Low Key

Those Who Wish Me Dead, the awesomely titled new thriller from Taylor Sheridan, stars Angelina Jolie as a smokejumper who must protect a boy with valuable secrets from a pair of assassins.

Does it work? We're divided this week, in large part because we aren't sure if the MacGuffin at the center of the film works. (A MacGuffin, of course, is a plot device that serves no real purpose except to move things along.)

What we do agree on is the cast is great and the fire sequences are spectacular.

Also this episode: We'll explain to anyone saying "what the hell is a smokejumper" exactly what that means.

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The Outside Story, directed by Casimir Nozkowski, defies the rule that films need to be high-stakes. It's the tale of an introverted editor (Brian Tyree Henry) who gets locked out of his apartment and is forced to spend a few hours... outdoors. We liked it.

Some critics are mad at this small, kind-hearted movie for not being about police brutality or the living wage, and we gently recommend that those critics go for a nice walk outside.

Here's the article that inspired our discussion of the film.

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Invincible, from Amazon Prime, is the work of a super team. Created by The Walking Dead mastermind Robert Kirkman, produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (who have developed a spectacular track record), and voiced by A-listers led by JK Simmons and recent Oscar nominee Steven Yeun, it's the most impressive cartoon we've seen in a damn long time. There are many reasons we consider if the superhero Game of Thrones.

We also talk about the breaking news that occurred a few hours before this episode: A new report on the search for a Black Superman, and all the interesting reactions to it.

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In the Oscar-nominated short film Two Distant Strangers, a young Black man (Joey Bada$$) finds himself trapped in a hellish time loop, relentlessly targeted by a racist white cop.

The film is written by Emmy winner Travon Free, who directs with Martin Desmond Roe. Free says the film is meant to illustrate the exhausting, horrific repetition of police killings of unarmed Black people. (You can listen to his interview over at the MovieMaker podcast.)

Keith talks in this episode about how watching Two Distant Strangers reminded him of the emotional death he's felt too many times before, after past police killings.

We also talk about police who kill and get away with it, whether there's any point in talking with racists, and how real events in the past week — including Derek Chauvin's trial for killing George Floyd — prove the film's point.

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In awards-season darling Nomadland, Frances McDormand plays a woman named Fern who takes to the open road when her husband — and town — dies.

We talk about what Fern wants, whether the movie should be harder on American businesses, and some interesting similarities between Nomadland and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.

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I Care a Lot is about a crooked legal guardian (Rosamund Pike) who makes a living stripping seniors of all their worldly possessions. Things go great (or terribly, if we're talking about morality) until she targets Jennifer Peterson (Diane Wiest), who is connected to the worst person you could ever cross (Peter Dinklage).

The film has gotten good reviews, but criticism from viewers who don't like movies about people they don't like. We also talk about double standards around bad onscreen men like Walter White and bad onscreen women like the protagonist of I Care a Lot.

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