:40:45
So like you take a keyboard. This might this might sound
00:40:51
crazy but. Anyway, we've gotten so far into
00:40:55
this, we're about as far into this recording as the movie
00:40:59
gets. Before Sam Jackson even goes
00:41:00
inside the sphere. That's how long it takes for
00:41:02
anything to happen. The actual, actual premise of
00:41:07
Sphere, which we get when the third act begins, is that anyone
00:41:12
who my voice correct? Anyone who anyone who goes
00:41:17
inside the sphere and pops right back out again gains the
00:41:20
ability, unbeknownst to them, that they can manifest their
00:41:24
dreams and subconscious into reality.
00:41:28
What the hell? Yeah, what's so guess what,
00:41:32
Jerry? The alien who communicated via
00:41:35
numbers on a computer was a figment of Sam Jackson's
00:41:39
imagination. It became real that like became.
00:41:44
Real. Physical.
00:41:45
That's not now. We're this isn't even science
00:41:48
fiction anymore. This is just like this is magic
00:41:51
now. This is science.
00:41:53
Failure is what it is. So also also 'cause I love the
00:41:58
details. Guess how Dustin Hoppin figures
00:41:59
out this reveal? He because things have gone
00:42:03
poorly in the in the parts of the movie I've skipped, several
00:42:06
people have died. Queen Latifah was here.
00:42:07
She's dead. When was she in the movie?
00:42:13
I refuse to elaborate. Was one of the support staff who
00:42:18
got killed by jellyfish? Jellyfish.
00:42:21
You didn't mention any jellyfish.
00:42:24
We would be here all day if I tried to actually recount the
00:42:26
plot of Sphere in order. It takes as long as the movie.
00:42:29
Takes just keep going. Just keep going, yeah?
00:42:31
So the reason that Dustin figures out after Queen Latifah
00:42:35
gets killed by the jellyfish and another guy gets cut in half
00:42:39
with a door doesn't often goes back and looks at the cipher
00:42:43
code that they made and says out loud because there's no one for
00:42:46
him to talk to. Oh, they translated this wrong.
00:42:48
And he figures out that the two math whizzes.
00:42:51
The psychologist figures out that the two math whizzes
00:42:53
translated the numbers wrong. He out masked them and realizes
00:42:57
that they mistranslated Jerry for Harry, which is Sam
00:43:02
Jackson's name. So he's like, oh, he wasn't
00:43:04
saying my name's Jerry. He was saying my name's Harry.
00:43:09
God. OK, wait, but he figures this
00:43:13
out mathematically. How does he figure this out
00:43:16
mathematically? That's my question.
00:43:17
Why would the not? Didn't carry the 2.
00:43:20
Why would the not math guy be able to look at the notes from
00:43:22
the two math geniuses and figure out that they were wrong, and
00:43:25
also figure out how to do it correctly?
00:43:27
Yeah, also like Harry and Jerry, they must have missed that's.
00:43:32
Multiple letters. Multiple letters off.
00:43:34
Also, I'm pretty sure the alien at some point uses the word the
00:43:38
in its speech, which would have shown up incorrectly if the
00:43:40
letters H&E were being mistranslated.
00:43:43
Yeah, yeah. No, this makes zero sense.
00:43:46
Like even in in the internal logic of the film, this doesn't
00:43:50
make sense. It would have to be like I boom
00:43:52
Jerry, you know, like just all of the letters are wrong.
00:43:54
You did what? Jerry, please.
00:43:59
So that's the problem with Sphere.
00:44:00
It gets that far in before eventually, eventually, like an
00:44:04
hour and 20 minutes in, we're left with three characters.
00:44:07
Dustin Hoffman's alive. Sharon Stone Suicide Squad
00:44:10
Sharon Stone is alive. I would advise not getting
00:44:12
killed by her. Samuel Jackson is alive and we
00:44:15
realize that Sam Jackson is manifesting his dreams
00:44:18
unintentionally and creating evil jellyfish and a giant squid
00:44:22
monster and a computer and the. Computer.
00:44:26
Well, the computer. The Jerry on the computer with
00:44:28
him. Yeah, yeah.
00:44:30
OK. Yeah, of course.
00:44:32
Did they see did wait wait, did they see this like the audience?
00:44:36
Do we see this Jerry Harry alien like?
00:44:39
Jerry's just text on a screen. Of course, yeah.
00:44:43
Anyway, yeah. That would be interesting.
00:44:48
An alien on screen, Someone who affected designed one.
00:44:52
No, we just get a sphere and then a computer monitor.
00:44:55
Because the movie is secretly, after all this time and all
00:44:58
these twists is really about the dangers of human imagination.
00:45:03
That's what the movie's about. Emotions are bad.
00:45:05
Imagination is bad. Emotion is bad, so eventually
00:45:08
the final act of the movie is when things are supposed to go
00:45:11
full Heart of Darkness, which they teed up.
00:45:13
Everyone's losing their minds and we're supposed to not be
00:45:15
sure who of the three characters has entered the sphere, and thus
00:45:19
who also has this power to accidentally manifest what is
00:45:23
mostly just things they're afraid of.
00:45:25
Like that's why this keeps happening.
00:45:26
They're manifesting fears as real dangers that have killed
00:45:30
several people. So now we're because at the
00:45:32
beginning of the movie when you were talking about like, oh, we
00:45:35
found this thing and landed in the ocean where it was, it was
00:45:37
kind of reminding me of the thing.
00:45:38
And now it feels like we're back to the thing again, where it's
00:45:41
like, you know, so they're just ripping off another really good
00:45:45
movie for this one. Yeah, so it's dumb thing.
00:45:48
Dumb Jurassic Park. Yeah, it's just.
00:45:51
The part of the end is maybe the worst because this is where in
00:45:54
editing, they're trying to sell that this is, like,
00:45:56
disorienting, and they're not sure what's real.
00:45:58
So they just try to, like, cut around scenes a lot and do like,
00:46:02
intentionally discombobulating edits.
00:46:04
But like, the movie's already so bad that they don't have the
00:46:06
craft to get away with that. So it just gets worse and worse.
00:46:10
And at the end of the movie, guess what?
00:46:13
All three of the remaining characters have been in the
00:46:15
sphere. We just only saw one of them.
00:46:17
Well, how did they get there? Don't they actually have to go
00:46:20
to the sphere to get put in? Hoffman, if you'll recall in
00:46:24
this very easy to follow plot, Don't recall, Dustin Hoffman was
00:46:28
the one who recovered Sam Jackson's body from next to the
00:46:32
sphere. Oh, so he got feared when he did
00:46:34
that? Same scene, we get a visual cue
00:46:37
which tells you immediately that Dustin Hoffman has also been
00:46:40
inside the sphere. They expect me not to notice
00:46:42
that the exact same visual cue appears to indicate he did the
00:46:45
same thing, but then it's like a reveal later that he was in
00:46:47
there. The only thing that's a surprise
00:46:49
is that Sharon Stone also went in there and then at the end
00:46:52
they realized that the enemy the whole time has been themselves
00:46:55
and they just need to fight to shake off the illusions long
00:46:58
enough to get to the sub and escape back to the surface
00:47:02
before the dynamite that Sharon Sohn set all around the alien
00:47:06
ship. Blows up and destroys
00:47:07
everything. Is this?
00:47:11
Is this imaginary dynamite or alien space logic dynamite like?
00:47:17
It was real dynamite that Sharon Stone triggered by accident
00:47:20
after knowing how the powers worked because her character.
00:47:25
Like part of the plot of the movie is that Sharon Stone's
00:47:27
character has like a history of mental issues and was like
00:47:30
briefly dealing with like self harm and was trying to like
00:47:34
enter life and stuff. So she straight up says out
00:47:36
loud. I think I triggered the dynamite
00:47:38
by accident because I secretly want to die.
00:47:42
OK, but just so the dynamite was there from the beginning, this
00:47:48
was not she. Put real dynamite out in the
00:47:51
third act, but she triggered it by accident because she imagined
00:47:54
it going off. OK, all right.
00:47:58
I don't want to be here anymore so.
00:48:01
Can I, can I just cut this? Can we just start the show?
00:48:04
It's like, so anyway, we have one movie to talk about.
00:48:09
No, no, no. This is this is this fear has
00:48:12
just caught. I've lost my composure, but I'm
00:48:13
back. Let's.
00:48:18
Like, you know, you sound, nothing about this is like,
00:48:20
funny because it's too confusing to be funny.
00:48:23
It's just like like. Weirdly upsetting.
