Film Junk Podcast Episode #766: I’m Thinking of Ending Things + Bill & Ted Face the Music

Posted by on September 8th, 2020   Filed under: Featured, Film Junk Podcast

podcast766

0:00 – Intro
15:15 – Review: I’m Thinking of Ending Things
39:55 – Review: Bill & Ted Face the Music
57:35 – Other Stuff We Watched: Unhinged, The Goonies
1:14:00 – This Week on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD
1:17:35 – Outro
1:19:50 – Spoiler Discussion: I’m Thinking of Ending Things

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  • Blake in Boston

    Nolanpox, Ebolan, Nolanfluenza are my additions to Frank’s self diagnosis.

  • Ben Bueno

    I still like my Nolangitis, affects the brain!

  • Ben Bueno

    As in, Meningitis

  • Alberto B.

    The best explanation of “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is this (Spoiler!):
    https://slate.com/culture/2020/09/im-thinking-ending-things-twist-explained-movie-book.html?via=recirc_recent

    Surprised you didn’t get the scene copied from a Zemekis movie (shot by shot, i think) at the end.

  • OsoDuck

    Thankfully, Frank, I’m here to cure your Nolanphilia sickness. I watched Inception for the first time yesterday and just thought it was laughably bad (Greatest sin: Nolan reduces the wonder of dreaming into boring action movie set pieces that would not feel that out of place in any movie). Knowing that some corner of the internet would have my back, I did a google search and found this:

    http://generalsnobbery.com/filmanalysis/inception

    Although this piece itself passes over the movie’s other great sin, which is that Nolan needs to make the resoundingly silly premise of his film serious as a heart attack. You want to have a little fun for a moment, Nolan? Even the moment when JGL is having a hard time hitting a bad guy with his boring big gun, and Hardy comically enters the frame with a grenade launcher and says something like “dream a little bigger, darling”, is trapped by the self-seriousness of the film. I mean, your in a dream, do you even need a grenade launcher? Why not explode everyone into mist with your mind? Why not turn into a dinosaur? Why? Because Nolan has to make it “realistic”. Just the worst movie.

  • OsoDuck

    From the comment section:

    “Alan,
    we would like to thank you for your thoughtful contribution. We are
    pleased that you, a fellow Inception-hater, discovered this post. We
    very much understand your sentiments regarding this dumb movie’s fans, who, by extension, are also dumb. Anyone who still claims this is a great film has no regard for elements that truly make a film great.
    Quite likely, they are currently waiting in line for Avengers: Infinity
    War and are already convinced it’s gonna be so fuckin’ awesome.

    “Also, great point about the limitations of the film’s “dream world”.
    All this does is show how fucking limited Chris Nolan’s mind is. What a moron. He needs to retire and spare us explosions and Hans Zimmer. This film doesn’t represent a dream world at all. It represents an idiot’s vision. Nothing about it resonates unconsciously in any way for anyone. It’s just an excuse to have “cool” shit happen, even though that “cool” shit is actually extremely stupid.

    “Thanks again for your input. You’ve got us going again. We may have to write a Part 2 on this, because surely these 5 reasons are not exhaustive in the slightest. Inception sucks!!”

  • OsoDuck

    Oh, and the ending of the film. It was all possibly a dream? Really? Nolan must have thought he was a genius. Nolan: “I’m Nolan, I’m going to give these filthy punters the “it was all a dream” ending but I’m going to make them love it. Why? Because I’m Nolan and I can do that.” And lastly, he just had to throw the borderline paralytic Ellen Page in there, who hails from Halifax, one of the grossest cities in the world. Why? Because he’s Nolan and he can get away with any kind of bamboozle. Thanks for nothing, Nolan.

  • OsoDuck

    I think Frank’s disease should be called Noleprosy, because it is truly a hideous condition, and all those who have it should be forced to live in impoverished colonies outside of all town and city limits. That being said, Frank is cool, love him on the show, and Eddy is almost as cool as Frank. Although I’m not sure how Frank/Eddy can make any objections to what is on Jay and Sean’s top 100 when Frank/Eddy puts a movie on his top 100 because it’s quotable and he quoted it just this past weekend. How that can ever be lived down, I’m not sure.

  • Lior

    The scene at the end is copied from Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind.

