Weekend Watchlist: Turning Red, The Adam Project and Ultrasound
[Izon by Trent Walton fades in, plays alone, fades out]
SLIM Hi, welcome to Weekend Watchlist, a quick look at what’s screening and streaming, brought to you by Mitchell.
MITCHELL Hello, hello.
SLIM And together, we’ll dig through what’s dropping this weekend, last weekend, what’s trending on Letterboxd. And we’ll also take a peek at our own watchlists. Mitchell, you’re senior editor at Letterboxd and everyone uses their watchlists differently. How do you use it? I saw—spoilers—I saw you almost have 1,000 movies on your watchlist, by the way.
MITCHELL I have a lot of movies on my watchlist. I kind of, you know, watchlist is not a thing that I used to use a lot. But then I started using it and now I’m very addicted to using it. [Slim laughs] It’s almost a problem. It feels like one of those things where I watch a movie, I feel like. you know, I got it off the watchlist. I’m getting it down, we’re down to 999. But then, the next day comes and I add ten more movies to it. And it just, it feels like this great mountain that I’m never gonna get down from but I don’t mind it because it’s, you know, it’s more movies. There’s always more movies to throw on there.
SLIM There’s plenty more movies to watch. Yeah, every time, some of my friends use it, where they’ll always say at the start of the year, “You know what? I’m only going to watch movies on my watchlist this year.” [Mitchell laughs]
MITCHELL Right, yeah.
SLIM And that never works. [Slim laughs] One week later, they’re already watching whatever the heck they want that’s not on their watchlist.
MITCHELL Yeah, at the beginning of this year, I made this list that our friend Jack at Letterboxd, he does a similar thing, I took inspiration from him, where I made a list of 52 films that are on my watchlist that I’m for sure, 100% going to see this year. And I think I’ve watched about seven of those right now and then added probably about… 100 movies to my watchlist maybe. [Mitchell laughs]
SLIM Yeah, the one saving grace for people with large amounts of watchlists, if you’re a Pro member, you get that email saying, “Hey, that movie is on your watchlist is now streaming on this service that you have. FYI.” So by all means, take advantage of that for Pro and Patron .
MITCHELL And it’s got cool, we’ve got like the cool filters on there too, where you can kind of filter your watchlist through like what’s available on streaming services and stuff, which is something that my partner Samm and I use, like literally every day when we’re deciding what to watch, it’s like looking through our watchlists and figuring out what’s available that we can actually see for free right now on the many different things that we subscribe to.
SLIM Right. Before we move on, we should mention that this episode of Weekend Watchlist is brought to you by Mubi. So our first ever episode and Mubi is sponsoring—amazing. For those that don’t know. they are a curated streaming service showing exceptional films around the globe. And everyday Mubi premieres a new film, from iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there’s always something new to discover.
MITCHELL You can try a Mubi for free for 90 days at—
SLIM Excuse me? [Mitchell laughs] I’m just so stunned at 90 days.
MITCHELL It’s a very generous offer from Mubi and you can use it for 90 days at the URL mubi.com/letterboxd. That’s mubi.com/letterboxd, for three months of great cinema for free. And, you know, my partner and I, we’ve got a Mubi subscription, we’re using it right now. And speaking of filtering by services on your watchlist, we, the other day, you know, we are looking for things to watch on Mubi right now. They’ve got—I mean, they’ve always got a really great selection. They’re always adding new things. They really curate the selection for you. They do these really cool series on specific directors. I , you know, last year or two years ago, maybe, they had selections, like series for Christian Petzold, the director of movies like Transit and Undine. And a series on Tsai Ming-liang, who’s one of my favorite directors, who I got to watch films by him that aren’t available anywhere else.
SLIM Wow.
MITCHELL You think you’ve got all the services and, you know, you’ve got access to everything. but especially for people who are really interested in, as you said, emerging directors and international directors, which I very much am, there’s a lot of really great stuff on Mubi that’s not available anywhere else.
SLIM I’ll be the first to call out that I’m one of those people that have not had a Mubi hip. I used this three-month promo.
