Medium Literate

This week we're TOGETHER IN PERSON in BEAUTIFUL PASADENA talking all about Wild Horse Nine, Martin McDonagh's follow-up to the Banshees of Inisherin. He continues to explore the themes of complicated male friendship and reckoning with one's legacy, this time via CIA agents in Chile in 1973. It's sad, it's funny, the acting is great, it looks gorgeous, and it has an overtly disgusted view of the CIA and its history of meddling in world politics, what more could you possibly ask for in a movie!

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This week we’re talking about Wicker and Wildwood, two fantasy movies that start with W, take place in the woods, and otherwise have almost nothing in common! But we love a theme so it’s Cottagecore Week, baby!

We get into why Wicker worked so well as a cozy little fairy tale, why the movie is less about sex than the marketing would have you believe, Olivia Colman serving as everyone’s inspiration to make this movie, Alexander Skarsgård really reveling in messing with the weird edges of what his handsomeness does to people, and the very simple idea that maybe you should just like your spouse.

Then we move on to Wildwood, an unbelievably beautiful stop-motion movie that took 16 years to make. We talk about the level of craft, why Emily liked it more than Monika did, why this might be one of the most violent children’s movies we’ve seen in a while, and our ongoing complicated relationship with Portland, Oregon.

(Also, we recorded this on Halloween night and gradually lost our minds. This really isn’t our greatest work.)

Spoilers for Wicker and Wildwood throughout the episode!

00:00 Intro

03:12 Wicker

32:59 Wildwood

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Emily and Monika are some of the several people who saw Taika Waititi's Klara and the Sun this week, and it's not a huge mystery why it didn't resonate with critics or audiences. Based on the Booker Prize-longlisted novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, this adaptation starring Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams misses the mark on what made the book so beloved. Monika read the book so she's here to lead us through a conversation on all the big differences between the book and the movie, and where it went wrong.

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Emily loved Clayface. Monika did not love Clayface. But she also didn’t hate it (which is honestly much more annoying?)

This week we’re talking about DC’s extremely gooey villain origin story, a movie with a clunky script, some genuinely great body horror, and enough cool shape-shifting stuff to keep Monika from fully turning against it.

We get into why Emily apparently loves origin stories despite having no interest whatsoever in comic book movies, why the actors are doing a lot of heavy lifting here, Matt Hagen’s descent from charming movie star to sewer-dwelling pile of skin, and the important question of what technically qualifies as a jump scare.

Plus Monika gives her thoughts on Street Fighter, Emily reports on The Devils, and we disagree about the new Sense and Sensibility.

Spoilers for Clayface!

Episode chapters:

01:49 Street Fighter

11:26 The Devils

19:36 Sense and Sensibility

39:21 Origin Stories and Clayface

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The biggest movie event of the year that was only announced a few weeks before its release has finally arrived. Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes documentary is as fascinating a project in execution as it is a log line, and we're very excited to talk about it this week. The movie's three hour runtime spans several years and several states as it digs into the truly strange people at its center. Emily and Monika disagree many times on what a situation really means, and that's the fun of it, because literally no one knows what's true, not even the filmmakers themselves.

***** SPOILERS FOR YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING THROUGHOUT THIS EPISODE

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This week we’re talking about Whalefall, the surprisingly sincere survival drama starring Austin Abrams and Josh Brolin that takes a pretty ridiculous premise and turns it into a moving story about fathers, sons, grief and maybe most importantly: how much we should respect and fear the ocean.

We get into why the father-son story actually worked for us, Austin Abrams’ continued reign as our nation’s foremost "talking-to-himself" actor, Josh Brolin’s natural gift for playing a salty sea dog, and the strange tenderness of watching a man slowly develop an emotional connection with the whale whose stomach he is currently trapped inside.

Plus: Monika give her full 4DX report because she experienced it for the first time. What's it like to cry while your chair violently shakes and sprays water in your face? Monika can now answer that!

Major spoilers for Whalefall throughout.

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It's not Mother's Day... it's Mommy Week at the Movies. Monika and Emily discuss two very different films: the Jessica Chastain-led horror Other Mommy, and the family drama/action thriller Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother starring Mahershala Ali. Monika has a shocking opinion on Other Mommy, and Emily lays out the differences between the movie and the book it's based on, Incidents Around the House. Then it's onto Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, a really clever, original version of a hitman-in-a-bad-situation story, with some really beautiful character dynamics.

***Major spoilers for both films***

02:33 Other Mommy

43:27 Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

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LET'S GET READY TO RECKON. This week we're talking about The Social Reckoning, the long awaited follow-up to 2010's The Social Network. This time it's Oops All Aaron Sorkin, and the results... aren't great. Emily and Monika talk about their tech takes, the silicon valley movie and miniseries industrial complex, the surprise cameo from January 6th, the insane score, and why this movie just doesn't work in our current landscape, or possibly any landscape at any point.

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Against all odds, we are here to defend Verity.

This week, Monika and Emily dip their toes into the CoHo waters to talk about Michael Showalter’s star-studded adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s extremely popular/horny/violent thriller starring Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett, a movie we can only describe (lovingly) as prestige Lifetime schlock.

We get into why Dakota Johnson’s particular brand of deadpan coolness is absolutely perfect for Lowen Ashleigh (perfect name), Anne Hathaway playing evil, Josh Hartnett’s ongoing second career as "Hot Dad Who May Be Dangerous...or not?" and why this movie understands exactly how seriously to take its beach-read source material.

***Major spoilers for Verity throughout!!!

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This week we’re talking about Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger, starring Tom Cruise as an oil tycoon at the center of an apocalyptic climate disaster (and also some other stuff)

We discuss whether a movie can be intentionally unpleasant and still simply not work for you, Iñárritu’s keen eye for bringing together incredibly skilled film crafts-people, and the exciting return of Tom Cruise doing something other than jumping out of airplanes.

***Major spoilers for Digger throughout the entire conversation.

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