The Big Picture · Discussion · Review · Top Five · Interview
February 13, 2024/ 110 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
Sean and Amanda run the Super Bowl movie trailers, pan the flat ‘Bob Marley: One Love,’ rave about ‘The Taste of Things,’ and each rank five food movies. Plus: Sean sits down with Tran Anh Hung and Juliette Binoche.
26 films across 6 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 Super Bowl Trailersten spots, ranked by enthusiasm
The first real look at the redubbed Deadpool 3. Amanda is clear it's not for her; Sean, the one franchise he still holds onto, feels the whole comic-book infrastructure pressing down on a dopey Deadpool movie, and reads the TVA and the Disney-corporate meta jokes as an end-of-an-era beat.
Glenn Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones in Lee Isaac Chung's follow-up to the 1996 original. Both are in; both wanted the sensor balls updated. A title-card gag swaps the S for a shot of Powell walking in the rain.
Sold as ‘Wicked,’ but it's Part 1 of two. Sean was depressed by the green-screen look and misses the physical-world transposition ‘Barbie’ pulled off; Amanda calls it the ‘Wonka’ of 2024.
Plays like a direct prequel to the 1968 original, apes expanding their kingdom and enslaving humanity. Very, very CGI, more than the previous trilogy, but this is the one franchise that keeps earning visual credibility.
A one-minute super-cut of jokes and laugh lines that landed better than the flat three-and-a-half-minute first trailer. Sean wishes they'd started here.
The prequel; the trailer actually dropped a few days before the game.
The trailer Amanda laughed at most. It's really about Gru and a new baby, but every Minions side gag lands.
Aired after Amanda left. Sean's daughter Alice took one look and needed to see the panda now, so the family is catching up on all three.
Dev Patel's directorial debut, an action movie set in India, marketed to the John Wick crowd. Amanda notes it's the only movie on the list made for grown-ups.
Anxiety joins Riley's emotions. Sean, who doesn't like confronting his fears at the movies, is nonetheless in, it's Pixar.
Going up against ‘Wicked’; the stock market has declared Disney back.
‘Bob Marley: One Love’
Reinaldo Marcus Green's follow-up to ‘King Richard,’ with Kingsley Ben-Adir as Marley and Lashana Lynch as Rita. A microscope biopic covering roughly 1976 to 1979, from the Smile Jamaica concert and the assassination attempt through the recording of ‘Exodus.’ Both hosts were surprised by how not-good it is: the music cues are laughably literal (a fight, then ‘No Woman, No Cry’), five title cards do the work the movie can't, and you can feel the estate's thumb. Ben-Adir and Lynch are genuinely good; a movie about a vibes guy with no vibes.
‘The Taste of Things’
Tran Anh Hung's Cannes best-director winner, France in 1885, Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel (once married in real life) as the cook Eugénie and the gastronome Dodin. All the cooking is real; the opening set piece hits harder than any action sequence Amanda's seen in a while. Food is the art on screen, but the film is really about a decades-long partnership and the sense that none of it lasts. On Sean's top five of the year, maybe number one for both; he laments its snub for the international feature Oscar.
Amanda's Top Five Food Moviescounted down 5 to 1
No. 1 — Ang Lee's chef and his three daughters, organized around opulent Sunday dinners built around a father who's losing his sense of taste. Lee's breakthrough, a year before ‘Sense and Sensibility.’
No. 2 — and Amanda's husband's answer too: the hungry boy, the too-loud toast, and, of course, the mushrooms. It's how you control a man as particular as Reynolds Woodcock, and how you care for him.
No. 3 — a Nora Ephron doubleheader with ‘Heartburn’ (1986). Meryl Streep's Julia Child mastering the onion pile; the midnight carbonara. Ephron thought about food constantly, and it shows in all of it.
No. 4 — Scorsese's 50-minute documentary interviewing his parents, bookended by his mother making her sauce (recipe printed after the credits), the recipe standing in for who these people are.
No. 5 — Julia Roberts's breakout and a coming-of-age story set at the local pizza place, the restaurant doubling as the town's social center. Pizza matters more than you'd expect.
Sean's Top Five Food Moviescounted down 5 to 1
No. 1 — Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci's Sundance classic, two brothers (Tucci and Tony Shalhoub) making authentic Calabrian food that's too regional for 1950s New Jersey, staking everything on a mega-meal for Louis Prima. Rossellini, Ian Holm, Allison Janney, Minnie Driver right before ‘Good Will Hunting.’
No. 2 — David Gelb on the ten-seat, three-Michelin-star Sukiyabashi Jiro in a Tokyo subway station. A gorgeous, sensitive family story about what you give your kids; the doc that launched Gelb toward ‘Chef's Table.’
No. 3 — Juzo Itami's ‘ramen western,’ a farcical essay movie of truckers perfecting a bowl of ramen and a gangster couple's sensual food encounters. The noodles are shot insanely well; Ken Watanabe and Koji Yakusho turn up.
No. 4 — the Danish film that walked so ‘The Taste of Things’ could run: a French refugee wins the lottery and repays two ascetic sisters with a lavish real-time meal. A movie about what we let ourselves enjoy.
No. 5 — Brad Bird's wholly original Pixar movie about a rat learning to cook and a critic learning to open his heart. Partly responsible, Sean says, for his own foodie awakening.
In conversationon ‘The Taste of Things’
Tran's Palme d'Or winner, 30 years on. He and Binoche met around that era but only found the right project two decades later.
Tran's last-great-thing pick, a completely crazy movie about vulgarity that he loves.
Binoche's pick. She braced for the three-and-a-half hours and came out calling it maybe Scorsese's best, a breath of cinema.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Trailer comps TwisterWhere the Crawdads SingThe Wizard of OzBarbiePlanet of the ApesA Quiet PlaceA Quiet Place Part IIInside OutFinding NemoGuardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3MinariTop Gun: MaverickAnyone but YouHit ManMississippi GrindRain ManThe TownWonkaDune
The weekend's news Madame WebCivil WarMaterialists
Marley on film King RichardBohemian RhapsodyRocketmanWalk Hard: The Dewey Cox StoryFerrari
Reggae on the Criterion Channel The Harder They ComeRockersBabylon
The Oscar-season crosscurrents Anatomy of a FallIo CapitanoTo Kill a TigerLove Lies BleedingNyad
Tran Anh Hung, elsewhere Norwegian Wood
More food movies HeartburnChefBurntThe MenuThe Lazarus EffectGoodfellasWhen Harry Met SallyYou've Got MailPerfect DaysSense and Sensibility
Brad Bird The Iron GiantThe Incredibles
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV The TraitorsLokiThe BearGossip GirlI Love LucyChef's Table
Games FIFA World Cup Launch Edition
Ads TremfyaWells Fargo Autograph JourneyState FarmAmazon PrimeNetflixWhole Foods MarketDeath, Taxes and Bananas