The Big Picture · Discussion · Interview
October 24, 2025/ 111 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins · Chris Ryan · Yasi Salek
The crew pans Scott Cooper's Bruce Springsteen movie, then builds a music-biopic Mount Rushmore. Plus: Mary Bronstein on 'If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You.'
11 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.
'Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere'With Chris Ryan and Yasi Salek
Scott Cooper's take on the making of Nebraska, from Warren Zanes's book, with Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen and Jeremy Strong as manager Jon Landau. The panel finds it silly and overwritten, a Walk Hard cliche it accidentally recommits, and says the two live-performance scenes are the only times it leaves earth.
The 'Music Biopic' Mount RushmoreEveryone's essential pick
Yasi's pick, a bit of a cheat since it's about a label and a scene rather than one musician.
The template-setter: Michael Apted's documentarian eye, Sissy Spacek in the lead, conflict shown in real time instead of glossed over.
The most fun of the recent crop, taking the jukebox-musical approach the Springsteen movie resists.
The Brian Wilson film, praised for two actors playing two stages of a life you can't predict.
Takes the fictionalized composite approach, giving it more creative freedom and less need to spell everything out.
The cautionary opposite, the Amy Winehouse film they found genuinely offensive.
'If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You'Sean and Amanda
Mary Bronstein's A24 film, shot in claustrophobic close-up on Rose Byrne as a mother at her limit. The daughter is never shown. Tonally in the Uncut Gems / forced-intimacy vein.
In conversation
Bronstein on writing it on a hotel bathroom floor while her sick daughter slept, walking away from every note until A24 said yes, and the choice to never show the child.
Her first feature, from the mumblecore New York era, followed by a 17-year gap before this one.
The last great thing she saw: a chamber piece that survives on performance alone, which she found already lived inside her own work.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Biopic comparisons and name-drops Walk the LineWalk Hard: The Dewey Cox StoryBetter ManStraight Outta ComptonRayThat Thing You Do!PaddingtonBridget Jones's Diary
On screen inside the Springsteen movie The Night of the HunterBadlands
Other films the panel invoked HeatA Quiet PlaceGone GirlNeighborsBridesmaidsEmpire of LightKingdom of HeavenChainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc
Scott Cooper's other films Out of the FurnaceBlack MassAntlersHostiles
This year's awards field Marty SupremeOne Battle After AnotherSinnersThe Smashing MachineWeaponsThe Secret AgentSentimental ValueHamnetDie My LoveA House of DynamiteUncut Gems
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV The BearPlatonicPhysicalStranger Things
Podcasts Bandsplain
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