The Flop House - Ep. #423 - Argylle

Episode Date: April 27, 2024

What is the secret to Argylle?!? Is the CAT the spy? Did Taylor Swift write it?!? Is it the obvious twist that Dan guessed after a moment of thought having only seen the trailer?!? Is it that it doesn't work at all as a movie, but at least it's not as relentlessly boring as a lot of Flop House topics?!? It's definitely at least two of those things!Tonight is our SPEED 2 live show, and tickets are still available! All 3 of us will be IN THE CHAT, watching along, tonight! BUT if you can't join us, you can watch (or rewatch) until Sunday, May 19 at 11:59PM ET!And if you happen to prefer your live shows really live? We’ve got LIVE SHOWS for you, in Oxford, England! Plus the colonies get their own NEW one, just announced, in Boston!Wikipedia page for ArgylleRecommended in this episode:I'm 'George Lucas': A Connor Ratliff Story (2024)Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb (2022)Zone of Interest (2023)The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993)Get 30% off your first order, plus free shipping today at Microdose.com, promo code FLOP.Aura has a great deal for Mother’s Day. Listeners can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $30-off plus free shipping on their best-selling frame. That’s A-U-R-A Frames.com. Use code FLOP  at checkout to save.

Hey, floppers. This is Elliott talking. Before we get into this episode's classic Flop House shenanigans, I wanted to make sure you knew about some upcoming live events we are very excited about. On April 27th at 7 p.m. Eastern, we are premiering online the professionally shot, professionally edited online video of our Speed 2 live show. Dan, Stuart, and I will be there watching the show with you,

text chatting with the audience throughout the entire thing. Can't make it on the 27th? The video will be available to watch at your leisure through May 19th. To see the trailer and buy tickets, go to stagepilot.com slash flop dash house dash speed dash two. If you want to see us in person and you live in England,

remember that on the 24th of May, we'll be in Oxford doing our first and second ever UK live shows in one night. 7 PM, we're talking the Avengers. 9 PM, we're be in Oxford doing our first and second ever UK live shows in one night. 7pm, we're talking The Avengers. 9pm, we're talking Spice World. Two shows, one night. For tickets and more information, go to Flophousepodcast.com slash events. Now that's enough live show hype from me.

Let's get to that patented Flophouse silliness. Take it away, peaches. On this episode, we discuss ourgyle. That's right, join us on the high seas where Gile from Street Fighter gets press ganged onto a pirate ship. Argyle they say. Not even a joke about the pattern. I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. Hey everyone and welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliott Kalin and I'm so excited to tell you that if you're listening to this on the

day we release it, you have a chance to chat with us later today, Saturday, April 27th, when we see you at the online premiere of our Speed 2 streaming event, the Flophouse Sink Speed 2. I'll tell you more about it later in the show, but that's at stagepilot.com slash speed. Today, we'll be chatting today while we watch it, if you're listening to this on the day it's released. If you're listening to this the next day,

well, you're partly in luck, but I'll tell you more about that later. I mean, we'll see you in the sense that we'll see your usernames on the screen as a chat. We will actually be seeing ourselves, which is sort of weird. We're going to log on to see our own faces as we had a conversation we had several months ago. Yeah, and that'll be weird for two of us, the two that don't routinely post videos of our own workouts online. Oh, wow!

To then watch them later. Wow, where is this coming from? Elliot says that as if he doesn't masturbate while watching said video. I thought you were going to say. I see the bookmarks. I know he's watching that shit. You see how much he saved. Yeah. I thought you were going to keep it thematically consistent and say he masturbates to videos of himself. No, no. Why would I? No, that's me, baby. And there's great A beefcake coming my way. Stewed beef. But Dan, what do we do on this podcast other No, why would I? No, that's me, baby. And there's great A beefcake coming my way.

Stew beef for all. But Dan, what do we do on this podcast other than reveal that I masturbate to videos of Stew? I have honestly forgot. Wait, we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it. That's what we do. So, you know, it's now on Apple Plus streaming for all who subscribe. It's a new premiere.

This podcast or Jimmy the movie that? Well, not this podcast unless you like, you know, mirror it on your Apple TV, then I guess you could probably like pretend that it's on Apple Plus. But no, the movie that we're talking about, the movie, it's new to streaming for, not all, but many. And...

It's undercutting the sell. Oh my God. My commitment to trees. Dan is the Gil. Gil is the car salesman on. Yes, on the Simpsons. Oh God. Yeah. Based on the kind of Jack Lemmon,

Glen Gary, Glen Ross character. Dan is so, Dan is so under the impression that the streaming release of Argyle is the cultural event of the year. He's been talking about it for weeks leading up to this. Well, I know I've been excited. Well, it's a cultural event other than Madame Webb thus far of the year for us, a bad movie podcast.

Cause I feel like this is the movie, the wide release movie in theaters that got the most sort of baffled and dismayed reactions and a lot of talk around it. There was enough, you know, and it was, there was a lot of talk beforehand about people lying that Taylor Swift wrote a book that was based on for some reason.

Like that's how big the footprint was. I fucking forgot about that part. Yeah, that was good publicity work on the part of whoever publicized this, that they managed to connect it to the most famous person in the world Who was otherwise unrelated to the movie every single way? Yeah, not since not since Marc Millar told the Told the artist of the Ultimates to make Nick Fury look like Samuel L

Jackson thus creating the role for Samuel Jackson has there been such a successful marrying of a property and a famous person who is Not related to that property in any way? And for old people, they snagged the new Beatles song for this like, like a year ahead of time, apparently, like the guy heard the new Beatles song, he's like, I'll have that please. And I was reading about it, how the director was hanging out with his friend, John Lennon son, I guess, or something and was like, oh, I've got a new song. Would you love to put it in your film? You know, and that's how it happened.

So yeah, Argyle, is it possible for a movie to be a parody of itself? Well, I mean, I guess that's the Zen Cohen that Argyle asks us, you know? Yeah, Zen Cohen is a Buddhist rabbi, is Zen Cohen. Yeah, that's a good joke. That's not too far off from, Matkoff has that Tiger Schulman bit

at the Jewish karate school. Yeah. Check out his album, anyway. Sure. Should we talk about Argyle? Should I get into what happens in the movie Argyle? Yeah, please. Please explain it to me, Alex.

Let's toss on some Argyle. Get ready for some twists, some turns, and a movie named Argyle. Yeah, please, please explain it to me. Let's toss on some Argyle. Get ready for some twists, some turns, and a movie named Argyle, which kind of explains the title, but kind of never explains the title. And going into this, I assumed it was going to be like kind of like a like a romancing the stone or the lost city, but it's it then morphs into a long kiss goodnight, which I wasn't expecting very much so Yes, I mean since Stewart sort of swelled it already. It's fine We'll get to that we'll get to the full spoilers later on but can I say that like I had seen the trailer

I was thinking about our gal. I was like Dan's like got his arms crossed behind his back as the waves crash. I was like, yeah, in my head, I'm like, that meme from always studying Philadelphia, I'm connecting yarn all over the place, and I'm like, I go to my friend, I'll call her out because she doesn't listen to the show.

Liz Babish, I said to Liz, I said, hey, is this the twist behind Argyle? And is this also what's going on with this secondary character in Argyle? And she's like, yeah, you got it. And I'm like, and I felt so pleased. So did she write Argyle? Why is she the person you went to

for your Argyle information? Because she had seen it at that, she had seen it, I had not. That important piece of information had been left out. I didn't know if you just accost your friends and ask them questions about Argyle. I believe I did mention it, but I apologize to the listener if I hadn't in passing.

But no, I was so pleased with myself for like guessing it off of not having seen it and Liz immediately deflated me by saying, congratulations, Dan, you've seen a lot of movies. But then watching this movie, I feel like it telegraphs everything way early, but we'll talk about it. Yes, especially that final,

the kind of finalist plot twist, which I feel like they telegraph multiple times throughout just in case the audience is a moron. But anyway, Stuart, you're saying? Just speaking of seeing a lot of movies, this movie is directed by Matthew Vaughn, who has made a lot of movies, and I would argue as he continues to make movies,

they get less good. Well, certainly as he continues to make them, he has access to more money and bigger stars, and I think that has been a negative for him in terms of the quality of the films. Yeah, because Layer Cake was his first one, right? I mean, it was definitely the one that got him attention. I don't know if it was the very first. Let me look.

It was kind of like first. You look at a movie like Kick Ass, which I did not particularly like, but that's a much better movie than this movie. And has a genuinely great sequence where Nicolas Cage is putting on makeup and applying his fake mustache extensions. Yeah, yeah. That's great. Let me quick just run it down.

We got Layer Cake, we got Stardust came next, which was pretty good. Okay, yeah, yeah. Kick Ass, again, like Elliot, I have problems with it, but it has a thing. X-Men First Class was a pretty good X-Men movie. I did like X-Men First Class. I didn't particularly like it,

but I did like the sequence where Magneto and Professor X are like wandering around looking for mutants. Like, I feel like it never gets better than that. But then he gets into the world of the the Kingsman. Oh, right. And I will admit having a certain fondness for the first movie, but that- You just like that last joke, right? You like the last joke about- Yeah, that was particularly- How by saving the world he gets to have sex by saving the world he gets to have anal sex afterwards

or something. Thank you for... Yeah, just spoiler alert for future. You know, we got to shout it from the rooftops what the end of Kingsman is. I've only seen Kingsman the Golden Circle without sound played on a television or a strip club. Oh, okay. Which again, I feel like is...

As it was meant to be seen. Yeah, I feel like it was intended, yeah. I mean, this is a movie that in many ways would work better as a series of images in the background somewhere than as a film with sound and story. But it's almost like entering the spy world is his version of James Cameron going underwater

where he is fascinated by it, and I think he's overestimating the audience's interest in that subject matter. Yeah, I think we can all agree. Which is not to say that he's a filmmaker at the same level as James Cameron on a technical level. Yeah. Yeah, but.

I mean, this movie, I will say, for a while goes down easier than I thought, just because it's so glossy, but then it piles on about 40 more minutes than it needs and at least one more plot turn than it needs. And it's sort of- This movie is very long. Yeah, the glossiness is kind of like how my cousin

used to smear his hot dogs with applesaucece because he said it made it slide down his throat easier Also, you should eat a hot dog. He also did it with with mac and cheese Which is wild because that should already be pretty Mac and cheese on mac and cheese Who's eating the dusty maggot? Yeah Maybe he doesn't know that the that the cheese dust is supposed to be mixed with milk and maybe even butter to get it extra creamy, but...

Oh, wow. If he's eating a lot at once, you know, I could see a clog forming. Yeah, that's true, yeah. You see that sewer system's also just big mac and cheese plugs there stopping up the sewage septa tanks. Okay, guys, let's talk about what happens in Argyle. So it's a Matthew Vaughn movie, and it's a glossy spy picture. And it opens up with a scene. I'll just go through it in detail, even though a lot of what happens in this scene is not exactly set up.

But Henry Cavill, he goes to a dance club. He dances with a sexy blonde lady played by Dua Lipa. Dua Lipa, yeah. And he lifts her and does a dance called the Whirlybird, which we will see performed two more times throughout the movie. We learn that he is Agent Argyle and she's a villain. She's lured him into a den of killers,

but he defeats them all off camera with the help of his tech sidekick, Kira, played by Academy Award winner, Ariya DeBose, right? And bad guy blonde, Dula Bushy shoots Kira and then Argyle's spy boss, Richard E. Grant, is like, Argyle, you have to go chase her. It's the only time we see Richard Grant in the movie. I was so mad about it.

Yeah, what a waste of Richard E. Grant. And I literally just, right before watching this movie, finished reading his book, With Nails, which is his kind of an adaptation of his diaries when he was making with Nolan Hudson Hawk and the player and stuff like that. And I was like, I want to see more Richard E. I got a hunger for Grant.

I want to give me a grant Grant grant me some more grant. That's all we need. A cameo. Grant land. Exactly. He tells our goal to ch, they have a very CGI car motorcycle chase, almost ludicrous. It's just like Ronin, right guys?

Well, and if you took Ronin and it started the Looney Tunes characters, but with no jokes, that's kind of what it feels like. But I mean, like the ludicrousness of this serves a point here. Yes, later it does not. I kept expecting like, oh, and this is one of the big problems of the movie,

spoiler to my opinion of the film. But I kept, like, you watch Romancing the Stone, like it starts off with that like really like goofy segment of her book, which is heightened. And then it contrasts it with the real world, which is recognizably real, like, and it gets goofier later on. Which is the opposite of heightened, yeah real, and it gets goofier later on. It's loathing, which is the opposite of heightened, yeah.

Yeah, it gets goofier later on, but it still feels like normal, real people within this, who are having adventures that they're, but even they're like, well, how are we having these adventures? This movie, I was like, oh, they're gonna create a contrast, but everything in the real world is just as loopy and goofy and weightless.

And- It's a little bit like if in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the humans were also cartoons. Yeah. So it was like, uh, an animated world where the, but the humans were also cartoons here too. They're also animated. So they have this chase, an American agent, Wyatt,

played by John Cena, he stops the baddie in a moment. This moment I did like where he just grabs her off of her motorcycle. Yeah. And she reveals that their spy boss is actually working for the bad guys and Wyatt is like, we need to go off the grid. And we discover this is all a story being read out loud

by writer Ellie Conway, Bryce Ellis Howard, at her book launch for her fourth Argyle spy novel. And the way she does the book launch is she reads the final chapter, it seems. So she reads the end of the book and then answers, I think, three questions, and then that's the total event. I gotta point out, there's a moment where one of the fans that are book reading, who we later find out is an enemy spy, but he's like,

yeah, your books are like a lot of other famous spy authors, like John Le Carre were formerly spies, and you're a lot like that. I'm like, have you never read a like John Le Carre were formerly spies and like, you're a lot like that. I'm like, have you never read a fucking John Le Carre book? Well, he says, your books are so real. It's clear that real spies read them. And you're like, the thing we just saw was so deliberately over the top and heightened in like James Bondage's Goofiest.

That being said, if the whole movie had been that first scene at that level, I think I would have enjoyed this movie more. Because as Dan was saying, instead of it being like, that was her fantasy world, but here's what the real world of spies is like. The real world of spies is just as silly and crazy and goofy and nonsense as that one. So I guess he is right though. I guess real spies are just like the crazy craft we just saw.

