182. Red Net

Wed Wed. Welcome to the in and the we're living in I mean digital love guitars right behind the screens. You could see it in your man sets. They got dams in the. Calm man sat Shan screaming forward down.

Shine cause they don't get in a foot and shine. Welcome to the into into, into into Internet, trying to game into begers. You don't thinking Internet everybodys batting fathers. Listen to the paper of Honey. Listen and welcome to another Skype edition.

Skype isn't dead yet. Of the feminine critique. I'm Emily, I'm Christine. I feel like it's very appropriate that we're recording this episode on Skype because it's a Skype is obviously a bit of a throwback in terms of technology, and one of the films we're watching, you might say the same. Red Rooms.

Red Rooms is very nineteen ninety. We're two thousand and eight, as we like to say, with Skype. Oh boy, so this is the last one with Skype. Right probably. I think Skype is supposed to phase out like May seventh.

Today is April twenty seventh, so we're kind of right in there. I know for some people, I think it already stopped working, or I think certain parts of it. I think, like calling out calling like real phone numbers from Skype doesn't work anymore. But I guess using me just Skype to Skype is still going And there's a part of me that feels like, I know it's going away, but that if you and I were to turn Skype on in like sire, it would just still work exactly as it does now and and it would be fine. Well, I'm game to try.

But I didn't even think of this as being an homage to Skype, but it is fitting. So I did we talk about it last time that we were going to cover Red Rooms. We did not. Emily was like Red Rooms, and I was like, that's a movie that I've heard people talk about. So it was basically left to me, which is a bad choice, to say, well, what should we pair it with.

I like to watch movies and think like, ooh what would I pair this with? Or ooh what does this remind me of? It's fun and I was so excited to hear what you would come up with. So while Red Rooms isn't a fun movie, I was like, this will be fun to figure out. I watched that movie, and nothing entered my head, not a single thing, except at one point I laughed and I said, this is like the Net exactly.

Like, oh, it kind of is. I mean there's aspects completely I never would have thought of to compare the two. But once you said that, I thought about the Net, which I've only seen once until until today when I rewatched it, and I remembered I'm like, you know, like young, like beautiful, young woman who does not engage directly directly with the world or the people around her, very good at technology and this leading to, you know, a bigger thriller of sorts, And I'm like, yeah, that's a really there there are some very like uh like surface level things that are in common. And then it was great because I got to rewatch the Net. Yeah.

I always want to rewatch the Net and also talk about the Net. And in the last episode I know this for a fact, the Net came up. It did, and we're talking about Gibson's yep, and I don't know, I guess it was already in my head. So we paired Redrooms with the Net, which I think makes sense, and. I this is one of those every now and then, like we nail it when it comes to putting two films together, and it feels like it's been a while since we've just done two movies because we've just done a lot of special episode it's a lot of ketchups.

We've had time between things, and this like is just the perfect, perfect way. Like I almost don't want to keep goinguse I don't want to ruin it. You know, God, we reached our peak. All right, this is what? Bye guys?

Okay, Yeah, The Net go watch it. Net, by the way, is on Netflix, although a week ago I don't think it was because when I went to look up and just watch where to find it, it looked like I have to rent it, which is fine. I get a lot of digital credits from Prime for not rushing delivery. But then I happen to check again and sure enough it's there on Netflix. So anybody can watch the Net if you have it, anyone, and you should.

I own it, So I don't keep up with where it's streaming, because do you. Own like the like the whatever it would have been like the two thousand and two era DVD. Probably it's ad. What does it have special features? And does it have an interactive Venu.

I'm not I'm not sure about the special features. I mean, you know, I know criminal, I'm never like a special features gal, which is weird because I likes it is surprising, right, I don't know. I cannot answer that question for you. And I feel like the Net probably the disc probably has like all those easter eggs, like where you maybe like you press up and volume down at the same time, and Mozart's ghost played the whole symphony missed opportunity, missed opportunity. I have to explore it.

I just don't even think to do it. I know, yes, everyone should own the Net, I guess, is what I'm saying. I don't disagree four K. Blu ray HD release when those are nonsense words, but they should do like a criteria as a Net. Oh god, yes, there No, there was a USA TV show, right, there was a ties I think so so.

Zach and I were actually talking about this, and I don't know why I didn't dig deeper. So there's something called the Net two point zh what And I think it's directed by the guy who directed this one's husband, husband son. I don't know why it's a husband. I mean, hey, urban winker, I you know, a legend legendary producer didn't know he was gay. That's cool, But I know I think it is his son that directed it.

So it's the life of a young computer systems analyst is thrown into turmoil when, after arriving in Istanbul to start a new job, she friends her credit cards useless. Okay, this was made in two thousand and five, so ten years after The NET. I bet you and I would love this movie. Yeah, I guess it looks direct to video if i'm it feels like the poster. The people behind it like, yeah, this is definitely like your clearly filmed overseas.

Yeah, you and I at some point have to find this and watch it. We should so. But yes, there was a NET team, and there was also a TV show, yes, but that I did not watch, nor did I so. That ran because I feel like that came based nineteen ninety eight, so three years after this movie came out. Because this movie was a hit, certainly.

Yes, it should have been in the show. So if you're not obsessed with the NET, I guess it's good that we decided to talk about the NET first, because we were gonna do it. Anyways, there's no way not to just work the Net into any conversation you're having. I have a problem with this movie, So the Net. We'll talk about red rooms after the Net.

So if you want to hear that, not that this, you should probably skip. Yeah, and at some point her music playing and that will be your your signal that we have taken a break and we're coming back to talk about red rooms. Yes, but I don't know why you wouldn't want to hearing us talk about the Net. So The Net is starring miss Sandra Bullock, so fresh off of her success in Speed and While you were Sleeping. True, it's true, she was on the rise.

This is the best career move, like career trajectory of any actress. It's shocking because she had worked for a while, like she was showing up in big movies but always in like small parts. She does Speed and it's just it's just the love interests, right, it's a supporting role. But she is so fucking good in Speed, and she leaps off that movie. Anybody watching that movie is like, who is that?

Why don't I know her? And so then she gets two big leading roles in two very different movies, but two roles that understand what is so compelling about Sandra Bullock as a screen presence and ah. So good anyway, So and and I think what's really interesting about this movie? So I am a bit of a Sandy Bullock officionado. I think what's really fun about her?

She really likes to be physical in movies. She does a lot of slapstick and pratfalls and and like she likes to get in there. And this this to me is a. Really good movie for her in that regard because she's just like running around being panicked and really stelling it the whole time. So The Net nineteen ninety five is The Net is an early computer movie.

If you didn't guess by the title, you know. What, I wonder if young people wouldn't, because it's not like we've ever we call it the net anymore. We don't. We don't. I guess they mean like the Internet.

Hey people, Hey kids, kids, come closer, because your old lady podcaster ants are going to tell you that the net is short for Internet. Internet. It's it's fun too, and it's a little so it's got ninety five. It's got ninety five mentality when going into like online stuff, which is not really accurate or real. But I would say this movie does a half decent job with that.

It never feels that bad. It feels like there were people that understood because it's it's not just like oh, online chat rooms, like, it's it's computer technology, right, it's viruses and hacking. And I feel like, and I didn't look it up, but I'm sure like there was a consultant, like somebody was there saying, this is kind of what this would look like, this is how you type it in. This is that it is not egregious in how some internet quote unquote comes off in cinema. Yeah.