  • ReelJunkie

    I’ve been an avid FJ listener since way back in 2008 and I haven’t missed a single episode ever. But over the last 7-8 months, for one reason or another, I stopped listening to the podcast.

    That changed recently and I started listening again and it reminded me how amazing of a show you guys put together for us every week. I feel like I’m rediscovering the show again. Just wanna say thank you for all the hours of entertainment!

  • AConcernedFan

    Are you sure Frank is the one with the disease here?

  • OsoDuck

    Thanks for your concern, Doctor.

  • OsoDuck

    Christopher Nolan explains how we want to be fooled by our thoroughly corrupt overseers in the last moments of The Prestige (a good Nolan movie, I might add)

    Now you’re looking for the secret.. but you won’t find it because you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know the secret. You want to be fooled!

    https://youtu.be/C4Rrj5eRdy0

  • Sean

    Thanks! Good to have you back on board!

  • Lior

    I watched I’m Thinking Of Ending Things twice and this is what I got:

    SPOILERS

    First off, the girlfriend isn’t real. The only real character in the movie is Jake. He’s the only character that stays constant: same age, same name, same interests, same job. The only real place with regards to time-space is the school the janitor (old Jake ) is working in. We are basically seeing him on the job as he’s “thinking of ending things”.
    Everything else in the film takes place in his head, as a combination of memories and imaginations. Lisa/Luisa/Aimee is probably an amalgamation of different women he dated in different times. Other than having the girlfriend’s name and profession keep changing, a major clue as to her unrealness is the fact her poem is a real poem by another poet (this I found out later), and that her opinion of A Woman Under the Influence is a verbatim review from Pauline Kael (with a dead-on impression by Jesse Buckley). All these are connected to the books in Jake’s room.

    If we follow the thread of the story to its apparent ending – where Jake commits suicide in the car – we are left with a really depressing tale, reminiscent of Synecdoche NY (which I wasn’t a big fan of). However, what makes this movie better for me is the ideas that it explores on the role of art in our lives and of memory, time and perception. Also it is technically done in a very interesting way, with a great use of the 4:3 aspect ratio and interesting compositions, including the camera preceding the action of the characters, as Jay noted on the show. It is maddeningly obtuse on purpose, but it was an interesting puzzle to solve, at least for me.

  • While I don’t share the disdain for Nolan you do, I mostly agree with this. He makes his films way too serious rather than having fun with them (think Live Die Repeat or Looper). That said, some time travel movies similar to the ones Nolan makes also take themselves pretty seriously (Deja Vu, 12 Monkeys) yet there is still a goofiness to them that Nolan can’t capture.

    Also, Nolan’s action sequences are so boring and messy for some reason. He just can’t put all that stuff on screen and make it interesting and often times it doesn’t even make sense.

    I loved Inception the first time I saw it, but I’ve watched it a couple of times since then and find its returns diminishing significantly. And The Dark Knight is one of the most overrated, non-sensical movies in the past 20 years.

    I still love Interstellar though!

  • Falsk

    Sort of going to agree with Frank about the Lynch vibes (though the “subpar Lynch” comment is a low blow, bud). IMO, I’m Thinking of Ending Things played with the same anxiety as Eraserhead; starting a relationship and inevitably having to meet the parents and, if you stay in the relationship, dealing with the longterm stuff (death of parents in I’m Thinking or having a baby in Eraserhead). My husband (a veritable Lynch super fan) argued that Lynch scenes focus more on the environment whereas Kaufman’s are more dialogue based, but… I was still vibe-ing, and not necessarily in a good way. ?????????????????????

  • Matt Thephotoman

    I seem to remember Jay you having a bit of a crush a few years back on a certain someone (maybe it was all three of you :) Might be worth you checking out this new doc about booksellers.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymcRRt3Ix04

  • This is an impressive deep cut FJ callback. Bravo.

  • OsoDuck

    I don’t necessarily despise Nolan. I watched The Prestige recently, and I still enjoy it. I watched Memento for the first time in a long time last night, and
    although I still enjoyed it, I realize now that its basically a gimmick
    that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

    Yes, I thought the action sequences in Inception were moribund, especially when you figure in the notion that all the bad guys are figments of the imagination, which completely erases any reason to be caught up in them.