That's true. In the world of Argyle, actually, that would be a funny thing if in the world of this movie, that is what real spy craft is, is a lot of quips and glamorous dance-offs and things like that. I definitely also had a problem with this moment, though, for the same reason, like this reason and another, I'm like, number one, were we supposed to just have seen

a Le Coré style realistic spy story? It hurts that he mentions John Le Corre. It really hurts that he says that. Tasty old men sitting in shabby rooms listening. Shlubby English people just sitting around. Have you ever seen the movie of the spy who came in from the cold with Richard Burton? If there is any movie that teaches you not to be a spy,

it tells you like, don't do it, don't ever do this job, don't do it, it's that one, yeah. But there's that, and then also, this tips the hand right away, you know, not to me of course, I've seen a lot of movies, I guess, the twist, but like, I think that the screenwriter was like, oh, I'm having a little fun,

this is some clever foreshadowing of like, they all turned, but was like, oh, I'm having a little fun. This is some clever foreshadowing of like, they all turned, but he says like, they all turned out to be spies. He phrases it that way. And, you know, she is going to turn out to be a spy later in the thing. I don't know how much of this, now here's my theory on this movie.

It was once told to me by a friend of the show, John Hodgman, that he had been told that they had, that the people who make like mystery TV shows had research showing audiences liked guessing the mystery before the characters. They did not like to be surprised or shocked. They liked to know the twists. And this movie feels like that.

It is telegraphing those twists so frequently. And in ways that you either like, is this like, are you like, this is a red herring, right? Because that can't be the real twist because you're basically telling me what it is. But I wonder if that's the idea behind it is like, people like to be go, oh, I'm smarter than the characters in this one.

I know what's gonna happen, but it also makes the characters in this movie seem really dumb, especially the main character who, for someone who's supposed to be a bestselling novelist, comes off as so kind of like inept at everything, but also writing. Anyway, the point is she became a writer after an ice skating accident.

This is one of the few details that seemed like a throwaway and then later I was like, oh, I guess they are gonna do something with this. But everybody loves her. She's a huge bestselling author. The guy at the thing asked if she's a spy. That night, and someone else asked her out. Do you guys think the,

I feel like it would have played better, at least for me, if her spy novels were like middling. Like she wasn't that successful. If she was an unsuccessful spy novelist, and it turned out she had this diehard readership that were all real spies, because she was an unsuccessful spy novelist and it turned out she had this diehard readership that were all real spies because she knows, but instead, but this movie doesn't do anything small. It does it all big.

It's gotta be as big as possible. If she's a writer, she's gotta be the bestselling writer in the world. If she is, to the point where later on a fan of hers is live streaming her sitting at a park bench because she's, I mean, like, if Stephen King was at a fucking park bench, do you think people would be like,

I gotta get this on camera, I gotta livestream right now? No. I would take a surreptitious picture perhaps of Mr. King. I'm sorry, forgive me Mr. King, I'm a fan. But I would not livestream him because I don't think he's gonna be doing anything particularly interesting.

No, maybe just kidding Rowling. If she was sitting somewhere, I could see that happening, but they'd be like, oh shit, we got to capture whatever she's going to say. It's going to be bonkers. She's going to say something terrible. That night, and someone at the reading asks her out on a date, it has a question from the audience, which is bad etiquette.

Please don't do that if you're at a public event. But she goes, no, I've got a hot date. That night she's alone at home with her cat Alfie. She's got to get to work finishing her next book, which is very funny because she's like, okay, I've got a hot date. That night she's alone at home with her cat Alfie. She's gotta get to work finishing her next book, which is very funny, because she's like, okay, time to get to work. And she has about five sentences left to write in the book. Like it's almost over.

Dan, you got thoughts on Alfie here? Alfie, I do wanna say, what's it all about, Alfie? I'll tell you. It's about, mostly Alfie is played by CGI, but when Alfie is played by a- Cat, great, intelligent. Imaginary. Imaginary, yeah.

But in the moments where there's a real cat, apparently that's Matthew Vaughn's wife's cat. And his wife is? I couldn't, I can't. Claudia Schiffer. Really? Yes, and so I have to assume the cat's name is Claw, C-L-A-W, Dia Schiffer.

So clearly I read that name because I know this fact, but my brain somehow, like I'm no longer 13 years old. Yes, you're more interesting than cats if you're an old man. Or maybe Dan's like, I just, I don't wanna believe that Claudia Schiffer's with anyone else. Dan, you are officially turning into the old man from Logan's run who just has his cats around him and that's all he cares about.

Sounds pretty good. He's got a beard. Sounds pretty good, guys. Okay, so we got a fake cat going. Oh, and I like that when she writes, she's surrounded by little like cartoony statuettes of the characters from the books. They're not quite Funko Pops.

They're more like little statues of like the Lupin III characters from the popular animated series. Yeah, they're kind of like, they're almost kind of Bruce Tim style like figurines of Argyle and his gang. And Argyle wears what? What kind of jacket is that? He's wearing like a weird like high... It's a Neiru jacket. Neiru jacket with a...

Explain his hair. A flat top which is not unlike Gile from Street Fighter. It's a Nehru jacket. Nehru jacket with a letter. Explain his hair. A flat top which is not unlike Guile from Street Fighter. I don't know if I can explain his hair, but Audrey was very dismayed by it, and one of the top letterbox reviews I saw was just like talking about what a crime the hair was. It looks terrible. And I feel like it has, Henry Cavill has an interesting relationship with hair because he had that great mustache in Mission Impossible.

And I was like, this guy, but then this flat top haircut, it almost undoes how great that was. So it's like, hey, I guess, you know what, like any tool or any weapon in the right hands, Henry Cavill's hair is a good for mankind. And in the wrong hands, it's a crime against mankind. You know, you can do good.

You can't blame the hammer. Whether if the hammer could build a house or it can beat up a bunch of guys. An old boy hammer don't hurt them, but it's not the hammer. That's the fault here. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So anyway. Just give them a mustache for safety. That's always, you know, that's the best. You can't go wrong with a Henry Cavill mustache. Here at Henry Cavill Mustache is the only supplier. We take Henry Cavill's actual facial hair,

meticulously reglue it into a mustache you can wear, now you're the bad guy in Rogue Nation, or whichever one it was. Starring in Superman, need it removed? Come on back down. Only use computers for that. I think it was Fallout, right? It was Fallout, it was not Rogue Nation, it was Fallout,

thank you. The subtitles to the Mission Impossible movies are unnecessary, they're so totally meaningless. I believe that you'll find that in Ghost Protocol there was a ghost protocol in both. That's right, I guess there was a ghost protocol, that's fair. Got em! Was it any better than if they just called it Mission Impossible 4? I don't think so, but still. I mean, and certainly less clear than if they just called it Mission Impossible 4? I don't think so, but still. I mean, and certainly less clear than if they just called it

Mission Impossible Disavowed, which means the same thing. Yeah, yeah. So she gets, anyway, the story she's finishing, she's finishing book five. Agent Argyle needs to find the Master File to destroy his former bosses in the Directorate who have gone evil. She just finishes the last few sentences.

Just like a fucking John Le Carre book. Yeah, he's a... All his spies needed master files on flash drives inside of silver bullets that were hidden somewhere. So, the next... So, she finishes the book and ends on a cliffhanger. The next day, her mom, Catherine O'Hara, always a pleasant thing to find in a movie. There's a point later on where Catherine O'Hara is doing an English accent and it's the most

like Moira Rose she can do it. We had the captions on because again I'm the sort of old man who's surrounded by cats and it said- And the cats were covering your ears? Is that it? Like living earmuffs? When she switched it said British accent in parentheses and I'm like oh thank God it told me because I would not have, I'm like what are you doing?

Like I love you, you're great, but this is nothing that's actually. I have no problem with her performance at all. I wish she had done even more with it. Her mom is like, the book, I read it already. It's anticlimactic, it needs another chapter. Why don't I fly out and help you write it? And Ellie is understandably kind of like,

I didn't really want my mom to just fly out out of nowhere. And so she decides she's gonna write the other chapter herself, but she's got no inspiration. So what's she gonna do? Take Alfie, put him in a backpack with a bubble window on it. This is the extent of her luggage apparently. And she's gonna take a train to see her parents. Just a cat on my back.

Doesn't need clothes, toiletries, just a cat. Like John Reacher. I mean, if you use the cat the right way. Jack Re he? Doesn't he? Clothes, toiletries, just a cat. Like John Reacher. I mean, if you use the cat the right way. Jack Reacher. No, John Reacher is Jack. That's what it says on his birth certificate. Jack is his nickname. John Reacher.

Where did I fucking get that? John Reacher. I know too many Johns in my life. Johns my father. Call me Jack. I love that John Reacher is Jack Reacher's brother who is always like, yeah, got another postcard from Jack, having some adventures, I guess. So on the, so on the, they get up, he- His brother got killed, Elliot.

Yeah, dude, come on. Have some fucking respect. Sorry. It's his formative trauma. Then it's his other brother. Okay. Yeah. The one he doesn't talk about,

cause there's no trauma. See, the funny thing is, I actually know about Jack Reacher, but I can't remember, anyway. Yeah, Dan knows all about Jack Reacher Come on. He reaches things cuz he's tall and big and burly That's where the name comes from. Hands the size of dinner plates. Mm-hmm So how does he hold a dinner plate just in his palm? Oh my god. Like a BFG? Yes, he I mean in a way he is the BFG

How does he handle a gun if his hand is that big? Like, how does he get his finger through the trigger guy? He smushes the trigger guy. He just slaps the gun and bullets come out. Like, his bonds with a jukebox. The bullets are so scared of him, they just fly off. They're like, we can't get this guy mad at us. I see. That makes it. We've got to get out of here.

Reacher's here. Some kind of jack creature. So she goes on the train. On the train, a guy hits on her. She says, oh, no, no, I'm this seat's taken. Then a slovenly bearded Sam Rockwell, one of these upper Northwest hitchhiker types. Oh, gross.

He he he sits down, plops down to the chair across and he goes, hey, aren't you the famous author Ellie Conway? I'm a big fan of your books. He has her latest book, which is just called Argyle, even though it's theops down in the chair across from him and goes, hey, aren't you the famous author Ellie Conway? I'm a big fan of your books. He has her latest book, which is just called Argyle, even though it's the fourth book in the series. I don't know what the other ones were called, I guess. And he tells- Introducing Argyle, more Argyle.

Yet again, Argyle. And then Argyle, just that's going back to basics. Hey, what's that? Hold on, let me take a look, dot, dot, dot, it's Argyle. Hey, look over there? Hold on. Let me take a look dot dot dot. It's our guy Fourth ones where our guy goes into space It has to be yeah And he tells her he goes I'm a spy someone's trying to kill her so in a minute I'm gonna start fighting and then we're gonna jump off this train and you're gonna have to hug me when I

Tell you and an army of undercover assassins comes by and he fights them off one by one as she starts Hallucinating that he is agent Argyle doing all this and they do this thing where you are her eye view as her eyelids close And then open again over the camera and suddenly he's Argyle and she's like, huh What she's she is acting in a way that it from this moment on through much of the rest of the movie, Ellie Conway does not act like a human being so much as like a walking, I don't know, like a walking collection of plot things. You know?

Well, she also seems like she's maybe on some Klonopin or Xanax or something. Like the way she doesn't bring a lot. They should have shown her, cause we know she doesn't like to fly. Maybe she doesn't like trains either. They should have shown her taking a Xanax before she gets on,

because it does feel suddenly like she's drugged, and there's no explanation for that other than later on as we find out just the drugging of a human psyche in turmoil and fighting against itself. And for somebody who's nervous about flying, she seems much more comfortable around dead bodies than I would expect a normal person to be.

Yes, she processes that very fast. They kind of explain that. Also, so this technique where you're kind of seeing Sam Rockwell and then Henry Cavill back and forth, the first thing I thought is, that's a lot of effort to make something unpleasant to watch. Like to shoot all those things multiple times. The other thing is I was like,

are they trying to infer that she would prefer her spy to be the Henry Cavill type over Sam Rockwell? Because I'm like, I gotta tell you right now, one of those two actors is more charming than the other. Yes, very much. One is more handsome than the other, I guess. But the other is more, well, this is, the movie is, it's messy in what it's doing.

Later on, it turns out, I think that that's not what she is thinking. But at the moment, you're right. It's it felt like it's supposed to be you're supposed to be contrasting super suave Henry Cavill with kind of like clumsy, graceless, kind of like get gets hurt really badly Sam Rockwell. But what they're doing is not that different. Sam Rockwell, even when he's graceless, is like very charming and he's also like,

like he's a fucking dancer. Like there's no shade to Henry Cavill, my Warhammer buddy. Like me and Henry Cavill, we can play Warhammer. No shade to you, buddy. Yeah, he's doing all the super spy fighting still. Like he, you know, he gets distracted every once in a while by like looking at her, making sure she's okay. And then someone gets it. But he's not like, making sure she's okay, and then someone gets it.

But he's not like, yeah, he's not doing goofball shit. He's just doing unflappable, sort of like, charming Sam Rockwell, which is very appealing. The difference is he's not running his fingers through his own hair to show how easy this all is. Although it is, the longer the movie goes on, the easier it gets for both of them to fight wave after wave

of thugs. This is, I feel like this happens a lot in modern day action movies. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm watching the wrong ones. I feel like in old school action movies, the threats get bigger as the movie goes on and the characters get beat up more and more. It gets harder and harder for them to do these things. You look at something like Die Hard and like it's getting harder. Lists one of the best action movies, yep.

Yes, whereas with, but why not compare to the best? But then in Argyle, they just get, it just gets easier and easier as the movie goes on until by the end we'll get to it, but they're like, they're just mowing down wave after wave of guys who don't even seem to have guns on them. Or, you know, they're so weak, you know.

We just, I mean, again, an unfair comparison, but why not compare something good to something that doesn't work? We just finally saw the Dune II. We had to- Dan, just watch out. You say it three times, you know who's gonna show up. And, you know, the end of that is a fight between two men,

and it is like weighted with a lot of meaning from the rest of the story, but it is all the more powerful that it's just two people who are very good fighters who really want to win this fight. I would argue that Paul Trades is much more than a man at that point. I mean, he's a psychic powerhouse. He's been literally engineered to be more than a man,

but sure. But you're right. When a fight between two people, I mean, there's no fighting scenes in this movie and the fight scenes are very colorful, they're very action packed, there's a lot of choreography. There are no scenes in it that are as exciting to me as Sean Connery and Robert Shaw fist fighting

in a train compartment from Russia with Love. Like there's nothing in here that's as exciting as that. And it's, I think partly because everything feels so weightless in the movie. It makes sense when the Argyle scenes are weightless because they're like a fantasy, but everything's so, it's so cartoonish. It's so, you know, like there's no,

there's no even sense of reality anyway. Anyway, I was wrong. There is a sense of reality because after this long fight scene, Sam Rockwell does parachute them out of the back of a train and she faints while holding on to him, which should mean that she drops to her death. No, he like wraps something or he puts a belt around her. Oh, did he?