00:48:26
There's just so many layers to this.
00:48:30
There's so many layers to this, like and then like you add in
00:48:33
the like editing choices with like the title car.
00:48:36
Like I'm just imagining like you didn't see Sharon Stone go into
00:48:40
the sphere because there was a title card in the way and just
00:48:44
talking about something else. Like it was just somebody's like
00:48:46
grocery list, like up on screen. It's just.
00:48:49
Like, none of this drama is effective because really the
00:48:52
movie is supposed to be about interpersonal drama between the
00:48:55
characters trapped at the bottom of the ocean whose fears and
00:49:00
repressed feelings are coming out in ways they can't control.
00:49:02
But that doesn't become the premise until 3/4 of the way
00:49:06
into the movie. Where?
00:49:08
Did the sphere come from? So there was a these guys went
00:49:13
from the future 2040, they went to space and found the sphere
00:49:18
out there and then they didn't intentionally bring it back to
00:49:23
Earth and they went through a black hole.
00:49:26
Found the sphere, They all died because they all got the same
00:49:29
sphere powers and slowly turned paranoid and killed each other,
00:49:34
and then I think their ship drifted into a black hole that
00:49:36
sent it cratering into the earth that somehow left no visible
00:49:40
record that scientists would find until hundreds of years
00:49:42
later. A.
00:49:43
Black hole that sent them into the earth in the past as well.
00:49:48
That's got to be pretty funny. You know, Like, imagine you go
00:49:50
out into the depths of the universe from Earth, go through
00:49:53
a black hole, a RIP in space and time that could send you
00:49:57
theoretically anywhere according to modern science, and you enter
00:49:59
back where you started. Back where you started, but but
00:50:03
like even further back than where you started.
00:50:05
Yeah, like that's got to feel funny.
00:50:07
You know, like you're on a cross country road trip and you're
00:50:10
like, we're starting California, we're going to New York, you
00:50:12
take a wrong turn and you just like 6 weeks later end up in
00:50:16
California. Wait a minute.
00:50:20
Like, but they were already dead at that point.
00:50:23
They were presumably already dead because they had all gone
00:50:26
insane and killed each other. OK.
00:50:31
And we never so we don't know where the sphere came from
00:50:35
technically is this. No, it's just like an idea, man.
00:50:38
Yeah, it's like an idea. It's.
00:50:40
Like a metaphor. Like I said, it's you.
00:50:41
Know it's a metaphor but also a literal sphere.
00:50:44
So guess what the end of the movie is?
00:50:46
I can't. I couldn't tell.
00:50:47
You, I know you can't. That's a quick question.
00:50:49
So eventually they overcome the power of their delusions.
00:50:52
Our three main characters, the screenwriters, unfortunately did
00:50:55
not. Then we get them back to the
00:50:58
surface. We get one last title card that
00:51:00
says decompression chamber day one.
00:51:02
There is no day 2. We just get day one when you
00:51:05
could have just written it as decompression chamber.
00:51:08
And then there's a scene at the end where they're in a waiting
00:51:10
room and they're like, OK, the bad guys, we blew up the
00:51:14
spaceship. We think, I think the characters
00:51:16
at this point believe they blew up the sphere itself.
00:51:19
But Sharon Stone says we all still have the power, right?
00:51:22
And they all go, yeah, we definitely all still have the
00:51:24
power, which I don't know why you would assume that if you
00:51:26
blew up the source of the power. But anyway, they're like, well,
00:51:30
the Navy's going to come in here.
00:51:32
How come to Sam Jackson's point, we escaped.
00:51:35
He correctly postulated that we all should have died down there
00:51:38
or else the information that we know would become public and the
00:51:41
future would never occur. And so Sam Jackson, his big math
00:51:44
solution, he's like, I know what to do.
00:51:47
They're never going to believe any of what we said, so we need
00:51:50
to use the power of the sphere at the same time to forget
00:51:55
everything we saw down there and thus not know that we have the
00:51:59
power. What?
00:52:01
Why? Why would?
00:52:03
Why would you? Why?
00:52:04
You didn't know you had the power for 90% of the movies.
00:52:09
Yeah, or just like, don't tell them.
00:52:13
And like, you have superpowers now.
00:52:15
Like you can literally warp reality to your will and and you
00:52:20
decide to just forget about it. That whole scene plays out as if
00:52:25
they're grappling with the weight of the power that they've
00:52:28
inherited, even though at no point have they ever had, like,
00:52:31
a handle on how to use it. It's only ever tried to kill
00:52:34
them, which is Dustin Hoffman's whole like monologue at the end.
00:52:37
He's like, we're some of the smartest people of our age, and
00:52:40
when given this power, we just resort to the most like
00:52:43
paranoid, pathetic delusions and almost got each other killed.
00:52:47
We're not ready for this, but let's not use it to like solve
00:52:50
world hunger on the way out. Let's just forget we have it and
00:52:53
then it will effectively disappear.
00:52:56
Even though the whole problem throughout most of the movie was
00:52:59
that we all had the power and we didn't know about it.
00:53:01
So they do this, they all hold hands and they forget.
00:53:04
And then the sphere which was, which did not die, flies into
00:53:09
space, and that's it. It flies itself, Jerry flies it
00:53:14
into space. Like what?
00:53:16
How? Is it Jerry?
00:53:16
The sphere flies itself away into space.
00:53:19
And then we talk about endings to movies a lot.
00:53:22
We have a shot of it, like disappearing into the stars, and
00:53:26
then we sort of dissolve to a frame of the three characters
00:53:29
just kind of still sitting in the waiting room not doing
00:53:31
anything. And then we dissolve back to
00:53:34
outer space one more time. And then we hit credits, which
00:53:37
just feels like one last editing trip up.
00:53:40
I'm like, what was that? There was nothing significant
00:53:42
about that scene other than reminding us, yeah, they're down
00:53:45
there. They were just like, literally
00:53:47
like on their way, like running out the door trying to edit this
00:53:50
film to get it to theaters like that.
00:53:53
That makes no dance. That makes negative sense.
00:53:59
The whole movie doesn't make sense.
00:54:01
It made me extremely frustrated and we've had to talk about it
00:54:04
for an hour just to get through the plot.
00:54:08
Yeah, yeah, that is. I mean, I'm all for convoluted,
00:54:15
like science fiction premises, but like, this one feels like on
00:54:21
top of being like needlessly confusing and also like had
00:54:25
nothing to say or didn't know what it wanted to say or or
00:54:29
whatever it intended, got lost in translation and like the
00:54:34
like, final product of the film somehow.
00:54:36
So you're just left with like this mess, just like a confusing
00:54:41
mess. Yeah, Sphere is so unequivocally
00:54:46
the worst movie that's been profiled on this show.
00:54:48
Like, it's not even close. It has no redeeming qualities.
00:54:55
It's not funny bad. It's not I'd watch it on a lazy
00:55:00
Sunday bad. I don't ever want to see this
00:55:01
movie again. I think maybe what happened is
00:55:04
that you and I watched this as kids for 20 minutes and we
00:55:07
realized it was so bad that the only way to escape that
00:55:09
knowledge was to forget that we had ever seen.
00:55:14
It oh or you did and I didn't. I forgot to forget so.
00:55:17
That was the other thing. Why was the twist at the end of
00:55:19
the movie not that one of them didn't choose to forget?
00:55:21
Like why wouldn't you have Sam Jackson do like a little wink
00:55:24
like I remember. You know, I didn't forget.
00:55:29
I didn't forget anything. And they're like, forget about
00:55:31
what? And he's like, don't worry about
00:55:33
it. And then a title card pops up
00:55:34
that says he remembers. How did the sphere leave?
00:55:40
How did the sphere? Flow away.
00:55:43
But how was it sentient the whole time?
00:55:45
Like was it trying to? Because like, it didn't seem
00:55:50
from everything else he said. Like it had any.
00:55:52
Intentions behind. Yeah, like.
00:55:55
Look, the sphere is not taking questions at this time, OK?
00:55:58
We can forward any remaining questions and the sphere will
00:56:00
follow up with you at its early as can be.
00:56:03
It's just Poochie died on the way back to his planet.
00:56:10
Yeah, yeah, that would have been great if it happened like, way
00:56:12
earlier into the movie. Sphere is too long.
00:56:16
It's annoying. Literally the only thing I could
00:56:18
say is that the presentation is mostly actually pretty good,
00:56:21
like better than you would assume.
00:56:22
Like the music is decent although misused the sets and
00:56:26
the like. Computer effects for 1998 are
00:56:28
like really really good. It is a polished visual
00:56:32
production and nothing else. All right.
00:56:35
Well, that's something better there.
00:56:36
You know, pretty good. Sounds pretty good is what
00:56:38
you're saying. That's pretty good.
00:56:40
I mean, I'd put it on. I can't remember what happens in
00:56:43
it, so that must be a. Reason for that?
00:56:44
Yeah, it must be some reason. Anyway, there was.
00:56:48
I mean, I guess we didn't do a lot of reflecting so much as
00:56:51
just recapping, but I'm over it. I'm over sphere.
00:56:53
I have nothing. Yeah, I have a headache that's a
00:56:55
commercial. That's a commercial.
00:57:06
OK, coming back from the other side of an intermission, Frank,
00:57:10
I don't think any break is long enough.
00:57:12
I'm completely mentally wiped from trying to talk about Sphere
00:57:15
because it doesn't make any sense.
00:57:16
Could you perhaps regale me with just some just some nice old
00:57:19
World War Two stories? I mean, are there nice old World
00:57:27
War Two stories? No, there's no World War Two
00:57:28
stories. That are nice.
00:57:29
That's the problem. We moved from a stupid idiot
00:57:34
sci-fi movie to what is probably a way too serious film about
00:57:38
World War 2 that I only picked for you to watch because we
00:57:41
haven't done any World War 2 movies and that felt like ground
00:57:44
we should cover. Did it?
00:57:47
Did it feel like ground we should cover?
00:57:50
You know what this show is missing?
00:57:53
In my defense, there are different types of war films.
00:57:56
Some are like Saving Private Ryan, which are like horribly
00:57:59
miser or like the what's the oh God the Spielberg one.
00:58:02
I'm forgetting what it's called Star Wars, Star Wars now, the
00:58:09
one, the sad 1, whatever Schindler's List there it is sad
00:58:14
1. So like there's some that are
00:58:17
like horribly brutal and are, you know, trying to be anti war
00:58:19
movies. And then there's some that are
00:58:21
like kind of just warmer war films.
00:58:26
I've seen a couple like that. They're like, they're not taking
00:58:28
it lightly, but they're more like human perseverance stories.
00:58:32
And I just thought maybe this, what's it?
00:58:34
Memphis Belle, that That's the title, right?
00:58:36
Memphis Belle and and you already hit on a point that I
00:58:39
wanted to get into with this movie with like anti war movies
00:58:45
because it's been said before. I don't know if you and I have
00:58:48
talked about it, but like there's like a discussion in the
00:58:52
sense that there is no anti war movie because like, like you
00:58:57
were saying. And and the territory this one
00:58:59
kind of gets into is when it focuses on like almost trying to
00:59:03
put a positive spin on war and like World War 2, you know, it's
00:59:08
like, look at the camaraderie between these characters, you
00:59:12
know, and then it kind of makes it seem like it's supposed to be
00:59:15
this like, good thing that happened when they succeed in
00:59:19
their mission and they're like, yeah, we killed people.
00:59:21
All right, Like well at. Least we can go to sleep knowing
00:59:25
that World War 2 ended very neatly and there were no lasting
00:59:29
ramifications to the ideologies involved.
00:59:31
And it's all just behind us now. You know it's.
00:59:34
All in the past. It was fine then and.
00:59:36
It's. Fine, now that's the tag line
00:59:41
for the movie. Yeah, I feel like it's a type of
00:59:46
movie loved by old dudes who themselves were born like
00:59:52
afterwards, you know? Well, but see, that is kind of
00:59:56
where the whole no anti war movie comes in because it's like
00:59:59
you get there's there's people that like love World War 2
01:00:02
memorabilia or like civil war stuff.
01:00:05
And it's like these, these are like real brutal conflicts that
01:00:07
like through films and other media or what have you, you get
01:00:11
far enough away from them that people then like.
01:00:13
Reminisce about them and like, kind of romanticize them in a
01:00:17
way. And then in a sense, that sort
01:00:19
of perpetuates the idea of war to people because it's like
01:00:25
people admire what they're seeing in these like images and
01:00:30
these stories. Yeah, it's hard to separate
01:00:33
because they're trying, you know, I don't mind trying to
01:00:36
highlight that ultimately there's a lot of brave people
01:00:40
involved in fighting in any sort of conflict.
01:00:43
But it's like the context for it is, I mean, so many wars have
01:00:49
been like people were drafted, they had no desire to be there.
01:00:52
There's nothing fun for anybody who was actually involved.
01:00:55
So yeah, I guess this is an irresponsible choice, really.
01:00:58
But why don't we talk about Memphis Belle?
01:01:00
No, I, I don't want to. Yeah, no, no, I don't want to
01:01:02
drag you too much for actually picking this, this movie.
01:01:05
It's just this is this is watching it.
01:01:07
These are like kind of the the thoughts that came to mind
01:01:09
though, because you're right, it's something we haven't we
01:01:11
haven't talked about or touched on on on the show before.
01:01:13
But to get into this movie to start off, this might be a first
01:01:18
for the show. This is a repeat director.
01:01:21
This film was directed by Michael.
01:01:23
Yeah, Michael Caton Jones, who was the director of The Jackal.
01:01:27
So Oh. Really.
01:01:28
Oh, see, we're in good hands, all right.
01:01:31
We are in 5 out of 10 hands everybody. 5 out of 10 hands
01:01:36
agree. All left say that this is a good
01:01:41
idea. It's too political, so.
01:01:48
Oh no, yeah, let's let's get off the political soapbox and go
01:01:53
back to talking about World War. 2 So anyway, this movie was
01:02:00
roughly inspired or like an adaptation of a World War 2
01:02:07
documentary. It was a documentary film
01:02:11
released in 1944 called The Memphis Belle.
01:02:17
Yeah, it's a subtitle. It's a Story of a Flying
01:02:18
Fortress is the full title of the documentary.
01:02:21
That's like a Studio Ghibli movie.
01:02:23
Yeah, yeah. But not as fun, I imagine.
01:02:27
Not as fun. Not a lot of.
01:02:31
Whimsy. Where's the whimsy?
01:02:33
But the over there. Hold on.
01:02:37
Did you see it? Watch this footage and see if
01:02:41
you can point out the whimsy. Yeah.
01:02:44
Just ignore the. Just ignore the.
01:02:46
Don't look at the. Don't look at what's on the
01:02:48
screen. Just.
01:02:50
Just think about it. But but that but so that
01:02:53
documentary was released in 1944 and the Memphis Belle was a real
01:02:59
like World War 2 bomber, which that's what this that that's the
01:03:02
premise of this movie. It's about the crew of a of a
01:03:05
World War 2 bomber plane. OK, and like it flew.
01:03:10
It's like last mission in 1943. And then that documentary was
01:03:14
released the following year 'cause it was, it was like
01:03:17
essentially documentary footage of the war.
01:03:19
And so then this is just like a fictional adaptation of that
01:03:22
whole thing. But to get into the pros of the
01:03:27
film, they're all they're all front loaded.
01:03:30
Like this all the good parts are at the beginning are.
01:03:35
All at the beginning it's it's what what was I think it was
01:03:39
deep cover where I had the exact opposite experience, where it
01:03:42
was like the first act of the film.
01:03:44
I was just not at all with it. But by the end I was like, yeah,
01:03:47
deep cover, all right. Like, but with this one, I was
01:03:53
like, damn, you know what we may have stumbled on like this is
01:03:57
like some real classy kind of just artistic big budget
01:04:02
filmmaking happening here. You know, like because tied into
01:04:05
the documentary thing, I mean, there there's just an impressive
01:04:07
amount of like B roll like to kind of set the mood in the
01:04:11
scene at the beginning of the film because the plot of the
01:04:14
film is is very simple. It's just about this the crew of
01:04:17
this World War 2 bomber and this is like their final mission.
01:04:21
It's like they have flown 24 successful missions.
01:04:25
And if they finish this last mission, then they get to go
01:04:27
home. Is that a thing?
01:04:29
You get to leave. The war is not over.
01:04:31
But if they've done enough, you guys have filled out your punch
01:04:35
card, you're going home. You get a free sandwich.
01:04:38
A free sandwich, OK. I mean, that might be a real
01:04:42
thing, but that is kind of funny to imagine.
01:04:45
That's the thing. I don't know.
01:04:46
So it's like this is a heavily fictionalized, like none of this
01:04:50
is like based on reality and in the sense of like 1:00 to 1:00,
01:04:54
but it, it is based on like, you know, they had this footage from
01:04:57
the documentary. And so the film looks like very
01:05:00
convincing when you're watching it.
01:05:02
It, it feels so like real and lived in like the space because
01:05:06
of the production design and the costumes and like an impressive
01:05:09
amount of extras. And they have, you know, they
01:05:11
actually went out and had to find these sort of vintage
01:05:15
planes. I, I think they used some of the
01:05:17
last ones in existence for the filming of the movie.
01:05:22
And what's really interesting about that is like, and again,
01:05:26
this is, this is like the first like 5 to 10 minutes of the
01:05:29
movie. And it really like drew me in is
01:05:30
like, you know, the first act all kind of takes place on the,
01:05:34
on this like Air Force Base where all our main characters
01:05:37
are. And the beginning of the film is
01:05:39
like, you know, these other planes are like returning from
01:05:44
like a mission. So they're all like kind of
01:05:45
flying in one by one. And they're like counting them.
01:05:47
They're like how many planes, you know, made it back, how many
01:05:49
were shot down or whatever. And then there's one coming in
01:05:52
that's like, clearly, like, you know, damaged.
01:05:55
And it's like, it's only got like one wheel down and it tries
01:05:58
to like land with just one wheel, like kind of do like a
01:06:03
crash landing. And like visually it's, it's
01:06:07
super impressive because like they blew that plane up.
01:06:10
Like, wow, this plane comes in and it looks like it was shot
01:06:15
practically like as as much as possible.
01:06:18
You know, I think it's like, it's kind of you see it like
01:06:21
come in for this like shaky landing on like one wheel.
01:06:25
And then there's, there's obviously like a few cuts and
01:06:27
like reactions from the other characters.
01:06:29
And then we just get a shot of the plane just erupting.
01:06:32
And I was like, wow, that is impressive.
01:06:35
Like production design, like production value, I should say.
01:06:40
That, that is sort of what I was getting at in picking a movie
01:06:43
like this is like, I know there's a lot of nuance in
01:06:46
making a film about a war or making a film in, in any sort of
01:06:50
coordination with your country's government in in like how things
01:06:52
are depicted. It's obviously going to be very
01:06:54
softened based on whose perspective it's from, but a lot
01:06:57
of talented film makers have been attached to projects like
01:07:00
these, and a lot of them do have a lot of money behind them.
01:07:02
So like, that's what I thought would be curious about this.
01:07:04
Like is things like that just like a massive, impressive
01:07:07
technical spectacle for something like that at the
01:07:10
beginning. Yeah, Yeah.
01:07:12
But again, super front loaded, like you get all that at the
01:07:16
beginning and the beginning of the film really feels like it's,
01:07:20
it's building so much tension. You know, it's like you're
01:07:24
getting to know your main characters.
01:07:26
It's a lot of people you would recognize, like Sean Astin is in
01:07:29
it, which I didn't know going in.
01:07:32
Billy Zane, Harry Connick, Junior, this is his first role.
01:07:36
He's super young in this movie. A lot of like 90 specific
01:07:40
actors, like people whose careers didn't even make it
01:07:42
past, you know? Yeah, yes, exactly.
01:07:46
Like, but it's like, it's like, even if you don't know these
01:07:48
actors names, if you're familiar with any films from this era,
01:07:51
you'd be like, oh, it's that guy.
01:07:52
Yeah, exactly. It's a lot of there's that guy.
01:07:54
Yeah, John Lithgow, like you said, Eric Stoltz.
01:07:59
I don't know if I said that. I don't know if I said that in
01:08:01
this episode, but Eric Stoltz was the guy who originally was
01:08:04
cast to be in Back to the Future.
01:08:06
So there's some like, test footage of like early scenes
01:08:08
with just a different Marty McFly.
01:08:10
And I think they just kicked him out because they thought he
01:08:11
didn't fit. I don't blame him.
01:08:13
Like he's he, he's, he's totally fine in this movie.
01:08:17
But like there's some actors where it's like you kind of if
01:08:21
it's like the first role you've ever seen them in or something,
01:08:23
and then you see him in something else, you kind of
01:08:25
associate them too heavily with like a different role maybe.
01:08:28
Yeah. And this guy, he was in Pulp
01:08:32
Fiction, like the scene where John Travolta brings Uma Thurman
01:08:38
'cause she's like Oded and he brings him to like his like drug
01:08:43
dealer's house or something. I, I don't know, like.
01:08:46
That's Eric Stoltz. That's Eric Stoltz.
01:08:48
Yeah. And like, to me, he's always
01:08:52
that guy. He was like, too good at playing
01:08:54
like that kind of creepy character in that movie.
01:09:00
Yeah, well, that's cool. I did not know that was him.
01:09:02
Yeah, yeah, so, but but, you know, he's like, not that
01:09:08
character in this movie, but that's just like.
01:09:10
What? I'm not a drug dealer in the
01:09:12
army. Yeah, yeah.
01:09:14
His character's interesting because like, again, you know,
01:09:17
we're still centering in like the first act here.
01:09:19
Like the the film just really feels like it's, it's building
01:09:23
up because you, you, you feel like you have a sense of where
01:09:26
it's going. It's like it's all of these
01:09:28
characters, you know, this is they're going to go fly their
01:09:31
last mission. They're kind of like they're
01:09:34
trying to crack camaraderie between them and stuff.
01:09:36
But there's also this like huge like unspoken tension because
01:09:40
it's war and they're, you know, so you just like, it kind of
01:09:45
gives you this like unease where it's like, oh man, these
01:09:48
characters like once once things get going, it's like some of
01:09:51
these characters that we're getting to know are probably
01:09:53
going to start dying. And like, you know, it's going
01:09:55
to get like very dramatic. And then that just doesn't
01:10:00
happen. Like, you know, it just doesn't
01:10:03
deliver on that, which was really disappointing, you know,
01:10:08
'cause it's like, like I said at the beginning, I'm like this,
01:10:10
this feels like prestige drama in a sense.
01:10:13
You know, it's like we're we're this is very like aiming to to
01:10:18
at least appear historically accurate and like dramatic.
01:10:23
But it's just like the limitations, I guess of the
01:10:29
story itself, like because the the entire rest of the film,
01:10:34
once they like go out on their final mission is like they're a
01:10:37
bomber plane. So it's just these guys like up
01:10:41
in a plane for the rest of the movie.
01:10:44
Like, not exactly front lines. I mean, it's like they are, but
01:10:48
you can't threaten danger beyond like they might hit us and then
01:10:52
either they do or they don't. Yeah, yeah.
01:10:54
It's just like there's other planes shooting at them and it's
01:10:59
like this plane that they're in feels very claustrophobic, which
01:11:03
I guess that's to the tension in a sense, 'cause it's like I
01:11:06
wouldn't even want to be in their period, let alone like in
01:11:09
the middle of a war zone in the air.
01:11:12
But it's just visually, it's just like you don't see anything
01:11:15
else. There's, there's like nothing
01:11:16
they can really show and no way to really move this story
01:11:22
forward in an interesting way. Once they're up there, you know,
01:11:26
'cause their mission is like, OK, we got to go bomb this place
01:11:30
and then turn around and fly home.
01:11:31
That's it. That's the whole thing, the
01:11:34
goal. Yeah.
01:11:35
And Eric Stoltz character, he has this whole thing like, you
01:11:40
know, where they're when they're introducing everybody, where all
01:11:43
the other characters are like talking about what they're going
01:11:45
to do when they go home and like once the war is over.
01:11:49
And he has this like film camera with him.
01:11:51
So he's always, like, taking pictures of everybody.
01:11:53
And he's like, he's like, yeah, I don't know what I'm going to
01:11:56
do. He's like, this feels like home
01:11:57
now, you know? He's like, I've become so close
01:11:59
with all these people here, you know?
01:12:00
And he's like, I guess that's why I'm always, like, taking
01:12:02
their photos because I, like, want to remember them.
01:12:04
Like, you know, once the war is over and we, like, go our
01:12:06
separate ways and like, to me, I'm watching it.
01:12:10
And I'm like, Oh, well, OK, he's going to die, you know, He's
01:12:13
like. Absolutely he's going to die
01:12:15
like that's that's the human interest story is like so many
01:12:18
young people die in armed conflicts whose whole lives are
01:12:22
ahead of them. And so you can tell interesting
01:12:24
stories about like what never was I I would all I would
01:12:27
immediately assume that's like the point of the movie if I was
01:12:29
watching it. Yes, well, and especially
01:12:31
because he's he's the one like he's taking all these photos.