MITCHELL Yeah.
SLIM This morning. I signed up, and I sorted my watchlist by movies that are on Mubi, so already, I’m paying dividends because one of the movies on there, Terminal Island, my friends are covering on their next episode of their podcast.
MITCHELL There you go!
SLIM So now I can watch it on Mubi. So thank you, Mubi! So now is the time to sign up and discover your next movie on your watchlist.
MITCHELL Mubi: get into it. [Mitchell & Slim laugh]
SLIM Is that an actual catchphrase that Mubi uses? Are they gonna steal that from us?
MITCHELL It should be! It should. I mean, I should get some pay, but…
SLIM Another three months for Mitchell after coining that catchphrase for Mubi.
MITCHELL I think that’s enough talk about Mubi for now. I think everybody’s into it. So let’s get into our next section, which is going to be all about the movies that are dropping this weekend for people to watch in theaters and on the many different streaming services that are out there.
SLIM I’m ready, let’s do it.
MITCHELL The big new release this week, the first one that we’re getting into, is the new film from Pixar—ever heard of ’em? [Slim laughs] The film is called Turning Red, it is written and directed by Domee Shi, who people may know from directing the very popular dumpling short from Pixar, Bao, from a few years back. Turning Red is about a young girl, thirteen-year-old girl, named Mei, who is experiencing the awkwardness of being a teenager with a twist. When she gets too excited, she transforms into a giant red panda. Don’t we all? [Slim laughs] How are you feeling about Turning Red, Slim? Is this one that’s high on your watchlist?
SLIM I’m excited because, I’ll be the first to say I looove movies that debut at my house. [Mitchell laughs] Like, Disney+, if I get to stay home and heat up some popcorn with my family and watch a movie at home, I’m all in. I don’t care what the heck it is. And bonus points that it’s a Pixar film! So this is just on Disney+, I think they forgo… they forwent? I don’t even know if forwent is a word, but they forwent theatrical release. And I love that Bao short. So I’m excited to watch this this weekend. I love Pixar. I’ve loved the last few that have debuted on Disney+. So I’m all in. What about you?
MITCHELL Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I mean, I’m the same way. I’m not really going to the theaters right now. So, you know, if you want to drop something on a streaming service for me that I have, that I can watch at home, especially if it’s free, that is fantastic news. I know that there is, you know, discussion about people being frustrated that Pixar, or, you know, Disney is kind of pushing some of these movies out, especially ones that have more kind of diverse representation out on Disney+, you know, a little bit unceremoniously, which I think is definitely a discussion worth having. But as a viewer who is not really going to theaters, I don’t mind being able to see the movies you know right away. And I’m the same way with Pixar, it is kind of a thing, where even the Pixar movies that don’t hit, that don’t blow you away, they’re at least, you know, a good time. There is really great animation, always, like they’re doing exciting, cool things. Do you have like a favorite Pixar that stands out the most for you or like a top three?
SLIM WALL·E was like one of my favorite movies for many years. I had a spiritual experience seeing WALL·E in theaters. [Slim & Mitchell laugh] And I haven’t rewatched it. I think it became one of those movies that I watched too often. So I needed to take a break. So I actually haven’t watched WALL·E in a very long time. But, yeah, that’s up there for me. 100%.
MITCHELL Yeah, I’ll tell you for myself, Soul is, I know it’s a recent one, and a lot of people go with some of the like the older, the classic ones. But Soul was one that really hit home for me and I think especially kind of it’s, those ideas that it gets into of appreciating life and not making your life all about this one ion that you have and this one thing that becomes like your identity and just, you know, appreciating the verisimilitude of life. It’s something that like really, really hit home for me in a way that I wasn’t expecting.
SLIM What was the like, ogre-elf one that they did that came, like right at the start of the pandemic?
MITCHELL Oh, Onward?
SLIM Onward!
MITCHELL The Tom Holland and Chris Pratt doing the voices? It was… what did you think of that one? That one was alright.
SLIM I loved the ending, I though the ending was amazing.
