Weekend Watchlist: Lightyear, Cha Cha Real Smooth and Mad God
[Izon by Trent Walton fades in, plays alone, fades out]
MITCHELL Hello and welcome to Weekend Watchlist, a look at what’s screening and streaming brought to you by The Letterboxd Show. I’m Mitchell, he’s Slim...
SLIM Hello!
MITCHELL And together we’ll dig through what’s dropping this weekend, last weekend, recent trends on Letterboxd and we’ll also take a peek at our own watchlists—all under 30 minutes or your money back!
SLIM Mitchell, welcome back from your well-deserved break. Is it true—
MITCHELL I did it! [Slim & Mitchell laugh]
SLIM Is it true that all you could think of during your break was coming back to talk about Lightyear and Spiderhead with me on Weekend Watchlist? Is that true?
MITCHELL It’s very true. I actually was planning to take off a month but I saw Lightyear and Spiderhead were coming and I said, “You know what kids? Pack up the bags. We’re going back home. I’m getting in there. I’m talking Lightyear, I’m talking Spiderhead.” We got to talk Spiderhead! What am I gonna Mia talk about Spiderhead? Not happening. [Slim laughs]
SLIM I just love the idea of you driving like a National Lampoon station wagon across the country to come back to talk about these movies.
MITCHELL We’re on the side of the road right now. I’m in the car—kids, quiet down! Quiet down! [Slim laughs]
LSIM So we have a big week—we have three main movies that we’ll talk about, but also some extras will squeak in to help plan your weekend movie watching and we’ll read some community reviews. And finally, after so long, we’ll get your thoughts on Sly Stallone in Cliffhanger later in the show.
MITCHELL I have a lot of thoughts. I’ve watched it three weeks ago. They’ve been stewing. They’ve been stewing... But as you said, this is a very jam-packed week. So let’s just dive right in. Let’s blast off with our first film releasing this weekend in theaters, Lightyear directed by Angus MacLane, coming just to theaters, no Disney+ on this one yet. On 31,000 watchlists on Letterboxd, this film. The synopsis: “Legendary space ranger Buzz Lightyear embarks on an intergalactic adventure alongside a group of ambitious recruits and his robot companion Sox.” Slim, what are you thinking about Lightyear?
SLIM I’m in the—I’m excited for Lightyear... You could tell the inflection of my voice can’t get any higher right now. [Mitchell laughs] I love Toy Story—everyone loves Toy Story one through three right? They love Toy Story one through three. What about Toy Story 4? What’s your story with the most recent Toy Story [4]?
MITCHELL My story with this Toy Story [4] is that I, like many people, when they announced Toy Story 4, I think especially in that period of Pixar where they were doing a lot of like sequels and, you know, Finding Dory came out, Incredibles 2 was kind of around the same time, I definitely bemoaned the announcement of Toy Story 4 because it felt like such a perfect trilogy with the ending of [Toy Story] 3. And then I saw Toy Story 4 and I’m not gonna lie, Toy Story 4 is my favorite Toy Story—
SLIM What?
MITCHELL Maybe even my favorite Pixar movie, period. Controversial opinion but I feel like Toy Story 4 is a phenomenal movie. I think that the arc that it takes of Woody and him figuring out this need to go out and be on his own and not be beholden to this need to be responsible for somebody else’s happiness and that being his place in life, him being able to become his own person and kind of the allegories that you can get into with that—with anybody, but especially with parents and their kids going off and you having to figure out your own sense of self in the world. It really struck a chord for me. So with that being said, when they announced Lightyear, I was like, “Oh, christ, what are we doing now?” [Slim laughs] But I think there still is that part of me that’s like, I mean I felt the same thing about Toy Story 4, so... maybe Lightyear will be good, I don’t know. I mean it is, it’s exciting to finally hear the story about, you know, the real human person that Buzz Lightyear, the toy, was based on, which we all were clamoring for, we all knew this toy, this toy Buzz, clearly this is a real guy, right? So where’s his story? [Mitchell laughs]
SLIM I didn’t know that, I had no idea! When they announced the Lightyear movie, I was like, “Okay, toy movie, alright,” but maybe not the case. But this is not, as you mentioned, not on Disney+. I kind of would have thought this maybe would have been a streaming film along with Soul, Luca and Turning Red—those did not get theatrical releases but Lightyear does. But, with that said, Rachel has seen it and left her review. Rachel Wagner, we’ll read that real quick: “I ittedly went into this skeptical of the whole concept. I’m still not sure it’s a movie Andy would [have] loved but as a space adventure it was entertaining. It lacks that big emotional Pixar moment but I smiled throughout and was never bored. The cat steals the film. The villain wasn’t my favorite” Thank you, Rachel.
