SLIM Okay, watch it this weekend. Tag your review Weekend Watchlist so we can spotlight it next week. So speaking of which, looking back at last week, we’ll spotlight our community reviews with that tag of Weekend Watchlist. Just a reminder, next week we’re gonna be doing a special segment holiday watchlist. So tag your list with your favorite holiday movies that you’re gonna be watching over the next few weeks and we’ll spotlight them next week. I saw Pinocchio last week, the big Del Toro release. The king. The God, they say, del Toro on Twitter. I liked it. I liked it. Wasn’t bad, you know, it takes place in like fascist Italy, the stop-motion animation is insane. I don’t know how they do this stuff. I don’t even want to know because I don’t want to take out the prestige of this kind of animation. The intro, the beginning had a lot of heart. I wish the rest of the movie had the same amount of heart. I also would have loved more time in the dead puppet underworld that is shown in a few scenes, but I had fun. Glad I was able to see it.

MITCHELL Yeah, I gotta check this one out. It’s on my list. I definitely want to make sure that I see it by the end of the year. Like everybody, the stop-motion in it. People will just not stop talking about it. I’m like, I get it. It probably looks great. I understand. I’ll watch it.

SLIM They’re going nuts, Mitchell, over the stop-motion animation.

MITCHELL I’ll shout out a review here that was tagged Weekend Watchlist from JoeJazzy: “I would not have thought of retelling Pinocchio with fascist Italy as the setting, but that's why Guillermo is the master. What a setting to retell this classic in, Disney could never.” Shots fired.

SLIM Disney, retire already. It’s over for you. What about you? What do you want to spotlight?

MITCHELL Yeah, I’ve been catching up on some stuff. You know, still working through my massive pile of screeners that I’m finally getting the chance to see. Some stuff that I haven’t connected with quite so much, but also I’m getting to see some that I’m really loving. I watched Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker  finally, which has been one of my most anticipated of the year. I’m a huge fan of him. I have a Shoplifters poster on my bedroom wall. He’s got Song Kang-Ho who people know from Parasite and other Bong Joon-ho movies as the lead in this one. It’s about like, it’s more narratively heavy than a lot of Kore-eda’s movies. So there’s some Letterboxd reviews complaining a little bit about the contrivances in the narrative, which I don’t disagree with. But I think that he makes them work because his filmmaking is always so focused on characters first, and like he just is a very humanist filmmaker. And the emotions in his movies really, really sneak up on you. So it’s like one of those directors where you’re watching his movies and you get like 90 minutes in and you start crying and you’re like, oh, I had no idea that this movie was even like that, I was that emotionally invested in this, but it really sneaks up on you which I liked a lot. I also watched Hit the Road by director Panah Panahi, who is the son of Jafar Panahi who is in prison right now for protesting in Iran. And Hit the Road also a very similar thing, Samm and I watched that one together. It starts off, it’s about just like a family on a road trip to get their son into like sanctuary. And it sneaks up on you because it’s really funny at first, it’s just like this family on the road and by the end of the movie, I was like a mess of tears and it’s pretty dope. I mean, that one’s that one’s available like on VOD and everything right now. So if you want to check out Hit the Road, definitely check that out. *Broker *is coming out in limited theaters around Christmas time and then I’m sure NEON will put it out in more theaters in 2023.

SLIM You’re talking about being in tears, I finally was able to watch Aftersun from Charlotte Wells, four and a half stars from me. FYI, folks. Four and a half stars.

MITCHELL Flynn Slicker, our social media manager, top five of all time, Flynn has declared for Aftersun on her most recent rewatch. So if you haven’t been checking out Aftersun, get on it. I think it’s on, A24 did like a screening room thing. Yeah, so it should be out on VOD probably next week or something if people want to catch up with that one. Let’s take a look at what’s going on with the Letterboxd Top 50 of 2022. Jack let’s us know, this is the last update we’re getting for this year before our big, whopping mammoth Year in Review 2022 coming in early January, where all of the stats we’ll be diving in, we’ll get to see what the official locked in, enshrined in gold forever, the top films of 2022 on Letterboxd, as well as the most watched directors, actors, actresses so many other stats flying your way soon. And you’ll also get see, that’s where you’ll see where Babylon and Avatar: The Way of Water, and some of these other last breaking films are gonna rank.