Okay, I missed that. I missed the belt. She wakes up in a cabin where he has now shaved, thank goodness. Now he's just regular Sam Rockwell, not bearded Sam Rockwell. And he tells her he is super spy Aiden Wilde and that her books are so... Dope name by the way. Great name. Again, this is the realest.

This is not the fantasy of Argyle. This is where real spies have real names like Aiden Wilde and that her books are so accurate that the real life evil division, the real life version of the directorate from the books wants to catch her. And the division is run by director Ritter, who was played by Brian Cranston. We see him, he's so mad at Rob Delaney, his underling, for losing Ellie,

that he just shoots him. He just murders him. And it's one of those things where it's like- He's fucking Skeletor. Yeah, or Darth Vader. If you work at an organization, and if someone, you see a coworker mess up and they get killed, leave fire.

Just quit, leave that job. It's not killed, leave fire, just leave that job. It's not worth it, don't be in that job. And Wilde is allergic to cats. This is an allergy that comes and goes as the movie decides. There are times later when he's just hanging out with this cat. I would think that would give you sympathy for this character. If they handled it in a way that was realistic, perhaps, but the allergy seems to turn on and off.

But also it's one of those things where, just means he sniffles every now and then, like it doesn't really play into anything. He explains, and he explains, this is the first of many info dumps that Sam Rockwell is tasked with performing in the movie. And he does a fine job of it mostly. He says that he had hired a hacker named Bucharan,

an anarchist hacker whose anarchism is so cartoonishly displayed. It's so funny. Later on, we see a flashback to Bucharan's apartment and his walls are just covered with anarchist A symbols all over the place. It's so cool, yeah. It's ridiculous.

Anyway, he hired this hacker, Bucharan, to steal the video. I wish I was that committed to branding. I mean. But it's a little. I mean, the clothes, so my older son, he loves the LA Dodgers. All he talks about is the Dodgers. Most of his shirts are Dodgers shirts. He has some Dodgers stuff in his room, but it's not just that the walls are spray painted with the Dodgers logo over and over again, as if he wanted to make his own wallpaper

out of the Dodgers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the energy of it. He's like the Joker, out of the Dodgers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the energy of it. Yeah, he's like the Joker, but for the Dodgers. Yeah, exactly. I mean, are you already prepared to do something like that for his inevitable Dodgers-themed department? Oh, it's going to happen, for sure. Yeah, I'll see if I can get Shohei Otani to show up.

Maybe he can be the rabbi that performs this. What's the Dodgers mascot? Is it like a man with a baseball head? What is it? What's a... I don't know that they have a mascot, to be honest. Then I have no interest in seeing one of their games. I need some kind of a cartoon character to keep her about.

You need some kind of a gritty or a Mr. Met, yeah, or something. Some kind of a fanatic of some kind. So anyway, so Wild is explaining, look, I hired B. Karen to steal the division's master file, which they easily organized and collated all the bad things they did and all the evidence for it into one master file. It was very helpful. He put it on a flash drive inside a silver bullet, but the hacker disappeared. And I want you to use your writer's intuition to find him. So they fly to London. she's afraid of flying, but he talks her through the takeoff.

Which by the way, this is a dumb plan that makes more sense when the reveal is. When they reveal stuff later, it does make more sense. No, this is what I was gonna say. The idea that she would be predictive in the way he wants her to be is ludicrous, but then that's not actually what's going on. I would argue that's a better plot for the movie

than the twist reveals. I think the idea of somehow she's such a good writer that she can predict things that are going to happen is kind of more fun to me. I think you just pitched a good procedural show. Yeah, I can see that. It's like Castle but predictive predictive Castle, you know, like, uh, like early edition Castle. Yeah.

If she's in a fight scene and she's like, how would I write this scene? Okay. I would make sure that this guy that I would like that guy, I would give him like a weakness. Maybe he's got like, uh, like a really bad, like an Achilles heel. That's not good. Kick him in the heel. That didn't work. Okay. Maybe another thing. Uh, what if he has like a weak heart? So if I surprise him, blah, and the guy has a heart attack and dies.

It's like, okay, yeah, I did it. Like this is more fun to me. You did it again in predictive castle. You did it again, you predicted it. Like that's more fun to me than what we get. But anyway, they go to London. They go to the Alfred Memorial, which is a real memorial. And that's where he was supposed to meet the hacker.

He wants her to invent her next chapter right there in the hopes that it'll lead them to be Karen and she envisions Argyle and his sidekick Wyatt finding a fancy phone chip which leads them to a satellite relay which helps them locate the hacker and the division is meanwhile watching all this through a closed circuit tv camera because they got tipped off because one of Ellie's fans was live streaming that she is sitting at a park bench in a park. And so we're cutting between Ellie, the division, and Argyle, who was a fictional character,

all racing to see who can get the address for the hacker's apartment from the satellite relay. They figure it out. Ellie didn't go to the apartment. It's empty, except for a little bit of furniture. It's empty. The walls have been cleaned of anarchist symbols, we'll see them later, and they find a hollow floor,

how is it discovered? Because Sam Rockwell starts dancing. Well, also, before that, Ellie's like, oh, there's clues here, I can feel that this means something. And he's like, no, nothing, we gotta go. And I'm like, what are you talking about? You're the one who brought her because of your belief that she has this information

and now you're immediately dismissing it. Nothing in this scene makes sense. And the clues that she is finding don't mean anything. Like they're not real. Like they find the hiding place for the master file log book purely by chance. But yeah, why is he suddenly like, eh, this doesn't mean anything when this is his plan.

She should be the one who's like, no, this is meaningless mean anything. When this is his plan, she should be the one who's like, no, this is meaningless, and then finds something. Like, the scene is backwards. Like, they reversed the scene for some reason. Yeah. Yeah, and also, I mean, I don't know when best to address this, but I will just do it now as a repose. The allegations against you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said it's all hokum. He said, he actually said hokum pokum. I think he meant hocus pocus. Because he was referring to his favorite movie, of course. I am still aware of who Claudia Schiffer is. I don't just, no, I just don't get the whole MacGuffin angle of this thing where,

why, if this thing is lost, is the division putting so much energy into like handling it the way they are? It's lost, it's lost. You're doing good, guys. Like if anything worked to like kill the people who are still working against you, Rockwell and we will meet later Sam Jackson,

like that's a much easier task than finding this lost thing through a series of mental manipulations. Here's what I'll say, here's what I'll say. Just because it's lost, it's not really lost, it's being stored somewhere and they don't want somebody else to get it, which I understand. But also it's one of those things too where you're like,

well, if the good guys are looking for this thing, why don't you let them find it and then kill them and take it? Rather than trying to kill them throughout. But I guess what they're really trying to do is they're trying to kill Sam Rockwell, but unnecessarily Ellie, as we'll find out later. I mean, the twist, none of the movie, I mean, the reason is because got to have action because it's an action movie. There's no real reason why anyone's doing anything.

You know, why is he doing it? There's no meaning behind life. Come on, we're just wasting time until the Grim Reaper taps us on the shoulder and says, buddy, you're done. So the- Oh man, there's action until there's no more action anymore. Exactly, that's called entropy or ax-tropy.

So they find the hacker's code book or whatever, the division team shows up, there's another fight them up scene. Aidan Wilde, the hero of the movie, tells Ellie that when he shoots someone, he wants her to then crush their skulls with her foot to make sure they're really dead. She's the one-

Like you're doing the twist. Yes, she has a lot of issues with this, understandably, because you are murdering someone who has already been taken out as a threat. So she can't bring herself to do it. Also, if you're gonna do that, why do it in a way that gunks your foot all up, you know? Just take his gun and shoot him again, maybe,

once he's been, I don't know. If killing's evolved already, there's simpler ways. Is she wearing the right footwear to Mario stomp these guys' heads to death? Yeah, I mean, and of course the reason is because later on, she is going to have to go through this again in a way that where it looks like she's gonna do it to the hero.

Like it's one of those things where it's like, why is this scene in here? So that it can set up a suspense scene later on. But it doesn't really make sense why you would have it. That's how you do it. That's how you do it folks. That's how you, that's screenwriters. I hope you guys are taking notes.

I, one thing, one thing. If you need to know one thing, set up stuff so that it pays off later, but it's okay if the setup is meaningless and doesn't have to happen. One thing I- And if the payoff doesn't have to happen, it's just action, it's just action all the way down.

Honestly, nothing has to happen. Nothing has to happen. You don't have to make movies. You don't have to. I just want to say that on this note, one thing I always really admired about the Cornetto trilogy is in all those movies, so much that is set up in the first half

gets an explicit payoff in the second half, but it all works on its own terms. You're never like, this is a setup for something because it's always funny the first time around. And it makes sense. Edgar Wright at his most stylistically driven is still more invested in character and reality than Matthew Vaughn at his most realistic, I feel like.

That's, they both do different things. I don't think it's going on on a limb to say that Edgar Wright is a better filmmaker. Yeah, sure. But his movies will mean more to me and will last longer, you know. But anyway, that's neither here nor there because they've got to escape. They go up to the roof. They see a boat down there that must have been Bukharin's escape boat.

To get Ellie to jump off the roof, Aidan just throws Alfie the cat off the roof to show that it's safe. Which Ellie was like, you probably appreciated that. Yeah, was that your stand up and cheer moment? I know, because then the cat survived. The cat entered the speed force. No. When does this cat enter the speed force?

That's what I want to stand up and cheer. Do you guys remember the scene in Kramer vs Kramer when Kramer enters the speed force? Which one? You guys remember that scene in the Shawshank Redemption when Andy Dufresne, he's crawling through that two miles of muck and shit and he enters the Speed Force? And you're like, just enter the Speed Force, man. Why are you crawling through all that muck? You can zoom through it.

Don't go slow. Do it fast. Come on. Do you guys remember the scene in Rudy when Rudy enters the Speed Force? Man, he would not ever have to sit on the bench if that bitch was in the Speed Force. If he was in the Speed Force, he'd be the greatest athlete of all time.

And yet we didn't stand up and cheer until the Flash did it. And that's what makes that movie, the classic. Exactly, nobody stood up and cheered until it happened. I mean, they do flash the word stand up and cheer in big red letters on the screen when he entered the Speed Force. But we did it. What a stand up and cheer.

Do you think anyone in the history of anyone watching that movie ever stood up and cheered watching that movie? Okay, real talk guys. We've had a lot of goofs. Yeah, let's be real. When was the last time you stood up and cheered at a movie? I don't know, I mean like.

I've certainly cheered in movies. I don't think I've ever stood up. Yeah, I feel like. I've certainly cheered in movies, I don't think I've ever stood up. Yeah, I feel like the closest thing I can think, I mean I don't, I was sitting stock silent because that's the way I watch movies. No, I react to things, but the closest thing was the fucking Avengers when the hammer. I feel like that may have been a stand up cheer. like Avengers when the hammer, you know?

I feel like that may have been a stand up. Captain America picked up the hammer. Oh, right, right. When Captain America took it. When he picked up Thor's hammer. Well, I mean, yes, that wasn't, I had been waiting for that moment for several movies. I knew it had to happen at some point.

Well, but you're saying somehow seeing this character that we have come to know and love over a series of films showing that he was worthy to wield the power of a god, another character, was more a stand up and cheer moment than seeing a character we had just met in that movie. Use his power. Use his power the way we expected him to. But that's the magic of the movie, so even so, we stood up and cheered. Well, Ben, but actually, you don't need, but you also don't need, I'm sure that when Luke Skywalker

blew up the Death Star, I'm sure people stood up and cheered the first time they saw that. And they didn't know who Luke Skywalker was until the movie started. So you don't need a whole series to introduce someone to build up to it. That being said, when the character's called the Flash and his power is speed, him entering the speed force

is not that, yeah, it is not that exciting. Yeah. And the first time. To be honest though, to be honest though, I did. I stood up and cheered because I was like, I think the movie's almost over. Yeah, it isn't though. Spoiler alert, there's so many of them. I'm getting a hot dog.

You cheered. Maybe it was like a stand up and go watch cheers moment. Was that what they were talking about? That's what they're talking about. Yeah. Probably. So that night, they're at a hotel. Ellie is hallucinating that Argyle is talking to her, but he doesn't actually tell her very much of interest.

And she goes, go away. And she overhears Aiden on the phone saying, oh, I hate Ellie Conway. Someone should put a bullet in her head. I'll deliver her to you and then I'm done. And that understandably sounds threatening. So she sneaks out, calls her mom, tells her mom to meet her in London.

The next morning, I guess, Ellie goes to her mom's hotel room. I don't know how fast that plane is, but that was a fast flight. She hopped on the Concorde. In this world, the Concorde still exists. I see. It makes sense. It's a world of super spies, of course.

Why wouldn't a super fast, super loud plane that nobody really needs that badly. And so it went out of business. So why wouldn't it still be around? So, uh-oh, there's a knock on the door. She goes, Mom, don't answer it. The door opens. It's director Ritter. And Ellie is shocked until she goes, Dad, what? Her dad is the evil bad guy director? Twist. Didn't see that twist coming. Did you, Twisties? I mean, this movie is twisted.

Yeah, it's pretty twisted. Audrey just said, you know, that's gotta be her dad, right? Before it happened. But yeah, you know, it was pretty good twist. No, I mean, yes, it's, you know, it's gonna happen. But also here's what I was hoping. I was like, okay, there's two ways I want this to go. Either he's a bad guy and Katherine Ahara doesn't know it or

Her dad is identical to director Ritter and they're gonna get mixed up at some point. That's what I want to say This this kind of bumbling Colorado dad is just kind of or Chicago dad I guess they live in this bumbling Chicago dad is just it's just kind of like thrust into running an evil directorate and he's like, sure, okay. I would love to see that. That's not gonna happen. Yeah, that's actually pretty good. I like that one.