I think Sandra Bullock also, like, you know, she she practiced at a computer long enough that it doesn't feel so ridiculous for her to type so quickly and know exactly which codes to enter. And then there's the other part of this weird, like the details of this movie are obviously very dated, right, floppy discs. Everything hinges on floppy disks in this movie, and you know, it's been what twenty years since you've even looked at a floppy disk. But all that being said, the actual nature of what's going on here of a private company that can access your data that has basically wormed its way into the US government and is then be you know, making this big contract with the government in order to you know, just do what it's gonna do for the world and also steal all of your information and do whatever the hell it wants to you.

Gee, I don't know. It's kind of crazy. But in twenty twenty five, thirty years after this movie came out, none of that is dated. No, it's not. So the most dated thing about this is the idea that that Angela Bennett, which is how I'll be referring to Sandra Bolo.

I'm Angela Bennett. She says it so many times, drinking game of how many times she says I'm. Angela Bennett because they have to establish her real name very heavily at the beginning, because when she changes to Ruth it doesn't like so when her identity gets stolen, you don't get confused. But the hardest thing to swallow is that she gets sent Basically, it's like a website on a floppy disk, which I spend way too much time thinking about what Mozart's Ghost really is. It's like a website and you go to the website and you can find a backdoor into like government websites through the Mozart but it's on a floppy disk.

I thought it was a program. I thought, like going back to Mozart's Ghost itself, the program, I thought so. I thought it was kind of like a video game, but maybe not, kind of like Mario Paint right where it's a it's a game, but it's not the same as like Wolfenstein, like what she's playing in the beginning. I take it more as a program you were loading on your computer. I thought it was a website for a band.

I'm not sure. I don't think it matters because it's so fun and cool. Yes, I don't care. Mozart's goost Mozart's Ghost, and then she goes to pizza. Dot net to get pizza dotnut.

I would buy a Pizza dot Net t shirt. I don't know if they're out there, but I would definitely where one proudly. I just loved how like straightforward it was and like and she's just the greatest way. So yeah, she's she's just like all alone and she doesn't like talk to anybody, and she works from home, which is also very relatable because oftentimes I don't feel like I exist nobody, nobody knows what I look like anymore. And this aspect of that of because she because something that I would curious on your take on is she agoraphobic?

Is she like actively suffering from like different anxieties like the movie's kind of isn't like they don't come out and say it. And I I always wondered on that because I remember as a kid, like a kid, when I saw this movie advertised and I understood the gist of it, and I was so confused. I'm like, oh, really, like she's afraid to go outside, but she's Sandra Bullock and look at her in a bikini, Like I kind of didn't get that aspect of it as a kid, and but watching it now and like it's it's definitely making it clear that she is uncomfortable around people. Right when she's in the airport and she's like there's people around her, Like she is clearly not not comfortable. It's really funny because I never thought there was anything weird about the way she acted or reacted around people.

But yes, obviously she's I feel like the movie does some work to tell us that she's just awkward. Like I'm just bad around people, I'm just awkward, I'm uncomfortable. She also has light like light neurodivergent vibes for me, like sense perhaps she's but like when you juxtapose this against something like Copycat, where it's like the entire plot is how she can't she doesn't feel comfortable leaving the house. She has like right breakdowns when she tries to. I don't feel like they ever explicitly inform us of like the stakes if she was like not okay, yeah, And.

I think if if there was a flaw to there are two flaws of this movie, I would say, and well, we'll get to one. I'm curious if you've feel the same way. But if there was another flaw, it's it's that that characterization that sort of like unclear diagnosis of is she just she just doesn't like you know, loud rooms and lots of people around her. But then or is there more to it? Right?

And it's again, there are a million different things that she could very clearly justifiably have to make that hard. But that that goes kind not that it goes away as soon as she is on the run. The fact that she is now out in the world. That kind of completely goes away and it's it's fine because it's adrenaline and now she is running from somebody trying to kill her. But when she runs into her into the office right which she doesn't go to, which she's never.

Been in, I did have a problem. I do typically have a problem with that that she knows exactly where everything is in that office and she's admittedly never been there. Yes, yes, but even that, like the other side of that of wouldn't she be really uncomfortable going in there and suddenly knowing that these are people that she's spoken to, that she knows, but that she doesn't know in person. So I think there's a little bit of like that might have been, like there was if this movie was five minutes longer, if there was one more draft, or if they made it today, that might be a little bit clearer. But also it could go very bad.

So I'm okay with Ordance, no any observation. I completely get what you're saying, and I won't at all argue and say that you're wrong, because you're not in any capacity. But I think I'm just completely okay with her because when she meets Jeremy Jeremy Northman on vacation. She really is just like awkward and uncomfortable and I don't know, man, I guess I have an anxiety disorder, so like she probably has an anxiety disorder then, because everything she does is really believable. Once, yes, I have once I have to actually go do stuff.

I'm very capable and competent. And like when the FedEx guy came to get the thing she could, she went outside and talked to him and was like here you go, like she's just a regular lady, but. Also didn't want to like the same time, you could tell like as soon as he said like, oh, nice house, she didn't really want to engage with him at that point. Yeah, she's very related, which I get well. And I think something else about the Jeremy north character is when when they meet and like yeah, like it's like two hot people on a beach and very easy, quick meet, cute and keep going.

Except also then you realize like, oh no, he knows exactly what she wants in a man, so it's flirting, but she doesn't. She doesn't know that she's not doing the work, not only because he's there to get something from her, but also he knows exactly what she wants, so he knows what to say and what not to say. So it's very natural for her to react to it because he's gonna get her references because he knows everything about her already. He's such a villain. He's a good villain.

He's a he's a good villain. He's also a really he's a really shitty at. His job, right, Like I think he has too much on his plate. Why is he the only one handling. It's and why you know, why don't they send more people in, Like clearly he sucked up like many times.

He's not good at this. So yeah, so I guess the plot of the net is that h Angela accidentally stumbles into that plot that you described, And yep, I guess she like she gets a copy of the Mozart Mozart's ghost disc that proves the back door thingy and that's like evidence or whatever, and like they they go, they send Jeremy north Northam to like pretend to be her love and. Keep his name differently. Every time you said Norman, I'm like, I know that's not right. I think it's north And then you said Northman, I'm like or North sumb that's like.

I don't know. Then they send him to seduce her and then like kill her, but the disc gets destroyed, but they're still out to get her, and she's in Mexico at this point, so they basically do this thing where she has to sign for a temporary visa that's not her name, thus claiming the name, so they have stolen her identity. Now she doesn't work in an office, everything's remote, nobody knows her. She doesn't seem to have friends except Dennis Miller, who will get. Let's get there, just pawse on that very that will hurt, yes, And then her mom, who sadly.

Has Alzheimer's so she doesn't remember her at all. And it's this I don't know if this movie gets enough credit for like what a I don't know that it's just the script, because there are also things that happened directorialtorially towards the end, Like I noticed it. There's a moment where when she's running from Jeremy the North and she runs past him or she's like hiding and you see like the move the camera doesn't like zoom it or anything, but she's standing beside a fire extinguisher, and then there's like another three minutes of running back and forth of hiding from him, getting shot near him, like running away, and then there's a like she exits and then comes back and he's standing there and she's whacks him in the face with the fire extinguisher and I'm watching them like that was.