MITCHELL Sorry, villain. Thumbs up for Sox! [Slim laughs]
SLIM Alright, so our next big release—this one was on 46,000 watchlists. There’s substantial Sundance buzz around Cha Cha Real Smooth, directed by Cooper Raiff. This is going to be on Apple TV+—I know most people listening subscribe to Apple TV+.
MITCHELL We’ve all got it.
SLIM This is a limited theatrical release. The synopsis: “Fresh out of college and stuck at his New Jersey home without a clear path forward, 22-year-old Andrew begins working as a party starter for bar/bat mitzvahs—where he strikes up a unique friendship with a young mom and her teenage daughter.” What’s the buzz behind this movie, Mitchell? There’s a lot of it.
MITCHELL A lot of buzz, a lot of buzz. Big winner at Sundance, again, Apple TV+ coming in hot with the acquisition on that one. And so, you know, the buzz is building, people were big fans of Shithouse, Cooper Raiff’s previous movie, so I think he’s got a little bit of a buzz going on on him. I saw it at Sundance—I liked it when I watched it but it kind of is one of those movies that sort of faded for me quickly after watching it. I wasn’t—I’m not so hot on it now as I was when I first saw it. I have reservations over seeing kind of another story about a young, straight, white guy, kind of well-off, who’s, you know, figuring it out... He’s not, he doesn’t have it all figured out. But maybe he will...
SLIM What white guys? When are we going to have our movie? When is it our time, Mitchell?
MITCHELL It’s time. It’s finally time. You deserve it. You’ve struggled long enough. [Mitchell & Slim laugh]
SLIM I’ve struggled long enough!
MITCHELL But yeah, so I’m not super hyped on it. But the thing that I think stands out a lot about it, is the characters around Cooper Raiff’s main character—especially the women in the movie I think are very dynamic and interesting. The woman he strikes up that friendship with a young mom is played by Dakota Johnson. I think her character is maybe more interesting than similar characters in similar films tend to be. But her daughter in the film, played by Vanessa Burghardt, I think is the absolute star of the movie. I think that as an actor, she’s so charming, she’s so relatable, she’s so—the character’s really perceptive in these really interesting ways. And I think she just has this star presence to her that you’re really drawn to her in any scene. And about halfway through the movie, she kind of disappears and it becomes more about Cooper and his character and I think that’s where the movie starts to suffer for me because I’m like, where did Vanessa Burghardt go? Like that’s the character that I want to see more of and see more focus on. But what did you think of Cha Cha Real Smooth? I know you saw it, right?
SLIM No, I have not seen Cha Cha [Real Smooth]. I’ve just been living on Letterboxd and the activity feed like everyone else, seeing these reviews come in from Sundance, people losing their minds. I will say like most, you know, white men my age, I am smitten with Dakota Johnson. I’m in some kind of trance with her. Her eyes in The Lost Daughter, my word. So I am excited to see this. And Brian Tallerico left a review: “Such a huge heart in this truly likable movie. A crowd pleaser about how people can help us figure out who we are. I being messy like this when I was 22. Sometimes I miss it. Dakota is fantastic here btw.”
