The Big Picture · Review · Roundtable · Interview
July 10, 2026/ 96 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins · Chris Ryan
The whole episode is about 'The Invite,' Olivia Wilde's one-set dinner-party dramedy, plus a roundtable of favorite toxic-couple movies (five each) and an interview with Wilde on shooting in sequence, the Edward Norton monologue, and the ambiguous ending.
18 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.
'The Invite'Sean, Amanda, and Chris Ryan on the whole movie
Wilde directs and stars; Rashida Jones and Will McCormick wrote it, adapted from a 2021 Spanish film. Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penelope Cruz round out the four-hander, playing two couples at one dinner party that turns into a group-sex proposition and a marriage on the rocks. Shot on 35mm, in sequence, on a single built set. Dedicated to Diane Keaton; the hosts call it Wilde's best work and read the piano-bookend ending as a Rorschach test.
Toxic-couple canon five each: the nightmare-marriage movies they love
Richard Gere and Diane Lane; everything looks great until a windy day in Soho.
Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn saying incredibly rude things: 'the 15th-century Husbands and Wives.'
Lelaina and Troy are insufferable, but the movie's logic demands they end up together.
Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor; she stays much longer than she should.
Her aspirational pick: Reynolds Woodcock and Alma as a portrait of marriage, timely after her husband's shoulder surgery.
Brandon and Phillip, two men who love a dinner party and want to kill people. Hitchcock.
Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul; she activates a new side of him, then betrays him.
Mickey and Mallory, played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis.
Ace and Ginger, two people who should not have been in a relationship.
Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss; also opens on a couple at a piano, then twists into what you wish your partner could be.
Sally and Jack, Judy Davis and Sydney Pollack; the Pollack performance for Sean, especially once Davis beds Liam Neeson.
Teshigahara, a man trapped in a dune with a woman; 'the Invite prequel.'
Sidney Lumet; Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve as mentor-mentee rivals plotting something else.
Pattinson and Dafoe, two keepers, both named Thomas, who might be the same person. 'Sometimes marriages can feel like that.'
In conversation
The cast asked her to play Angela after workshopping the material; shooting in sequence let her feel the film's rhythm in her body. Norton wrote his own third-act monologue and asked to perform it first on camera aimed at her. Dev Hines scored it; test-screening notes killed a set of flashbacks so she'd 'stick the landing.' She reads the ending as a hopeful breakup; Rogen thinks the couple stays together forever.
Her last-great-thing pick: Pete Ohs's film with Charli xcx, shot on a Canon 5D in about nine days, about a woman who wants love to feel like a volcano.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Also mentioned Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?Don't Worry DarlingHannah and Her SistersThe GraduateWeaponsEyes Wide ShutMichael ClaytonThe OdysseyThe Devil Wears Prada 2Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV The Studio
Podcasts The Joe Rogan ExperienceOff Camera
Ads NetflixAmazon Prime