That's such a perfect directed thriller scene because they have told you this, They've shown you without like zooming in on it the way so many movies do, of like, because I remember watching it thinking like, oh, gee, if I were her, I would have grabbed Oh never mind, she's passed it, okay. So then when she brings it, you're like, oh, no, I knew exactly where that was. That makes perfect sense, Like it's so smart. But also that her mother, Diane Baker the legend her mother has Alzheimer's, so it is a It helps just establish her character and it makes her a little more sympathetic right off the bat. But then immediately it's like, oh, right, we know this is one more person that can't even identify her, and it's just it's a simple thing, but it's so smart.

It's so the man on the run kind of framework. Is one of my favorite but it's done well, it's so fucking good. There's just something really like terrifying about like being either the only one who knows the last one left, like everyone's this is this is essentially the Fugitive, this MIMPI. It really hit me this time. I've loved this movie for as long as it's existed, and I love The Fugitive, but I would have never said like they're tapping into the same thing until I really watched it analytically.

This time. There's also a parade in. This like, oh, this is the era so much like the future, Well, this is the era, like this is what happened in the nineties. If you were running away from somebody, you damn well well better do that during a big holiday on the weekend when there's going to be a parade coming through town, because you can get away. You can't always get away, but you can get away if there's a parade when and.

I would say Asterix like try not to run in the other direction. Also, don't look right back, No, just go with the parade. Yeah, go with it. I've noticed run in front of like either the Tuba player or like the Big Bird or whatever, like the big mascot is in front of them, and just walk, just march. This is your moment also to rest up, like because you've been running.

I was so tired watching this and realizing, like, I went running this morning. I went for like a long walk run around my neighborhood. It's really hilly, so I was like dead by the time I came back. And I'm watching this movie and realizing, like, this woman has not slept, she has not she has just been literally running this entire time, and like, this is where you can serve your energy by get in front of somebody big and then you can just march, right, you can just walk, get your breath back, get your bearings back, and then like you know, wait till you turn a corner and then zoom off the other way. You know what?

Else is a very nineties thing that happened in this movie. I think seven times, oh what, turning the TV on just the right time for a relevant news story to play. It's funny too because it's this is kind of predates the idea of like constant twenty four hour news stle too, so it really was just like good luck the luck. Yeah, just good good. Luck and happenstance?

Did you want to talk about Dennis flore. All right, so let me say one thing first, because so many thoughts. But first thing I will say, if you remember, if you recall last week or two weeks ago when we recorded, you mentioned a movie that you watched that I don't even remember if you brought him up, but happened to have Dennis Miller in it. Bordello of Blood. No, the other one?

Oh? Do you remember the other? Nineties? Okay? What's the other?

Okay? It's another nineties thriller where he plays the ex boyfriend slash one night stand. Oh is it disclosure? No? No, no, no, but you're really close?

Oh is it? Uh? Never talked to stranger, never talked to strangers. I watched it. I loved it, glorious.

I'm so glad watching it. Joe Dirt, which I watched recently. I've been watching a lot of Dennis Miller movies and I need to see. You really do well. He just let's talk about.

First of all, it's Dennis Miller's asshole, so I don't ever like seeing him show up. That's one thing. But let's talk about the relationship and this character. In this movie, it's well deeply inappropriate. Yeah you want to there's a few things that date this movie in a you know, because for the most part, like even the fact that Angela Bennett's a woman in tech, like that's never really harped on too much, Right, this movie could have gotten much worse on that, and it's really not like she's not kind of this could have done worse genderwise.

But this is a thing that I like to think after like twenty ten, we stopped doing. He is her fucking therapist, but he's more than that because he's able to transfer her mother. So I don't think he's just a therapist. I think he is actually either a psychiatrist or psychologist. Yeah, I think so too.

Yeah. Oh and he was. Married, Oh and he was having with her. So yeah, while he was married and Angela was his patient, he entered into an obviously a predatory, uh sexual relationship with her, and and they've remained friends. I mean, I'm glad because, like, right, she needed some person that could vouch her her identity and help her you know, get Chinese food.

But still, like it is, it's bad like that the movie doesn't and it kind of drops things about like, yeah, that's inappropriate, but not to the extents of like no, no, no, no, that's illegal. He should have lost his license. Yeah, it's like it's oh, that maybe wasn't the best choice versus like, oh, that was deeply unethical and you shouldn't be practicing anymore. Yeah, but like he he kind of gets. What's coming to oh completely.

That's the thing about this movie is I feel like, something I love about it is that ultimately there is no love interest, right Like, there are there are men, there's a romantic relationships. She gets to have sex, but this ends with her, you know, not attached and not seemingly sad about it. But I do wish she wasn't so sad when Dennis died. Deserve much better even. In a friend It's true, I can kind of just you know, maybe she was just traumatized there by their relationship as a whole, but like she's kind of.

The last person deaf and stuff. But then he says, like at one point, she jokingly says to him, like, do you still think I'm crazy? And he says, jokingly, I always have. He was a fucking therapist, And in this. Truly, I don't know because I don't watch special features, but I would really wonder how much I've apparently seen almost every movie Dennis Miller's been in.

I'm very curious as to how much he's able to like massage his dialogue because he is always an unre repentant prick and everything he's in like rude, mean, inappropriate, crass, like just tone deaf. So is he getting in there and add in his own flavor or is the casting just really good? That's a good question, yeah, because he really. Was not as like sympathetic as maybe he could have been. Well, you know, it's tough because I feel like anybody if I don't know, if you cast Tom Hanks in that part, I would still not get over the fact that this man was her doctor.

Like I don't think anybody could have redeemed that relationship because it's terrible. But the way that it, I feel like it softens him, Like I feel like they do try to make this him into a very soft like he was her friend, you know, like when she but it's like I don't know, this is where like she's there with him in the hotel in the hospital, and he's okay, and so she's like kind of cuddling up next to him, and he puts his arm around her, and it feels very like, oh, this is actually like a sweet this this relationship here feels warm and safe, except it's totally not because he was her doctor and he's still making like weird little sex jokes to her in this moment. And I don't know if it was written that way or if he changed it, but no matter what you do, like, I don't want to see Dennis Miller in that part.

It's it's true. I mean, it really is just a vehicle for somebody, a reason for somebody to know her, and then he also plays the role of being able to like keep her mom safe. True, that's a good point, Like I understand. It almost seems like he's more of like a gear than like, right, a character that compliments her for the story. And this is also something to this movie's full credit is that this is the kind of movie when you look at each scene, there's no fat right, every single scene is driving towards you know, even you know, the beginning conversations with her internet friend about viral O.

He like he collects viruses that's gonna come back, Like every little thing my mother plays piano. I'm with my favorite piano teacher like this as a script. It is really masterful, how tight it is and how everything really does pay off one way or another. It really does that. The virus stuff is so satisfying to pay off at the end as it goes, like Angela's definitely on the back foot because they, you know, are killing people around her.

They stole her identity, they took everything from her. But by the time you get to the end, she's so activated and proactive. Yep. And at one point Zach was like, I wish she would have just set a fire in that building to get into the cathedral building where she used to work, but not in person. They why didn't they just set that She should have set that on fire?

And I was like, no, her triggering the fire alarm is poetic because she's using her tools, which are also their tools against them. She's she's doing a ruse. She's manipulating things digitally, not physically, which is what they do. That to me feel so fucking smart and like satisfying. Oh it does.