MITCHELL There you go, big Dakota Johnson. And Robert Daniels from Sundance, a little bit more on my side, Robert says: “Have been thinking more on this film, and the more I consider it, the less appeal I find in it. You get the sense by watching the naïveté of the character—with his decisions that are always made with the best intentions, and the sort of saccharine contours of his character as a ‘my worst fault is I care too much’—that only a 23-year-old could have made this film. That fact is at once its appeal and its downfall to a shallow, mostly unoriginal narrative that lacks rich actions performed by real humans rather than these over-scrubbed archetypes.”
SLIM Oh my word.
MITCHELL So a little bit, a little bit of a mixed reaction, I think, from the Letterboxd community, but... it’ll be on Apple TV+ on Friday so everybody can watch it! We’ve all got it! [Slim laughs]
SLIM And I think 5,000 folks have this logged on Letterboxd right now and it’s sitting at a 4.0. So we’ll see next week where that nets out, maybe it’ll go higher, maybe we’ll go lower. We’ll see.
MITCHELL For now, you know, while we’re talking about young, straight, white dudes, let’s shift into a movie with a tagline saying “A JOURNEY BEYOND YOUR WILDEST NIGHTMARES.” This film is going to take us to some dark places! The film is Phil Tippett’s Mad God, coming out this Friday on Shudder, streaming on Shudder. On 35,000 watchlists. The synopsis: “Follow The Assassin through a forbidding world of tortured souls, decrepit bunkers and wretched monstrosities forged from the most primordial horrors of the subconscious mind. Every set, creature and effigy in this macabre masterpiece is hand-crafted and painstakingly animated using traditional stop-motion techniques. Mad God is a labor of love, a testament to the power of creative grit, and an homage to the timeless art of stop-motion animation. Ready your eyes. Ready your spirit. Prepare to meet your maker.” Slim... are you ready to meet your maker?
SLIM I’m ready to meet my maker—whoever that is, every day, and Mad God on Shudder this weekend is no different. I’ve been waiting for this movie for a long time, as you can see other people have, 35,000 watchlists. And Mia talked briefly about it last week and she has officially posted her review on Letterboxd—four stars. Let me ready just a piece of it: “Phil Tippett!!!!! Phil Tippett. Phil Tippett worked on Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Starship Troopers, RoboCop and the Twilight saga. This guy designed Jabba the Hutt and supervised the CGI vampire birth scene from Breaking Dawn: Part 1”—spoilers maybe—“(two equally important cinematic events), and in between those 30 years he was working on this ion project: an experimental stop-motion dystopian nightmare yuck-fest with no dialogue about the abject horrors of war, the body and Eraserhead baby-esque creatures. To me, that’s one of the top-three coolest things ever. Phil actually tipped it, that absolute Mad God hahahahahahaha!” Mad God, I’m very excited to watch.
MITCHELL A lot of exclamation points, a lot of excitement from Mia’s review there. [Slim laughs] I think that that’s as good of a sell as anybody can really give for Mad God. I mean, as Mia mentioned, Phil Tippett is a guy who’s been in the industry for decades and doing work on some of the biggest films that have ever been made—RoboCop, he worked on, I don’t know, Slim, if you’ve heard of RoboCop...
SLIM Number-one all-time movie right now my Letterboxd.
MITCHELL So I mean, this is a guy who, he’s been in there and the entire time he’s been working, toiling away on this ion project of his for Mad God. It’s his feature debut as a director. And so I mean, I think that’s something, you got to give respect for that. The film is, Mad God from, you know, festivals, from screenings that have already happened, it’s currently sitting at number 78 on Letterboxd official Top 250 Highest-Rated Horror Films of all time—right next to Videodrome and An American Werewolf in London, so I mean, that’s pretty good company to be in.
