The Big Picture · Review · Discussion · Top Five · Interview
November 9, 2021/ 77 min/ Sean Fennessey · Brian Raftery
Brian Raftery joins to talk Tom Hanks and his robot pal Jeff in 'Finch,' then the two draft five favorite movie robots apiece. Plus, Jim Cummings on 'The Beta Test' and what he's learned since 'Thunder Road.'
40 films across 7 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.
Finch
Tom Hanks as a dying engineer building a robot, voiced by Caleb Landry Jones, to look after his dog. Directed by Miguel Sapochnik. Gentler and more contained than the post-apocalyptic premise suggests. Sean and Brian both single out the robot's parka.
Tom Hanks, Grandfather NowWhere Hanks's late-period run fits against his 90s peak
The reference point for 'Finch': Hanks acting almost entirely alone.
Also premiered on Apple TV+ on a Friday, same pattern as 'Finch.'
Brian's pick as a personal favorite, since he grew up in a newspaper family.
Brian calls it Hanks's best performance, the first time he really let the stoicism crack.
The closest Hanks has come to a heel turn, and even that was sold softer than intended.
Sean's hypothetical: could Hanks have played Frank Mackey? Brian says no.
Sean brings up Sean Penn's small, lascivious cameo as the kind of against-type role he'd love to see Hanks try.
Apple TV+'s Movie ProblemGood films, no word of mouth
Todd Haynes's documentary, the one Apple movie Brian says has actually broken through.
Sean: barely anyone he knows has seen it, despite Oscar buzz.
Referred to on air as 'Boy State.'
Brian Raftery's Top Five Movie RobotsRevealed 5 to 1
No. 1: R2-D2, 'the most chill character in all of Star Wars.' Compares him to Mike Schmidt on the 1980s Phillies: reliable, surrounded by lunatics.
No. 2: Roy Batty, Rutger Hauer's replicant. The 'tears in rain' speech reads, on rewatch, as the robot telling humans they don't appreciate what they have.
No. 3: Maximilian, Disney's would-be Star Wars cash-in villain robot. Gave Brian nightmares as a kid; still does, apparently, to kids at New Beverly revival screenings.
No. 4: Dot Matrix, voiced by Joan Rivers and performed by Lorene Yarnell. One of Rivers's two best film performances, by Brian's count, alongside Muppets Take Manhattan.
No. 5: Yul Brynner's gunslinger. Michael Crichton's proto-Terminator, mostly wordless and mostly terrifying.
Sean Fennessey's Top Five Movie RobotsRevealed 5 to 1
No. 1: R2-D2 and C-3PO as a package deal, an Abbott and Costello by way of Kurosawa's 'The Hidden Fortress.'
No. 2: Ben Burtt's sound design for the title character, part of Sean's mini tribute to Burtt.
No. 4: Alicia Vikander's Ava, the inversion of Bishop: you spend the movie hoping she's not what you fear she is.
No. 5: Bishop, played by Lance Henriksen. A sympathetic counterweight to Ash in the first 'Alien,' and later killed off by a different Finch, director David Fincher, in 'Alien 3.'
Honorable Mentions
Julie Christie, directed by Donald Cammell from a Dean Koontz novel: an AI attempting to impregnate a human woman.
Prompted by a Ringer oral history that sent Brian back to rewatch both films that week.
Brian didn't appreciate it on release, has come around since.
Gregory Hines; Brian calls it the second-weirdest Gregory Hines movie, after Running Scared.
Wes Craven, starring Kristy Swanson. Home to the basketball death scene that circulated as an early internet gif.
Brian's pick for the actual best Wes Craven 'paycheck movie.'
In conversation
Cummings's new film, about a Hollywood packaging agent unraveling after an anonymous hotel-room encounter, built on testimony from agency staffers he sourced over Twitter.
His breakout, self-financed feature that made French audiences its biggest early buyers.
His first studio-scale film, with Robert Forster, shot in freezing night exteriors with a 50-to-60-person crew.
Cummings acts in it: director David Gordon Green cast him after seeing the Thunder Road short on a plane.
David Gordon Green's film. Cummings says seeing it in high school convinced him a Southern kid could make movies.
Trey Edward Shults's debut, made for about $35,000 with his own family in the cast, about a Thanksgiving unraveling into addiction. Referred to on air as 'Cretia.'
The Polish film Cummings names as the last great thing he's seen: a delinquent impersonating a priest.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Teased for next episode Spencer
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