And then another like quick little thing as she's trying to get away because of course everybody knows who she is, now what does she do? She my other favorite thriller move, which is also in the fugitive right uniform uniform, grabby uniform and put it on. In this gates it's a fireman. Usually tow it's a doctor's code, but this one it's the fireman's outfit, and like, yeah, so she needed the firemen there. It it's like just really perfect.

It's just one thing drives to the next thing, drives to the next thing. Yep, yep. And one of my one of my favorite tropes is I just need to be in front of any computer. Yeah, it's just any computer you. Get me in front of I can do this.

But with Angela, it's more like cathedral computers, so she can do stuff from the computer in the office buildings. And then she has to get to the tech conference, which again feels very fugitive because they're driving to the big like gala. Yes's what we're moving towards at the end. So we have to get to the like the conference at the big convention center, and she has to get to the computer there to do it. It's so good.

Yes. One other thing now that we're just naming everything we love about a good thriller. Like every trope, there's another one that comes up in this It is the when how do I say it? When you are rescued and you finally breathe a sigh of relief and then with like one line of dialogue, and it's always in a car, right, You're always in a car When this is happening, you realize, Oh, no, I've been rescued by my enemy. Right.

Oh no, he tipped it. He showed something he knows that he shouldn't know. And I know that he knows. Does he know that I know? Oh he's gonna know that.

I know. I might as well just say that I know. Love that love those moments. Yes, that is honestly of one of my in this movie. It's one of my favorites because we don't it's really well done.

It's a character we haven't Nobody knows this character. He's only been mentioned in Passing and you want angelaba be okay. So you're like, oh that guy Dennis, Oh my god, good for something. Yes exactly, he's now even though he's dead, he's helped us get here. This is great.

And then it just like flashes to Jeremy North in his car listening, it's like fuck. But even before that, though she knows, she figures it out before the movie tells us it, Oh yeah, which I love. I love that he says something and then you just see her like all she has to do is like make that look with her eyes and you see her like fuck. Love it so uh yes, it's actually my favorite line of dialogue that she that she does there she I have it written down because that's how much I like it. I believe that she made her own choices when she did it.

Here it is she goes, how do you know it got ruined? How do you know it got ruined? I didn't tell you it got ruined? How do you know it got ruined? She just says ruined over and over and over again.

And it's my favorite. But this, it might be one of my favorite Sandra Boult performances. You know, she is so good and I know I said in the beginning, but it is so remarkable how good she is, like how much she brings to this movie and this part, because again, I think this is a really well made movie. I think this is a very good script, Like I think this this But even with all of that, it doesn't work without you really really deeply caring about the lead. But there is something about how she like and how do you say, because I was laughing watching this because I'm thinking of like her other probably greatest performance, Miss Congeniality, which is a perfect movie.

Happy April twenty fifth to all who celebrate the perfect date and in that movie too, Like one of the things they do they're doing a lot with her is like, oh right, she eats pizza, she eats donut. She's like she's one of those messy women. And there's like when movies try to do that so often, it is like very very insulting, and like you're sitting there, you know, eating your pizza being like, look, I'm never gonna eat pizza like Sandra Bullock. Okay, stop it. But you like you watch her do it and you're like, yeah, like I don't feel like this is pandering.

Like this Sandra Block eats pizza like Angela Bennett is eating pizza. This makes perfect sense. And there is something I don't know how she does it have that very like relatable charm of I will believe you no matter what you do, as long as you're not in a terrible racist movie. Called the blind Side. Other than that perfection as a career.

It's that she when she mixes her Gibson and that first I think it's in the first pizza scene. She mixes it with her her finger and then she just rinses that one finger underwater for three seconds and then wipes it on her shirt. And I went like, Wow, she's just like me. She's real, man, She's really real. So it is it's little like things that like kind of bring you in and like make you feel like, oh, oh, this is We're all people here.

This is just this is just life, man, And it's really nice. It's funny because I always remember when I think about her in this era, there was an Entertainment Weekly article because I was one of those like EW kids who would wait every Friday at the mailbox to read my issue entertain Weekly that night, and I remember there was a feature about who is the next Julia Roberts and because at that point Julia Roberts had like stopped doing prom coms, and so it narrowed down to Sandra Bullock, Julianne Moore, and Julia Ormond. And it's it's so strange because you think of the three of them who are vastly different actresses we even at that time were doing like Julianne Moore did nine months, so you had like one rom com that I guess was probably why they were pulling her in there.

Julia Ormond was I guess Sabrina was the thing like, oh see this, but just what like how Hollywood was looking at at that part of like Julie Roberts was like an anomaly, right, she was a movie star that you had not seen somebody like that in twenty years of this person who is She's beautiful, but she's beautiful in a different way, so there's a relatability to her and she just comes alive on camera. There is something about, right Julia Roberts that it is not that she's the greatest actress, it is that she has something that the camera loves more than anything. And like that, they were trying to figure out, oh who is that now? And in many ways I think Sandra will is the right answer to that, but yet not because like, no, they're very different actresses.

Yeah, but yet like yeah, if I had to name something, who is the best movie star? And I had to do a top five, like it's the two of them without question. I agree, I agree. I don't know that at the time I would have. I was thinking about it, and like, if pressed then to like tell you who the next Julia or I don't think I would have been able to pick three good names because like that's such a weird question to even ask totally, and like even though Sandra Bullock's probably the best answer among them, especially like she just transcended that so fast.

Yeah, yeah, and it became like not about that. It's interesting, Yeah. When when you look back at like how we talk about about especially women but right, but reason in general. But there was that very particular like we we know we're gonna put you in this box, so do you fit in this box? Or does she fit better in that box?

But I mean, Sandra Bullock made a lot of interesting choices around this time. I think she was and again, whether it was her, whether it was her management, really smart about understanding what was appealing about her, but also not sticking to one genre. Right, She's doing rom com, she's doing thrillers, she's doing draw she does The Time to Kill not too long after this, like, so she's really like actively showing how wide a range she has but she's still one of those movie stars where at the end of the day, it is always Sandra Bullock, and that's not a bad thing if you do it. Well, yeah, I tend to agree. So the Net.

Do you have anymore to say about The Net? Because I know you could talk forever about The Net? I could. I really like it. I think it's it's one of my foundational films.

It's so in watching it, like so Far into the Future is really satisfying to be like, well, I liked it because it was good, not just because it was on TV, like and like it. It's explores tropes that I still like, and it frames a female character in an interesting way. She's not helpless, she is activated. It's not all on me going to save. Her, and she saves herself in the end.

There's no man that cots to come in and shoot the guy like she does it. She does it. So there's a lot to like. For my money, it's one of the best of this brand of film. Oh completely, Yeah, So I'm really glad we watched it and I could look at it in a more serious way, Like when we talked to Copycat.

That was another one where I was like, this is a good movie. I don't know why people acted like I was weird for. Liking No, it's funny because thinking about it, and how like, for a long time, people used to always say like, oh, we don't make movies like we made in the seventies, right, there was a certain energy to that that we just, you know, we stopped doing and we I think we're far enough away from it now that we can objectively come back to nineties movies and see them like not be stuck on the context or stuck on the fashion and all those things. And I think it's been really remarkable to watch nineties movies that are really good. And I think I'm glad you mentioned Copycat.