SLIM Maybe [Avatar: The Way of Water] is gonna be the number one movie of the year. Could it be? Could it be? [Mitchell sighs] Mitchell doesn’t even know what to say. How to politically respond to that statement without ignoring me completely.

MITCHELL Or could it be Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which has landed on the list at number 40 right now. Jack says this is a pleasant surprise because the first Puss in Boots film from 2011 currently has a 2.9 average rating. So Puss in Boots: The Last Wish getting a huge bump, you know, a big, big pull up from its previous film. You know, we read I think a couple of weeks ago, Mia and I read Gemma’s review of this one. She compared it to Paddington. She really loved it. I’m seeing a lot of, I got the screener for this in my inbox last night. I feel like I gotta check this out. Let’s see. You know, it’s at 40 right now, but it’s not out in US theaters yet. It’s coming out soon. So maybe we can get it up to number one by the end of the year.

SLIM We’ll see. We’ll see. I watched the Nanny Saturday, you watch [Puss in Boots: The Last Wish] and we’ll see makes the lead, what goes up the charts. Should we go to our watchlists? Should we check out what’s happening with our own watchlist? We’re making headway. I alluded to the fact that I needed to do a cleanse, a watchlist cleanse a couple of weeks ago, so I started removing things.

MITCHELL I feel like you’re cleansing like every two weeks. I have friends who comment, I mentioned this to you, I have friends who comment like, “every time Slim pulls a review, you just hear like a sigh in him and a regret.”

SLIM Regrets, regrets. So many regrets in my watchlist additions. But I’m trying to, you know, I get IG ads for cleanses now. Maybe cleanses is the key and it starts with my watchlist. So I got a Christopher Lambert movie last time, Fortress, from the director of Re-Animator. So you might think like, okay, now we’re cooking with gas.

MITCHELL You might think.

SLIM You were not cooking with gas for this movie in my opinion. You were cooking with, I don’t know, charcoal. So Christopher Lambert had a moment. I think we can all agree, in kind of like action era movies.

MITCHELL Big Highlander.

SLIM Big Highlander. He was Raiden in Mortal Kombat, he had that famous chuckle that everyone references. So in this movie, having more than having more than one child is illegal. This is like the dystopian future. If you break the law, you get sent to the fortress, which is run by Clarence Boddicker from RoboCop. What’s his name?

MITCHELL Kurtwood Smith.

SLIM Kurtwood Smith, the great Kurtwood Smith. And when you get put into this jail, you have this like, almost like bomb thing put in your body, in your intestines, and it’s called an intestinator. And when you’re like misbehaving, Clarence, like turns it up a notch and you’re like in pain because your intestines are about to explode. Very strange. But I thought it was kind of a dud. So there were some cool stuff in it. Like, Clarence Boddicker, Kurtwood Smith, he’s like the warden for this prison and these sexual thoughts are pretty much illegal in the jail and at large, but he has a way to see people’s dreams, so in his little lair he’s like, able to kind of like break the law himself by like, observing these dreams, which I think is a pretty cool angle for a movie. But that’s where the coolness kind of stops. So Fortress, Christopher Lambert, it’s off my list. I think I gave it like two stars maybe. So we’ll see how the cleanse goes the next time I shuffle.

MITCHELL 2023 is going to be a new year for you. That’s my hope.

SLIM It is! It’s my year! I’m almost under 100 movies on my watchlist, so it’s very curated right now.

MITCHELL That’s impressive. I’m at—let’s do a quick check on Mitchell’s watchlist, we’re about at 1452.

SLIM Oh my god.

MITCHELL Making progress everyday. I think I added about twenty last night.

SLIM Holy smokes. So what did you get when you were last on the show?