He turns out to be Ellie's dad. She hands him the log book. He starts flipping through it and with noticeable glee on his face. But then Aiden bursts in. Oh no, he puts a gun to the dad's head. And the dad instantly drops his cover, reveals he Aiden bursts in. Oh no, he puts a gun to the dad's head. And the dad instantly drops his cover, reveals he's a bad guy. Ellie's mom puts a gun to Ellie's head

and starts talking in as Dan saw from the captions, a British accent. She's like, what's going on? And Wilde shoots Catherine O'Hara, knocks out the dad, and then drives off with Ellie. Just as Ellie's about to get in the car, she realizes she left Alfie the cat up in the hotel room, but he's like, you can come with me and learn some things,

or you can go try to rescue that cat. She makes the wrong decision. She goes with him instead of going back to get her cat. That's not a heroic thing to do. If she was Sigourney fucking Weaver, she'd go back for that cat. Yeah. And it's also, you know, in direct opposition

to the screenwriting rule that states that one does explicitly that thing. Yeah, that you go back and save said cat. That's what makes her an unlikable protagonist. That's the only thing. You've set up for me that there's one relationship that means more to her than anything else in the world, and that is this dumb cat, this dumb CGI cat. And then she's like, I guess I will leave the cat behind. Like, come on, what are you doing? Anyway, she hallucinates Argyle again and then passes out, I guess I will leave the cat behind. Like, come on, what are you doing?

Anyway, she hallucinates Argyle again and then passes out, I guess just for the sheer exhaustion of these last couple days. She wakes up there driving to the French countryside. I'm sure there's a way to drive from London to the French countryside. I don't know what it is. Maybe a ferry is involved at some point.

I don't know. It's a tunnel. You got the tunnel now, right? The tunnel is a train. I don't know that you can drive a car through it, but maybe I'm wrong. Who's it the same guy? Stan's googling it. I don't know.

Google it. Again, I've never done it. I'm sure there's some way to do it. There's spies, dude. Maybe their fucking car turns into a gondola. Which run, what was that? Moonraker, where the pigeon does a triple take. I feel like Matthew Vaughn saw that scene and he's like, perfect, I'm making a whole movie like that. I want my whole career to be like that. They're driving to the French countryside, they get to an isolated vineyard.

There's a channel tunnel that you can use for your car. Okay, so there is a driving tunnel. Okay, that's fine. Then please strike it from the record. No, leave it in. I you know, then please strike it from the record. My worries about how they joined there. No, leave it in. Double it. Leave it in. No, no. Yeah, make it more. That's the trailer. She wakes up. She's a they go to a the vineyard of former CIA Deputy Director Alfred Alfie Solomon played by Samuel L. Jackson,

Nick Fury himself. And he uses winemaking as a very on the nose metaphor to reveal that Ellie is actually about to meet the real Agent Argyle because Ellie, Dan, hold on to your fucking socks. You are going to blast right off your feet. You are going to flip over backwards to your feet in the air like it's a Bazooka Joe comic. When you learn this stunning twist, Ellie is the real Agent Argyle. Or actually Agent R Kyle, Rachel Kyle, which they had to have found a better way to do that.

It's the clumsiest way to get the name Argyle. I love it so much. I got to hand it to Samuel L. Jackson. He really set up a pretty sweet deal to put in what, two days of work, hanging out in an office, clapping, watching Lakers games a lot of it I love that he's in his his Vineyard man cave

Which has a big screen that he uses either to track the world's evil spies or to watch Basketball games and the whole all the walls are have framed basketball jerseys Billion shit and he just loves memorabilia. But yeah, she is actually a secret agent. Her books, they're not fiction. They're her processing her buried memories of being a spy. And Ellie's like, that can't be. But Aiden proves it in the only way to prove things. In these movies, he fights her and unlocks her secret spy fighting skills.

Why the previous times when people were genuinely trying to kill her, her fighting skills remained under lock and key. I don't know. That's just the power of the human psyche. That's the mind. No one threw a direct punch at her, which I guess is the triggering event that needs to happen, I guess.

Yeah, I suppose that's it. It would have been kind of better if she was like, but what about all those other times when you killed all those guys? And Aiden's like, I didn't kill them, you killed them all. And we get a flashback of her like murdering all these guys. Like with like a blank look on her face. To be honest, again, I would have liked that kind of more.

But it would have made more sense. Yeah, it would have been like a look of horror on his face. He's like, what are you doing? You watched her upgrade her way through these things. You were always the most brutal of us, a beast, a monster. So guys, you were flabbergasted by this twist, right? Like you did not know how to handle it. Your minds were blown away.

I mean, again, I thought to myself beforehand, how would I write this movie based on this trailer? Oh, these are probably repressed memories. She's like been brainwashed. I had to go all the way back to the beginning and start over because I'm like, I must have missed something. Yeah, there's got to be little clues. Let me pick up the clues. And guess what?

I don't know. I'm sure there are clues of a sort, but it's not like, I don't know. The only way to deduct this twist is to have seen movies before. But anyway, Alfie and the Division, or maybe not, just to guess it. Alfie and the Division, they're racing to decode this hacker log book as Aidan does some more info dumping on Ellie. So guys get ready for some info to be dumped on you. She was the agent who went to meet with Buchanan in his hilariously anarchist apartment.

She ended up in a coma. She was found by the division leaders who posed as her parents. They brainwashed her into believing that she was a writer who was injured in a coma, she was found by the division leaders who posed as her parents. They brainwashed her into believing that she was a writer who was injured in a skating accident so that she would then they gave her a journal that they said was hers full of story ideas for her to then write as novels so that she could write the novels that would lead them to the hiding place of the master file. Rather than let's say, not giving her a cover story and asking her, where's the master file, they instead decided to take

the clues that would lead people to the master file and put them into bestselling books that would be available around the world, probably in multiple languages, so that anyone could join in on the hunt. Or anywhere. I don't think they knew they were gonna take off this way, but I also had a problem with, I also had a problem with the like encouraging her to write

and then it turns into this storyline. I thought like, why not just, if you're writing this, why not just make it like they like are keeping an eye on her, they have this cover, like they've given her this other identity, they're staying close to her in case something comes out and then unbeknownst to them, like, lo and behold, she starts writing this story.

That's just something that happens. Like it's so absurd to me that part of their plan is like, oh, she's gonna write her memories into these stories. And just, sorry, just to clarify before, it's not that important, but the reason she was in a coma was like, he had some sort of dead man switch the hacker and like her thing blew up. Well, we don't find that out till later.

We don't know that till later. What if there was a point where they were like, well, we want her to go through this process so we can figure it out, and then they started selling the books and they're like, man, we're making some fucking money off these books. Like maybe we should just focus on publishing instead of being evil spies.

Yeah, well that's, it's one of those things where you look at like, you look at James Bond movies, and I mean those are cartoons also, but you're like, you have so much advanced technology. No, that's James Bond Jr. Oh, sorry, sorry, yeah, say James Bond Jr. Who isn't his son is the weird thing. I don't know if you- No, no,

but his dad was also named James Bond. It was like George Foreman's family, where all the boys have the same name. But the idea, you have all this advanced technology, you should just do that, just sell that, instead of using it to like hold gold for ransom or whatever, you know? Start an undersea kingdom, you know?

But it's so, there's so many ways to be a bad person with a lot of money in the world that don't run afoul of the law. Yeah. That you don't end up having a spy chasing after you and trying to shoot you, do one of those evil people. Okay, so, and every now and then we get a piece of consumer electronics out of it.

So, that's the bargain. That's the devil's bargain we've made with the evil people of the world. So it turns out the thing that happened in Greece at the beginning of the movie, that whole shootout with Argyle and Dua Lipa, and that happened. Aidan was the real life Wyatt.

They did have an associate named Kira who got shot in Greece. And Ellie's like, oh, I was gonna bring Kira back in book six. A fan sent me a crazy way to do it. And you're like, oh, so. And she's like, I was gonna was gonna bring Kira back in book six. A fan sent me a crazy way to do it. And you're like, so. And she's like, I was gonna include it into my book and risk litigation.

Yeah. Yeah. Now that was the biggest problem I had, not the foreshadowing of who of course sent this to her. I know, Charlene's like, that's gonna happen. I'm like, but there's no way she could put that in her fucking book. Pause the movie.

This is why you don't get unsolicited manuscript. And then I'm like stomping around the living room, making a lot of hand motions like I'm fucking Sebastian Maniscalco. Sebastian Maniscalco is coming up a lot in the conversations today, even before the recording. Stewart's got Maniscalco on the brain. Maniscalco fever. Oh, no.

Look, you can take the Maniscalco out of the man. You can't take the man out of the Maniscalco. Our show today is sponsored by Maniscalco on the brain. Maniscalco fever. Oh no. You can take the Maniscalco out of the man. I need to see a doctor. You can't take the man out of the Maniscalco. Our show today is sponsored by Maniscalco, the best way to shave your nether regions. No, no, actually, Dan, it's sponsored by Manachevitz, which is the only one that tastes like Sebastian Maniscalco. Okay. So, Alfie cracks the code. It turns out, and there was no way that anyone is going to be able to guess this, that Ellie, that the master file was in the keeping of a known associate of Ellie is known

as the Keeper of Secrets, a professional secret keeper. How could they have ever thought that? How could they have cracked that? This amazing thing. Ellie is nervous, but Aidan's like, you're going to have to go with me on this mission to get it. They go to, as the Chiron tells us, Arabian Peninsula, no country, no city, nothing. We can say Chicago, but we cannot be any more specific than it's somewhere on the Arabian Peninsula, which felt racist to me in a way,

and I'm not quite sure if it is or not. They show up dressed as glamorous spies. They go to luxurious Oasis Complex. Ellie is nervous. So what do you do when someone's nervous? And you want them to just not worry about it anymore. You dance with them publicly and you do the Whirly Bird move. And he reveals that they weren't just spy partners. They had a relationship and this song that's playing that was their song. That song of course is now and then

a Beatles song that was not released until 2023. So I'm like, when did this move? When is this movie taking place? Is it taking place 20 years in the future? Yeah, yeah. I will say, you say they're dressed up like glamorous spies. I gotta say, I'm not a huge fan of the dress that they put Bryce Dallas Howard in, the glamorous spy dress, because it feels like it both covers up her body entirely and also does nothing for her.

So it's like, it should be something that empowers her more, I would argue, rather than covers her up and doesn't look particularly good on camera. Wow. That's Stewart's costume corner. That's my little, and I will say Sam Rockwell, little frosted tips, thumbs up more of that please. So there's a cheer and a cheer here.

It is ridiculous that they dress up as Argyle and Lagrange, the bad guy lady from the beginning to get into this thing. It's a, I don't know, it's silly that they play those parts, especially because she should be dressed as Argyle. Like, he should be dressed, he should be wearing some kind of spangly thing or not, I don't know anyway. But they dance to their song now and then, a huge hit Beatles song everybody loves.

It's everyone's favorite Beatles song since 2023 when it came out. Ellie meets with the keeper of secrets and- By the way, just I gotta clarify, is not a greater demon of slan ash, which I was hoping for, but was disappointed by the omission. No, no, it is just a woman who keeps secrets.

Who is this? Sophia Botea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's been in multiple Flophouse films. Yeah, we're going to be seeing her soon. We've got to date with Rebel Moon 2, right? We've got to date with Rebel Moon 2 sometime. Oh, that's right.

I forgot that was her in the Rebel Moon series, yeah. You know, it's that old Rebel Moon shining down on us. So, Ellie meets with the Keeper of Secrets, and she's like nervous meets with the Keeper of Secrets and she's like nervous. And the Keeper of Secrets is like, how do I know you are still the same agent R Kyle that I remember? And she hallucinates agent Argyle saying,

you don't need me anymore. You're all that you need, you can do it. And I'm like, well, agent Argyle, have you done anything to help her up to this moment? Like it feels like this is what happens after she has hallucinated Agent Argyle like giving her tips you know or helping her through things but why don't you just be doing all that. Like Dabney Coleman in Cloak and Dagger.

Yes. Yeah exactly. Like Dabney fucking Coleman in here. Yeah get Dabney Coleman. I mean how many times do I have to say it? Get Dabney Coleman in here. If we're gonna have a sexy Spar character. Gary Coleman that's notney Coleman in here. If we're gonna have a sexy spy character.

Gary Coleman, that's not the Coleman I wanted. I said Dabney, I was clear about it. If you're gonna have a sexy spy, it better be Dabney Coleman. Yeah, the luxuriousness of that mustache. Look, mustaches work. Let's just say it, guys, whether it's on Henry Cavill or Dabney Coleman, mustaches work.

God, I gotta curl my fucking mustache again or Dabney Coleman, mustaches work. Three words. Remember, mustaches work. Tashes is of course, they publish art books, right? Anyway, so. Magnum PI, the list goes on. Anyway. His name stands for Mustaches are great, not ugly man.

Please introduce. Inform. Please inform. Please inform. Please spread this information about mustaches brought to you by the Facial Hair Council. So she bluffs her way into getting the flash drive with the master file, which is just her being mean.

The person's like, how do I know you're the real Agent Argyle? Prove it. And she's like, fuck you, you piece of shit. And she's like, yes, you are the real Agent Argyle? Prove it. And she's like, fuck you, you piece of shit. And she's like, yes, you are the real Agent Argyle. Good job. And she opens up the file and starts to read it just on the computer right there.

She is shocked by something she sees, but we're not going to find out what it is until a few minutes later, unless you guess what it is, because it's the most obvious thing that it could be. Catherine Harris shows up alive. She reveals she was wearing a bulletproof vest over some tea. She reveals that Ellie was actually a bad guy a devoted evil agent of division This is when we learned that she she went to Karen's anarchist apartment killed him which set off a dead man switch bomb

Which put her in a coma and then everybody drank the tea passes out This is I think the third time that Ellie has passed out and then woken up again in a new place. Oh man, you should see a fucking doctor. That can't be good for you. So if you want to see a movie where the main character is continuously roofied, go ahead. Go see Argyle. I guess that's a review. If you want to see a movie where a female lead

is continuously passing out and waking up in situations she doesn't know she got there,. Go ahead. Watch our show. No thanks. Wow. Elliot's a hero. Take the stand. Don't like it. So Elliot, she's at division HQ, director Ritter is destroying the flash drive and he's like, we need you to tell us where Alfie is. And she doesn't know, but she figures she can get out of Aiden. And Ritter is like, give us our Alfie we'll give you back your Alfie he has the backpack with the cat in it she goes I hate cats and he just drops the backpack that's how

you know she's evil now yeah he's getting beaten up for his info and Ellie walks in there's like why don't you just tell me and he says no so she shoots him and then she uses her hacker skills to find Alfie but meanwhile Aiden hold on he's not really dead and he beats up his interrogators and then she uses her hacker skills to find Alfie. But meanwhile, Aiden, hold on, he's not really dead. And he beats up his interrogators and then shoots himself up full of adrenaline, so much that it would, it has to kill him. It's in the biz, we call that a Hong Kong cocktail. Especially if his.

