The Big Picture · Discussion · Review · Interview
August 9, 2024/ 107 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
The 700th episode: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins run a double bill of the A24 prison-theater drama 'Sing Sing' and the Colleen Hoover adaptation 'It Ends With Us,' then Sean talks to 'Sing Sing' director Greg Kwedar.
13 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.
The week in moviesbefore the reviews
The George Clooney and Brad Pitt Oceans reunion, financed by Apple and distributed by Sony, yanked from a September 20 wide release to a one-week theatrical run before heading straight to Apple TV+. Sean read the news as a group-chat crisis; both take it as a bad sign for movies. Apple also greenlit a sequel, which Sean suspects was announced mainly to justify the streaming dump.
The Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum movie whose soft box office is part of why Apple is rethinking theatrical.
The Matt Damon and Casey Affleck movie opening the same day on Apple TV+; neither host is sure it got a real theatrical run, and both plan to watch it that night.
Jason Reitman's all-in-one-night comedy-thriller about the first SNL episode, with a deep young cast (Gabriel LaBelle, Cooper Hoffman, Rachel Sennott, Dylan O'Brien, Cory Michael Smith, Nicholas Braun as both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson). Sean's excited; Amanda saw the trailer's white-guy-in-a-stairwell framing and decided Reitman is back. Now reportedly headed to Toronto.
‘Sing Sing’Sean Fennessey, Amanda Dobbins
Greg Kwedar's A24 drama about Rehabilitation Through the Arts, the theater program at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility, adapted from John Richardson's Esquire piece. Colman Domingo plays Divine G opposite Clarence Maclin, a formerly incarcerated RTA alumnus playing a version of himself. The performance annihilated Sean, who didn't clock until the credits that Maclin had lived it. Both hosts call it a favorite of the year: shot on Super 16, mostly close-ups, no climactic triumphant performance, all the revelations kept between the men. Sean pegs it as the first real Best Picture challenger to 'Dune: Part Two' and a lock for acting nominations. Domingo shot it in 18 days between 'The Color Purple' and 'Rustin' reshoots.
‘It Ends With Us’Sean Fennessey, Amanda Dobbins
Justin Baldoni directs and co-stars in the Colleen Hoover adaptation, with Blake Lively as a florist whose romance with Baldoni's neurosurgeon curdles into a domestic-abuse story the movie withholds for an hour. Amanda did the reading (dark romance, first-person source, an Ellen-diaries device) and argues the rom-com framing is a structural trap romance keeps falling into. Sean thinks the movie pulls its punches because the director is playing the abuser. Both were entertained and appalled: the Carhartt costuming, the abhorrent soundtrack (a wispy 'Skinny Love' cover set to teen sex made them burst out laughing), Brandon Sklenar's mullet, and the offscreen drama of the cast unfollowing Baldoni. A hit they don't understand.
In conversationSean Fennessey talks to the director of ‘Sing Sing’
Kwedar's first feature, a border-patrol thriller made in 16 days; its perceived commerciality is what the industry kept trying to extract from him for eight years of cop-and-military scripts he passed on.
The film his creative partner Clint Bentley directed and Kwedar co-wrote, dropping trained actors (Clifton Collins Jr., Molly Parker) into a real racetrack among real jockeys. It was the dry run for putting RTA alumni at the center of 'Sing Sing.'
One of Kwedar's top-four: a movie that let the world breathe into it and showed him you could make something about the simplest things that was also the stuff of poetry.
The film that 'just got away with it': friends, scarce resources, long lenses across the street, working musicians who'd never acted. He points to the cassette-in-the-car beach scene.
His counterweight reference and the closest thing to where 'Transpecos' sits in his work: a film he calls perfect for its precision, its love of place, and its refusal of an easy conclusion.
His 'nerdy film-school' fourth pick, from a grad-school syllabus he worked through before backing out of NYU. Kieślowski as the humane filmmaker who loves his characters without shielding them from their pain.
Kwedar's last-great-thing: sexy, a former athlete's delight in the mind games, and film grammar that reminded him why he goes to the theater.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Reitman, before ‘Saturday Night’ JunoYoung AdultTullyGhostbusters: AfterlifeGhostbusters: Frozen Empire
The ‘Saturday Night’ cast, elsewhere The FabelmansLicorice Pizza
‘Sing Sing’ in context RustinThe Color PurpleDune: Part TwoPast LivesLittle Miss SunshineSister Act 2: Back in the Habit
The romance-movie wave The Idea of YouA Family AffairFifty Shades of GreyFive Feet Apart
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV Jane the VirginCrazy Ex-GirlfriendThis Is UsGrey's AnatomyEuphoria1923House of the DragonThe Ellen DeGeneres Show
Podcasts WTF with Marc Maron
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