Killers, Movie Cults & Games
A Q&A from Greg to Greg.
A while back, I tried to do a mailbag of sorts in which you, the readers, would send me questions and I would answer them. It was an unmitigated disaster. I got few responses and the ones I did were … not great. Maybe we’ll try that again, but until that day, I decided to have one of my favorite people ask me some movie questions about, well, everything. That person is me. Here’s what he and I and us had to say.
Have you seen any good movies about killers lately?
Wow, coming out of the gate hot. And yes. Yes, I have. Of course, there’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which opens nationwide today. We’ve talked about this one time and time again, but who knows how many Martin Scorsese movies we’ll have left? Each one should be treated like The Avengers and then some.
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The legend is a TikTok maven now too. He just knows how to make entertaining movies and short films and whatever else. Killers is a devastating yet entertaining Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro masterpiece. That’s the first killer movie you should check out.
The next one, which drops next week in select theaters, and then on Netflix not long after, is David Fincher’s The Killer, which we will be talking about a lot more when it eventually comes out. It’s a Michael Fassbender hit-man movie that I guess can be classified as a dark comedy but is also just Fincher having as much fun as possible. The guy made Zodiac, Se7en, The Social Network, Fight Club and Gone Girl. He has a resume as long as the kills The Killer’s protagonist seems to have. Tremendous stuff here. Go see it on the big screen if you can.
Other killing movies I’ve seen in the last few months that deserve shoutouts? Sexy Beast from 2000 directed by Jonathan Glazer, and No One Will Save You, a pretty fun extraterrestrial horror-action movie that you can check out on Hulu right now.
Any movies you were excited for that really let you down lately?
Okay, let’s talk about Fair Play, which had an intriguing premise, great actors and excellent writing by an AI bot on its first day in the office. The Netflix drama, which bafflingly has been getting good reviews, stars Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich as a romantic couple that happens to work at the same cutthroat hedge fund. One of them gets a promotion and then the tables turn. It’s a fun idea and should be a home run for Netflix but pretty quickly becomes this year’s Don’t Worry Darling with a similar harebrained plot, some Jordan Peterson side quests and some of the dumbest “twists” you’ve ever seen.
I know that the movie was bought by Netflix and wasn’t initially conceived by the company, but it does feel like a real lowest-common-denominator Netflix project that has some good pieces and does nothing with them. Bring back good erotic thrillers. Unfortunately, this hurts the cause.
Also, Netflix is upping its premium subscription from $19.99/month to $22.99/month. What a rip-off. There are like three good shows and two good movies on there.
Who are the Sewer Boys?
The Sewer Boys are Backpack and Whisper and they deserve the world.
Check out Dicks: The Musical, a real “what the fuck is happening right now?” movie if you want to know more.
This A24 musical somehow stars Bowen Yang, Nathan Lane, Megan Mullally and Megan Thee Stallion. It’s quite something. The couple in front of us left 20 minutes into the movie, and we really couldn’t blame them.
Can you rank the Wes Anderson shorts?
So, along with Asteroid City, Wes Anderson casually dropped four new shorts in 2023. All are on Netflix right now and all are pretty incredible. They’re Roald Dahl adaptations and feature Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade and Rupert Friend. It’s almost a traveling theater troupe as the actors change roles throughout and each gets to have their own starring vehicle.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is the lead, I guess, as it’s 38 minutes and had a Venice premiere, but each is worth watching. The other three are less than 20 minutes. That’s not even one episode of TV. You can do that in your sleep.
You kinda have to watch them in order, but this is my official unofficial ranking…
The Swan
Poison
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
The Rat Catcher
The Swan, in particular, a bleak and evocative short on bullying, has an unbelievable performance from Rupert Friend. He’s kind of jumped up into my upper echelon of actors just from his Anderson work this year. Looking forward to what he does next.
Taylor Swift?
Is that a question? I’m assuming this is about the movie, which I haven’t seen yet. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ve been busy lately and I just want to wait a little for the insanity to calm down. I’m such a movie theater snob. We all know this by now. If someone breathes behind me, it gets on my nerves. I’m an asshole; it’s fine. I can’t deal with this in a movie theater:
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I’m happy for everyone here. God knows how much I love Taylor Swift. But I just don’t need this while I’m eating my Buncha Crunch and lounging. I’m 28 now. I only have a finite amount of time left before I’m yelling at people to get off my lawn. Well, I’ll never really have a lawn because of student debt, persistent inflation and insufficient income, but you get what I mean. Things are great.
Any other movie things I should keep an eye out for?
I recently got into this game called Movie Grid, which is the Immaculate Grid baseball trivia thing but for movies. You have to make connections for various stars and different types of ideas like genres and release dates. It’s a perfect way to waste a few minutes. Here’s an example…
And yes, ladies, I am still single.
Finally, where do you see the Oscars race right now?
Oh, this is a good way to end it. So, this is what I have for the ten Best Picture nominations right now. Will update, I’m sure, but this is how I see it. They’re in order of how confident I am that they will make the cut.
Oppenheimer (my Best Picture pick at the moment)
Killers of the Flower Moon
Poor Things
Barbie
Maestro
The Color Purple
American Fiction
The Holdovers
Past Lives
The Zone of Interest
To be fair, I’ve only seen half of these movies, but these are the vibes I’m getting. In terms of actors and director, if I had to pick now, I think it’s Emma Stone for Best Actress, Cillian Murphy for Best Actor, Danielle Brooks for Best Supporting Actress, Robert Downey Jr. for Best Supporting Actor and Martin Scorsese for Best Director. Of course, there’s plenty of time for this to change. And we’re sure to see plenty of Ryan Gosling on the campaign trail if the studios ever get their shit together and pay the actors. We’ll get more into it soon enough.