The Big Picture · Discussion · Review
January 27, 2020/ 47 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins · Chris Ryan
Recording from Sundance, Sean, Amanda, and Chris Ryan decide the Oscar race is already over after 1917's DGA win, run through the weekend box office, get into Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen, and file dispatches from the festival.
47 films across 4 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.
Is the Oscar race already over?Sam Mendes wins the DGA
Sam Mendes' DGA win (on top of the PGA and Globes) makes it, for the hosts, a Best Picture and Best Director lock. They read it as a technical-achievement war movie that peaked at the right moment on a compressed calendar, and the candidate with the fewest negatives: nobody has landed a case against it the way people have with past winners.
Bong Joon-ho's SAG ensemble winner, the film the hosts are rooting for. Sean calls it 'the Hurt Locker of 2020,' though both it and 1917 are the year's dueling war-adjacent pictures. A likely International Feature winner; the open question is whether the Academy hands it a screenplay.
A late-December contender the hosts suspect voters are relieved not to have to rewatch.
Once looked like Tarantino's coronation; now maybe running fourth. Screenplay is no longer a lock; it's been around a long time, which may be working against it.
The 'Christmas dad movie' Sean imagines swapping calendar slots with 1917 in a what-if: the old-world dad movie the Academy supposedly moved on from, only for 1917 to slide into the same lane.
Noah Baumbach floated as a possible original screenplay upset.
Taika Waititi named as the adapted-screenplay threat to Greta Gerwig; Scarlett Johansson's second nomination of the year is here.
Greta Gerwig took the USC Scripter, positioning her as the adapted-screenplay favorite. Saoirse Ronan is a Best Actress nominee.
Renée Zellweger is the presumed Best Actress winner. Sean's example of an awards movie that 'exists in an aquarium': lauded by voters, absent from any real-world conversation.
Charlize Theron's Best Actress nomination.
Cynthia Erivo's Best Actress nomination, part of a slate the hosts note is short on actors of color.
The Annie Awards' surprise Best Animated Feature winner. Hand-drawn, which the hosts flag as notable; Sean strings out a running bit pretending it's about Santa Claus versus legal clauses.
Took the Annie in the indie category and is also an Oscar animated-feature nominee, more evidence that the animation race, unlike everything else, has no consensus.
Sean's prior pick for the Oscar animated feature; it lost the Annie, leaving that category up in the air.
Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert's DGA documentary winner, and the presumed Best Documentary front-runner.
The time the Academy got it right, and the hope the hosts admit they keep reinvesting: it beat La La Land after Damien Chazelle took Best Director in a split.
Amanda's example of a movie she could finally articulate disliking, the kind of clarity nobody's managed against 1917.
Alfonso Cuarón won Best Director but not Best Picture. The hosts note that split is common, the kind of achievement movie that doesn't always win the top prize.
The last technical-marvel juggernaut, a huge deal to filmmakers at the time, that still lost Best Picture.
The war movie that beat Avatar; Sean's template for how Parasite could theoretically topple 1917.
The lone DGA exception: Ben Affleck won it, then wasn't even nominated for the directing Oscar, the outlier that keeps 15-of-16 from being 16-of-16.
Stock up, stock down: the box officeBad Boys are back
A mega hit, and the hosts' theory for why: the IP is Will Smith and Martin Lawrence's chemistry, not a mythology. There's no Silmarillion of Mike Lowry. Kate del Castillo (the actress who led Sean Penn to El Chapo) plays the witch, La Bruja.
Cited as a retread franchise revival that flopped, 'okay, not bad,' but not Bad Boys.
Another failed Will Smith-adjacent revival; Sean calls it 'apocalyptically bad.'
The other revival that didn't work; Sean hadn't seen it, so no verdict.
Surprisingly did not die: kids turned out for talking animals. Setup for the running bit about Stephen Gaghan's troubles directing digital-animal-human interaction.
Stephen Gaghan's earlier film, invoked in a mock Rogan-appearance bit about what drew Robert Downey Jr. to Dolittle.
Chris Ryan on 'The Gentlemen'Guy Ritchie's return to the gangster mode
Chris admits it's regressive, kind of racist, and pretty stupid, and that he really liked it: a smart-dumb British gangster movie, staged almost like a play in long dialogue scenes. Wild swings from Hugh Grant, Matthew McConaughey ('thinks he's in a Lincoln commercial'), Colin Farrell (a tartan-clad Irish gym coach, Chris's favorite thing in ages), Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, and Jeremy Strong. Financed partly by the new Miramax in 2018, bought by STX for around $7M, and made about $11M opening weekend.
The stylish, knowingly stupid British gangster mode Ritchie made his name on and is returning to.
The other Ritchie touchstone in that original run.
Part of the 'IP Gulag' Ritchie spent five years in before this.
The other big studio-IP job on Ritchie's recent résumé.
The franchise work that preceded the IP stretch.
The Charlie Hunnam character Chris says he relates to most, the one who chokes a man out in a Publix.
Chris's example of Hunnam's booming, Shakespearean-projection voice work.
Source of the 'a guy playing a guy' Robert Downey Jr. line the hosts apply to Hunnam.
Henry Golding's other recent title. It made money in the UK, so his post-Crazy Rich Asians run is 'hanging on.'
Golding's breakout, the baseline against which his stardom is being measured.
The charming-crooks counterexample: The Gentlemen is not that; it's two hours of cockney swearing.
The Gentlemen opens with blood splashing into a beer, which Chris reads as the 'low-rent version' of the Pepto-Bismol-in-whiskey image, a movie the hosts wish they were still talking about this awards season.
The permission structure the movie seems nostalgic for: when films could 'be that.'
Dispatches from Sundancewhat they've seen so far
Josephine Decker's claustrophobic film about Shirley Jackson (Elizabeth Moss) writing a novel. Amanda pitched it as The Secret History but about women; both liked it, Sean less so after watching it from the front row, straight up Moss's nostrils. An incredible ending.
David Bruckner's horror film with Rebecca Hall as a widow investigating her husband's suicide. Chris admired it but saw it stacking three genres at once, a product of 'I can't believe we got to make this,' with a Pacific Heights element, a Shining element, and loud jump scares.
Bruckner's earlier Netflix horror movie, Chris's reference point for him.
Sean's favorite of the festival so far: Kirsten Johnson staging her aging father's deaths on camera. Funny, peppy, heart-rending, 89 minutes, and headed to Netflix; he'd bet on it for Best Documentary a year out.
Kirsten Johnson's impressionistic earlier documentary, widely called one of the best of the decade.
The ski-lift survival thriller, invoked when the Sundance chairlift becomes a running gag, a woman stranded on the far side of the mountain.
Also mentioned raised along the way
In the bits Captain MarvelAvengers: EndgameGuardians of the GalaxyThe Tree of LifeForrest GumpA Perfect WorldThe Lord of the Rings: The Two TowersDoctor StrangeFrozen
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
Ads AT&T
Podcasts The WatchThe RewatchablesThe Ringer NBA ShowThe Joe Rogan Experience
Books The Secret HistoryThe Lottery