I would have forgotten about it. But you're absolutely right, Like Copycat and The Net are both very much movies of their time. They are traditional stories, traditional thrillers that are just executed really well with like shockingly good casts and are are exploring things, have things to say, and you watch them thirty years later and it's it is active today. I mean it's ninety this is thirty years and you watch them and you're like, okay, yeah, like I can you know, laugh at some things about that were stamps of their time. But wow, this this is like when I went in nineteen ninety five when I watched a movie from the late sixties, like this absolutely will hold up in a canon and in goes in the criteria.

You're right. I think you're you're really right about the amount of distance we have now you can say without like applying your own feelings to it because you like lived it or whatever that you We don't make movies like that anymore, just we don't. And I think that copycat is actually the same year. It's ninety five, which is the same year as like Demon Night. It's just like you look at you look at ninety five, and you're like, it's just we were just taking swings.

Yep. Movies are weird studios and they're they're horny, and people who would become like the A List celebrities of today are just like kind of in them. Yep, just like just dicking around in them. And it's really cool to see, because I wonder when we get far enough away from like the twenty twenties, how how we'll feel looking at the whole grouping of films, And it definitely won't be how we feel about the nineties, so in that way it's unique. We don't make them like that.

So it's cool. Anytime you want to cover a nineties movie, I'm into it. I think we need to cover more. It's fun. It's really fun.

All right. Well, and so in another thirty years we'll come back to something from this time, perhaps the next movie we're gonna talk about. We'll take a quick break and come back and talk about red rooms. Finally, I get to teach a whole lesson all by myself, and I'm gonna teach something irrelevant, something modern. The Internet.

The Internet is really really great or poor, got a mass connection, so why don't talk to it for porn? There's always some new sight sor porn. My brows all day and night. Sporporn. It's like I'm serving at the speed of line.

Or the Internet is more poor. Probably Internet is more poor. Why do you think then that was born? Porn? Porn?

Porny, Hello kids, monster, We're back to make some hilarious puns about red rooms. The lighthearted hit of twenty twenty three. Should I say what this movie is about? Please and everybody. We will probably be spoiling.

Oh I think so? Yeah? Y so this is on shutter. I had been hearing people talking about it. I had a lot of festival runs, so it kind of garnered a lot of attention that way.

And I'm gonna say early on that I do think that hurt it from me, okay, but like whatever, So I didn't know anything about it going in at all. The only reason I watched it is because you wanted to cover it. It's a little too like like intense for like what I typically will do on like a Thursday afternoon fair fair. And I watched it, and I had a lot of thoughts on it, and I'm like, I will need to see this again at some point, And I really was like, you know who I want to talk about this with is you? So that's why made you watch it?

Thank you no. And I appreciate it too, because sometimes I need to be challenged these days, or I'll just watch old episodes of Kitchen Nightmares. So I'm actually just going to read the letterboxed and then add my own details if I feel the need. The high profile case of serial killer whose name I'm not going to say, has just gone to trial and Kelly Anne is obsessed when reality blurs with her morbid fantasies. She goes down a dark path to seek the final piece of the case's puzzle.

I think that's much more DECI than I would have gone it is. I think it makes it sound more of a uh, it makes the plot sound more straightforward. Absolutely, it feels like a down the line, like. Yeah, she's the murder mystery, and I mean she kind of does in some ways, but it's not that all. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely not.

So it's I guess I would say it's like a meditation about like obsession and fixation and like feeling a calling to accomplish something despite what it does to you. This is how I viewed it, which I thought was really cool and like you, I think I need to watch it again. But just because I walked into this holding a lot of baggage, everyone made it seem like it was going to be exceptionally difficult, and I didn't find it difficult. I agree on that front. I think this was kind of described in a lot because I once I kind of heard about it, I knew I wanted to see it, and then I wouldn't read much into what people were saying because I didn't want anything spoiled, and it was very much described as like, oh, this movie really shook me, it really disturbed me.

And then I knew enough to know that it also wasn't overly like visual graphic violence, and so I was like, okay, I'm like, so that's you know, I'm color me wildly fascinated because I want to know what that means. Then, and I do really like this movie and this so I've watched it twice now, and I think it is not for me going to be like a legendary I'm always going to come back to this, this is one of the best movies of the twenty twenties, anything like that. But I think it's really thoughtful about something, that it's exploring something a few things in ways that I haven't really seen before, and so the and there's a couple of reasons for that. So it's written and directed by Pascal Plumt. I'm sure I'm saying his name wrong.

It's a French Canadian movie. Most of it is in French, and the lead actress Juliette Garie. Again I don't speak French. I'm sure I'm butchering that this. I think it's her first film.

I don't think she had acted much before she was she was a model. I mean, she is phenomenal, completely phenomenal. You know what, I don't care if you don't like a single fucking thing about this movie. It is she is undeniable. She has a force in this thing.

Yep, and playing a very a character that is hard to read, and I think you I think that's deliberate. I think it's done in a way where you can assign a lot of different things of what why she is doing what she's doing. But it also feels like, I I know that this actress knows exactly what she's doing. I don't know what she's doing. I can give different interpretations to what I think she's doing, but I have no doubt that she know that Kelly Anne know what she's doing.

Totally. I think. There was because of the the I didn't like. I said, I didn't know what it was necessarily about. But even when you try to avoid stuff like that, when when you hear anybody's opinions, it is tempered with like a like like I was while I was watching this movie.

I was bracing instead of like enjoying or watching like I just kept because what it's about, is the guy abducts these girls, young girls and and create snuff films, so murders them on camera, and and like that's what it's about. And we very much have to sit with that. And like you had said, much to the movie's credit, and one of the reasons why I think it's so successful is that it's very restrained and all that stuff, and I appreciate that, but I still I kept expecting it to like mow me down emotionally, and it is. There's intense scenes, but I almost worry that I was like expecting something so over the top that I didn't the stuff that did happen didn't resonate as much. And I think that's one of the reasons this movie is one of those movies that's worth re watching once because it you really you watch this movie not knowing where it's going, and there is a sense of dread.

There is a sense of because you don't understand is Kelly Anne. What is so that basically we know at the start of this movie that somebody has killed these girls, and there is video evidence of some sort, and it is a public trial, and it's fascinating to see trials in Canada and in different places. It's something I always love in movies. My favorite part was right Anatomy of a Fall. Like part of the reason that movie, I think was so thrilling to Americans was that we had never seen the justice system in France and now that how a trial is carried out, and it's really different than an American trial.

And so in this case, it's it's a trial, but it's the you know, in the States, our trials are in these like grand courtrooms that are all wood and have this like sense of colonialism to it. And in this case, it is a white room with a you know, glass glass wall where the defendant is and it's very it feels like you are in kind of an office in a way. And so just even that is like a different view. And so it's a public trial, but there's like it's a very high profile trial, so spectators can come watch, but it's capped at a certain amounts. Basically you get there early and you can get in and watch.

And we are introduced to Kelly Ann, who is a model and online poker player, like she clearly makes a lot of money, lives well these are her professions, and we learn a little more about what they both mean for her in different ways. But she is going to these trials and we don't know why. There is no you know, we don't see her like reading up on it or or you know, masturbating to it or doing anything. She just keeps showing up there. And then there is another young there's a lot of young women that are clearly like kind of serious I don't know what the term is, like true crime groupies, I guess would be the kind of idea of they're going with that are showing up also that want to see this and seem to be very much obsessed with the defendant.