SLIM My gosh. Videodrome, retire. Alright, so we have other movies that we want to spotlight this week. Busy week. Spiderhead, Joseph Kosinski on Netflix. This is streaming this weekend, 11,000 watchlists. Joseph Kosinski, maverick, ever heard of him? [Mitchell laughs] “A prisoner in a state-of-the-art penitentiary begins to question the purpose of the emotion-controlling drugs he’s testing for a pharmaceutical genius.” I watched this late last night, I told my Apex Legends buddies, “Can’t play tonight. I have to watch Spiderhead.” And it’s still very bizarre to me that Kosinski and Miranda—the cinematographer—essentially saved cinema weeks ago, with Top Gun: Maverick, and they have a totally different movie streaming on Netflix this weekend. You know, Covid, et cetera, et cetera. I liked it. I thought it was fine. I would have preferred a more low budget. Like this looks like a big budget. It’s got, you know, Miles Teller, Chris Hemsworth as the two leads. I probably would have preferred a little more low-budge affair on Shudder, maybe like a Shudder find, than like a big-budget, full-featured version of a New Yorker article.
MITCHELL You would think that because Kosinski has the biggest movie in the world, that there would be a little bit more promotion for this, it’s kind of sliding in on Netflix a little bit under the radar. But yeah, I think Hemsworth, I think is really fun in this. I think that he’s really well cast as this like mad genius—he’s almost like a charismatic Frankenstein messing with people, without getting too much into spoilers. But I think it’s a fun watch. It’s definitely not saving cinema as [Top Gun:] Maverick, as we all know [Top Gun:] Maverick has done—they really did it. They did it! [Slim laughs]
SLIM They did it!
MITCHELL But if you’re not going in with that expectation, I think that it’s a decent watch, it’s a fun watch. One other film dropping this week on Hulu, if you’re not in the Netflix game, but you’ve got Hulu, you’ve got a good one coming for you: Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, directed by Sophie Hyde, on 8.6 thousand watchlists on Letterboxd. The synopsis: “IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO TRY SOMETHING NEW. Nancy Stokes doesn’t know good sex. Whatever it may be, Nancy, a retired schoolteacher, is pretty sure she has never had it, but she is determined to finally do something about that. She even has a plan: It involves an anonymous hotel room, and a young sex worker who calls himself Leo Grande.” This movie premiered at Sundance, popped-off big in the Letterboxd Slack. What are your feelings on Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Slim?
SLIM I’m neutral for Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. The only knowledge that I have of this movie is the nuclear heat in the Letterboxd Slack about this movie. There’s an electrifying positivity about this. So it’s on Hulu, so I mean, even that alone could push people to give this movie a shot. What about you? Where do you stand on this one?
MITCHELL When I first saw it, the first thing that I did when I finished it, I texted my mom and I was like, “Hey, I just watched this movie at Sundance. I know you’re gonna love whenever it comes out. I’m not sure when it’s coming out. But like, whenever it comes out, I know you’re gonna love it.” So the other day, I texted my mom and I was like, “Hey, that movie I told you about is coming out on Hulu on Friday, so make sure that you watch it.” [Slim laughs]
SLIM We need their Letterboxd. We need to see what the review is going to be from your mom.
MITCHELL Honestly, I should get my mom, she should be on Letterboxd. She’s always texting me about the movies that she just saw. “I just watched Top Gun: Maverick! It’s amazing!”
SLIM Is it five stars?
MITCHELL Probably! My mom—not to get too into it—but my mom does, like my mom and I before the pandemic would go to the movies together all the time and so she’s still going to the theaters even though I’m not right now. You know, okay mom, I appreciate it. [Slim & Mitchell laugh] But like she—
SLIM She just takes selfies of her in the theater alone, sends a text to you.
MITCHELL “Weird that you’re not here, nerd!” [Slim & Mitchell laugh] But she keeps a note in her Notes app on her phone of the movies that we saw in theaters together with her star ratings on them.
SLIM That’s awesome.
MITCHELL And I’m like, “Mom, literally that is what Letterboxd is, get on Letterboxd. Come on.” [Slim laughs] Linda Beaupre, make it happen, please.
