The first five minutes and opening credits are liked for setting everything up and introducing a whole bunch of people, which is actual work; the funeral opening tips its hand that somebody dies and you forget it completely until the string is pulled at the end, though the players look like they aged far more than a decade, with Wood Harris in a bald toupee.
The end-of-film updates make almost everyone a municipal employee, and the cemetery walk is called a rip-off of Saving Private Ryan from two years earlier.
Julius and Gary yelling at each other, with the 'I'm going to get mine' and 'attitude reflect leadership, Captain' exchange, is nominated: it makes you care about both of them before you know whose side you are on.
The Gettysburg speech is nominated as unreal, manipulative and yet an incredible coach move; the film came out right before one host reached high school and every coach then wanted to be Coach Boone, denying water; coaches could make up stats, as Boone does with his older brothers.
The 'I don't care if you like each other, but you will respect each other' speech is given to a staff every year by one host, and it leads to the practice where the team finally comes together with 'left side, strong side', after which, the next morning, racism is over, until the bus drop-off shows it is not.
Donald Faison's Petey being switched to defense, the comeback, and Sunshine trying to buy everybody dinner at the segregated diner are nominated; the diner scene is called exceptionally well done because Ronnie Bass's 'I didn't know' against Petey's 'I told you' is smart commentary on how white people receive what black people are telling them.
The Boone and Yost confrontation about coddling, with 'the world don't give a damn how sensitive these kids are, especially the young black kids', is paired with the diner as two parallel moments that hold up, still real in 2019, and the only scene where the two coaches are not just trading 'worry about your offense'.
Rev getting hurt and Ronnie Bass coming in is a really good minute and a half, with the 'when I was 15 I lost my mother and my father in the same month' speech; the soundtrack introduced one host to rock music such as Credence and Fogarty (as transcribed) at twelve, and Sunshine throwing a defender over him is called arguably the best block in sports movie history, with the Samoan lineman's block in Innecessary Roughness (as transcribed) offered as a rival.
The last 80 seconds of the championship game are riveting to one host and awful and inexplicable to another: up four with a minute twenty left, the team runs a play, the runner fumbles, and like Hoosiers it is a sports-movie trope; the final play pairs up every white-black relationship at once, with Ronnie blocking for Rev and the two daughters in the stands, which the hosts joke led 37 years later to President Obama.
Yost's 'you were the right man for the job' and Denzel's 'you're a Hall of Famer in my book' close two hours of movie, and the hosts would gladly trade a real Hall of Fame induction for Denzel saying it, suggesting he go on Cameo for 50,000 a message.
The locker room mama-joke scene with Lou Elastic (as transcribed) is a massive one: Bertier is serious at first, then realizes it is a mama joke, Sunshine kisses him, Gosling dances in his own world, and Ray is overwhelmed by the progress and has to get out of there.
Asked for the most rewatchable scene, the pick is 'left side, strong side': it gives goosebumps every time, texting ten people 'left side' gets seven 'strong side' replies, and Gettysburg into that practice is a strong five and a half minutes; smaller favorites are Denzel arguing about the veer with his daughter over game tape and Julius visiting Gary's house, where a cop praises him and he lifts the mom, since the film is built from one-minute vignettes rather than ten-minute scenes.
Denzel calling Bertier and Ray the Racist Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in front of everyone, clapping all by himself, is so much fun it should have been added to the most rewatchable scene.
Asked to define the award, the guest says it is who does the most with the least, and does not require the person to be a lunatic. — Chuck Klosterman
Lunatics are nonetheless often the winners because of the hosts' taste; the nominees are Jack Nicholson, Joan Cusack, Lois Childs (as transcribed) and the TV music composer guys; the minority pick is Cusack, one host going with her as memorable for how little she is on screen and for the Juergen Klinsmann slide under the filing cabinet.
One of the composer guys is Mark Shaman (as transcribed), among the most successful composers in Hollywood, who wrote all the songs in Mary Poppins Returns; the 'Big finish!' clip is played, and the scene is called the most sitcom-y of all time, proof the director made sitcoms.
Jack Nicholson is proposed as maybe the greatest Hitchcock performer in American movies, one who can take over films he is not the star of, as in Reds, A Few Good Men, Terms of Endearment and the Joker, and this is probably his smallest part ever, just reading the news and one office visit; one host makes him his vote for the award; it is a lost art Denzel Washington does not practice, though Cruise did it in Tropic Thunder, and Denzel should play Jessup if NBC stages A Few Good Men.
