The Big Picture · Discussion · Interview
May 12, 2025/ 137 min/ Sean Fennessy · Amanda Dobbins
With Cannes opening and no other news, Sean and Amanda open the mailbag (producer Bobby Wagner reads the questions), covering underrated directors, first big letdowns, movie-history what-ifs, marathon themes, family traditions, and which recent films will make the canon. Then Alex Ross Perry stops by to talk Pavements, his biopic-jukebox-musical-museum-documentary about the band.
22 films across 2 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
The MailbagSean and Amanda, with Bobby Wagner reading listener questions
Named alongside Kelly Reichardt and Sean Baker as an example of Mike Mills's zone: eight or nine acclaimed indie features, small box office. Amanda saw it while pregnant with Knox; it took her out. Both call it underseen, maybe due to COVID.
Reichardt's new film, playing Cannes this year. Some think it could be an Academy Award contender. Sean says that would've been unthinkable a decade ago.
Sean's answer for first movie to truly let him down: he clocked the twist about six minutes in and sat in that feeling for 90 minutes. He still likes it.
Amanda's pick for first big letdown. James L. Brooks's comedy with Reese Witherspoon (a softball player, à la Jennie Finch), Jack Nicholson, and Owen Wilson. You know five minutes in it won't come together.
Another Sean letdown: Diane Lane and John Cusack, seen on a hot summer day at a downtown-Manhattan multiplex. It just didn't play.
Bobby's answer. At 11 he thought it would be the coolest, greatest movie ever; it fell apart for him.
Cited as the No. 5 movie at the box office that weekend: an IFC/Shudder horror movie that does exactly what the title promises. Nobody had it on their bingo card.
The film behind the closing question: appreciated by critics and cinephiles, largely unknown to the wider public, the kind of movie Sean expects future filmmakers to cite.
Sean's biggest recent pick for a film destined for the canon that the public hasn't caught up to. A tough watch at home, but he sees a repertory reputation building.
Talked up repeatedly on the show without ever getting its own episode; Sean sees it starting to get memed the way films do right before they take off.
Amanda's canon nominee, to Sean's surprise. A movie about movies that some cinephiles increasingly call the one, even if it isn't as fun as Get Out.
Not a big Oscar or box-office movie, but self-reflexive in ways that get people pondering their own relationship to art. They expect it reappraised as one of Spielberg's most important.
A great late Spielberg movie hurt by the pandemic that nobody seems to care about. Sean was cool on 2010s Spielberg, hot on the last two.
One of the last films released before COVID, so a lot of people streamed it at home. Sean thinks that raised Reichardt's profile with younger viewers.
The Nicole Kidman movie Amanda sees percolating: a specific, taboo-but-not-perverted set of desires, with the girlboss material landing flatter than the sex. Getting memed, milk and all.
Bobby's pick. Not necessarily canon, but doing enough weird, audacious stuff visually that filmmakers will cite it in 20 years.
Bobby's other pick: an act of filmmaking built around a specific, non-commercial vision that he thinks will inspire people to make something.
Alex Ross Perry on 'Pavements'the writer-director's tenth-or-so visit, in person in LA
The four-year odyssey: a Pavement movie that is at once a fake biopic (Joe Keery as Malkmus, Nat Wolff, Fred Hechinger, Logan Miller, Griffin Newman), a jukebox musical, a pop-up museum, and a documentary of a reunion tour, all smashed together like a turducken. The band asked for something that felt written, not a traditional doc.
The structural rip-off Perry admits to: three timelines converging about 70 minutes in, so five different versions of the song Grounded lock together at once.
Perry feels a huge affinity for it: someone else working through something and asking why a movie has to be one way. He calls Pavements the indie-rock Megalopolis.
The straight-faced biopic Pavements parodies: the 'musician sits down and writes' scene Perry lampoons, and the New York Times coverage about how they made the wig.
Joe Keery's other credit; Perry, who admires Keery's real work in Pavements, calls Free Guy garbage: 'my Synecdoche, New York.'
Also mentioned raised along the way
The underrated-directors question Armageddon TimeAll of Us StrangersThe Edge of SeventeenAre You There God? It's Me, Margaret.Rebel RidgeJay KellyPetite MamanSummer 1993Alcarràs
The Best Actor race, as speculated Marty SupremeSpringsteen: Deliver Me from NowhereOne Battle After AnotherThe History of SoundThe Smashing MachineBugoniaBallad of a Small PlayerSinnersHighest 2 LowestInception
More first-letdown picks UnbreakableThe Sixth SenseThe 6th DayEraserEnd of DaysBatman & RobinExcess BaggageClueless
The what-ifs question NixonWorld War Z20,000 Leagues Under the SeaThe Lovely BonesThe AvengersHeatA.I. Artificial IntelligenceBarry Lyndon
The limited-release / box-office question ThunderboltsFriendshipMission: Impossible - The Final ReckoningLilo & StitchAnoraHundreds of Beavers
Blu-ray white whales 28 Days Later28 Weeks Later28 Years LaterDogmaExodusHombreThe Long, Hot SummerNear Dark
Marathon themes and rep-theater talk Hail, Caesar!Boogie NightsWrath of ManPoint BreakOnce Upon a Time in HollywoodBaby BoomWorking GirlBroadcast NewsWall StreetFatal AttractionBlade RunnerMission: Impossible
Family movie traditions The SavagesSynecdoche, New York21 GramsMorning GloryTop FiveInside Llewyn DavisEbirah, Horror of the DeepPorco RossoRobin HoodTop Gun: MaverickMary PoppinsSingin' in the Rain
Also in the recent-canon talk Get OutXPearlBabylon
In the Pavements conversation Her SmellGolden ExitsListen Up PhilipLast DaysEdvard MunchBergman IslandPersonaShameScenes from a MarriageMishima: A Life in Four ChaptersMamma Mia!The Zone of InterestSomething's Gotta GiveAlmost FamousI'm Not ThereBob Marley: One LoveTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant MayhemWe Own the NightMenasheThiefPossessionOn the Silver GlobeThe Virgin SuicidesLost in TranslationBottle RocketRushmoreThe Royal TenenbaumsHard EightApocalypse NowFitzcarraldoMinority Report
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV The StudioLaw & Order
Stage / other media Stereophonic (play)Illinoise (Sufjan Stevens musical)Nebraska (Bruce Springsteen album)
Unmade or fictional films Napoleon (Kubrick's unmade epic)The Secret History (Pacino / Didion-Dunne adaptation)Kool-Aid (the Scorsese-Buscemi movie inside The Studio)Blackwing (the Zoe Kravitz movie inside The Studio)Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Jane Schoenbrun's announced next film)
Podcasts 60 Songs That Explain the '90sPlain EnglishThe Press BoxThe Rewatchables