Oh no, so he's gotta keep his heart rate up for real time. Oh no. If he's got an injury near his heart, maybe it would. This part really annoyed me. Like of all the quote unquote twists, I mean like they don't wait that long to reveal what's really going on, but even so, it bothered me because you're not watching our gal

thinking like, oh shoot, she really just killed Sam Rockwell. Like she turned to the, Oh shoot, like she really just killed Sam Rockwell. Like she turned to the, you know that this is gonna be undone, so why even play it movie like we're fools? Because twists, Stan, because twists to action. If you need this, come on, have fun. You think they should have stretched it out a little bit, like him give final words, maybe he's like a little bit of blood drips out of his mouth.

I mean, look, I'm just saying. You're saying why not cut out the middle man just to have him rescue Sam Rockwell? I will give the movie the slight credit that it doesn't try and extend this long at all. Like he doesn't try and like really fool us, but if you're gonna do it, I feel at this point, just like have them like exchange a wink

so like you know, like I don't know. Like it's- But Aiden doesn't know it because she can't blow her cover. But this is up there with Chewbacca's death in Rise of Skywalker. Right. With the like, this is, you know, I know this is not,

they undo it, you have to undo it really fast because nobody, everyone knows Chewbacca is not gonna die off screen, you have to undo it really fast, because nobody, everyone knows Chewbacca is not going to die off screen killed by the hero accidentally. Yeah. Although when it happened, I was like, movie, if this is for real, you have, okay, I'll give you some credit for that.

You're a mad man, I don't know where you're going. You give a shit, what happens? Like you're just so, you're insane. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I look down, I'm like, I guess I should buckle my seatbelt, huh? I don't trust this guy. No one's safe. I wonder if the theater will give me a refund

on the four fifths of my seat. I'm not using it, because I'm just sitting on the edge. It turns out- You call a fucking usher over and explain that. Like, what are you just saying? And usher is like, yeah, yeah. Oh wow, Elliot knows a fucking Usher song? Just the one.

That is fucking crazy. That's blowing my mind. So it doesn't surprise you more that Usher is working as an Usher at the movie theater? No, I'm more surprised that Elliot knows an Usher song. He's doing research for what, his concept album about working at a movie theater? He's like, I've been at a wedding,

I've been at a movie theater. Yeah. Yeah. I spent a little bit of time as a toilet, but that's a Flusher, that's a little different. And I spent a little bit of time as a candy with fruit juice in it, but that's a Gusher. Also a mistake on my part.

He just wanted to cover his bases. An actor prepares, you know. An actor certainly does prepare, especially if you're Usher, who's not really an actor. It's the name of a book, I don't know. I mean, in, what was the movie with the hustlers? I mean, he doesn't really act in that, he's just playing himself. But playing yourself when you're Usher is the role of a lifetime. But playing yourself when you're usher is the role of a lifetime

Usher thought things couldn't get any better, but he was wrong and they did Rise of usher so anyway, uh see so uh We're gonna find out usher did something bad that we don't know about, that people are going to be like, how can you make jokes about Usher? I don't know, I only know the one song. I watched his whole halftime show and I still don't know any of his songs. Anyway, so he escapes the interrogation room. Ellie reveals to the bad guys, actually, I'm a good guy and I just sent the master file to Alfie. And then an error message comes up on the screen that's like, file not sent.

And she goes, uh, Lucy. And she knocks out fake mom and dad. Which, by the way, why are they constantly knocking him out? Well, in movies, for some reason, there is nothing wrong with murdering low level grunts, but there is some moral problem with killing the people at the top who are responsible. It's the same thing with Guardians of the Galaxy 3, where they're just mowing down people. And then when it's time to kill the high evolutionary,

they're like, no, we won't do it because we're Guardians of the Galaxy. It's like, I don't know, man, if you're going to kill anybody, kill that one guy and leave everybody else alive. I still think they're supposed to have been using stunned things. They talked about non-lethal force in that movie.

I mean, I- In what, Guardians of the Galaxy? So when Chris Pratt says, okayOkay, Groot, kill them all,' and they just start shooting people with blasters- That the light? I don't know. When they're fighting those pig monsters, and they're just chopping their limbs off with swords,

were those stun swords? And they can reattach their limbs later? And Star-Lord's like, "'Yeah, use the stun weapons, leave them on the ship that explodes in a few minutes. I will say. There's that too. The only reason I am pushing back at all

is like you've used this as an example a few times, and I'm like, well, even if it doesn't do it well, that is one of the few movies that tries to make some nod towards, hey, like let's not just kill all of these faceless people for, you know, because they're minions of the bad guy. But then they do it. I know, I'm better like it.

Or in Rise of Skywalker where it's like, you can't kill the emperor, that would be wrong. Yeah. You're right. I guess I'll just murder all these child soldiers who are forced to fight for you. I'll just blow them up en masse. It's like movies, check yourself, you know? Look at what you're doing.

I mean, Argyle doesn't do this, but let me do a little Argyle script doctoring. Strip doctoring. Ooh, strip doctoring. Take this shirt off and. Ooh, yummy. I'll just take off my stings of scoop. Hello, doctor.

No, like, you could have her not able to kill them because she has lived thinking that they're her mom and dad for a while. You know, like some emotional, you know, reason anyway. Yeah, no, that makes sense. Even though she still has trouble doing that. Yeah. But she knocks them out, she apologized to her cat

for saying that she hated it, she still loves it. She runs off to a weapons room where she is reunited with Aiden and she tells him. I want a fucking weapons room. You don't have one of these. I would have way cooler ones. I would have like all kinds of katanas and batlets. Like a Psy.

Yeah, definitely a Psy. Your weapons room is basically just the pawn shop from Pulp Fiction. Yes, thank you. There's like a baseball bat, there's a chainsaw, there's a katana. Or you know what? The Kingsman movies have better weapons rooms than this one.

I'd have a flying guillotine. Oh, that's a really, that's hard to, you gotta master that thing. That's hard to use. Yeah, I accidentally chopped my hand off at least twice. Well, and also, like, you've got, that's the only number of times you can do it. You can't just do it at least, but I think, uh, the thing with the flying guillotine is you gotta, you gotta get it to land right over the other person's head. It's like a carnival game, like it's pretty hard to do. It looks like it's easy.

And it's not just that, you have to do that and then you have to wait for them to register their situation, then you chop their head off. And the other thing is. You gotta pull so hard that it cuts through a human neck. That's hard to do, yeah. Like a carnival game, the loop is actually a little smaller than people's heads, most of them.

So it's really easy. Yeah, it just bounces off their heads. You got to find some with a very small head. Yeah. Yeah or baby Your baby baby Hitler People say all the time this is me saying the opposite of the same for that no similar if people are like, oh Would you be able to kill a baby Hitler? Because he's just a baby. If people are like, oh, would you be able to kill baby Hitler because he's just a baby? I'd be like, yeah, you better believe I will. Dash it, brain's out, come on. I know that baby's Hitler, you know?

Do it, fingerprint it first, make sure it's baby Hitler. Yeah, do all the, do your due diligence. That he didn't use his sinister genius to switch places with a different baby, probably a Jewish baby because he's that evil. Anyway, but yeah, I'll take out baby Hitler. Bring me your time machine. Anyway, she tells Aiden.

She tells Aiden she's just pretending. She was just pretending. LA's application to the fucking Looper program. Yeah. Yes, reasons for applying. Want to kill baby Hitler, change history. I'll do it, whatever. Specifically baby, though.

And there's all those- Can't handle older men. Not grown up Hitler, too history. I'll do it, whatever. Specifically baby, though. Can't handle older men. Not grown up Hitler, too much of a challenge. There's all those stories where they're like, oh, we can't kill Hitler, what if someone worse shows up? And I'm always like, mm, he's pretty bad. I don't know, does it get worse? Let's risk it. Let's take the chance, let's see what happens.

What if his replacement started a war that killed 50 million and three people? That's slightly worse. Let's take the chance. Let's see what happens. What if there's someone who's someone if his replacement started a war that killed 50 million and three people? That's slightly worse. Let's treat ourselves. Let's just you know what let's live dangerously and kill Hitler Let's let's take those odds anyway. She reveals to Aidan. I'm not really bad I shot you but I shot you he goes you shot me through the heart and she goes no I shot you through the vascular Corridor a two inch passageway that allows a bullet to pass through the body while appearing to go through the heart and she goes, no, I shot you through the vascular corridor, a two inch passageway that allows a bullet to pass through the body while appearing to go through your heart harmlessly

as long as the blood is spout. And she goes, this is the crazy storyline that was suggested to me by that fan about how I was gonna bring Kira back. And it's like, movie, you don't have to keep telling me. I get it, Kira's gonna come back because that's not what you're gonna keep telling me. Just keep moving, movie.

And so now we're getting to- It's in the name. We just gotta keep moving. Keep moving, come on. It's not a stoppy, you know? No. It is a talky, but this is where we get to the two scenes that really soured me on this movie.

Up till this point, I was like, you know what, movie? I don't really like you, but whatever. I respect you. I don't think it will nut that either. You don't just check your brain but whatever. I respect you. It's a check. I don't think it will not that either. It's a check. You don't just check your brain at the door with this one. You check your whole nervous system, check your circulatory system, too. Check your endocrine system, the whole thing.

But then they team up to fight their way to the server room where they can transmit the file to Alfie. And you get two action scenes in a row. One is this big kind of dance shooting scene where the two of them are dancing while shooting guys while they're flinging colored smoke grenades everywhere. And it's supposed to be big and bright and colorful and fun and silly. They're rediscovering their love for each other

while they kill people. And the bad guys are such low level threat. There is no threat whatsoever that I just, it just murdered to me. But anyway, Stuart, you were saying, prove me wrong, Stuart. I will say that I feel like at least this scene is pretty colorful and visually I think it's colorful. I think it has a look that I don't feel is overdone.

I agree, it's not like a particularly good action sequence, but I think as like a dance sequence, it's more fun than other parts of this movie. That's true, I guess. Yeah, sure. In the color section of the grading card, I'll give this scene an A. 10 out of 10, for sure.

They use all the colors. I have some sympathy with what Elliot's saying, because I feel like the older I get, the more this kind of like whimsical, gleeful murder of people on the screen bothers me even in the movie is. When I was younger, I might've been more into it. And at the same time, like when Sin City came out,

I was like, this movie is cool. And now I think I don't know that I'd be able to watch it. It's just so grim, but, and not the fun kind of grim where it's like the grim adventures of Grim and Mandy or whatever it was in the cartoon where the Grim Reaper hangs out with those kids. But yeah, I think part of it is me getting older, having a family, living in a world

where people are killed routinely by guns and it's not fun. So to see like them kind of dancing their way through shooting people, I just can't take the same enjoyment out of it that I could when I was young and didn't think about that stuff. But then, so I will say this sequence is better than the next one where they're in a room

that's leaking oil because of all the shooting. And so they're like, we can't use our guns. So they have to fight with knives. The bad guys are slipping all over the place. They cannot stand up. Nellie goes, wait, was I really an ice skater? And Sam Rockwell's like, yeah, you were a great ice skater. So she takes two knives,

somehow shoves them into the bottom of her boots and ice skates. Unnecessary. Ice skates through the oil, just stabbing guys and just cutting their hamstrings and stuff, and these guys are, there's nothing, they are not a, they are so at her mercy because they're slipping and falling down.

So it's like, it's not, and she's kicking them with her boot, which has a blade in it. So she's slashing their faces open. Like it's, you don't see their faces get cut open, but you're like, there's a blade in it, so she's slashing their faces open. You don't see their faces get cut open, but you're like, there's a blade in the bottom of your boot. Don't kick it in the face. It's totally bloodless. I had a moral problem with the previous scene,

but in this scene, that was replaced by just being annoyed, like, being like, those knives would make it harder to slip around on that oil reflora. They'll just use your fucking shoes. I've seen the fucking transporter, which is the platonic ideal for an oil fight scene. Yeah. And also it's a,

I think there's a certain point where characters in a movie get so self-satisfied with what they're doing that it makes the movie feel smug. And this scene is where that happens for me. Like the character, she is so proud of herself for doing this. And there is, and it is so not a challenge for her, and the bad guys are at such a disadvantage

that it's like, okay, yeah, you're super cool. I don't know, I don't understand. Like, I don't like you. I stopped liking the character at that point. This makes me think of, like, I went to see, hell, it's gonna make fun of me, the fact that I saw this. Look, I was feeling down, wanted a movie. You're like, look, I didn't make fun of me. The fact that I saw this, look, I was feeling down,

wanted a movie. You're like, look, I didn't know what to do. I went to the, I went to the Times Square subway station, I watched a rat fight. Yeah, anyway, no, no. I went and saw the snuff movie from 8mm. I watched. They were, they're playing at Nighthawk.

I have the season pass. It's a rubbertory screening. It's not that it was so gross, it's that I know Elliot will take umbrage to anyone having the spare time, but I saw the Equalizer 3, and the end. No, Dan, that's one of the essentials. You gotta see it, yeah.

At the end of this film. It answers all the questions that the Equalizer 2 left unanswered. Fucking Mr. Equalizer, Denzel, is doing these, like it is shot and staged like a slasher movie where he is the killer hunting down these goons. I'm like, I have lost any sympathy with the equalizer at this point.

This feels grim and ugly. When it gets too easy for the good guy to kill the bad guys, then they become the bad guy. And then if it's done well, then the audience does feel that is deliberately feeling uncomfortable because it's like you wanted this, you're getting it now, it's not pleasant.

But while I was watching this, I'm like, I love the movie, The Raid Redemption. What is different between that movie and this one? And the difference is that it is hard for those guys to get through that building. Like they are constantly in trouble. Yes. It's really difficult. That is a very accurate description of the movie, The Raid. It is hard for those guys to get through that building like they are constantly in trouble Very accurate description

I'm getting through a building they did it's a hot getting from Florida some days He's just hard to get from the second floor to the third floor when it's two guys versus one guy in a fight that one Guy is a is a maniac and yeah amazing and that's why it takes the two guys to do it. Like, there is, I get no thrill out of seeing a super skilled assassin hero taking out guys who, the bad guys, they barely get a shot off in the last couple scenes in this movie. They're, and they're just standing there with guns in their hands, not firing,

as the good guys take them down. And it makes me, it's not fun, you know? So, but if they were like, this is really difficult, and then they had to meet the challenge, I'd be like, oh, this is a fun movie. It takes a certain amount of skill and work to make an ultimate badass character interesting. See the lone wolf and cub stories, for instance.