Nicholson's whole career has been like that, back to the small memorable role in the Fonda film; a second participant votes for him, making Nicholson the majority choice; sheer charisma carrying four weird scenes in a movie you are not important in is a category only Brando shares; De Niro in The Untouchables does not count because he is the bad guy; Nicholson's best scene is slinking away around the desk during the layoffs with no dialogue, something George Clooney could not do with the same impact, though Damon does it in Interstellar.
Late in the segment William Hurt's dad is raised as a Dion Waiters candidate, pretty good for being in Tucson; the host had him coming up later as a 'that guy'.
Did Will Ferrell's character really last with the therapist? Should they make Step Brothers 2? Is there a comedy whose sequel is better than the original?
Whether Will Ferrell's character really lasted with the therapist is waved off because it is a comedy, with a guarantee that Andrea Savage would be in any Step Brothers 2.
Asked whether they should make Step Brothers 2, two hosts say no, though one clarifies that does not mean not going; the challenge to name a comedy whose second film tops the first draws Godfather 2 as a joke, Another 48 Hours and Beverly Hills Cop 2 as nos, 'the clumps' (as transcribed) as a tease, and the observation that there was never a Stripes 2.
The Equalizer is named as a sequel better than its first film. — Bill Simmons
After the Equalizer tease, the defense is that it is really good, with Denzel Washington as a Lyft driver in Boston.
The who-won-the-movie take is saved for a phone call to Shea; a suggestion that maybe Ethan Hawke won is met with a no, followed by the garbled line 'Ethan Hawke's Denzel Washington won this week' (as transcribed), and a joke that Shea might come in with a Scott Glenn take.
On the call, the in-studio hosts say they saved who won the movie but already think they know the answer; the first question instead is whether this is the guest's favorite Denzel movie, and it is.
Shea is told this is Denzel's finest achievement and that he has written about it; no formal declaration or vote on who won is ever made, so Denzel is implied rather than declared.
Nominees recited: 'King Kong ain't got shit on me', noted as an ad lib, 'man the fuck up', 'finish that shit', 'all that jelly no toast', 'it ain't checkers' and about a hundred others; it has got to be the King Kong one.
The 'I'm the police, I run shit here, you just live here' speech is recited through to the King Kong line; a Ringer column by Shea covered the whole speech; the ad-lib is admired as pushing a scene that was not going far enough, and 'I'm the zigzag man' from the car is a good random one among many great Denzel pop-offs.
In the appended interview excerpt, the actor reports people throwing 'Jake, you got the money, Jake?' and 'King Kong ain't got nothing on me' at him pretty much daily, putting it in his top three.
The near-assault rescue and the wallet Jake carries around are flimsy; Alonzo's intent to frame Jake for Roger's murder only becomes clear after the three wise men lunch; Alonzo stays after getting $4 million; the wise men and Russians corruption plot is another movie; the Vegas killing is never shown; Denzel kept replaying the Alonzo persona like Pacino after Scent of a Woman
The movie hinges on a weird near-assault scene in which Jake, on PCP, sees something, saves a girl from two crackheads and randomly picks up a wallet he then carries around until it saves his life; the premise that Alonzo is breaking in a kid he will frame for Roger's murder is flimsy and only becomes clear after the lunch with the three wise men.
Alonzo gets his hands on $4 million and stays rather than leaving the country; the defense that he has five kids is waved off, he loves the streets and cannot get away from them, and there are a million why-are-you-doing-that moments that only the compelling performances carry.
The police corruption, the three wise men and the Russians are another movie the film only dips into; it is rewatchable because at any 17-minute interval a Denzel-Hawke scene is about to start, the five most rewatchable scenes staggered roughly every 20 minutes.
Not seeing what happened in Vegas with Alonzo killing the Russian is a nit, since it is such a big part of the movie; one host would drop the first five minutes with Hawke and his wife and open with a Vegas prelude, then the credits.
A tiny bit of Scent of a Woman is in this: Denzel stumbled on a new character with King Kong and then became that guy in about seven more movies, the way Pacino became the Scent of a Woman guy over and over.
Ethan Hawke gets an initial no; the alternative apex offered is Before Sunset, the second one, which came after Training Day, with Before Midnight and Before Sunrise also liked, Reality Bites arguable as his movie-star apex, and Boyhood, where he is amazing but not on screen much.
Whether who you are married to counts prompts the ruling, deferred to the person who invented the show and the category, that it is only about performance, not life; still, the case for 2001 is made, a hot celebrity couple and a respected actor newly proven in action, and one host switches their pick to 01 while another stays with Before Sunset.