01:12:33
So I'm like, oh, he's going to die.
01:12:35
But then they're going to have all these photos that he took,
01:12:37
you know? And maybe either no photos of
01:12:39
him or like 1. Yeah, exactly.
01:12:42
Because like they're, they're like all annoyed.
01:12:43
They're like, they're like, you know, all the, all the other
01:12:46
characters are like, stop that. You know, they're like like.
01:12:52
Stop that. Stop doing that.
01:12:55
Well, yeah, it's just like it's so and then it just doesn't
01:12:59
happen. He's the one character that and
01:13:02
and you know, again, I'm I'm jumping to the end here because
01:13:05
not much happens in this movie, unfortunately, like.
01:13:08
But is that the similarity between the two movies in this
01:13:11
episode 2 films where not much happened?
01:13:14
Except a lot happened in the sphere, like not nothing logical
01:13:18
happened, but like there was like a million different things
01:13:20
going on. Where is this is just like, oh
01:13:23
boy, OK. Two guys on a plane.
01:13:29
Basically like, but his character is the only one that's
01:13:33
even really like he gets shot like they're up in the air and
01:13:36
other planes are shooting. The big dramatic point of the
01:13:39
film is they're they're flying. Their mission is to go bomb this
01:13:43
like factory that's like building, you know, army stuff
01:13:50
that's building like you. Can tell our experience in this
01:13:54
area, you know, army stuff, there's building army stuff,
01:13:58
more planes, more memories. Something we don't want them to
01:14:01
build Legos maybe, who knows? But they're just, they're like,
01:14:06
OK, but there's like a hospital nearby and like a school or
01:14:11
something. So like we got to be really
01:14:12
accurate and just bomb this building and like they, you
01:14:18
know, when they get there, they're like, oh, it's like
01:14:20
there's a bunch of smoke or something.
01:14:22
And like we can't see the target.
01:14:23
So it like there's this whole thing where they're like, do we
01:14:27
drop the bombs anyway? And Matthew Modine, he's like
01:14:32
the captain of third unit. And he's like, well, no, we
01:14:34
can't just drop him, you know, if we're not going to be
01:14:37
accurate. And he's like, so we got to
01:14:39
come. We got to like do a lap and or
01:14:41
we got to, you know, turn around and come back and like do it
01:14:44
again. And they're all like, well, let
01:14:46
you know that's a death warrant. You know, that's like, you don't
01:14:48
do that. Yeah, but then again, it just
01:14:53
works like we're back, like. And we're back.
01:14:58
Eric Stoltz, when they fly back around, like, he gets shot from
01:15:01
one of the other planes. And again, I'm like, well, yeah,
01:15:04
obviously, like, if anyone's going to die, it's going to be
01:15:07
his character. But then he doesn't.
01:15:08
Like he survives in the end. In a fictional version of the
01:15:12
story, they couldn't introduce more like.
01:15:16
Expendable characters. Yeah, exactly.
01:15:18
It's just like, it just, it felt antithetical even to the story
01:15:24
that they were trying to tell. You know, like, because the the
01:15:28
movie just ends where it's like we didn't like everyone.
01:15:35
Like, you know, it's like we won the big game.
01:15:39
Like we didn't kill those innocent people, we killed those
01:15:42
other people. Yeah, anyway, let's go home
01:15:47
like. Starting to ask a lot of
01:15:50
questions, Sarge. Sorry, war's over.
01:15:52
Too many questions. Go home.
01:15:56
It was just odd. Yeah.
01:15:58
It was just like, what happened here.
01:16:00
It's like you were setting up to be such an interesting film to
01:16:04
really show the horrors of war. And like, even put these like,
01:16:09
it's a film I'm thinking of. I can't remember what it was.
01:16:12
I've been based on a book or something, you know, but it's
01:16:17
just, it's like a common thing. It's like, like, you know, it's
01:16:20
like, oh, you put all these guys and they're like trapped on the
01:16:22
sub and they start to like hate each other and like turn on each
01:16:25
other, you know, 'cause it's like they're.
01:16:26
All they're trapped in a sphere on a spaceship they're.
01:16:28
Trapped in a sphere. There it is.
01:16:30
There's the common ground. Like, but none of that happens.
01:16:35
There's like it it it feels like they like tried to like force
01:16:38
things in to kind of create tension or drama for these
01:16:41
characters like Harry Connick Junior's character, He's like
01:16:45
their one of their like Gunners on the plane, you know, and he's
01:16:49
just like this super nice, like country kid or whatever.
01:16:52
And one of the other characters who he's like the copilot, I
01:16:58
guess, like he, you know, he's up front with Matthew Moody.
01:17:01
'S character. Yeah, exactly.
01:17:03
He's he's Alexa, where are we? Alexa, I need a linguine recipe
01:17:10
and also information on how to drop a bomb.
01:17:13
Like, but his whole thing is like, he's he's like telling
01:17:17
Harry Connick Junior, he's like, man, you got to let me, like,
01:17:20
use your gun at one point. He's like, if I don't kill any
01:17:22
Nazis before the war is over, you know, I won't be able to go
01:17:25
home and, like, brag to all the girls.
01:17:26
Like, that's his, like, thing, right?
01:17:31
Yeah. So like, and, and what that sets
01:17:35
up is, like, at one point, Harry Connick Junior, like, lets him
01:17:37
do it. And like he shoots down like an
01:17:40
enemy plane and he gets all excited, but then the plane that
01:17:43
he shot down like crashes into one of like their guys planes,
01:17:47
like one of the American soldiers planes.
01:17:49
And like so they both explode and then he feels all like, Oh
01:17:53
no. But then we just move on.
01:17:55
We just move fast. Just.
01:17:57
Move on, Sarge. Copilot's got a question and
01:18:00
they're like, sorry, he's got to go send him back.
01:18:03
We're just pushing characters out of the plane throughout the
01:18:05
movie with parachutes. Every time they ask too many
01:18:07
questions, it's. Just even that would have been
01:18:10
more interesting. Like it's kind of like Seinfeld.
01:18:13
It's like, and then maybe something happens.
01:18:15
No, nothing happens. Nothing happens.
01:18:19
Yeah, I just this in a weird way, is why I picked this movie.
01:18:23
I feel like there's, there's such a unwinnable task in
01:18:27
depicting like even this one, trying to depict a real story
01:18:31
while being sensitive enough to not use real people like it.
01:18:34
You know, it's a fictional depiction of this and it's like
01:18:37
a win for America, like the mission succeeded.
01:18:40
But any sort of depiction of these conflicts, which I think
01:18:44
aren't, obviously we've never been able to avoid armed
01:18:47
conflict throughout history, but it's inherently like tragic and
01:18:50
irresponsible. So it's like, how do you tell a
01:18:51
story in here that does not ultimately condemn the entire
01:18:55
notion? Like, And it feels like
01:18:58
sometimes they don't. They just say like, well, these
01:18:59
parts are bad. And it's like all the parts.
01:19:01
Are bad yes, exactly yeah and that's that's what I really I
01:19:06
really thought they were doing something there at the beginning
01:19:08
because like yeah, you know the characters it's like you do
01:19:13
definitely get that sense where it's like these group of
01:19:14
characters are they're like bonded together through this
01:19:19
traumatic experience they're all going through and they're all
01:19:21
young kids you know they're like fresh out of high school or
01:19:24
college. So it's very tragic.
01:19:26
It's like you, you recognize from the beginning that these
01:19:29
characters are all in this tragic situation together, but
01:19:31
they they have this this strong bond and like they're doing what
01:19:36
they think is right, some of them.
01:19:41
But then the rest of the film just, it just doesn't do enough
01:19:43
to to follow up with those characters even, you know, it's
01:19:46
like once they're up in the air, it it's like it, it doesn't
01:19:51
matter. You know, it's like you can't
01:19:52
even, it doesn't matter which character you're looking at
01:19:54
because it's, it's all just becomes very like monotonous and
01:19:58
like gelatinous. It's just like, yeah, like it's.
01:20:01
Like is there a beef plot? Like are we cutting away from
01:20:05
their plane to anything else or is it mostly just them?