Or like Wolverine. Like Wolverine at his worst is a character who's just so good at everything that he just mows through thousands of guys. At his best, he is a guy who is only capable of winning because he can absorb more pain than anybody else. And it's not that he's invulnerable. It's just that he, or maybe he's invulnerable, but it still hurts, you know, and he looks

worn out. It's hard for him. Like when a hero has to push themselves, it's cool. When a hero is just kind of sliding by, like Agent Argyle does, Agent Argyle has more of a hard time than Agent Ellie does at this point. It's like, or Agent Argyle, I should say. Anyway, we don't need to keep belaboring the point. The point is they get to the server room,

they're going to upload this damn file finally, Ritter walks in, he's about to shoot them with his old-fashioned shotgun. But who steps in? The true hero of the story, I guess. Alfie the Cat to claw the shit his old fashioned shotgun. But who steps in, the true hero of the story, I guess, Alfie the cat to claw the shit out of his face. And like, and before that Ritter was like, you can't use this computer, there's a retinal scanner, it only works on my eyes.

And then Alfie jumps at him and Agent Wild is like, oh, I better kill him before your cat destroys his eyes. Because we're going to need it. He shoots Agent Ritter and he's like, oh, it's too bad, his eyes are pretty messed up. And I'm like, okay. So in this fun action movie, the villain's eyes have been clawed out by a cat. I can't respect it. It's a little, it's a little like, I mean, it works in a little more edge in this movie.

It's like got a bunch of killing, but no. It's a horror movie and that's a hugely fraded moment when he rips his own eyes out. It's not like, it's not a laugh line when he does that. Anyway, what happens? But it reminds me a little bit of that scene that I didn't like so much in Quantumania when Modok dies and they're like, oh, weird day today, huh? And it's like, well, you just saw someone you know die.

Like this is, even if you don't like him, you know, take a moment. Anyway, they they're like, OK, luckily, there's another computer on this in this place that we can go use to upload this file. They go up on the deck of what turns out to be a giant oil tanker. That's where they've been all this time. And maybe it's because we watched Waterworld earlier this year, but I was not surprised or excited by the idea of them being on a giant oil tanker. Like, okay. It explains why there's all that fucking oil. Oh yeah, the oil.

It does explain all that oil. Does explain the oil. No, that's because it's an intricate puzzle box. Every piece fits just so. Couldn't have just been because they needed oil for some reason for all this machinery that's around. No, couldn't be. Not an oil tanker. While the file is uploading to Alfie,

Catherine O'Hara turns, she has a music box, and the music triggers Ellie's brainwashing, and she commands Ellie to kill Aidan. They fist fight for a while, and they're pressing the button that pauses and unpauses the file transfer, because that's how file transfers work, right? It's just hit pause, and when you hit unpause,

it just goes right back to where it started. I don't know, I'm pretty bad with that Drive. I'm pretty bad with that shit, yeah. I'm bad with all that stuff. I'm like, why is it not working? And every now and then you cut to Alfie and his man cave going, ooh, it stopped. They're fighting, and finally Aidan is like, Ellie, I'm not going to fight you anymore.

I know you're still in there. I'm going to get, or Rachel or whatever, you're going to do the right thing. She knocks him down, she's about to stomp on his skull as he taught her to do, and for some reason, it feels like we need, the movie feels like we need to flash back to moments of their relationship and the moment when he taught her how to stomp skulls.

It's like, yeah, I remember, I was watching this damn movie. I mean, it's a long movie, it's not that long that I'm forgetting things that happened. This really bugs me because the only, like, he stops fighting. He's like, you know, like you said, I know you're really in there. I'm not gonna fight you.

I don't wanna hurt you. Like that's a big part of it. The only way to unleash you before was to fight you. Now the only way to cure you is to not fight you. Yes. Symmetry. The only reason to do that would be is if she overcomes her programming, but she doesn't. The only reason to do that would be is if she overcomes her programming, but she doesn't. The only reason that she survives,

or he survives is, you know, what's her face comes in. Kira? Yeah, and like smashes the- Bonks her on the head. A masked figure, a figure, Dan, you're revealing a twist. A masked figure hits Catherine O'Hara over the head with a wrench, probably fracturing her skull, killing her.

And that, and the music box stops stops and she snaps out of it. Oh no, and that masked figure, you guessed it, is Kira. Who reveals that she's the anonymous fan who sent the Vascular Carter plot because that's what happened to her in Greece. And she hasn't been dead. We could've gotten to this after I was done with what I was saying.

What were you saying, Dan? No, I'm just saying that narratively, why go down this road? Because like, Sam Rockwell stops fighting, and I'm like, no, like, go down and get Catherine O'Hara, get the thing, like he says he's going to do it earlier, but then he's just like, you know what, I'm just gonna stand here and let you beat me up, and I'm like, okay, well, it's gonna be her struggling

to overcome her programming. She doesn't. I got a better version of this action sequence. Catherine O'Hara whips out a music box. That makes Ellie try and kill Sam Rockwell. Sam Rockwell then spends the whole fight trying to defend himself while also- By dancing.

While also breaking the music box. And each time he does, Catherine O'Hara brings out another one. Oh, that's even better. The standard version of it would be, he's trying to get to Catherine O'Hara and Ellie keeps stopping him. And he can't get past her. But I do like the idea that she has multiple music boxes.

She keeps whipping him out and he's like, oh, another one. That would be amazing. Dan, I think I've got the explanation for why they're doing it. I think it's because this movie is not well written. Oh, okay. I think that's the reason. And I never want to blame the writer on a movie. I will always blame the director

and I will always blame executives who meddle with stuff. But I'm going to say that this movie is, it's a movie, it's a script that is free from reasons for things to happen or people to do things. But you know what? Then that could be the director and the producers meddling. Yeah, I think so. It could be the director, it could be the meddling.

I guess we'll find out. By blaming the script, we aren't necessarily blaming the writer. If the same writer who wrote this, when his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series that was announced a few years ago, and I guess it's probably not happening, when that comes out, we'll know for sure whether it was him or the director, you know, when he takes a truly beloved piece of literature for me and gives it the, our gile treatment. Anyway, but I never want to blame the writer because the writer ultimately doesn't get

to make the final decisions. It's, I will always blame the director or the executives because they're the ones who make those decisions. Anyway, that mass figure is Kira. She explains, she survived because this vascular corridor, I didn't do the research to find out if it's a real thing or not, I don't care enough. She goes, when you didn't respond to my email,

I decided to go undercover in the division and wait until the moment when I was needed. And it was like, there were like 400 moments you could have stepped in until this one. They finished transmitting the file to Alfie and then they leave blowing up the tanker, killing, I have to assume dozens, if not hundreds of people who did not get to evacuate

because they're all lying there unconscious in pools of oil as a tanker explodes around them. And we don't even get a moment to make us feel better about it. Like in Waterworld when Carl Oli Olsen goes, oh, thank God. And then as flaming calls him. Yeah, such a good bit. This, what a great performance on his part.

Anyway, Ellie then VOs that Argyle was now free. He had no more missions left. And we see she's reading from the final Argyle book to the same audience members who all showed up to this book release also. Yeah. Maybe it's a label like a season pass. They're super fans, yeah.

Yeah, super fans. And one of the people goes, people that says, I have to know what happens to the characters after the book. And Ellie- This sucks. This sucks real bad. And Ellie explains each of the characters,

happy endings, Samuel Jackson gets a medal, Kira becomes the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or whatever. And we see that- Why wasn't this in the book? Why didn't she put it in the book? Is it cause it sucks? I think maybe you could say this stuff happened after the book came out. There's an edict in writing to get in at the latest possible moment and get out of the

earliest. Maybe she's like, this is unnecessary. Unless it's the movie our gal doesn't learn from the book. I feel like usually spy novels don't have an epilogue that explains what happened to the characters later in life that's one of the thing I guess She but they each have happy endings and they're all there at the reading Kira

Alfie Alfie the cat and Sam Rockwell who has now remembered that he's allergic to Alfie the cat but they're now living together They're they're in love finally and the and this is the dumbest of all the twists in the entire movie. Henry Cavill stands up, he's got a mullet and a Southern accent and she goes, I don't have a question, but I bet you've got two or three for me. And Ellie is shocked, cut to credits.

And it's like, wait a minute. So it's a twist that means nothing, but except I guess, how are we supposed to take this twist? Guys, explain to me this twist, because it's not like Argyle has a famous face. He's a character from the book. Well, that's what I, yeah. Yeah, that's what I was just thinking about.

Like, does he know how she envisions Argyle exactly? Yes. Yeah, I mean. Especially since we've established that she is Argyle. There's no Argyle, but I guess, and why does he have an accent? Why does he have a, it literally feels like one of those things where they threw a twist in

just to have something, but they didn't have an explanation for it. Like the end of Super Mario Brothers, the movie, where they're like, yeah, we didn't have a story for them to go back to, just a cliffhanger. The next scene. Are we gonna go to the mid-credits scene?

Well then, I'm just, I wanna bring it up because it throws some light on what's going on. Wait, first, Stewart, I want Stewart, never sees the mid-credits scenes. Stewart, what do you think the mid-credits scene is for this movie? Okay. I can only assume,

I can only assume it's Tom Hanks in a fat suit dancing to a rap song. Or Tom Cruise. A little left field. If only Stuart, if only. So Dan, what happens in the mid-credits scene, tell me. Well, in the mid-credits scene, it's totally, we don't see any of our,

the people we've come to love over the course of the movie, Argal. In fact, it says 20 years earlier. 20 years earlier, a young guy walks into a bar that- Walks into the Kingsman Pub. That's a little Easter egg for those Matthew Vaughn fans. Well, and he introduces himself, like he asks for like something with a twist or whatever,

and like they give him a gun, and he goes, oh, that's a twist. He says a bunch of code words. It's like, I want this drink minus this, minus this, minus this, and they give him a gun, and goes, oh, that's a twist. He says a bunch of code words. It's like, I want this drink minus this, minus this, minus this, and they give him a gun and he says, that's a twist and they go, what's your name? And he goes, Aubrey Argyle, where again, as you mentioned, there's no one really named Argyle.

Although we come out of this scene and it says Argyle Book One, the movie or something, a poster. Coming soon. Coming soon. So it's like, I guess this is the movie version of the book series within the universe and it's tied to the Kingsman somehow.

This is what I was gonna say before with the ending of the thing where it's clearly setting something up. And Matthew Vaughn apparently had this idea like, oh, I'm gonna have these three separate kind of worlds of espionage and eventually they're going to coalesce into sort of a Matthew Vaughn cinematic espionage universe. I love the look on Stewart's face as Dan is saying.

It's just lips snarled in disgust. The fact that Argyle was greeted as Argyle was, of course we're not gonna see the fruition of whatever the fuck all this is about. No. So it just lives on as total gibberish nonsense to confuse at the end of a movie. Yes, and I have one comment and two questions.

And my comment is, what kind of- This is like we're at an argyle book event. Yeah, like I did say, yeah. Oh, this is less of a question and more of a comment. How dare you? But what kind of chutzpah does it take to produce a movie like this and be like, by the way, this is going to be one of a series because people are going to care so much about the fictional world inside of this movie that they're going to want to see it.

People didn't even want to see light year, a movie based on a beloved series of movies. They were like, Oh yeah, I want to see what the Buzz Lightyear story in universe is. The idea that you would do this is bonkers to me. So here are my questions. One, are we ever going to see? Are we ever going to see any of these movies? And are you, are you, what And how do you feel about that? And two, knowing that we will probably never see

these movies, what is your explanation for this? How do you think it would play out, this ending where a Southern Henry Cavill shows up looking like her mind's eye imagining of the Argyle character? So I can only presume that this is part of some other memory that she has and she has transposed his face onto, like that's the only thing that makes any sense to me.

But why? But how would he know that? It's a good question. He knows that she used to know him, but I don't know why he would introduce himself necessarily that way, because like he doesn't know that she's recovered the memories of him, so.

Also, it feels like a weird thing to do, why do it at a book launch? Yes, why do it at a book event? Why not? We know already that she has reimagined Sam Rockwell as John Cena in her memory, in her imaginings of this book. So, is it, so now, but we're supposed to believe that her description of Argyle is letter perfect

to what the actual guy looks like? Well, he's got, you know, he's got different hair. He's a different guy. Yeah, he looks more Australian. He does have different hair. That hair on the back of his head is different. That's true. That is a big change.

But so, Stuart, how do you feel? Do you, are you, are you a little, do you think we're gonna get these Argyle movies and how do you feel about it? No, we're not gonna, we're not gonna get them. Wasn't it, wasn't it a Wasn't it one of the Kingsman movies where the like post credit scene has like, what's the Russian wizard guy Rasputin?

Yeah, Rasputin shows. Rasputin's like introduces Hitler in like a Thanos type moment. Like it's a flashback though. And it's like, yeah, Rasputin's like, we figured out the guy that you're guy who's gonna do all this stuff. And he's like, hello, my name is Adolf, wink. And it's like, kill that guy.

When he was a baby, what are you doing? Then guitar squeal. You file out of the theater. And then he plays a song, my name's Adolf, listen to me. Like it's all, it's like, well, I mean, that's basically List-a-mania, isn't it? Where they're like rock and roll Nazis at the end. I mean, rock and roll Nazis,

you were talking about hammers earlier. That's another situation with hammers where- That's for sure. Look, don't blame the hammer, blame the hand. Yeah, this is, I feel like I can almost understand when a DC movie ends with a mid-credit scene and you're like They're probably not gonna pay this off But I get it these are pre-existing characters that they have some

Reason for assuming people will want to see when new characters that are made up For the this movie are then teased at the end as if the audience is gonna be like What we're finally gonna get the archile story I don't, what reaction are you hoping to get from the audience? Like, I don't understand. Actually, when was the last time a movie went that all in on completely brand new characters that have no preexisting backstory

and they just assumed people would love it and it actually worked? And it's not based on a book or anything like that? Well, there's this movie Rebel Moon, we also probably... I mean, to say Rebel it's not based on a book or anything like that. Well, there's this movie Rebel Moon. I mean, to say Rebel Moon is not based on pre-existing characters is stretching things a bit. I mean, so obviously Star Wars, right, is a big one. But even that's almost 50 years ago. Is there anything since then? Where a movie went all in and was like, you saw these characters, they're new,

and you're gonna love it. And they were like, and the audience was like, yeah, it worked, it worked. I mean, and it's not based on anything. I want audience members to write in, because I'm having trouble thinking of anything else. That's partly because there's so few original movies that are made now that are not based on something.

Is the question like like people like, the act of going all in. Indiana Jones, maybe? And assuming this or the fact that, or when are you asking when it's actually successful? My argument is that a movie that introduced brand new characters was also, in the course of the movie was like,

this is gonna be a huge success. We are promising this huge universe. There are definitely sequels and it actually paid off. Like audiences liked it. No, I can't think of something like that. Like the, like. That's true, cause even like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, it's not like they said, we'll be back in.