Hawke's turn in Fuqua's Brooklyn's Finest, basically playing Alonzo, gets a shout-out as an idea hatched at 2:30 in the morning after eight beers.
Antoine Fuqua is a yes: a good career, but how do you top directing Denzel at his peak performance, something to tell your grandkids; The Equalizer 2 is the most anticipated movie of the year for one host's father, Dr. Bill, who loves Denzel and The Equalizer and should have been on the episode, and of the four Denzel-Fuqua movies this is by far the best.
Eva Mendes and the other supporting people are not at their peaks here; Scott Glenn's apex is The Right Stuff, when in the 80s he looked like a potential top-tier actor.
Denzel gets a yes from one host; others answer Malcolm X, a movie about one man featuring three primary characters played by the same actor, a 19-year-old gangster, a 25-year-old militant and a 30-year-old spiritual leader; the Training Day case is that Denzel, already America's most beloved actor with a unanimous approval rating, lacked an Oscar and a Michael Jordan 1992 Finals moment and then played a part nobody else could in a movie that should not have worked; it is called neck and neck, a total coin flip.
Favorite recent Denzel: Flight is growing on one host, the two Travolta movies are liked and Unstoppable is called better with a fun Chris Pine; Denzel inhabits characters for better and worse, probably smoking for three months here and drinking through Flight, and he struggles only when he tries something smaller that recesses from essential Denzel-ness, as with Roman J. Israel.
On the phone, the acting apex is Malcolm X for a single performance, but the cultural apex, the Denzel moment, is Training Day for sure: everyone followed along waiting for the Oscar, Halle won the same year right before him, and his two-birds-with-one-stone comment played out perfectly.
The 'they knew' bit is skipped because there is really one person, 'Smiley's a crazy poker buddy' as the transcript has it, which reads as Smiley's crazy poker buddy, really feeling it and ratcheted up, as if Antoine told him to go up two more levels and passed him some of the PCP, out of control.
The white kid in the driver's seat of the Volkswagen Beetle, apologizing, was really solid and is thought to be Fran Kranz, Joss Whedon's guy.
Denzel has no chance of landing in the overacting category, even though he draws out the diner scene and the two-gun scene feels like an Oscar play; the diner is the only case to make, since the character was not fully figured out and he is doing the Jay Pharoah version of Denzel with all the tics rather than just being Alonzo.
Fuqua gave the poker-scene actors instructions without telling Hawke, who did not understand the card game; 'fuck' is used 211 times; the opening diner was also the Seven diner where Morgan Freeman and Gwyneth Paltrow meet; the studio wanted to cut the three wise men scene
During the card game Antoine Fuqua gave the gangster actors instructions without telling Hawke, who did not understand what game they were playing, so he would seem more confused; the over/under on the word fuck draws guesses of 72 and 47 against an answer of 211.
The opening coffee shop was also used in Seven for Morgan Freeman and Gwyneth Paltrow's first meeting, two scenes with a lot of dark humanity between two people; an oral history of that diner is proposed, and, in the spirit of buying the Boogie Nights house, buying the diner on 7th and putting the Ringer offices there.
The studio wanted to cut the three wise men out and the scene was fought for and kept, allegedly; it is one of the half scenes in the movie but thought necessary.
Asked whether the research covered Hawke knowing Denzel would slam the diner table, it did not, but the guess is he did not know and Denzel did it to throw him off; the King Kong line was definitely ad-libbed, and in the poker scene the rules were mixed up on Hawke and the other actors told to do weird things so he would be confused and uneasy.
Woven through the ZipRecruiter read: casting Tobey Maguire in the Ethan Hawke role would have been disastrous; Maguire spent two months on undercover narcotics runs, lost weight and got in crazy shape, but Anton Fuqua (as transcribed) was never 100% sold; he would have crushed Smiley in the poker scene holding pocket rockets.
Davis Guggenheim was set to direct with Sam Jackson and Matt Damon as the stars; that movie wins no Oscar, and Jackson would have been almost a parody of Denzel, red meat and meta where Denzel feels real and cinematic, though one host would have watched it and thinks it could have worked.
Eminem and Christian Bale allegedly turned down Jake Hoyt; Eminem is really good in 8 Mile and very funny in Funny People, and his career would differ if he had gone Will Smith and left music, but he could not have played this role, and it is hard to imagine him punked for 90 minutes or fighting Denzel, since he is pretty skinny.
The Dr. Dre needle drop and the film's L.A. feel; the two lead performances; the anti-hero crime storytelling that anticipated The Shield; