Napoleon 2023
Ruled ineligible for the Hall of Fame since it hasn't opened yet, but they just saw it at a DGA screening and can't stop talking about it.
The Big Picture · Discussion · Hall of Fame · Interview
The Ridley Scott Hall of Fame. Plus: Errol Morris!
November 17, 2023/ 120 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins · Chris Ryan
Sean, Amanda, and Chris Ryan (on his birthday) build a 10-film Ridley Scott Hall of Fame, then Sean talks to Errol Morris about The Pigeon Tunnel.
29 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.
Before the Hall of FameNapoleon opens next week
The Ridley Scott Hall of Famereds are out, yellows are maybes, greens are in, worked chronologically through the filmography
The Duellists 1977
Red. A cool artifact of his ad-director years, but a filmography this stacked doesn't have room for it.
Alien 1979
Green. The greenest green: he saw Star Wars, panicked, and reinvented science-fiction filmmaking to answer it.
Blade Runner 1982
Green. Cold, metallic, endlessly re-cut since release, and it anticipated how obsessively we'd pick movies apart online.
Legend 1985
Red. Tom Cruise as a mythological hero in the land of nymphs. Just not good.
Someone to Watch Over Me 1987
Red. His American-noir cop thriller. Looks good, isn't terribly strong.
Black Rain 1989
Red. Michael Douglas versus the Yakuza. A pretty good cable movie from the mid-'80s lull when people had started writing him off.
Thelma & Louise 1991
Green. Auto-green. His John Ford movie, but with two women driving across Monument Valley toward freedom.
1492: Conquest of Paradise 1992
Red. Gerard Depardieu as Christopher Columbus. Rewatched for House of Gucci prep and it's terrible.
White Squall 1996
Yellow. An underrated coming-of-age movie with Jeff Bridges running a reform school on a yacht. Doesn't survive to green.
G.I. Jane 1997
Red. Bombed at the time, but a dry run for the leaner, more character-focused mode he'd return to.
Gladiator 2000
Green. Auto-green. The Best Picture winner that turned Russell Crowe into a movie star and re-anointed Scott himself.
Hannibal 2001
Red. Grotesque, entertaining, not a green.
Black Hawk Down 2001
Green. A war film with a cast that doubles as a graduating class of movie stars for the next two decades.
Matchstick Men 2003
Yellow. A personal favorite for Sean and one of his better scripts, but doesn't crack the final ten.
Kingdom of Heaven 2005
Green, via the four-hour director's cut. The theatrical release was a shrug; the director's cut is a Lawrence of Arabia-scale epic that earns one of the last two slots.
A Good Year 2006
Red. The one he made because he'd bought a vineyard in Provence and fell in love with it.
American Gangster 2007
Green, promoted from yellow. Suffered at release from Godfather-sized expectations; the Denzel-Crowe interrogation scene alone earns it the other last slot.
Body of Lies 2008
Red. A gripping first hour, then a romance subplot sinks it.
Robin Hood 2010
Red. A movie no one needed. Started life as a revisionist take called Nottingham before turning into basically Gladiator in England.
Prometheus 2012
Green. "Green as fuck." Upsetting, gorgeous, and made partly to keep the Alien franchise out of Neill Blomkamp's hands.
The Counselor 2013
Green. A tribute to his late brother Tony and, per Sean and Chris, one of the great ones.
Exodus: Gods and Kings 2014
Red. His Cecil B. DeMille movie, made and released the same week of December as Prometheus two years earlier. A lot of bad ideas meeting in a desert.
The Martian 2015
Green. An absolute green, and the rare Scott movie where he visibly lets everyone in the cast cook.
All the Money in the World 2017
Red. The Kevin Spacey reshoot movie. Christopher Plummer got an Oscar nomination out of the replacement performance anyway.
Alien: Covenant 2017
Red. Rip-roaring first two acts, a confusing back half. Still, by their math, the fourth-best Alien movie.
The Last Duel 2021
Yellow. Grim and punishing to sit through, but a great script from Damon and Affleck (with Nicole Holofcener).
House of Gucci 2021
Red on the show, green in Sean's heart. The campy romp they don't regret hyping.
In conversation
Errol Morris on
The Pigeon Tunnel 2023
His documentary about John le Carre, built around an interview where le Carre spends as much time interrogating Morris as the other way around.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Errol Morris's other films, mentioned in passing Gates of HeavenThe Thin Blue LineThe Fog of WarStandard Operating ProcedureThe Unknown Known
In passing King ArthurKing Arthur: Legend of the SwordRobin Hood: Prince of ThievesThe Gray ManMaestroA Star Is BornTenetFerrariKillers of the Flower MoonMargin CallStripteaseIndecent ProposalJagged EdgeSpartacusCasablancaLawrence of ArabiaThe Spy Who Came in from the ColdThe HoldoversThe Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV The Good WifeTabooThe North WaterNumbersTrustHomelandA Murder at the End of the World
Games FIFA World Cup Launch Edition
Podcasts The Wedding ScammerAge of Napoleon
Ads TalkAboutPD.comBoar's HeadSimpliSafeMUBINetflixNOS EnergyFanDuelWhole FoodsApple's "1984" ad