What’s Aged the Best?
Corporate culture; consent; white-male anxiety; Dennis Miller; entrances and suspense
In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 01:00:57Read transcript
- Aged best begins with casting Dennis Miller and allowing a comedian to perform his own style, alongside affection for his HBO show and The Net role.
- Dennis Miller's brief appearances and familiar comic voice are an aged-best choice.
- Tom's small chair, mocked tie, and steadily diminishing confidence effectively undercut his expected promotion over the course of the day; weekday title cards reinforce the progression.
- The dehumanizing corporate culture, embodied by Dylan Baker’s automaton-like executive, is an aged-best choice.
- The discussion of consent that can begin or end at any moment is an aged-best choice, recalling later Me Too debates and the long history of this conversation.
- The film's clumsy but substantive treatment of social issues is compared with Philadelphia; its anxious straight-white-male rhetoric is seen as anticipating later public discourse.
- Meredith’s going-down elevator entrance is praised.
- Sneaking into a hotel room while its occupant approaches remains an effective suspense device.
- Tom's sudden shower after the encounter is both suspicious and compelling filmmaking as he hides scratches and his wife mentions Meredith's call. A DeRay Davis routine about habitual showers is used to explain the attempted cover.