And meanwhile you have the parents of these girls who have been brutally viciously murdered, and they come every day, and it focuses on one of the mothers who's they never found the video of her daughter, but they found the bodies and they know she's dead. And this woman you keep seeing and she looks at these girls like she she keeps watching them, and you know, she gives an interview where she says like I'm just I'm What bothers me more than anything is that there are these young women that are seem to be obsessed with this man and in love with this man, and and you assume that's the case for Kelly Anne, but you don't. Again, she's a very opaque character that it's hard to understand why she's doing any of this.

And I think the way this movie sort of like opens up all these questions about that about people, and I think particularly women. But it's it's true if I think anybody, this thirst that people have for true crime is something that's always kind of I've found like a weird, very odd to me. I know I've talked about this before of how like I don't really like based on true stories. I don't listen to true crime like I don't like it because to me, horror is an escape from things. I like.

The absolute fantasy of this is disconnected from my reality entirely. So be as brutal as you want, be as awful as you want, because it's fake and I like that. And so when you mix in, oh but somebody, this did happened to somebody, and like somebody's mother or cousin is out there knows that this is now turning into entertainment, like that does upset me. So let's read the text thread that I sent you that I realized was a very formative thing in my understanding and my stance and drew crime. So this is a text between me and my older brother Adam.

Okay, now the I sent you a picture of it. So the green is me and the white is my brother Adam. Would you like to be me and you read my questions? Yeah? Okay, so ahem, super random question.

Was it you who made a Jeffrey Darmer joke in art class and your teacher took you out of the room to say that her friend had been one of his victims? I haven't. I hadn't read this. She didn't let me I would not. And this is my brother's answer, yes, but not exactly.

It was that she knew someone who knew someone who had been killed by him. But for the life of me, I can't remember what teacher it was. Oh, oh wow, want me to read you you can finish that one up. I think it was the high school art teacher I had her years later. And remember you or mom warning me not to mention Jeffrey Dahmer because you were so apt to do it at the time.

I mean probably, I you know, it was like nineteen ninety eight, and it's kind of being you'd somehow make a joke about because like, remember how how many Jeffrey Dahmer jokes there were in the ether in the nineties. It was a lot. So you know, I my mom, my mom is is a lot. Sometimes my mom is gonna be child like. I have a vivid memory of her saying, it's not funny.

Real people died and he was not okay, and I was like, oh, okay, and it really stuck with me. She really hammered home that he was a sick person and even though he did bad things, you shouldn't make fun of sick people. And I was like, whoa, Yeah, my mom just fucking dropped it on me. But yes, it was just one of those. It was like it was like it was lorraina Bobbitt.

It was this, And part of it was the era. I think the nineties had a lot of that, where when there was something in the news like O. J. Simpson and it was very I don't know, like it had a lot of kind of like exciting bells and whistles, it would make like the late night TV circuit then was kind of like your source of comedies that would get turned into everything. It's like Letterman loved Jeffrey Dahmer, right, And I think it had also been kind of like the first serial killer.

We had an error generation, I guess, the first kind of prominent one prominent one. That's a really good point, because we were always living so detached from it, like it's son of. Sam right ted Mundy, Like this was a generation before ours. But now it's like we still wanted to like make fun of it or joke about it with that level of detachment, but it was like present because it had so. Much to it that made right.

It wasn't just oh, somebody was killing people. It was like, well he was cute, and and how much of that also had to do with the fact that he was, you know, killing gay men. I don't I didn't know that back then, Like I don't even think that was part of it, at least to like that level. I think it really was just like the cannibalism aspect, which was something that hadn't happened or seemed so shocking that was really easy to turn into a joke. And it was you know, I'm sure there were Saturday Night Live sketches on it, like it was just an easy punchline because it was so outrageous, and then I think, like that always stuck with me of like, oh my god, but it did happen to it happened to like what was it like a dozen people?

Like yeah, all of those men had you know, sisters, mothers, friends, like all of that. And I guess like there's always been that thing that I think, like hit me at a young age of remembering that, and it's part of why, like I do find and I understand, like, I mean, true crime is very interesting, right. I watch lawn Ard to rest for you. I you know, I memorize Olivia's haircuts and can tell you what episode we're watching based on three sound guys. It's fine, but I also like hate when it gets really like oh this is from the head, Wait a minute, that happened.

Yeah, And like there have been like I grew up in Long Island, we had a weird amount of high profile murders in the last thirty years since of me there. And every time it comes up, it's like, oh, wait, Like there was a when one of like the high school teachers when I was in like elementary school, was you know, one of those like morning jogs murdered by a guy that had a lot of problems, and like we had to play in band at her memorial kind of thing, and like those little things that like stick with you of like oh right, because there is there's people on the other side of that, and so I think like it. That's one of the reasons why I think Red Rooms to me was really fascinating, was it was it was it's giving you like you this not appeal, but like you understand it a couple of different ways why different people are so drawn to these cases and the men who are doing them right, But it doesn't let you, it doesn't let you off the hook.

Should not have the mother right there saying that was my daughter. Mm hmm. I think the involvement of the mother is something that I the entire time was trying to puzzle out. So I didn't just like let it be the way that it was, because obviously it's the mother of the child whose whose tape wasn't found, and and that is becomes the thrust of what Kelly Anne is doing. She's she's she gets she finds the tape on the dark web, she buys it, and it has spoilers everyone I'm just getting there.

It has proof that it is the defendant who did it. Like that that tape was definitive. For the other proof, there's other evidence that seems pretty pretty damn exactly like his full face is there, So like. For that reason, the mother's deep inclusion is very important. But like again, sometimes I can, I can, I can overwork something as I watch it and it's just like, no, you should have just sat there and watched it.

It wasn't really a think piece, like it's just the stuff happening. But I get it though, because I think this movie is it's unlike anything like I can't easily and I think that's also probably why you were having a hard time thinking what to pair it with. Yeah, I don't know what I would compare it to, like it is, and even the idea that this is a horror movie, I guess it is because of you know, at the heart of it, it's it's about a brutal, brutal man doing terrible things, but it's hey, it's not really about that per se. But there's no real violence, there's no real like you're this movie isn't there to scare you. It's there to kind of really no, I'm not.

And I don't even think disturb you. I think it's it's just really like kind of it like found a cut you have, and it's like kind of putting its thumb in there and like turning it around a few times. And I signed that fascinating, like as an actual just piece of art, Like what is this? I think is unlike anything I've seen in many ways? Yeah, I and and you don't want to think that that uniqueness or unable to kind of categorize would would hurt and experience.

But I think yeah, for me, for somebody who's spent so long intensely watching movies, it did. But which is on me because like the movie is really great. There's we haven't even talked about like two or three of like the things that I liked the most of it, and I feel like we've been very complimentary, but I would I walked away from that first viewing being like okay, but and I knew why I felt that way though, and I was like, no, I know, but because it's it's I don't feel that it was okay. I just felt like it was going to do something else, and my own expectation like stepped on it, but like all that courtroom stuff, the way it was filmed, it was so like long and blow and and and it like the camera movement like just guided your eye around the room in such a natural way, like you were a voyeur there as well.

You were the jury, you were you were taking it all in. It was just being presented without judgment at that point, and I thought it was such an interesting like lens I love something. I loved about it that I think. I think I only kind of thought of more on the second viewing have you ever had jury duty? Just recently I got out of it, But yes, I had to go and sit with like in the room, in the room answer questions and yeah, yeah, but you did.

You didn't get to like see the lawyers in. Action, not really, not like in any meaningful way that way. Were there always a slightly disappointing exactly. That was the thing about the I had jury duty twice and the one of the times when I was actually on a case and it was like a one day case. It was quick.

