The Big Picture · Discussion · Review · Interview
May 19, 2023/ 89 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins take apart 'Fast X' and what franchise fatigue is doing to movies, then Sean talks to Paul Schrader about 'Master Gardener' and the Lonely Man trilogy.
19 films across 3 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.
'Fast X' and the desecration of movieswith Bobby Wagner
The 11th 'Fast' film, directed by Louis Leterrier after Justin Lin left mid-production. Opens by re-editing the 'Fast Five' vault heist to insert Jason Momoa's villain, Dante, son of Hernan Reyes; crams in nearly every returning star and ends on a dam cliffhanger Sean calls the most cynical thing he's ever seen. Amanda flags Brie Larson's exposition and mismatched eyebrows; both liked Alan Ritchson.
Sean's high-water mark for the series and one of his favorite films of its decade: the Rio vault heist with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. Fast X leans on it and, Sean argues, only reminds you how far things have fallen.
Paired with 'Fast Five' as the other peak, for how it closed out Paul Walker's story after his death.
The eighth film, badly reviewed but still a box-office hit. Where Amanda marks the decline setting in.
The one where the characters go to space; cited as the previous ceiling on escalating stakes that Fast X fails to top.
'Master Gardener'
Schrader writes and directs Joel Edgerton as a horticulturist with a violent past on a Southern estate owned by Sigourney Weaver's character. The tonal inverse of Fast X and, for Sean, a hopeful capstone to a trilogy that asks whether a former Proud Boy can be forgiven and loved.
The 2018 release Sean calls one of the most significant films of his life; the trilogy's opener, with Ethan Hawke as a minister undone by climate grief.
The middle film, Oscar Isaac as a poker player and former Abu Ghraib torturer.
In conversation
Ground zero for his sensibility: a lonely man drawn from Dostoevsky, Sartre and Camus that he says caught the zeitgeist. He returns to the Peter Boyle diner scene, where an older man gives Travis the worst advice, as the pattern his late films reverse.
His midlife-crisis film, the drug-delivery-boy 'John' who appeared to him in a 5 a.m. dream and gave him his metaphor.
The ending he most regrets: Columbia forced a daughter rescue where he wanted her to die unrelated to the pornography her father chased. The theater scene is now a meme.
Another departure; he's gratified it still screens, and that you can hear Philip Glass's score in an elevator.
Cited as a film a Criterion reissue introduced to a new generation.
Among his least-seen; he admits he didn't quite get the ending right.
Quentin Tarantino told him he'd like to refilm its ending for a project about 1970s Hollywood.
His answer to the show's closing question: not great, maybe not even good, but a force of imagination that stayed in his head 'like this very cute girl that you just want to slap.'
Also mentioned raised along the way
The end-of-the-cycle rant AquamanTop Gun: MaverickThe CreatorThe FlashThor: Love and ThunderDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of MadnessAnt-Man and the Wasp: QuantumaniaAvengers: Infinity WarAvengers: EndgameStar Wars: The Rise of SkywalkerIndiana Jones and the Dial of DestinyDuneDune: Part TwoTransformers: Dark of the MoonTransformers: The Last KnightShort Term 12Killers of the Flower MoonThe WalkerAvatar
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV ReacherThe Little Drummer GirlSuccession
Video games FIFA World Cup Launch Edition
Ads The Ringer MMA ShowNetflixCarvanaNOS EnergyBoar's Head