You know, they used to say James Bond will return, but like James Bond was already a successful series of novels, you know. And the thing is like. Almost as successful as the Argyle books. I would argue that Star Wars and Indiana Jones both kind of posit a larger world, and it's one adventure for that character, one of many, and in both cases it worked.

But I don't think other things have worked. That's the last time. Well, you can do that as long as you tell a full story within that universe. But definitely the implication for both of those. know, but you can't set up like No, but I can't think of other movies is Is this yeah, this is one adventure of a larger that there could be a series of you know Because I think because they're both wearing their influences from the serials of old on them

I guess but yeah when the last time i've seen a movie that was a new movie with original characters and back to the future How it ended on a cliffhanger that said to be continued at the end. Maybe that's what- But that wasn't even intended on happening. Like they're like, okay, well, let's do it. But like they kind of did that as a joke originally. You know, they're-

That's how I understand it. I mean, Dan, it may have started as a joke, but it sure didn't end as one. Back to the Future is one of the most beloved franchises in the Hollywood history. Join me, won't you, as we look at Back to the Future and all its love, from the movies, to the cartoon show, to the comic books, to that's it.

To the Broadway show. No, there's the fucking stage. Oh, to the Broadway show. That's right. That I saw because we got disc 88 gigawatts, that's what we need. 88 gigawatts, give him some speed. How's, what's his name? Roger Bart. Roger Bart is the main thing that makes that show watchable. I would say that the songs are all various degrees

of awful and not, they don't do anything to advance the story. The only good songs are the songs that they steal from Huey Lewis to stick in there. Are there songs like- Did they steal them or did they pay him a license and fee? I told Elliot this actually- Because Huey, if you're listening, if they stole those songs, you can sue them. You're going to be Huey Lewis and the Sews.

I used this metaphor before I was talking to Elliot about this on tour, so I apologize, but no one else has heard it before. Even if you apologize to me, I'll hear it again. I don't remember it that well. This is a conversation we had in an airport. Another fucking straw man sitch. I better get out there in case anyone overheard me say this to Elliot in an airport in, was it, we were in Portland at the time, I think?

And then, because then they might get mad that I'm reusing material. Yeah. So, a lot of what is fun about the show is seeing them recreate a show, recreate a movie that should absolutely not be on stage as a Broadway show. It should work on stage. It shouldn't work, like, there's just too much special effects.

It's like that King Kong musical where everyone said, if you're gonna see it, see it for that giant puppet King Kong. Yeah. This is not a show that makes sense as a Broadway musical. I mean, you could do it by doing it like super like Michelle Gondry style, where it's like, oh, it's just like, you know, a car that someone holds

and runs around with. Like that 39 steps play from a bunch of years ago. But if you're gonna do it Broadway style, it's ridiculous and you watch it, and the fact that it comes as close to recreating the movie as it does is kind of amazing, but it's an amazing in a way that's like, if you saw someone who owned a duck and were like,

that's a pretty good duck, but could you make that duck into a horse? And they're like, let me try. And they come back and it's like 75% of the way to a horse. And you're like amazed that they did it that well. But you're like, this is not worth doing. Yeah. You know?

Yeah, now I'm getting visions of like a Yorgos Lanthimos duck horse being plopped in front of me. Yeah, what a poor thing indeed, yeah. Yeah. Well Dan, I started thinking of some lyrics in my head for Crispin Glover's haunting ballad for it. He has a song that he sings while he is in the Peeping Tom tree.

Yeah, he has a big number. But can't she see? She's my density. It don't make sense to me. That's what she, that doesn't sound like that. Is there a song? Is there a song where Marty sings about how his mom wants to fuck him?

I can't recall. It seems like a missed opportunity if not, but you know what? What do I do this time? How do I deal with the situation? Don't wanna commit a love crime. So what we normally do at this point. But Freud says I should do it.

And then Sigmund Freud comes out and goes, no, no, Marty, you're misunderstanding. That's Roger Bart in Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud. You gotta use, yeah, yeah. If you're telling me Roger Bart can't do a funny Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud comes out. You gotta use, yeah, yeah. You're telling me Roger Bart can't do a funny Sigmund Freud, then you're a liar.

He can do it. Yeah, yeah. It's like, turns out that most of my theories are complete nonsense. They're just kind of made up. I was kind of taking my own neuroses and projecting them on other people. Anyway, this is the part of the show where normally

we don't talk about Back to the Future or Sigmund Freud, but we do our final judgments whether the movie is a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie we kind of like. I'm gonna say about Argyle, I'm gonna say it is a bad bad movie. However, on the steep curve of the flop house movies, the steep curve of the flop house movies. Of the flop house, yeah.

It did not make me as angry or bored as most movies do. It is surprisingly watchable for how big a mess it is. And so if you were like, you know what, I just wanna see colors, I wanna. If you're high, basically. If you're high or you're a cat, turn on Argyle. If you're a cat, jump off the couch onto the remote. Jump on the buttons until Argyle is selected.

As Elliot said, if I want to check my whole nervous system at the door, it was a tiring week and you have Apple Plus already. I'm not going to say don't turn on Argyle. That's the highest recommendation I could give. Sam Rockwell is very charming in it, as he often is. But what do you say Stuart? Yeah, I mean, I think this is a bad, bad movie. I'll be slightly harsher than Dan,

because I think whatever charms the movie has, you can find elsewhere. There's just not very much to it and it is such a mess and it's hard to find joy in the violence of it. It's just not for me, no thanks. I feel, I wish that, I mean, I feel bad saying it's a bad bad movie even though I think it is because having said all that stuff earlier,

it is kind of in original. It's not based on preexisting IP, even though they kind of pretended it was when it first came out. But that's being said, it's so heavily about the James Bond type movie stuff that it's not really fully original. You know, it's not like-

And as Ellie, as Stewart said, it's a romancing the stone that turns into a long kiss goodnight. It's pretty derivative still. It's original only in that it does not use the names of pre-existing characters. Yeah, and again, can I state Romancing the Stone, fucking rocks, that movie's great.

It's like Dan's saying, if you've seen all the other movies and you're not feeling up to paying attention to something too closely, I guess you could watch it, but there's so many better versions of this. And it's such a glossy kind of mess. And sometimes a glossy mess can be a lot of fun, just to see famous people doing silly things. Shoot them up. Shoot them up. Yeah, I mean, shoot them up is funny.

Like, shoot them up is genuinely a funny movie. Yeah, it's a good movie. But it's a... It wasn't very fun to me. I found it, you know, I was bored by it. And then by the end of it, I was kind of disgusted by the heroes, because it's just nonstop slaughter. So here's how you do it. If you want to make a movie that I'm going to like,

make those heroes have to pay for it, you know? Make them work real hard and I don't know, do some other stuff than this one does. But I'm going to say a bad, bad, and I'm going to say say if you have Apple Plus You're sick. You're tired. There's probably better stuff on there. You're feeling sick and tired. You feel sick and tired This is this is there's probably better movies on there But if you watch all the other movies on there, this one is gonna hurt you I guess Okay

Hey when you listen to podcasts it really just comes down to whether or not you like the sound of everyone's voices. My voice is one of the sounds you'll hear on the podcast Dr. Game Show, and this is the voice of co-host and fearless leader Joe Firestone. This is a podcast where we play games submitted by listeners and we play them with callers over Zoom we've never spoken to in our lives. So that is basically the concept of this show. Pretty chill.

So take it or leave it, bucko. And here's what some of the listeners have to say. It's funny, wholesome, and it never fails to make me smile. I just started listening and I'm already binging it. I haven't laughed this hard in ages. I wish I discovered it sooner. You can find Dr. Game Show on MaximumFun.org.

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T's and C's apply. Are those terms and conditions? Is that the cool way that you say terms and conditions? That's the cool way to do it. That's how they say it in Australia. We got some live show stuff coming up. We're very excited about, if you're listening to this episode today,

April 27th, the day it gets released, then as I mentioned earlier, this is the day we're premiering, the day gets released. Then as I mentioned earlier, this is the day we're premiering our latest streaming video show, the Flophouse Sink Speed 2. It operates like our Battlefield Earth show from last year, I think it was, that last year, guys, I can't remember. Time's a fly circle.

Yeah. You buy a ticket and it gets you the chance to stream the show as many times as you want, whenever you want, until May 19th, when the streaming window closes and the Flophouse SYNC Speed 2 goes back in the Flophouse vault. We'll be watching along with you tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern.

We'll be live chatting in the chat box. I can't wait to see the show again. It's a really fun show. I think you'll really enjoy it. Just go to stagepilot.com slash speed, where you can see the trailer, buy tickets for the show, or for a Flophouse VIP experience.

That's where we talk to you, not through a chat box, just directly through your computer, like a regular Max Headroom. Yeah, it stands for very in-person over Zoom. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Or you can buy exclusive merchandise

that's only available during this streaming window. That's stagepilot.com slash speed for the Flophouse SYNC Speed 2, our latest, greatest, newest online streaming video event. But next month, we got another show, Not on a Computer. Instead, it's in the place where computers were invented. England will be making our first ever British public appearance. Dan, you didn't stay for the part at the end of the invitation game

where it says, today we call them computers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, no, the good guys won, time to go. I don't care what they call this now. I care what they called it then. A computer box. So we'll be making our first ever public appearance in Britain as we do two shows in one night

in Oxford, England as part of the St. Audio Podcast Festival will be there the night of May 24th or 24th May, might be the way they say it there, I can never figure it out. We're doing two shows at 7 p.m. We're talking The Avengers, the Uma Thurman, Ray Fiennes, Sean Connery movie based on the television show The Avengers.

And at 9 p.m. we'll be talking the official movie of England, Spice World, which is not so easy to find. We'll actually be appearing at a screening of the movie the night before, right guys? Yep, that's right. Also in Oxford. Yes, also in Oxford.

But if you can only come to one of those things, come to see us on the 24th when we talk about it. Yeah. We're doing all new shows, all new presentations, all new jokes, all new questions from the audience, which will be said in a new accent for us, because you were used to answering questions from people with American accents. If you're anywhere within traveling distance of Oxford, England, take advantage of

this opportunity because I don't know when we'll get the chance to perform in the UK again. After the things we say, oh boy, we'll be banned from Britain. Oh man. We're going to be run out like Benny Hill. For tickets and more information, just go to flophousepodcast.com slash events, then scroll down to the Oxford England entry and click on where it says more info. As I've said in previous episodes, don't click on where it says get tickets.

That just takes you back to the events page. Go to more info and that will take you to the real links to the ticket pages for those shows. Speaking of which, thank you for the deluge of offers to be our webmaster. I'm going to sift through them and get back to some people, thank you for the deluge of offers to be our webmaster. I'm going to sift through them and get back to some people, thank you. Great, so that's the Flophouse in Oxford, England,

May 24th at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Two different shows, and guess what, guys? Guess what? What? We've got a different show coming up in a different England. That's right. Sorry, Old England, we're also doing a show in New England.

We're going to Bastastian everybody on July 26 We'll be in Bastian, Massachusetts at WBUR City space courtesy of WBUR radio We're gonna be live there. It's Friday, July 26. We don't know what movie we're covering yet, but I guarantee you It's gonna be a bad one. It'll be a movie. It'll be a movie. It'll be bad. We'll talk about it We haven't been to Boston in years. We're excited to be back in Bean Town and dig into those famous Bean Town beans. Mm, mm.

The last time we were in Boston was when we talked about Battle Angel Alita, right? And we learned about Dan's need for backstory. Well, we did two movies. Backstory Angel Alita. We did Battle Angel Alita and we think we did Godzilla King of the Monsters. Yeah, and Stuart did a presentation

that almost murdered me by how much I was laughing. It was so good. And Godzilla King of the Monsters also, I think the climax happened in Boston, right? Did it? I think so, yeah. Did it? Maybe. Yeah, we talked about it on the episode.

Hometown hero. We're not doing Godzilla. We're not doing Godzilla King of the Monsters. We did it already. We're doing a different movie. He's not going back there? Okay. So for tickets. He's going to go back there someday, Elliott.

He will. There's not an entry as I'm recording this yet on the Flophouse events page, because it's that new. For tickets, you can either go to wbur.org slash events slash 931089 slash the dash flop dash house dash live. To be honest, it might be easier just Google the flop house and WB you are it'll get you know what this shows how little faith

Elliot has in me actually doing this he has already told me to put this on the events page I did I was putting it in my reminders theoretically this does exist on the floor house page and may I quote you you did say you needed a reminder to check your reminder. That's true. So you don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps. So go to flophousepodcast.com slash events. And if it's not there, just Google the Flophouse in WBUR because that's where we'll be at WBUR city space.

So that's three great things from April 27th to May 19th. You can go to stagepilot.com slash speed to see our speed two show. If you're in Oxford to May 19th, you can go to stagepilot.com slash speed to see our speed two show. If you're in Oxford on May 24th, see us in Oxford at the St. Audio podcast festival. And if you're in Boston on July 26th, come see us at WBUR city space. It's a good amount of Flophouse.

That's, you know, there's a lot of Flophouse in the world that you can see in person or through your computer. Very exciting. We're in the golden age of the Flophouse. Mm-hmm. Yeah, let's say that. Just like the golden girls are in their golden age. Right?

Yeah, exactly. Just like Gold's Gym is the golden age of exercise. All right. Hey, howdy, partners. We get letters here at the Flophouse. Oh, Cowboy Dan is back. We're going to do our little letters roundup. Well, we have that. I, Cowboy Dan is back. Oh. We're going to do our little letters roundup.

I lassoed me some letters. Let's see, maybe I pulled some of yours out of the old letters pile. The old feed bag, yeah. This one is from Bonnie Last Name Withheld. Who writes, Dear Peaches, while listening to your recent Roadhouse episode at work, I was delighted to hear the extended talks about the Miami Heat mascot, Bernie. That is because I work at a mascot company, and I'm actually one of the very few people

who sew all of Bernie's costumes. It's amazing. While I cannot vouch for his problematic past actions, According to Wikipedia, I would like to thank three of my favorite podcasters for brightening up this Taylor's workday. My question is this, in the event that the smash success of the Five Nights at Freddy's movie spawns a mass interested in mascot based horror movies, which iconic horror film would

you choose to remake starring a goofy mascot version of its main vision, villain. All the best, Bonnie Lasting Withheld. Like you gotta go with something that's genuinely weird, right, because if it's already kind of a cute monster, like a Grimlin or a... Yeah, or a critter. But Freddy is also already kind of a mascot version of himself, so.