But the most shocking thing about it to me was in that room and having like a lot of expectations of a lawyer, right like you have to go to school for what seven years, right, you're in an undergrad and another three years you pass the bar, like and you know, all of obviously like a lot of my what I think of when I think of lawyers is like law and order and legally blonde and all of that. And so I'm sitting in the room and then I realized, like the two people that get up to talk, I'm like, oh, those are the lawyers, and I'm looking at them. This was out in Long Island, and they had the strongest Long Island accents. They were both like, I don't know, kind of like not to be mean, but kind of dumpy looking like.

And it was just fascinating to sit there and think, like all of these years of me thinking about like my speaking voice when I'm in meetings, and then I sit and I hear like the lawyer get up and be like, all right, members of the jury. So the case we have today, and I'm thinking, I'm like, oh, like, lawyers are just people like they've had that education, but at the end of the day, like they might not have shaken that that Suffolk County accent. And so I like in this that like our lawyers and also it's in Canada, like they wear the robes, so that's fun, but that the lawyers also there's nothing. And also I think there's a reason for this is that like because Kelly Anne is a model, right, she is gorgeous and like you would see her and like she's not overly like done up, but if you glanced at her, you would look at her and immediately like do a double take.

It's like, oh wow. But that everybody else in this like looks like a person. So your lawyers like they're stumbling over their words a little bit because it's a lot to say, and it has this like it feels very natural, very like cold, like you are just you are in the courtroom and it is not this dramatic thing. It is very you know, just the facts, like that's what it is. So that I think kind of also just this I don't know the look of this movie.

Then when you get to like Kelly Ane's apartment and it's this you know, stunning view of the city and it's very like they're If you want to get deep into the movie, you can read the poem The Lady of Shalat the Tennis and poem because it comes up like her screen name is like lady Shalat. If you read that poem, I think there's like more there of like that kind of explained some things. But so you have these like visual decisions in this movie and musical decisions. The score in this movie is great. I think it's the I think it's the director's brother who did the score.

Uh. But so you have this very the tone, the visual tone of it, I think is very strong, and and make certain decisions and such. We should probably talk about Clementine. Oh yeah, so talk about like one of my favorite parts. So she I guess if I'm if I'm gonna give a reason, you want a character that's easy to understand, Like she was so like what she was, and her arc was so exactly what it was supposed to be.

She was like really a perfect character. She is the one of the I don't know hangers on uh fans like, yeah, she believes that the defendant is not guilty, and and I think what I like so much about her is her reasons are like really believable because they're so intangible. Like he just has kind eyes. I can't you know, I couldn't see someone like him doing that. It's all a mistake.

And then every time there's like, well, well they found this, well outlandish reason why that didn't act, you can take that, Yeah, they this was that was planted. Somebody went in and did all that and put it there. And it was like and then for a second I was thinking, well did Kelly Ann frame him? First? What second is like, is that what we're getting at is all that fake?

And she framed him? She didn't frame him, Yeah, but her just her like wide eyed desire to believe ye. She has no reason to other than like her vibes. And she's like traveling from far away and she's homeless, doesn't have anywhere to stay and no food to eat, so she's like laid it all on the line for this random fucking psychopath yep, who is murdering young girls. And this this little lady is not large herself.

She is a tiny little lady who you know, looks good for murdering. So she's just like putting herself out there in this really dangerous way, and Kelly An takes care of her like she's like an injured bird. It's really interesting. It's yeah, because I think the the first time I watched it, I was like really curious where that would go because I was like, Kelly An, don't let her end like this, like you just you find Kelly Anne, so like just riveting right, I mean immediately you are under the thrall of this woman and you don't know her motives. You don't know if she is quote unquote good or bad, but you're just very much like I, you're cool and you've figured out a way to live, and I want you see like you have a really good thing going, so don't disrupt it.

No, this is gonna No, Clementine's not gonna be good, like I remember, like that's how I felt, like Clementine's whatever's gonna happen, it's not gonna be good for you, click Keilly Anne. But it's it's really nice when you see like this sort of friendship develop and you see like and you understand, like, oh, it's not that Clementine is this Like she's not a true crime fan like as you're saying, she is just decided like something she made up in her mind. This man is innocent, and and I see that. And also I think you get the sense of like you know again clearly like she's homeless. She i think you can kind of see like she has scars on her, like so you're like, okay, well, she probably doesn't come from a good background and such, and this is something she she doesn't trust authority, so therefore, like you know, why wouldn't she believe this man?

And all it takes is and I mean, Kelly Anne has the videos, right, she has the first two videos, and so she shows them to Clementine, and Clementine watches and realizes, oh, no, he did it, this man did it. And that's you know, it's obviously not an easy decision for Clementine, but like that's the thing where she's like, Okay, no, this is not He's not to who I thought he was this and you she comes back at the end, so you kind of see her like sometime later having kind of you know, grappled with this and dealt with it and moved on from it. But you see like the loss when when Clementine is watching the video, you see it in her eyes of like losing this thing that meant so much to her and on Kelly Anne's like and you wonder on like do you think that was like why did Kelly Ann show those videos to Clementine.

Clementine asked to see them, she told her not to watch them. Kelly and innocent, one hundred percent, no fault of hers. She I what I found so wonderful about that character is she like just didn't give She didn't editorialize, she didn't get her own opinions about it. She had facts true, she had the truth. And she never once approached Clementine specifically with like you're wrong.

You have no idea how wrong you are? I know, and I see like she The reason why it even comes up is because in that day in court is when you know they're watching the videos, and Clementine has it in her head that she she needs to see these videos and like these videos will do you? Hear his voice, like she needs to see them. And that's when we find out too, I think right that Kelly Anna even has them and and she doesn't want to show them to her, and I think it's kind of like she just gives her what she asked for. And and even there's like a sadness to Kelly in when she does it too, because she knows how poorly it's gonna go, like how can you?

And she's so desensitized to it as well, and that in contrast to how Clementine watches it like horrified and she wants to stop watching it and like Kelly and won't let her write like she's basically no, you ask for this, you have to watch it now. And it's also like black and white to Kelly. And that I find that really interesting about her character is her character is good, good, bad, her indifferent is so convicted that there is no gray area for her, And I think that's really cool. You don't see that with like fictional characters a lot. Yeah, and you know she has watched those videos a lot because she knows exactly when to pause, right, she knows, oh, this is the part where this happens.

And something else she does is you realize she like kind of you know, the way like a serial killer has a totem, Like she takes us with her everywhere, right when she goes in and out of the court, like they are on her keychain. They are with her at all times, and there is that sense. And this is where like again the lady of Chalotte Poem will come in of this like distance. Right, she has watched this on video. She keeps it close to her there's this, like, you know, very odd sort of obsession she has where if she can't let this away from her.

But she's also like, I mean, she is going to the courthouse every day. She's as close to it as she can be, but she'll never be directly close to it until she does what she you know, kind of her one of her second to last big moves, if you will. So when she goes to the courthouse, she dives her hair blonde, she gets the school uniform that the last victim was wearing, she puts blue contacts in her eyes, she gets into that court room, and she puts on braces. So what did you make of that scene? Because it's obviously like a very big moment in the film.

It is a big moment in the film. So yeah, her cause playing as the victim, I think could probably be open to a lot of different interpretations. And I don't know what the filmmaker had in mind. So if you if you've read anything, and you do, I would, I'd be curious. But like for me, it's it's an assimilation thing or a physical representation of the obsession, of the fixation.

