The Big Picture · Discussion · Review · Interview
November 21, 2025/ 131 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins, with Juliette Lipman, take apart 'Wicked: For Good,' then turn to the Netflix logging drama 'Train Dreams,' followed by Sean's conversation with its director, Clint Bentley.
10 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.
The trailerstwo jam-session-coded previews
Charli XCX's feature acting debut, a mockumentary about her tour and Brat era directed by Aidan Zamiri. Juliette calls it charming but 'too close to life for a mockumentary'; the three reach for Madonna: Truth or Dare and Waiting for Guffman as reference points, and note it lands in the glut of post-tour pop docs.
The sixth film and a Haymitch Abernathy prequel, out November 20, 2026, again directed by Francis Lawrence from a Billy Ray script. Joseph Zada leads as young Haymitch; the loaded supporting cast includes Ralph Fiennes (Snow, once Donald Sutherland), Jesse Plemons (Plutarch, once Philip Seymour Hoffman), Kieran Culkin (Caesar Flickerman), Glenn Close (Drusilla Sickle), Elle Fanning, Mckenna Grace, Billy Porter, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Maya Hawke, and Ben Wang. Sean detours into Lawrence's 1990s music-video résumé.
‘Wicked: For Good’with Juliette Lipman
The second half of Jon M. Chu's split adaptation, again from a screenplay by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, with the full first-film cast back: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode. All three are down on it. Juliette, who loves the stage show and its second act, finds it frustrating: the movie inflates Fiyero and turns the friendship between Elphaba and Glinda into a fight over a boy, and it rushes the songs into superhero beats with no showstopper. Sean, personal about The Wizard of Oz, hates the film's literal retconning of Oz mythology (the silver-then-red slippers, Fiyero as the Scarecrow, a live-body Dorothy who suffocates in a cellar through three songs). Amanda had more baffled fun but agrees the story is a mess. They praise the two leads, the new songs 'No Place Like Home' and Ariana's 'The Girl in the Bubble' (the one that replaces 'Thank Goodness'), and 'For Good.' But they read the flat premiere and quiet fan screenings as trouble, forecast a big opening then a possible drop, and handicap a shakier Best Picture/acting run than the first film's.
The 2024 first installment, which the group was largely outside on even as it made over $300 million domestic on repeat viewings. They credit its camp, its viral 'Popular' dance moment, and the press-tour bond between Erivo and Grande, all of which they say the sequel lacks.
Sean's touchstone. He contrasts L. Frank Baum's populist gold-standard allegory with the 1939 film's dream-logic, and argues Wicked's insistence on literally tying itself back to the classic (Tin Man, Scarecrow, ruby slippers) mangles something he loves.
‘Train Dreams’Sean and Amanda on the Netflix logging drama
Clint Bentley's Sundance-launched adaptation of Denis Johnson's slim novella, now on Netflix, co-written with Greg Kwedar. Joel Edgerton plays Robert Grainier, a railroad logger whose family life with Felicity Jones's character is upended by grief; the film moves episodically across roughly 85 years of his life with narration by Will Patton. Both hosts are moved: Amanda, who came in resistant, calls it beautiful and upsetting; Sean flags a supporting bench of William H. Macy, Nathaniel Arcand, John Diehl, Paul Schneider, Clifton Collins Jr., and Kerry Condon, a camera-strapped-to-a-log opening shot, and a digital-photography finale that lifts the character out of his natural world. Sean thinks it's a real Best Picture threat as the film 'everybody likes,' even if Netflix isn't the ideal screen for it.
Clint Bentley
Bentley on adapting a book he first thought unadaptable (a Sound and the Fury / One Hundred Years of Solitude problem), finding its shape via Paul Schrader's idea that screenwriting comes from the oral tradition, and pulling Johnson's narrator toward a Jules and Jim / Y Tu Mamá También voice: a guy in a logging-town bar. He details the 29-day shoot on digital for available light, bolting cameras to trees already scheduled to be felled, 12-foot fiberglass stumps extended with VFX, and Adolfo Veloso's photography. He explains casting Joel Edgerton (an actor 'from any time period') against his own prior resistance, and reflects on Sing Sing and Jockey teaching him to make what he's drawn to rather than reverse-engineer success.
The prior film from Bentley and Kwedar (Kwedar directing, Bentley co-writing), which took an eight-year path against industry advice and became their breakout. It's the lesson Bentley cites for trusting the material.
Bentley's directorial debut, drawn from his jockey father's world and shot on a working racetrack. Its money-and-time constraints shaped Train Dreams' folded-into-real-locations approach.
The main precedent Bentley and Kwedar found for filming logging, praised for its brutal drowning-death scene, though made in a 1970s era when you could throw logs down a hill in ways you no longer can.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Charli XCX's November Letterboxd Bram Stoker's DraculaThe Naked GunSimon KillerFour Weddings and a FuneralHusbands and WivesThe Devil All the TimeFriendshipTo Live and Die in L.A.Caught StealingThe KeepBugoniaLove and DeathAfterschoolL'AvventuraMighty AphroditeThe Long GoodbyeThe DeadFather Mother Sister Brother
Around the trailers and Wicked MoanaHamiltonMadonna: Truth or DareWaiting for GuffmanBarbieThe Hunger GamesThe Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & SnakesThe Long WalkSeabiscuitShattered GlassThe MasterPredator: BadlandsRegretting YouCrazy Rich AsiansThor: The Dark WorldThe Wizard of Oz
The box office and awards talk Uncut GemsMarty SupremeOne Battle After AnotherWeaponsSinnersWake Up Dead ManSentimental ValueFrankensteinJay KellyZootopia 2Avatar: Fire and AshAvatarAvatar: The Way of WaterAliensAliens ExpandedDie My LoveHamnetThe Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the RingThe Lord of the Rings: The Two TowersThe Lord of the Rings: The Return of the KingThe Bells of St. Mary'sGoing My WayThe HustlerThe Color of MoneyThe GodfatherThe Godfather Part IIThe Lion in WinterBecketElizabethElizabeth: The Golden AgeRockyCreed
In the Clint Bentley interview The Great GatsbyNomadlandLovingTranspecosTriple FrontierJules and JimY Tu Mamá TambiénStargate
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV I Love LAThe Secret Lives of Mormon WivesBridgertonShamelessMaking the VideoSaturday Night LiveThe End of an Era
Music videos Gone Till NovemberCry Me a RiverJenny from the BlockBack at OneWarningAdiaMirrors
Podcasts Jam SessionBachelor PartyFood NewsNo Hearts Feeling
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