MITCHELL They do, Pixar’s got a good track record for endings. They hit those emotions even when you don’t know that it’s coming. Onward, one of the last movies that I saw in theaters before.
SLIM That feels like that movie came out a decade ago. [Slim & Mitchell laugh]
MITCHELL Jesus Christ. Yes it does.
SLIM So, Turning Red is on 11,000 watchlists right now. So we’ll start to see that movie popping up in our activity feeds on Letterboxd very shortly. But, next on our list from Shawn Levy and written by Jennifer Flackett, Mark Levin, T.S. Nowlin and Jonathan Tropper. This is hitting theaters and Netflix. This is on 4,500 watchlists. The Adam Project. Your friend and mine, Ryan Reynolds. This one is hitting Netflix, you can also go to theaters and see it, but this falls into the grouping of movies where, you know, I saw Red [Notice] last year...
MITCHELL Red Notice?
SLIM Red Notice. Wasn’t for me. So I kind of looped [The] Adam Project into like one of those Netflix Originals. And I’ll be completely frank with you, Mitchell. I watched the trailer this morning just to get a taste of this movie and this feels like right up my alley of movies that I would watch with my son. He gets like YouTube ads for movies like, “Hey, you see this [The] Adam Project?” And then we’d watch it. Do you have any buzz around The Adam Project that’s worth mentioning? Maybe it’s similar to other films?
MITCHELL Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I was able to see the film a little bit early and I think that it definitely is kind of gearing towards that father-son, kind of, it’s very much a movie about a father and a son. The whole kind of plot revolves around Ryan Reynolds’ character, in the year 2050, travels back in time to 2022 to try to stop some stuff that’s going on that, you know, shouldn’t happen in the future. And it becomes kind of all about him and his younger self trying to reunite with their father to solve all this stuff. The father’s played by Mark Ruffalo. And it’s very much going for that kind of Amblin vibe, which I think, you know, who are familiar with Shawn Levy maybe wouldn’t be surprised. He’s one of the producers on Stranger Things, he directed the Night at the Museum movies, along with Free Guy, stuff like that. And it’s definitely going for Amblin, all the way, maybe a little bit too transparently, it feels a little bit, at least to me, kind of derivative and it doesn’t really hit those, you know, beats the way that those Amblin movies do. But it definitely is going for that. So I think if people are interested in that kind of thing, and I mean, especially if you like Ryan Reynolds, it’s definitely a Ryan Reynolds movie. [Slim laughs] I think his kind of particular brand of sardonic witticisms don’t really work for me necessarily the way that they did back in like 2005 when he was first kind of getting into that whole thing, with like the Van Wilder days. I was like, “Oh, this guy’s, you know, doing some stuff. I’m having fun with this guy.” At this point, you know, twenty years later I’m like, ehhh, maybe not.
SLIM So you’re saying this is Amblin Van Wilder? [Slim laughs]
MITCHELL Yes! That’s the way—that was in the trailer, right? That’s what they said in the trailer? This is Amblin Van Wilder? [Mitchell laughs]
SLIM If you like Van Wilder, get a load of this. So I came out of trailer retirement to watch this trailer. And funnily enough, it reminded me of another movie that had like non-positive buzz ahead of time, that I had a lot of fun watching with my son, which was The Tomorrow War with Chris Pratt. that movie that came out Prime?
MITCHELL I never caught up with that one. Yeah.
SLIM That one was another like action, adventure, streamer original that I got [The] Tomorrow War vibes. So for better or worse, if you like [The] Tomorrow War, maybe [The] Adam Project is for us. We’ll find out.
MITCHELL There you go! The Adam Project on Netflix.
SLIM Big weekend plans.
MITCHELL Let’s move on to kind of the more under-the-radar ones that we want to give a little spotlight to. Our next film, it’s called Ultrasound. It’s directed by Rob Schroeder, written by Conor Stechschulte. It’s on 1,000 watchlists on Letterboxd. It’s coming out this weekend on theaters and on video on demand. So if you don’t want to head out to the theaters, you can watch this from the comfort of your own home. The film premiered last year at the Tribeca Film Festival. The basic synopsis goes as this: After his car breaks down, Glen spends one hell of an odd night with a married couple, setting into motion a chain of events that alter their lives plus those of several random strangers. Now I saw this film back at Tribeca last year when it premiered, but you, I believe, just caught up with it recently. Is that correct? What are your feelings on Ultrasound?