That's true. Yeah. The way he always wears the. I mean. Fame outfit. Yeah, I mean, Frederick J. Krueger, yeah. I was gonna say something like, I don't know, like Reagan from the exercise.

With a big oversized face. I mean, if it's a big mascot head, it'll be that much easier for it to spin around. Yeah. Oh, man, when someone like, I don't know,'s a big mascot head, it'll be that much easier for it to spin around. Yeah. Oh, man. When someone like, I don't know, hits a home run or Grand Slam, the head spins around. See, I would say pinhead for a similar reason that the heads already that they're making a big goofy head, those pins will be huge, you know.

And like, you don't want that just appearing in your room, covering chains and shit. Not at all. And I want to do it sort of like conceptually and let's do the thing because it keeps shifting. Oh yeah. You get one version of the mascot that's like a dog with a bunch of spindly things and then by the end, I don't know.

Is McCready a mascot? Who knows? Yeah, I love that super tense scene where they're testing everybody's blood and he's like going down the line and he gets to a guy who's now a mascot and you're like, oh shit, that's gonna be it. Yeah, he gets to the, he.

His blood is just yarn that shoots up. What a good scene. Yeah, great. This one. Do you guys remember when Mrs. Met joined our Antarctic Research team? She always here. This is from Philip, last name redacted from North Cackalacky. Okay.

Which I read just because I like saying North Cackalacky. Sure, who wouldn't? And Philip writes, a long time listener, first time letter writer, Adult Swim has recently been live streaming episodes of Space Ghost Coast to Coast on YouTube for the 30th anniversary. I was watching some yesterday while I was working, yep. It's been the perfect second screen work from home show.

Well. Did I write this letter? I don't know. It's been the perfect second screen work from home show. Well. Did I write this letter? I don't know. Watching the classic 60s Hanna-Barbera character slowly turn from late night show spoof to some classic surrealist comedy nonsense. My question is, if you were given free reign

over a forgotten property from yesteryear, how would you put your personal spin on it? Keep on flopping and best wishes to you and yours Philip last name redacted huh, huh, huh, I Come on writers, you guys are real buzzkill answering this so I don't know if you want me to go last I just Or I can be a buzzkill and then you can go next and be a hero. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's do it that way. I'm going to say, uh, Phillip, uh, I can only assume you're Philip K. Dick writing in not the, not the author, but someone whose last name is K. Dick, uh, that Phillip, I think right now so much of entertainment is about taking old properties and putting new spins on them. It's something that I know I'm starting to get more requests to at least pitch those things and stuff like that.

And I'm happy to do them for work, but something like this on the flop house where we're just having fun, keeping in mind that I just talked about Pinhead as a mascot, I think I'm gonna try to take every opportunity I can to push original things and to not play into the idea of taking a forgotten property and putting a spin on it. Let's take properties that are so forgotten,

they didn't even exist before. They're just original things. And so I think that's what I'm going to focus on in this moment. Sorry that I'm not answering the question the way I wanted, but I'm trying to introduce more honesty into my life and less people pleasing. So Dan, Stuart, you guys are great.

I mean that sincerely. But what if there's a vision of, what was their version of Steamboat Willie where he killed everyone? Oh shit, Cormac McCarthy's on the podcast. Hold on, hold on. You know why he wears those white gloves everywhere? So he doesn't get fingerprints over all the people he kills.

Man. What a twisted guy. He goes, no, this is a good twist. Cormac McCarthy just wanted in here. Cormac Dan morphed into Cormac McCarthy so quick. Now Cormac Mcdanthey, Cormac McQuathy, what if it was like the My Little Pony? What would you do with them? Oh, twisted.

Those ponies are so little that what if they gallop up inside you and then they kill you from the inside. Oh, that's pretty pretty horrifying. Yeah. Yeah Okay. Now what if it was now what if it was the cuddles the fabrics or snuggles the fabrics? You shouldn't let a bear in your house, man The scrubbing bubbles what would you do with them? What if it was the scrubbing bubbles? What would you do with them? Yeah, those bubbles are gonna be like, you gotta get clean.

You gotta get clean. Clean all of you. Clean the sin away. And it rubs you so hard that it kills you. Yeah, it kills you. Okay, now what about Alf? Well, he can't do anything with Alf. Alf has had so many shots.

Yeah, tried to make him. So he's done. That's it, he's just done? Yeah, well, I mean,... That's it? He's just done? Yeah, well, I mean, it happens in show business sometimes. You only get so many chances that... There's gonna be bites of that apple. Hey, I could keep doing this, but my answer is...

I don't have one. My answer is... Yeah, I'm just gonna say fucking gummy bears, dude. They rule. They're bouncing here and there and everywhere. They drink their gummy bear juice. Yeah, it's just gonna say fucking gummy bears dude, they rule. They're bouncing here and there and everywhere they drink their gummy bear juice. Yeah, it's awesome. Magic and mystery is part of their history.

Put me in charge. Along with the secret of gummy bear juice. That's also part of their history. Gummy bears fits into that classic category in my mind of shows that I watched regularly all the time and remember no episodes. Exactly, yep. The Duke wanted gummy bears, you need juice.

Yeah. Okay. So you get that bouncing power. I don't know, it does something else for humans, I guess, maybe. Yeah, cause what is the big strength about being able to bounce on your butt? Is that worth taking a magic juice for? You bounce on people.

Yeah, I would imagine there's like another thing. It's similar to like how Sauron wants his ring back and you're like, what, so he can be invisible? And it's like, no, I guess it does something else for him. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, something else for him. No, that was the, I mean, as a child, having read The Hobbit, but not knowing Lord of the Rings,

when I learned about Lord of the Rings, that was the big problem I had with it. Where I'm like, wait, this is the ring of power? It's just the most powerful, but it makes you invisible. That's what else doesn't do it. You realize this was just part of Gollum's junk that he just kept in his cage? What do you mean?

Most powerful thing. Yeah, I don't have a good answer. You were like, isn't the most powerful thing friendship? Honestly, if it's a forgotten piece of media, unless it was a shitty one, let's just do it straight the first time. Let's do it normal rather than reimagining it.

So sorry for that. We totally, we took the, we took the, took the juice out of that one. Hey, there was some ideas in there. Most of them came from Dirty Dan, but you know. Dirty D McZ had some interesting thoughts. Let's recommend movies, movies that we think that people, you know, your time may be better served than watching Argyle, no matter what I may have said about turning off your brain.

I'm gonna quickly recommend two documentaries, both of which I enjoyed, but also both of which are sort of backdoor, you know, plugs for Friends. The first one was I saw- You don't have to plug Friends, dude. It's a huge show. It's the biggest show in the world, Dan, still.

And having rewatched some of it, it's pretty good. I get it. Good point. The first one is- The first one's called The Pall Bearer, and it's like, Dan, that's not a documentary about David Schwimmer. That's just a movie that he's in.

I saw a screening of I'm George Lucas, a Conor Ratliff story, which of course, one of the people in the George Lucas talk show is Griffin Newman, our pal from over Blank Check who guested on our recent Garbage Pail Kids live show that will show up in the feed at some point, who knows. But I enjoyed this documentary for its own merits. Like I think it's interesting on its own.

It's about Connor Ratliff, the guy who does George Lucas and the George Lucas talk show and sort of, you know, his experience as an actor and someone doing this weird like niche show that's only ever gonna get so big, kind of by its nature. But I have to admit that a lot of it was just sort of personal interest too for me, where I'm like, okay, well, this is a movie that's made up of

like a bunch of people I have met over the years and hear a bunch of comedy stages that I have performed on at different times. And I think that part of what's interesting about that, maybe for someone who is not me specifically, is like it is a very specific snapshot of a type of independent New York comedy show and what it's like to, you know, like our show is not

as complex as what the George Lucas talk show has become by any means, but it is sort of a similar vibe of what it's like to put on this sort of DIY cheap to produce show that you can move from theater to theater. And if you're interested in comedy or seeing like a scene at a specific time, it's a lot of fun. And I also wanted to recommend,

it's on the Criterion channel right now. I watched Turn Every Page, The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb, Twist, this is a backdoor plug for Elliot and his side project over at 99% Invisible doing the Power Broker read. They just talked to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the most recent episode.

And it was really fun hearing her speak, but it's about, the movie is about Robert Caro's, sorry, Robert Caro's relationship with his editor, Robert Gottlieb, who is also a towering figure, like one of, he edited so many huge books and was the editor of The New Yorker. And it's interesting to see their working relationship, although you're kind of shielded,

they're both very private. They don't wanna actually let you in too much on the working relationship, but there's a lot about how committed these two people are at really caring about the work they do and what it is to work with an editor who's a simpatico with what you're trying to do, even though they also argue incessantly about everything.

The filmmaking, I think, was a little more boring to me than the actual people being highlighted, but they're both, or you know, gotly missed paths, but they're like treasures of people who are interesting to watch. So those are my two recommendations. Yeah, I guess I'm gonna recommend another comedy, no, I'm just joking.

I'm gonna recommend The Zone of Interest, a harrowing story of the- I don't know, Stuart, after the intro, I'm not sure what's sincere or what's not sincere. Fine, yeah. Yeah, I'm going to recommend The Zone of Interest, a movie that has received a fair amount of notoriety that also won an Academy Award. When they came out the best foreign language film

directed by Jonathan Glazer it is a story about the kind of the mundanity of evil following the family of a commandant who runs Auschwitz and it is a Presentation of a Holocaust story that is is a presentation of a Holocaust story that is, uses the horror of it as more of a, kind of a backdrop, and it is a very well-crafted movie, and the sound design is really, in particular, is really fascinating,

the way it allows the horrors of the camp to kind of like seep into this seemingly normal everyday life and it it keeps it from being just like a bulldozer of a blunt emotional instrument but I thought it was really well done and really affecting and yeah a well-made movie that is very sad and gross at the same time. I'm gonna recommend a movie that is almost the exact opposite of that, I think, which is, I was thinking about-

The Gold Dickers of 1933. If only. Argyle is like trying to be like a goofy action comedy, right, and I was like, okay, well, what's kind of the goofiest action comedy that you can think of that still manages to have a lot of funny jokes, but also has a lot of good action scenes, but is itself also a mess.

And the movie that came to mind was The Eagle Shooting Heroes. This is a Hong Kong movie from 1993 that was made in basically to hide the fact that Wong Kar-Wai's movie Ashes of Time had gone so far over budget that they were like, oh, we made a second movie. That's why it costs so much. And they had a lot of the same actors playing very similar characters and it's incredibly

goofy, just like super goofy, like a mess of an action comedy that is there are things in it that just do not work, but there are things in it that work so well. And even the stuff that doesn't work, you're like, all right, well, this is literally a movie that is doing every possible thing that it could do. Like it's, they're just, there is, it is a movie that was made seemingly entirely without shame for anyone involved in it.

And so the jokes go from being very funny parody jokes of kind of Chinese kind of historical adventure movies to the dumbest slapstick to the worst costume comedy to like some really really good kung fu action scenes and it's just like it's a real it's a real messy platter of movie but I enjoyed watching it quite a bit and I it did for me what I think our guy was trying to do but yeah for me and that sounds that sounds like a lot of fun. And actually that reminds me of a movie that is gonna be the focus of next week's mini,

where we talk about Larry Cohen's The Ambulance, which has a similar sort of like reckless need to entertain. Yes, yeah, the Eagle Shooting Heroes is very much like that, where it's like, it feels like you're watching a group of children just being like, what about this, what about this, what about this,

what about this, what about this, do you like this, what about this? And by the end of it, it's not a long movie, but you are like exhausted by the end of it. But even if you just watch the first, you know, 30 minutes, it's fun. So that's my recommendation for this week. Oh, great.

It's fun. So that's my recommendation for this week. Oh, great. Hey, here's something that I should say more often. You can find the Flophouse a lot of places now that are not the website formerly known as Twitter, which is increasingly unpleasant to be on. You can find us on Mastodon, on Blue Sky. There's a Threads for us.

There's an Instagram. This is a perfect chance for us to plug the brand new Discord. Yeah, a fan-started Discord. Do you want to read what? Yeah, it's really great. So yeah, the Discord is the Flophouse podcast. If you are a friend of the Flophouse,

hey, isn't this podcast great? I'll bet you want to talk about it all the time. So why don't you join the new Discord over on Discord, the Flophouse podcast. You can share your thoughts on your favorite bad movies, show bits, even your latest happenings with our super friendly community. The only thing that needs to be added is you.

They also do movie watch alongs. I think they recently did one on a Neil Breen movie, specifically, Cade the Tortured Crossing, which I believe was a, received multiple thumbs up from us here at the Flophouse. So why don't you go grab a chicken leg, a beer, or your sore knee and join us here at the Discord.

Just look up, it's the Flophouse Podcast Discord. Why don't you go check it out? Yeah. And as long as we're saying this, of course, we got to shout out the original group on Facebook, still going strong. There's a lot of people who hang out there. And we have a YouTube channel that has various videos, mostly sort of the shorter videos that we post on Instagram and such,

but there are longer videos, like you can find the archive of, there were some charity live streams we did of longer shows. There's us doing the boy next door screenplay reading. Why don't we do more of those, Dan? I don't know. It was pretty fun. We we do more of those, Dan? I don't know, it was pretty fun. We should do more of those. Dan, why are you stopping us?

Why are you underselling it? You're like, I guess it was pretty fun. No, I had a ball doing that actually. But anyway, so that's all squared away, I guess. I want to say thank you to Alex Smith, our producer. He makes us sound good. You can find him under the name Howell Doughty in various places, probably a lot of the same places.

Thank you to Maximum Fun over at MaximumFun.org. You can check out other great podcasts. And that's it for this time. For the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy. Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kalin. Okay, bye! Let's get into this fucking thing.

Alex is filling us any of that material. It will either hurt our careers or be boring. You can use this part where we call the podcast that we do this fucking thing. Oh! Because it's self-deprecating. This dumb shit. But like in a cool way, not a my therapist would be mad at me kind of way. Yeah, yeah. I mean your therapist shouldn't get mad at you.

I feel like that's one of the main things therapists shouldn't do is get mad at the patient. Yeah, it should be sort of a radical... Don't minimize yourself is what he'd say. Why are you doing this? Don't do that. I see. No, it's interesting that you read your therapist's concern for you as anger, getting angry at you. Maybe this is a thing we should. Yeah, maybe this is what the episode is about today.

We can get into this. Wow, dance bring the heat. Okay, let's fucking peel this onion back. Maximum fun. A worker-owned network. Of artist-owned shows. Supported. Directly. Let's fucking peel this onion back.