SLIM Linda, please! [Mitchell laughs] Last one we’ll spotlight this week—lightning round style before we move on—Official Competition, co-directed [by] Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn. In theaters, nearly 8,000 watchlists. A synopsis: “THE BEST DIRECTOR, THE BEST ACTORS, THE BEST IDEA? When a billionaire entrepreneur impulsively decides to create an iconic movie, he demands the best. Renowned filmmaker Lola Cuevas is recruited to mastermind this ambitious endeavour. Completing the all-star team are two actors with massive talent but even bigger egos”. So I watched this last week. I gave it four stars, I had a ton of fun. Penélope Cruz plays a director—Penélope Cruz with curly red hair... My life is forever changed, I think, with this styling. I had a lot of fun with this movie.
MITCHELL Yeah, it’s a good ride. Penélope Cruz, once again, as she did with Parallel Mothers last year, she’s doing it for the gays, we appreciate it. She’s just getting in there, showing that representation, it’s very much appreciated. It’s a fun movie. It’s like a showbiz satire, for people who are into that kind of thing. And there are definitely like, some bits—there’s a bit with the two guys playing the main actors in the film, and they’re rehearsing a scene and Penélope Cruz as director, puts them underneath this like huge boulder that’s hanging above them to make them nervous and create this tension in the scene. And it’s absolutely hilarious. And that’s just like, the movie is basically stitched together with a lot of like bits like that. Just these interesting, weird ways of this director and these two actors figuring out scenes and having these personalities that clash not very well. [Slim laughs]
SLIM Yeah, I thought it was hilarious. It really surprised me. But last week, we had a ton of releases out as well. Jurassic World Dominion, Colin Trevorrow, the legend himself. [Jurassic World] Dominion currently sitting at a 2.5 average right now on Letterboxd. Kate Rose’s review, spotlight a few: “This is profoundly stupid and even manages to be boring at times. It could have and should have been at least 45 minutes shorter. But you still get to see some dinos fight and that’s pretty cool.”
MITCHELL Shoutout Gabb’s review: “My favorite part of seeing this in theaters was seeing all the happy people come out of Top Gun: Maverick. Two stars for the movie and a heart for Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and the Jurassic Park theme” No matter what movie it’s in, it still is nice to hear that theme.
SLIM My wife and I watched Jurassic World together last week and she was like irate when the Jurassic Park park came on. [Mitchell laughs] She’s like, “They don’t deserve to use this music.”
MITCHELL They don’t deserve it. [Slim laughs] Colin, damn you!
SLIM So if you want to have your reviews potentially spotlighted on the show, you can tag them “Weekend Watchlist”. Hustle, sitting at a 3.6 average, the Sandman, on Netflix. When are you making ton of watch Hustle? Have you done it yet, Mitchell?
MITCHELL I haven’t done it yet. But I am genuinely quite excited to watch it. So that’s definitely gonna be happening sooner rather than later. I did want to shout out Mitch Alridge’s review of Hustle—mostly because, you know, great name, great name Mitch Alridge. Great, whatever your parents were thinking, they really nailed it. [Slim laughs] Mitch’s review: “Two things we know Adam Sandler loves: 1. Basketball 2. Being a dad.” There you go! That’s all you need! [Slim laughs] Basketball, being a dad—the two essential things for cinema.
SLIM This is the year for dads. This is the dad renaissance—dadassance. It’s been a Pratt-Renaissance, this is a dadassance. And The Janes that we had talked about last night, highly recommended. This is the highest sitting average for those releases last week, 3.8, and that’s now on HBO Max. But there’s—we talked about rumors kicking off the show—there are rumors that you finally sat down to watch Everything Everywhere All at Once. It’s a long time coming. We’re ready to hear about it.
MITCHELL It’s been a long time coming. Samm and I, the moment that we could grab it. And... surprise, pretty good movie. [Slim laughs] I laughed. I cried. I hooted and hollered. I thought about my loved ones and the value they have in my life. But I would say more than anything else, Slim, I developed a massive crush on Ke Huy Quan, who is just an absolute treasure. Slim, I don’t have children, but if I did, I would leave my children in a moment to run away with Ke Huy Quan. Please. Call me. Call me. [Slim laughs]
SLIM Ke, we know you listen to this podcast, okay?