SLIM Lucky enough to get a screener ahead of time, some LB crew perks, and this has been on my watchlist for a little bit, because six-degrees-of-separation, a friend of a friend knows the director and heard ahead of time that it was based on a graphic novel. So I’m a long-time comic reader, but I’d never read it. So I fired this up and I actually really enjoyed it. It falls into the like nanogenre in my head of lo-fi sci-fi, where, you know, some kind of sci-fi topics play a part of it, but it’s not the main thing, it’s kind of in the background, but it’s really about the human relationships and the fallout inside of it. And I compare that to two directors which I go to when I talk about lo-fi sci-fi, which are the dudes that made The Endless, Spring and Resolution, Moorhead and Benson. Gemma, on the main show, talks about how her favorite movies are ones that land at like three and a half stars. [Mitchell laughs] That’s the sweet spot of movies for her, and their films, and this one, falls into that sweet spot for me. So it starts out where you’re not really sure what’s going on, it almost felt like a thriller that I wasn’t vibing with, with like the plot, I was like getting really uncomfortable. [Slim & Mitchell laugh] Then it like drifts into, okay, there’s actually some strange sci-fi things happening. And then you’re kind of like in the dark for most of the movie and then the ending reveals everything. So by the end of the time, the full journey of the film, had a great time.
MITCHELL Yeah, it’s definitely the kind of movie that I’m always like down to watch, even if I—so my kind of trajectory with watching the film was I was really intrigued by the beginning, it started kind of losing me during the middle where it felt like it was maybe like meandering a little bit too much, but then, you know, as you just said, it comes back around at the end in a really exciting way that like everything comes full circle and like all the pieces just mesh together really well. So the end kind of brought me back in, you know? And just the kind of premise and, yeah, those lo-fi sci-fi vibes, like low budget sci-fi is some of the most interesting stuff out there, because you got people who just had these ideas and really have to get creative with the way that they want to employ those ideas because they don’t have the biggest budgets in the world where they can lean on, you know, digital effects and whatever. So they have to really get into character but also like finding different ways to use the form to capture those ideas and I definitely think that Rob Schroeder does a good job of that. I’m definitely you know, curious to see kind of what else he’s going to put out as well.
[music fades in, plays alone, fades out]
SLIM Let’s look back real quick at last week’s releases. We do want to spotlight, maybe folks weren’t able to make plans last weekend with their watchlists. But maybe we’ll spotlight two things from each of us that we want to call out from the previous week and maybe the big one so far is The Batman.
MITCHELL Mmm. Heard of it? [Slim laughs]
SLIM Everyone is seeing this movie. It’s still on 73,000 watchlists right now. So there’s still plenty of people that have not gone to see it in theaters. Maybe they’re waiting for digital release. And this is hanging pretty tough with a 4.3 average on Letterboxd. One of the reviews that I do want to spotlight—and if you want potentially have one of your reviews spotlighted, tag your reviews with “Weekend Watchlist” by the way, on Letterboxd. From Brat, who we’ll actually hear from next week, Brat wrote, “seen a lot of people comparing this to Zodiac and Se7en (agree) but not too many commenting on its most clear influence... the Saw Sa(w)ga.” I very much agree. I definitely got some Saw vibes during the film.
MITCHELL Well as somebody, you know, who got said, “Apologies to my five-year-old who will not be seeing this anymore this weekend (or for at least a couple more years).” [Slim laughs] And I know, Slim, you did not see The Batman with your son and I was curious kind of for all the parents out there, who may be listening, who haven’t seen the film yet, who might be considering bringing their children, what do you think is the correct age for this new [The] Batman? I hear it’s a little bit darker than, you know, the Schumacher Batman. [Slim & Mitchell laugh]
SLIM This is a far cry from the Nolan trilogy, which I think is dark at times. This is grimy. This is like the muck under someone’s boot. I would not take any child under the age of maybe eleven or twelve to see this movie. No way, Jose. Definitely not for young kids. And I’m okay with that. Because we’ve had so many Batman movies already. I’m totally on board with a different vibe for Batman films. And if it’s dark and gritty, then let’s do it for a little bit and then we can refresh in like ten years and have a director take another swing at things.