MITCHELL One that came off of my watchlist, Alphabet City, 1984, directed by Amos Poe. Not as complex as a plot as Fortress sounds like it is. No intestinators in this one, basically just like a late night New York movie about a small time drug dealer who’s trying to get out and make clean but the people above him are not down for that. And you know, he’s in a little bit of trouble. He’s been tasked with burning down a building that just happens to be the one that his mom lives in. And I mean, it’s a wild ride. It’s pretty dope. It is very like neon nights in New York City in the 80s which is like 100% my vibe if anybody knows me. It was put out by Fun City Editions on Blu-Ray and I basically love like everything that label puts out. Yeah, it’s sick. I really enjoyed it. It’s very like scuzzy but also like the neon and like the washed out lighting of it is really gorgeous. And it’s got a killer soundtrack. It’s also very funny, this dude is spending the whole movie like trying to convince people to like leave this building. He’s like, “I am going to burn down this building tonight. You need to leave or you will die.” And even his mom is like, “Hey man, if that’s what happens, I guess how I’m going down. I gotta iron this laundry.” I was delighted to see that Justin on Letterboxd watched this as well and tagged his review Weekend Watchlist. Justin’s review: “treads a weird middle ground between Escape from New York and Drive street tough, soaked and surreal neon. Johnny’s a good egg, but he crosses the line from sentimental to self righteous. I want good things for him. But I also want to see him shoot his way out.” Johnny is, yeah, I mean, he’s a tough noodle to crack.

SLIM It’s hard to crack those noodles. It’s very hard to crack those noodles.

MITCHELL Every day I’m trying to crack these noodles and they are just slipping out of my fingers.

SLIM My buddy Chuck Forsman, who’s a cartoonist and he created The End of the Effing World on Netflix, he left a review for this that I didn’t realize it until this week, but he gave it four and a half stars. So he loved that as well. He said, “this is delight felt like equal parts at self published amateur comic, and an incredible college art film with the most intense splashes of color.”

MITCHELL I gave it four stars. So yeah, I definitely would recommend people checking out Alphabet City.

SLIM It’s in my watchlist now. I can confirm that I just added it to the watchlist.

MITCHELL My influence is so strong. I’m gonna get—in no time I’m getting your watchlist up to 1000.

SLIM No, absolutely not. But we should point out some community reviews. Rob watched Eyes Wide Shut, which we will be spotlighting next week on our Four Faves episode, which was your pick for Holiday Faves. Rob left a review, “I would do unspeakable things to be part of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise’s blunt rotation.”

MITCHELL That’s an interesting review because I would do anything to not be in that room.

SLIM It seems like such a downer to be in that room with them.

MITCHELL The vibes are very off in that room. I’ve smoked some pot in my day and I’ve had experiences where, you know, one person takes it a little bit in a direction where they get a little bit antsy, they get a little bit hyper, they get a little bit, you know, and it just, it kills the vibe. I want to smoke and I just take a nap, like that’s that’s my vibe.

SLIM You gotta change the room. If you’re in a party with Tom and Nicole, you change rooms. I’ll see you guys in a little bit, I need to break.

MITCHELL How do you even know where to look? What’s the eyeline there? One’s so small and one’s so tall. Like where are you looking?

SLIM Listen, Tom was on the bed, okay? Tom was on the bed accentuating his height.

MITCHELL That might have actually been a very direct choice. Nicole’s, you know, on the ground.

SLIM Yeah, she was on the floor and she was still taller than he was.

MITCHELL Yeah, they’re about the same eyeline. I wanted to quickly shout out, so I did choose Kayla happened to review and tag their review Weekend Watchlist. Kayla’s review of The Shop Around the Corner: “A 1940s rom com with Jimmy Stewart? Honestly, the movie didn’t have to do much for me to love it.  Also, ITS SET IN BUDAPEST?!” The Shop Around the Corner is the total opposite end of my Eyes Wide Shut holiday viewing pleasures, but The Shop Around the Corner also now like a marquee holiday viewing for me. It is so delightful. So warm. It is perfect, perfect like old-school viewing. Feels like a warm blanket.