It was also potentially a way to like get him to see her, yeah, which which seemed like it could be important to her. And I don't know if it was important for her to have him know that she knew, or if it was important for him to react, because it was the only time he ever showed any emotion or reaction was when she did that. So but it just it just that that her being seen thing really felt like it needed to happen for whatever reason. Yeah, I agree because I think, I mean, I think she needs this, and then I think she also knows that it's fucked up beyond everything, yep, but she like she knows she's losing everything by doing this. Sorry, she's already kind of lost like some modeling jobs because people have seen her at the courthouse, you know, Like, oh no, it's just people are starting to know who I am and realize what I'm doing.

So I think it is it is absolutely a decision if she knows there's no going back from this. But she and something I actually really love is the idea that she is a model, right, she is somebody who is always seen, who is perfect, who is a physical specimen of what you know, the majority of people would think is what you're supposed to want. In a woman, and yet she has to transform herself complete opposite right, blonde hair, blue eyes, bracests, none of these things that she has in order to get this one man who she is fixated on for whatever reason, to see her and she needs and when he sees her, like you see the smile, I think you see a tear Like that's all she needed, Like she needed this is it just that like she's she has gotten what she needed out of this, what she wanted.

So now she can kind of sit back and say, Okay, so now fuck, I guess I will do the thing that somebody has to do in you know, help helping this woman who's who has not seen the video of her daughter. And and there's a cruelty to that, but there is also like it feels like she is doing that because it is now where she has decided this is the thing I have to do because I can do it of finding the video, buying the video off off the darknet, watching it, right, we see her watch it and then it's not just she gives it to the beliefs, but she also makes sure it goes to the mother. And you know, even that is I think up for interpretation on Is that an act of kindness or cruelty or both. Yeah. I think again, there's there's such like a black and white way that that Kelly An comes across that it almost feels void of any intention or emotion.

It's just it's just reality and she and now she has access to this truth, this this event, and she needs to let everyone know that it happened. There's like almost like a I need to document this, I need to be present and witness this to her. But I like that felt like part of the trial stuff was that she needed to exist with in the world of this story for some reason. And I think the fact that we never get a real reason, like it wasn't her her cousin, it wasn't one of the girls, wasn't a classmate that, I mean, it could have been we don't know, there's. Me, But I don't think that has anything to do with it whatsoever.

It's not presented like she she doesn't care because she's supposed to. She cares because she felt called to care about it. And I think that really informs her motivations in an interesting way. Like again, she's she's like this like undiscriminating voyeur, whereas everyone has their own parts to play in it. She is just like she is the hand of God and not like one of the players.

And I think that's so interesting. Agreed. We don't typically give younger female characters that power and like dramas like non like slashers usually, But so it's interesting. Yeah, it's it's just a really different in to a story. Oh, yes, that's a perfect way to put it.

Is this story new and unique? Actually, no, it's maybe one of the most overdone type of story like court hybrid courtroom, serial killer thing is with videos. Yeah, is the in, is the angle? Is the perspective completely fucking unique? Absolutely?

Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad you made me watch me too. Yeah. And I'll be really curious if you, like, in a year or five years revisited knowing what where it goes, because and I think that's true often true for me of movies that with very with surprising and tense stories, where as you're watching you're just so kind of like, uh, in the moment, wondering where it's going that in a way you don't always then get to evaluate it like in a way that you were fully engaged because you were fully engaged watching it, But because like you're kind of like blood pressure is so high up as you're doing it, you can't you might miss things, or it's hard to go back and say like, oh, I don't know what I felt about that because I was so expecting this to happen, or like you know, kind of gritting my teeth knowing this was gonna happen.

And sometimes those are the movies that I most enjoy revisiting because then it's like, Okay, I know where it goes. I know I know the twists, I know the turn, so now I can see how it gets there. And this does play I think on second viewing, it does give you like the breathing room to watch these people exist in this space and like the phone call to the TV show for example, like oh yeah, it's a great scene where the girls are kind of having a sleepover and they're having fun, and there's a news show that does like I don't know what, it's a late night show where there's a bunch of comedians and like but also you know, psychiatrists on there and they're taking calls about the case and Clementine calls in to defend him, and watching Kelly Anne watch Clementine be just insulted and kind of humiliated by these people.

And to kind of see like how Kelly Anne sees that it's just when and then when you kind of know after knowing well Kelly Ann knows and Clementine doesn't, right, and seeing how much Clementine is put into this and knowing how quickly and how how crushed she will be when she realizes, oh my god, these people were right and I was wrong. There Uh it's yeah, there's a lot here, and it's it's it's again and again. It's strange because like it's not like, oh this is a disturbing watch. It's not. But it's a really I think complex watch.

I guess the way. Yeah, it definitely is. When we got finished with it, both Zach and I were kind of like about it and and like I even said, I I said, well, I, I you know, I'm a little like underwhelmed about it. But I know once once I talked to Emily, I'm gonna end up like loving it. And and it wasn't because like you needed to talk me into it and anything.

It's just like that initial experience with it was just a little underwhelming. It's that that expectation thing, but even just kind of reading other people's like little letter box snippets of it, it started to kind of pull into focus what why I felt like I was there, which didn't seem to be the what the movie was sold on. The movie seem to be being sold on. It's maybe it's difficulty and its brutality, but like the really uncomplicated but complicated human story at the center of it that had nothing to do with murders was like for me, what really worked? Yeah, yeah, this sort of play with morality and kind of how what what does it mean when you are kind of obsessed with either acts of violence or people that commit them?

What does it say about you? But also doesn't matter what it says about you? Like where do you put that? What do you do with that? And what does it mean when it starts to when you start doing it to other people?

I guess is part of it. I don't know. There's so much there, and I think there's a very it's a very dense film, but it's one obviously I certainly recommend. Yeah, definitely. When I tweeted about it or fake tweeted about it, people there was a bit of like I don't know that that one seems tough.

I'll have to listen to see what you think. And it wasn't tough in that way. And I know you can say that and people will have their own relationships with things and like who knows what triggers other people. But like I found that while I was expecting something that was not this. Yeah cool, yeah, good pick yeah, and good pairing obviously, very goofy Yeah.

Yeah. Killy and Angela Bennett. Would they be friends? What do you think? Yes?

I thought they're both very quiet, insular people. Yep, they're both very good with computers, and I guess the ninety five version of the dark Web just like background, completely underground stuff, and they're both very righteous. Yeah. I feel like they would both be like in the same sort of chat room and group and like instantly backing each other up. And they'll never meet I r L.

But they will always like have each other's back in on the Internet. I like that. I like a yeah, they'll always have each other's back on the net on. Thet all right, Well, with that being said, uh, I think I'm ready to go to Pizza dot net and order myself dinner. How about you?

Extra garlic. I don't have anybody to impress that from the movie. What a great episode, begs everybody, all skype yes, when next we meet, it's probably gonna be a lot of me going, you're gonna just a fair warning on the next episode to everybody, it's probably gonna be a lot of me going like a fuck, did I dipress record? Damn it is this? Do you think it's recording?

I don't know, is it? Okay? Wait, thirty minute off? Okay, we'll be back. That's preview for next episode.

Maybe will sound even better. Though, as if we could. That's true, true, all right, thanks everybody, goodbye. M m. Ok m h.

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