MITCHELL Just ask your kids if they want to see a movie that has been described by Letterboxd podcast host, Slim, as “the gunk on the bottom of your shoe.” [Mitchell & Slim laugh]
SLIM Listen, WB, HBO, if you want to put that on a poster… [Mitchell laughs] Let’s talk. Okay? We can make this happen. Three months free of HBO Max. Let’s do it.
MITCHELL One of the other releases from last week that I would love to shout out, also starring Colin Farrell, star of Journal, our digital magazine on Letterboxd, from Isaac Feldberg with kogonada about kind of the inspirations behind the film. You know, he mentions Yasujirō Ozu as a really big inspiration. They also talk about kogonada becoming a cat person over the last few years, surprisingly, getting some of the cat love out there. But also, you know, really getting into kind of the film itself and the themes that After Yang gets into, which are really these existential questions about life and death and searching for meaning. And one of the things that I really love that kogonada speaks about in the interview is finding meaning within the search for meaning, rather than working so hard to find the meaning yourself, and this idea that like you can never really fully find that meaning of life, what life means and finding that fulfillment. But the idea that the kind of never-ending search for it is where you get the meaning from.
SLIM Incredible film. I heard you speak about After Yang and I was able to watch this just before it hit Showtime. This is my movie of the year so far.
MITCHELL Yeah, same.
SLIM I was blown away. This is an incredibly therapeutic watch, to the point where, after I read the Journal article, finally after I watched it, I added Columbus, you know, his previous directorial effort which I had not seen. But I mean if anyone is on the fence for this film, it’s actually going up in watchlists since its release. It’s on 52,000 watchlists right now. And I think there’s definitely like a Letterboxd buzz around After Yang. And I know Showtime, maybe not a lot of people have Showtime but, I mean, do whatever you can to take advantage of this film.
MITCHELL Yeah, Showtime’s got free trials. You can get in there for seven days, probably, and then maybe cancel your subscription, maybe not, maybe keep it around. They got other good stuff on there too.
SLIM I know Showtime is listening right now. [Mitchell laughs] You want to next week, you know, maybe the week after, you want to do a three month free trial for Weekend Watchlist listeners, let’s make it happen. [Slim laughs]
MITCHELL showtime.com/letterboxd — It’s open! It’s available! Nobody’s using that URL right now. It’s very available. Well, speaking of Jack Moulton, every week we will be giving you updates on where the current Top 50 films of 2022 are looking at on Letterboxd. So Slim, you want to take a look at what’s kind of trending, what’s moving and shaking on the Top 50 list for Letterboxd right now?
SLIM Yeah, I love this list. It’s updated every Monday, so you can see what’s moving up the list what’s popular, what’s jumping in. So it’s a great opportunity to find new movies. And you mentioned [The] Batman, [The] Batman was at number two of this list last week, it’s now moved down to number three. And 8,000 people already have this in their four favorites on Letterboxd. So, Jack even mentioned how we might be getting a little bit of a [Spider-Man:] No Way Home scenario from last year. that was like at the top of the charts and—
MITCHELL Number one.
SLIM You know, certain groups of movie fans were freaking out that this could be number-one movie of the year. [Slim laughs] It eventually settled down a little bit. But there’s also another movie on this list that I wanted to highlight that you I think also saw, The Last Farmer, which I had never heard of. It’s now at number two on our Top 50 of 2022 and has a 4.3 average. So I need to see what the heck this movie is about.
MITCHELL Yeah, this is a Tamil Indian film. And you know, these films really, they get a very ionate following behind them, where they—one of the things that I love so much about the Letterboxd lists is that while you get films like The Batman on there that everybody’s talking about, you also get these films that maybe don’t have as big of a profile, you know, worldwide as something like The Batman does, but they have a really ionate following, particularly within their countries of origin. And it really helps to put them on the radar for everybody else so that people can seek these out. This this film, The Last Farmer premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival in February of last year back when they were doing virtual screenings. And over a year later, it finally got its first national release in India on February 11. And it’s immediately, as we can see, really charting up this Letterboxd list at number two, just from getting that national release in India and it’s exciting to see a film like this just really surging like that, kind of coming out of nowhere, at least for us, you know, most of us living in, the Letterboxd people living in America, New Zealand, we weren’t really familiar with the film. So when Jack came out of nowhere in the Slack and was like, “Hey, we’ve got a new film at number two,” it was immediately like, well, let’s check this out. Let’s see what this film is all about.
SLIM Yeah, and we didn’t mention number one, but Jack theorizes that it will stay number one probably for most of the year. And that’s [The Beatles:] Get Back – The Rooftop Concert.
MITCHELL Certainly is.
SLIM From The Beatles. So if you’re into that vibes, then you’re very comfortable with the new number one for the most of the year.
MITCHELL Take that, [The] Batman! [Slim & Mitchell laugh]
SLIM Final segment for this episode, let’s talk about our own watchlist. What we added to our watchlist, what we’re hoping at some point to watch in the near future. And mine actually came from that Journal article. I added Ozu to my watchlist for the first time ever, Tokyo Story. 1953. So this was called out in the After Yang article about various Ozu vibes and references and homages and this is a giant blind spot in my library. So Tokyo Story is actually streaming on Criterion and HBO Max right now, so hopefully I can start to get into these vibes and see what all the fuss is about.
MITCHELL Yeah, not to sell it too hard, Tokyo Story on my personal Top 250 of all time list, number eight. So…
SLIM Oh my god! Number eight!
MITCHELL Big fan of Tokyo Story. If anybody hasn’t seen Tokyo Story, get on it with Slim and check that out. [Slim laughs]
SLIM What about you? What did you add to your vast watchlist this week?
MITCHELL Yeah, for me, I added, you know, some big blind spots. Actually, Rolling Stone this past week dropped a massive kind of list with a bunch of contributors of the top 100 films of the 1980s. And while I had, I’ve seen I think, you know, some people have listified that list on Letterboxd, which is very generous and very much appreciated. So I could see how many of those films I have already seen. It looks like I’m at about 70%.
SLIM Whoa.
MITCHELL Which is good, but I’ve got, you know, 30 still the watch, some of which were already on my watchlist. But I went ahead and added anything that wasn’t already on my watchlist. I added on there, which weirdly some things that maybe would surprise people were not already on my watchlist. This Is Spinal Tap.
SLIM Oh my god. [Slim laughs]
MITCHELL A movie that I have never seen that was for whatever reason not on my watchlist. Airplane!, not already on my watchlist. Maybe the biggest one that I think would personally harm Gemma especially, is that I’ve never seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit and it was not even on my watchlist. [Mitchell laughs] So that is on my watchlist now and I promise the world, I promise everybody, I’m sorry that I haven’t done it yet, but I will watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
SLIM My god. Just in our first episode, we’ve heard twenty movies that Mitchell has added to their watchlist by the end of the episode. [Slim laughs]
MITCHELL I’m adding more right now, while we’re talking I’ve been adding, I haven’t been listening to a thing you’ve been saying. I’ve just been adding new movies to the watchlist. [Slim & Mitchell laughs]
[Izon by Trent Walton fades in, plays alone, fades out]
SLIM Thanks so much for listening to Weekend Watchlist, brought to you by The Letterboxd Show and thanks to this week’s co-host Mitchell Beaupre. You can follow HQ page on Letterboxd using the links in our episode notes.
MITCHELL Thanks to our crew and thanks to Letterboxd member Sophie Shin for the episode transcript. And to you, for listening. Weekend Watchlist is a Tapedeck production.