MITCHELL We know!
SLIM Make the call.
MITCHELL Let’s head into our weekly check in on The Letterboxd top 50 of 2022 list, curated by our good old pal Jack, to see what is at the top of the list of things released this year. What’s moving, what’s shakin’. Slim, is there anything to note from the updates this week?
SLIM One new entry this week from Jack—as always, thanks to Jack for putting this together. Hirokazu Koreeda’s NEON for at least in the US. So NEON, we all know how to track those NEON releases. So it’s only a matter of time before we see this movie.
MITCHELL Yeah, I’m super stoked for this. I literally have a poster of Shoplifters, Hirokazu Koreeda’s 2018 movie that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, on the wall in my bedroom. So Broker, you’re not gonna find somebody more excited for Broker than me, I think. I’m super stoked for it. Glad that is just getting, picking up more and more positive buzz as it’s coming out, you know, in Asia and everything. So super stoked. NEON... get me a screener. [Slim & Mitchell laugh]
SLIM The official quote of Mitchell from Weekend Watchlist, we can slot in different distributors in place of NEON for future weeks. [Mitchell laughs] So the final segment of this show, every week, we talk about our watchlists. We’ll go, we’ll shuffle our watchlists from movies that are streaming and we’ll watch at the end of the show. And we’ll spotlight some community reviews for friends that are also shuffling. So last time we were together, I shuffled my own watchlist and I got You Won’t Be Alone, Goran Stolevski. And this turned out to be an almost Terrence Malick-like exploration of a young witch. What was the Terrence—was it A Hidden Life? That kind of like wide-angle lens film where the fields and the land, I think that was his, right?
MITCHELL Yeah, he’s been doing that for a while, for like a little while now. His collaborations with Lubezki, in the last decade or so, it’s very much that, that aesthetic.
SLIM So visually, just picture that but instead it’s a young witch. So she’s exploring life after taking on different forms and different bodies. She had lived hidden away by her mother until she was sixteen. So she didn’t really know anything about anything. And there’s an older witch that follows her around that was burned at a young age and she’s pretty much just miserable constantly. She’s like telling her like, “This life isn’t for you. You’re gonna blow it. Everyone hates you.” I thought it was gorgeous. You can almost watch it without the subtitles and still have this story come through you, the emotion of it. So I gave three and a half stars—the Gemma line. I liked it. Streaming on, actually believe it or not, streaming on I think Peacock right now.
MITCHELL Peacock, Apple TV+, everything... everything that you’re looking for!
SLIM Enough about me. We need to hear about Cliffhanger. This is what the people want.
MITCHELL Cliffhanger. For those who don’t know, directed by Renny Harlin, 1993, starring Sly Stallone. “A year after losing his friend in a tragic 4,000-foot fall, a former ranger and his partner are called to return to the same peak to rescue a group of stranded climbers, only to learn the climbers are actually thieving hijackers who are looking for boxes full of money.” What?! That’s the worst that could happen! It is a very fun movie. I watched it on 4K Blu-ray and the transfer is gorgeous. So the movie takes place in these mountains, these icy mountains, Sly Stallone just free-soloing up these cliff faces and I was stunned. The opening of this movie—I’m sure people who have seen this movie many before me, know exactly what I’m talking about. The opening of this movie is absolutely jaw-dropping and I found myself, throughout the movie, the plot and the characters, maybe there’s not a lot of heavy lifting there in the script. It was blowing my mind. It’s a really fun movie. John Lithgow plays the main villain and he’s making some choices with his accent in this that I found very interesting. [Slim laughs]
SLIM Yes!
MITCHELL So I was just really impressed by him. It’s a very fun, it’s a very, very fun watch. Slim, have you seen Cliffhanger?
SLIM I have. I watched it last year for the first time, maybe since I was a kid. But man, so many famous, iconic scenes and shots of him like upside down on that rope. Oh my god. So we’ll spotlight some reviews before we shuffle again. Liam watched Pleasantville: “Why can’t more movies have a use of color that makes me gasp every single time color is used. For a movie that I’ve been interested in seeing for a while this was pretty great. Some really cool uses of color of course but also some awesome camera angles and shots. The ‘Across the Universe’ cover at the end is really the frosting on the cake.”
MITCHELL I would like shout out Kyle’s review of The Art of Racing in the Rain. The Milo Ventimiglia dog movie that we all very well. Kyle’s review: “Like what is this movie? Why am I here? Who hurt us? I need a vacation. Sad-dog voiceover movies have always just not worked for me, I think my friend Gavin was right when he said I have too many random films on my watchlist.” [Slim laughs] Which I think Slim might relate to that. But The Art of Racing in the Rain, seeing that on the “Weekend Watchlist” tag on Letterboxd was such like a flashback for me, because I don’t watch trailers anymore now that I’m not seeing movies in theaters, but I seeing that trailer a thousand times and the dog in that movie is voiced by Kevin Costner, which is like, the weirdest decision. And I just always the end of the trailer for that movie is Milo Ventimiglia and the dog driving down the road in this like convertible with the top down. And Kevin Costner’s voiceover just going, “Faster Denny, faster...” [Slim laughs] And it’s the funniest thing in the world for me. Watch the trailer for The Art of Racing in the Rain on YouTube, if you haven’t seen it.
SLIM It sounds horrifying, based on that description, I will say. So now we’ll go to our watchlist. And you can us as well if you want to watch something from your watchlist that maybe has been just chilling there for too long. You can go to Service and filter by Stream Only, if you so choose, and then go to sort by Shuffle. And the first movie that you get, now you have to watch that before we meet again. But full disclosure. I’m actually not shuffling this week. I’m going to be camping this weekend with my loving family, so I’m not sure if I’ll have time to weasel it in. So Mitchell, what are you shuffling and watching? [shuffle sound plays]
MITCHELL I have shuffled my watchlist. I have gotten the film Vigilante from 1982 directed by William Lustig. The tagline: “YOU’RE NOT SAFE ANYMORE.” Uh oh. The synopsis: “New York City factory worker Eddie Marino is a solid citizen and regular guy, until the day a sadistic street gang brutally assaults his wife and murders his child.” Jesus. [Mitchell laugh] “When a corrupt judge sets the thugs free, Eddie goes berserk and vows revenge.” This kind of sounds like that Kevin Bacon movie, Death Sentence. The reason this was on my watchlist, a 4K recently came out from Blue Underground, that I picked up, that I was very excited to pick up. Robert Forster is the lead in this movie, my beloved, RIP Robert Forster. So I’m very stoked to check this out. It’s streaming on Tubi, I’ll be watching the 4K. Slim, you had a reaction to it though, any thoughts on Vigilante?
SLIM This is one of my favorite kinds of movies, because it’s streaming on Arrow, Tubi, Voodoo, Pluto and Shudder.
MITCHELL All the good ones.
SLIM That is the key to knowing you’re in for a treat. And some of my close friends have this rated very highly. My buddy Dale is four and a half stars: “This flick is everything.” And Jwhale has this, “The scan on Shudder looks amazing.” So, there you go.
MITCHELL Very excited for Vigilante—stay tuned for my thoughts on it. [Slim laughs]
[Izon by Trent Walton fades in, plays alone, fades out]
SLIM Thanks so much for listening to Weekend Watchlist, brought to you by The Letterboxd Show. You can follow Mitchell, Slim—that’s me—and our HQ page on Letterboxd using the links in the episode notes.
MITCHELL Thanks to our crew and thanks to Letterboxd member Sophie Shin for the episode transcript. And thanks to you for listening. Weekend Watchlist is a Tapedeck production.
[Tapedeck bumper plays] This is a Tapedeck podcast.