01:20:09
This is like I was saying before it's it seems like the movie
01:20:12
feels like it was like trying to grasp at straws in terms of like
01:20:16
anything else they could show us because it cuts away once and it
01:20:20
feels so out of place because like at the beginning of the
01:20:23
movie, John Lithgow's character is like, he's like the PR guy,
01:20:27
you know, so he's trying to like he's like, Oh, once you guys fly
01:20:30
this mission, you know, we're going to send you back home and
01:20:32
you're going to be like in the newspapers and you're going to
01:20:34
be like celebrities. And so he's kind of like at odds
01:20:38
with like the Colonel on base because he's like, no, this, you
01:20:42
know, this is serious. Like, you know, this is we're
01:20:45
not just here for your stupid like newspaper photos or
01:20:48
whatever. And so that's that's at the
01:20:50
beginning, you know, and it's like that that all feels very in
01:20:54
tone with the story they're telling.
01:20:56
But again, then they leave and the rest of the movie is just
01:20:59
you're following these guys up in this plane.
01:21:00
And so it just randomly at one point cuts back to what John
01:21:04
Lithgow was doing back at this base.
01:21:06
And he just has this scene with like the Colonel where he's just
01:21:08
like, like the Colonel has to like educate him, I guess, and
01:21:13
be like, he's like, read all these like, you know, like he's
01:21:16
like, this is serious. Like read all these letters of
01:21:19
like family members of soldiers under my command that have died,
01:21:23
you know, and it's just like. And then you just cut away from
01:21:26
that back to what our other characters in the plane are
01:21:28
doing. And it's kind of like that
01:21:29
didn't move the plot forward. You know that that thing that we
01:21:32
cut away to was just and then this happened over here.
01:21:37
And then also this. Yeah, I feel like my main point
01:21:40
of reference for this in terms of a World War 2 movie that I
01:21:43
think most people would agree is pretty good, would be Saving
01:21:45
Private Ryan. And I think that that one has a
01:21:48
pretty good premise that creates an interesting angle on a war
01:21:52
story because it takes a very human emotional angle at like
01:21:56
the symbolism of conflict where, as I recall, it's been a long
01:21:59
time. I think the reason they go try
01:22:02
to save this random soldier is because his family, his mom sent
01:22:06
like 6 or seven sons into battle in World War 2 and all of them
01:22:11
are already dead except for this one.
01:22:13
And so as like APR type thing. And for morale, sort of they
01:22:17
send a whole task force unit of soldiers to go bring this one
01:22:21
pointless kid home. Not pointless, but like there's
01:22:25
one kid home that has no strategic value to the war.
01:22:28
Just as like a human emotional reaction to that tragedy of like
01:22:32
this mother has lost all of her kids except for one.
01:22:35
We have to try to send one of them home, even though doing so
01:22:39
is not strategically viable and risks the lives of other men.
01:22:42
It's like about how these conflicts, as logistical as they
01:22:47
can be, really are like emotional conflicts in a way,
01:22:50
even at like a nation level. And I think that is gives you
01:22:54
permission as the viewer to care about the people in the story
01:22:57
and not feel bogged down by these same questions.
01:23:00
And I feel like a lot of other World War Two stories are just
01:23:02
wartime films. Like struggle to be about both
01:23:05
because they don't do a good enough job of giving you an
01:23:08
angle to look at it from other than the obvious.
01:23:10
Like, this is all horrible. Yeah, exactly.
01:23:12
And, and the problem with this one too is just you really don't
01:23:16
care about these characters, you know, other than in like a
01:23:19
general sense, but there's nothing like connecting you to
01:23:22
them. Like pretty much all of them.
01:23:25
Like I said, it's kind of this ensemble cast, about 10 or so
01:23:27
characters, but they all basically have like 1 sentence
01:23:30
back stories that you get, you know, it's like this guy used to
01:23:35
be in the furniture business and this guy's from Chicago.
01:23:39
Like it's just like. That's my favorite.
01:23:42
I'm from Chicago. I've been there.
01:23:46
I've been there. So.
01:23:48
You know, it, it there's just nothing to play off of there.
01:23:51
You know, it's it's like you don't know enough about any of
01:23:53
these characters that they all just kind of feel the same.
01:23:57
This is this is an another movie too, where it's like, I think
01:24:01
there's there's one scene where there's a woman in the movie who
01:24:06
has lines, but other than that, oh.
01:24:10
No. Keep giving me these these
01:24:12
mansphere movies. These Manosphere daily movies,
01:24:16
Oh my gosh, I that's both of your movies for the month of
01:24:19
November are completely devoid of women.
01:24:23
This one has one. There's one woman.
01:24:25
One who has one we're averaging. We're averaging .5 women per
01:24:29
movie. Yeah, I'll have to take that
01:24:32
into account for my next pick. Yeah, yeah.
01:24:35
It's just, yeah. So it just gives you nothing
01:24:38
like and visually it's so uninteresting.
01:24:41
You know, once they're up in that plane, 'cause it's just
01:24:44
like, Yep, that's it. It's a really small plane.
01:24:47
Well, I've seen it. I mean, that's crazy.
01:24:51
Are we talking like what, like an hour plus of the story?
01:24:54
It's just them up in the plane. Yeah, absolutely so.
01:24:57
It's like a bottle premise almost.
01:24:59
Totally, yeah. I mean, you spend, again, the
01:25:01
first act, they're on this military base and it feels like
01:25:06
this calm before the storm. And then it's just like, it's
01:25:10
like even when they're in danger, it's like they can't
01:25:13
visibly show it in an interesting way.
01:25:15
You know, it's like you're seeing our characters like
01:25:17
inside this tiny little plane. It's like, oh, we're getting
01:25:19
shot at. And then you're like.
01:25:25
Bullet noise. It's raining too.
01:25:26
It's. Like an improv show like that.
01:25:31
Just in an empty set of their plane and they're just like, I
01:25:35
better go grab some water. Glug glug glug.
01:25:39
It's like I need a place. Chicago.
01:25:41
OK, All right, so we're. I'm from Chicago.
01:25:43
It's. Just like, so it's just like, it
01:25:49
just gives you nothing. It gives you nothing to connect
01:25:52
with and nothing like to look at.
01:25:56
And there's even like there's like, there's like a multiple
01:25:59
like fake outs even of like something happening, but then it
01:26:04
doesn't happen. Like like I said, Eric Stolt's
01:26:06
character, he's the only one that gets like injured, he gets
01:26:08
shot. And like there's like a kind of
01:26:11
interesting thing where Billy Zane's character again, one
01:26:15
sentence back story for everybody.
01:26:16
They're like, oh, you know, he's going to be a doctor.
01:26:18
He went to medical school. But like when Eric Stoltz
01:26:22
character gets shot, they're like, like, oh, oh, you know,
01:26:25
you can help him. Billy Zane, you know, you went
01:26:26
to Med school and he's like, yeah, no, I lied.
01:26:28
I I didn't go to Med school. I I don't know this guy.
01:26:30
Let's throw him out of the plane.
01:26:33
Like he did it. Dustin Hoffman, he made it up.
01:26:36
Yeah, yeah. And that's like, literally his
01:26:38
plan. He's like, he's like, I can't
01:26:39
help this guy. Like he's like, I think
01:26:42
genuinely his best bet is if we try and like, bandage him up,
01:26:45
put a parachute on him and then like drop him into Germany and
01:26:48
hope somebody finds him and helps him.
01:26:50
Sarge, we can't do that. Then a movie would happen.
01:26:53
Yeah, right. Exactly.
01:26:55
Then we'd have to go back and get him.
01:26:56
Then we'd have to turn around again like.
01:26:58
You want us to do Saving Private Stoltz?
01:27:01
No way. Like, but then it's like the
01:27:05
other characters are like, no, you can do it, Billy Zane.
01:27:08
And he's like, all right, I'll give it a shot even though I
01:27:10
actually don't have any medical training and this man's been
01:27:13
shot and I don't know what to do.
01:27:15
And then we kind of just don't show what he does.
01:27:17
And Eric Stoltz character live somehow.
01:27:19
Wait, what? We don't even get it.
01:27:22
He just wills himself to no medicine enough to save this
01:27:26
man's life. I.
01:27:26
Don't know what he does. He didn't show it.
01:27:28
There's just like. Anyway, moving on.
01:27:30
In a movie with this little 2 show, to find something that
01:27:34
critical and decide we don't need to show that is insane.
01:27:37
Well, it's like they didn't know how they didn't know what to
01:27:40
because it was like it was a beat that they like wrote
01:27:42
themselves into a corner. They're like, oh, what?
01:27:44
What if he didn't actually go to medical school?
01:27:47
You know, like, he doesn't know how to help him, Like, and then
01:27:49
it's like this tragic thing. Billy Zane's like like half
01:27:53
delivering a line. He's just like the only thing we
01:27:55
have to to stop the bleeding is and then he pulls like a piece
01:27:58
of paper out of a top hat and he's like a candle, his audience
01:28:02
suggested. Burn him like like.
01:28:07
Saying I think the candle might have worked.
01:28:08
We could have like cauterized it.
01:28:09
And he's like, Nah, I just, I just burned him somewhere.
01:28:13
Like, yeah, but it's like, but it's like they wrote that in and
01:28:16
then they didn't like like. And then he just through the
01:28:19
power of imagination sphere magic just makes him whole
01:28:23
again. Like, yeah, well, somebody ran
01:28:25
in front of the other characters, which denoted the
01:28:27
end of the scene, so they had to.
01:28:29
Move on. No.
01:28:30
Well, yeah, title card came down and.
01:28:31
Title card came down and just said yeah, the machine and there
01:28:34
something else. Doesn't make sense, but.
01:28:39
I thought that this episode would be a slam dunk for me
01:28:42
'cause you made me watch Sphere, but no, I'm not so sure.
01:28:45
No, no, I, I, I get like, like I said, this is probably the first
01:28:51
of the films that I've watched for the show to have such a
01:28:54
complete fall off. You know, it, it's just, it's,
01:28:58
it's a rare thing for, for a film really to have this kind of
01:29:02
trajectory for me, like viewing it where it's just like, because
01:29:07
it feels like you're like sold on this promise of this
01:29:10
interesting drama from everything that it sets up in a
01:29:13
way, you know, 'cause it 'cause it feels like you get this even
01:29:17
with all these individual characters.
01:29:18
It feels like you kind of get this set up one sentence setups
01:29:22
for everybody. But then it almost feels like,
01:29:24
you know, then once they're in in the thick of things, it's
01:29:27
like then something would happen with all of them.
01:29:30
You know, it's like that thing where it's like Billy Zane.
01:29:32
It's like he, you know, he lied about his background.
01:29:34
It's like. Maybe that would be
01:29:35
consequential in some way. Yes, exactly.
01:29:38
But like none of the other characters even get anything
01:29:40
like that. You know, there's just like no
01:29:42
follow up with any of the other characters.
01:29:44
They're just completely static throughout the rest of the film.
01:29:47
And it's like it may have been salvageable in in other ways if
01:29:51
like you could at least have something visually interesting
01:29:54
on screen, but it's like you don't even get that.
01:29:56
It's you just get this claustrophobic space that you're
01:29:59
in the whole time where it's almost, it almost is like
01:30:02
they're like pantomiming what's happening to them.
01:30:05
You know, 'cause you get like really almost no shots even of
01:30:09
the outside of the plane. You know, you don't get these
01:30:12
like exteriors and like. Crazy.
01:30:15
Yeah. Yeah.
01:30:16
So I mean, I can understand maybe the intention if you
01:30:19
wanted to feel super claustrophobic, but still.
01:30:22
Yeah, but it's like not even that.
01:30:23
It's like it, it tries, it's like, it feels like it tried to
01:30:26
go because I mean, that original documentary was was like a
01:30:30
propaganda film basically, you know, it's like here, here's
01:30:32
support the war effort, like. Recycle your nylon.
01:30:39
So like so it feels like free. Boga So I don't intend to keep
01:30:47
doing voices on the show, sorry. Casablanca.
01:30:52
Casablanca sounds like a bad like gangster movie.
01:30:58
Like it's. Not seems like a very specific
01:31:02
accent they would do in those 40s movies and that's not it.
01:31:04
This. Is like not not it, but it it's
01:31:10
like this film almost feels like in that same spirit, you know,
01:31:14
it just feels like this like like it has that energy of like
01:31:17
a sports movie where it's like we did it.
01:31:20
It was tough out there in the third quarter, but we put, I
01:31:23
don't know, I keep, I keep slipping into that accent.
01:31:25
Now they almost had us out there, those Germans.
01:31:31
None of the characters talk like that.
01:31:37
Yeah, but it'd be funny if they did it.
01:31:39
Would be funny. Germany.
01:31:42
Germany scores in the second-half.
01:31:51
OK, Frank, a couple of flops today as far as our forgotten
01:31:56
90s picks as Fear was terrible. It sounds like Memphis Belle
01:31:59
really suffered from being just kind of boring.
01:32:02
So I'm curious to see who's going to win.
01:32:04
It's going to be the battle of the losers.
01:32:05
Yeah, yeah. It's a tough one.
01:32:07
It's a tough one. I'll go first since my review
01:32:10
came up first. Sphere is my least favorite
01:32:13
movie I've watched for the show. It may be very mad, but as we
01:32:17
keep running into, we're like trying to set the floor and the
01:32:20
ceiling for like how to score a film because you and I are not
01:32:23
used to this. We we never did this before
01:32:25
starting the show because it's productive, but now we're trying
01:32:28
to rate things out of 10 and not look like frauds.
01:32:30
And so I want it to be relatively consistent.
01:32:33
So I can't just say like Sphere was awful.
01:32:35
It's a 0 because that's it. No, there's so much further down
01:32:38
you could go than this movie in terms of like more boring, more
01:32:42
incoherent, like non functioning.
01:32:45
So I think I'm going to give Sphere a 2 out of 10 because it
01:32:49
does a couple of things well. Like visually it actually
01:32:51
impressed me more than I expected.
01:32:53
It looks nice. It's just an like unbelievably
01:32:56
dumb movie that is not even fun to watch for its dumbness.
01:33:01
It's just aggravating. So I think I'm going to give
01:33:04
that one A2. I mean that that feels deserved.
01:33:08
That feels like a like a 2. Like don't, don't watch Sphere
01:33:12
out of like, I'm going to watch it anyway because it sounds so
01:33:15
silly it will bore you to tears. It's such an annoying.
01:33:19
Film, yeah, I mean it like on paper it sounds like, you know,
01:33:24
when you throw in so many wacky elements that like, even if it's
01:33:26
bad, it could be interesting because that's, that's the
01:33:29
that's the territory I kind of more lean into.
01:33:31
Like I prefer like theoretically, I would prefer a
01:33:35
sphere to a Memphis Belle, you know, whereas Memphis fellas
01:33:39
just this very kind of like technically correct in a lot of
01:33:42
ways, but falls flat. So it just kind of falls into
01:33:44
this like nowhere territory. Whereas like Spear is not an
01:33:48
example of this, but similar films to it where it's like they
01:33:50
kind of shoot for their moon in terms of like creativity or or
01:33:54
just like craziness to the point where it becomes interesting
01:33:57
even if it's a bad film. So theoretically I would prefer
01:34:02
a spirit, a sphere that is. Yeah, that is a tough one.
01:34:06
It's hard to say, right? To a Memphis Belle.
01:34:09
But this one sounds like a unique case of it just being so
01:34:13
poorly executed in every way that it was just like there's
01:34:16
nothing redeeming about it. It should have been more of a
01:34:19
slam dunk because like, I'm super open to science fiction.
01:34:22
Some people don't like sci-fi in the 1st place.
01:34:23
But like, we both are huge, you know, into that genre much more
01:34:28
so than war films. So like it was almost favored
01:34:31
towards sphere and it still managed to mess it up.
01:34:33
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Which is a bummer.
01:34:36
I didn't know. I did not know what sphere was.
01:34:40
It was going to be that bad when I picked it.
01:34:42
Well, we forgot about it. We chose to forget about.
01:34:45
I used the stones to destroy the stones.
01:34:50
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
01:34:52
So 2 out of 10. Poor sphere.
01:34:56
OK, over to you. What's your final tally for
01:35:00
Memphis Belle? This is this is a hard one
01:35:03
because if I turned this movie off 20 minutes in and just
01:35:08
imagined what the rest of it would be, I was I would be like,
01:35:11
that was probably a pretty good movie, but unfortunately I saw
01:35:15
the rest so. Yep.
01:35:20
It's it's like you said, it's, it's tough to find that that
01:35:22
floor, find that ceiling. I think this is going to be a
01:35:29
three. I think this is going to line up
01:35:31
with grifters. A three OK right at right tide
01:35:34
for the worst one that I've given to you.
01:35:37
Yeah, it's just like out of all the movies I've watched for the
01:35:43
show, those are the 2 where I just wouldn't want to watch them
01:35:47
again. You know, like the you know, I
01:35:51
listen back to our our episode we did with like the prophecy
01:35:55
and you know, like I was telling you, I think off air, like I
01:35:57
keep that from a four out of 10, but I'm like prophecy was so
01:36:00
much more interesting than like a four out of 10, you know, if
01:36:04
that makes sense. Like I, I do think we'll like
01:36:07
we've mentioned we'll probably come back and kind of do sort of
01:36:09
a retrospective where we talk about everything, but it's yeah,
01:36:13
this one falls into that grifters territory.
01:36:15
I'm just like no this just really did not click with me.
01:36:19
Which is saying a lot because you and I are such film fans and
01:36:23
you're like, working. You have literally made a
01:36:25
feature yourself. So like, there's such an
01:36:27
inherent interest in just how people put those pieces together
01:36:30
that it's hard to be turned off completely by a movie.
01:36:33
It's like you have to work so actively to be that boring or
01:36:37
that annoying. And these two both succeeded.
01:36:39
These these might be like the two worst movies we've had to
01:36:42
review. And so it's funny to me that
01:36:44
they ended up on the same episode.
01:36:46
Yeah, yeah, 'cause it's not like we were like, you know what,
01:36:49
let's do a, let's do a, a rotten, Rotten Tomatoes episode
01:36:52
here. Like, you know, this is not
01:36:55
intentional. This is just how it goes.
01:36:57
It's just the nature of the show.
01:36:58
Yeah. All right.
01:37:00
So that's a three, you said for Memphis Belle, right?
01:37:02
Yeah, yeah. OK, that's this is so
01:37:06
fascinating. So we have two more episodes
01:37:08
left before we decide who wins Season 1.
01:37:11
We'll each recommend two more films.
01:37:12
We'll rank those and then we'll do a cumulative total after 10
01:37:16
episodes, we are within two points of each other.
01:37:19
I've given you 10 films, total scores for that from you, 56
01:37:23
points. You've given me 10 films, 54
01:37:25
points, which both like mathematically makes sense.
01:37:28
We're like averaging towards the middle and we're just like
01:37:31
almost exactly tight. I just find that kind of
01:37:33
baffling. Yeah, yeah.
01:37:37
The fix is in all right. We're doing it for ratings well.
01:37:40
I we're definitely not, we're definitely not.
01:37:42
And I like, I'm glad that you're the one that have the total
01:37:45
scores in front of you because I'm not like trying to be
01:37:48
influenced by those in any way. I'm just trying to be like, this
01:37:50
is this is just how I feel about this individual film, so.
01:37:54
Yeah, the other funny thing is that I have won the episode
01:37:57
despite the movie I gave you earning a three out of 10.
01:38:01
That's how it goes. I did it.
01:38:03
I have won episode 10, our landmark 10th episode, which
01:38:07
means that as we move into our picks for next time, I'll I'll
01:38:10
go first. Have we done like a straight up
01:38:13
comedy on the show so far? Like, not like a not like a
01:38:17
comedy drama, but just like a full blown comedy film.
01:38:20
I I mean, I don't know, I guess that Wes Anderson movie was like
01:38:25
in the comedy genre. That's true.
01:38:28
That's more of a comedy, but it's like a Moody indie comedy.
01:38:32
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it wasn't like a Ace Ventura
01:38:34
like, you know, OK. I'll go in that direction then,
01:38:38
you know what I mean? By the time this next episode's
01:38:40
coming out will be towards the end of the year, people just
01:38:42
trying to unwind. Nothing too serious, No more
01:38:44
war, you know, some laughs, some laughs.
01:38:48
So I am going to ask you to watch 1997's The Wrong Guy,
01:38:52
which is a movie I saw on some thread recently.
01:38:56
I think the star of the movie is one of the guys from Kids in the
01:38:58
Hall. You know the old comedy group.
01:39:01
I don't kids in the. Hall Yeah.
01:39:03
They had like a show in the 90s. It was like a sketch comedy
01:39:05
thing. The premise of the wrong guy, to
01:39:07
my understanding, is it's like this regular office worker guy,
01:39:12
his boss gets like murdered and he thinks that he's been framed
01:39:16
for the murder and so he goes on the run even though no one
01:39:19
actually thinks he killed the guy.
01:39:21
That's funny premise, yeah. It's like a road trip kind of
01:39:25
thing where like he thinks he's on the run from the law even
01:39:28
though nobody's after him. OK.
01:39:30
Yeah, just like your classic. Yeah, over to you.
01:39:34
Over to me. So yeah, I don't know this one.
01:39:38
This is an interesting one. I'm going to recommend to you.
01:39:44
Actually, it's not a recommendation.
01:39:45
It's more like a you have to watch this.
01:39:47
More of an assignment, yeah, yeah.
01:39:51
It's 1995's Cutthroat Island starring somebody I know you're
01:39:56
a fan of. This is Geena Davis is the lead
01:40:00
in this one. I do like Geena Davis.
01:40:03
This is Sam Jackson in this one too.
01:40:06
I don't think he is. I don't believe so.
01:40:08
I could be wrong. And I don't know what this is.
01:40:10
This is, and This is why I picked this film because it's
01:40:14
interesting to me, kind of a piece of film history here in a
01:40:18
way. This movie, it's like a pirate
01:40:20
themed movie. Awesome, right?
01:40:24
Totally awesome. But it was such a box office
01:40:30
failure. I think it bankrupted a studio
01:40:35
and basically like blacklisted pirate films from Hollywood for
01:40:42
like a decade because like essentially this one did so
01:40:46
poorly financially that like the studios just didn't believe in
01:40:49
the bankability of pirate films after it until Pirates of the
01:40:54
Caribbean. So oh.
01:40:57
Wow. Yeah.
01:40:58
So that's like an 8 year drought.
01:41:00
Yes. Does it have like do you know if
01:41:03
it's like critically pan too or is it just a box office flop?
01:41:06
I didn't get into that because I didn't want to skew my
01:41:10
perception of it or yours too much.
01:41:12
Like good. Point.
01:41:13
Good point. So I, I specifically avoided
01:41:17
like looking into if it's, if it's actually a bad movie and
01:41:21
that's why it performed poorly. And I'm sure there's, there's
01:41:24
more stuff we can get into. I did read a little bit about
01:41:26
like reasons why it did perform poorly.
01:41:30
But yeah, I didn't get into the critical stuff because I I'll,
01:41:32
I'll let you do that. I'll leave it up to me.
01:41:35
Yeah, well, I'll tell you right now.
01:41:35
Sphere was like a 17% Rotten Tomatoes, so you could have
01:41:40
probably flagged that one a little bit earlier.
01:41:44
It seems like it should be lower honestly, like.
01:41:45
Seems like it should be lower. Yeah.
01:41:47
Is there a zero? Is there a 0 on this thing?
01:41:49
Oh, there's absolutely there's. There's 0 scores.
01:41:51
Sorry, there's a 2. There's a 2 on here.
01:41:53
It's a 2 out of 10. Which 17 out of 100?
01:41:55
That is worse. That's true.
01:41:58
Anyway, that's math, everybody. We'll see you in two weeks for
01:42:00
the next episode of Meet Your Double Feature.
01:42:02
Before we go, Frank, I feel like we should we should shout out
01:42:06
our socials and our website because I sometimes forget to
01:42:08
plug that at the end. We do have a website.
01:42:10
You can listen to every episode of Meet Your Double Feature by
01:42:13
going to Meet Your doublefeature.com spelled in
01:42:15
full, just like the name of the show.
01:42:17
We also have some blog posts on there.
01:42:18
Frank just added one about the upcoming Frankenstein film on
01:42:22
Netflix. So occasionally we're even going
01:42:24
to cover stuff not covered directly on the podcast.
01:42:27
And yeah, there's lots, lots more you can find there.
01:42:28
You can find links to every other platform to listen on.
01:42:31
So please go ahead and check it out.
01:42:32
Meet your doublefeature.com. Yeah.
01:42:35
Frankly, anything you want to plug or is it?
01:42:37
Yeah, I guess that's it. Yeah, Yeah.
01:42:43
Well, you mentioned the socials too.
01:42:44
I don't know if you wanted to plug the.
01:42:46
I totally would if I had them in front of me.
01:42:48
I want to say it's Instagram. Is meet your double feature on
01:42:51
Instagram? We're also on Blue Sky on mydf
01:42:54
pod because Blue Sky wouldn't let me type in the full name.
01:42:57
Said it was too long anyway. We used to on the show on Funny
01:43:01
things. Coming up next, It's the Wrong
01:43:19
Guy, followed by Cutthroat Island on Meet Your Double
01:43:23
Feature.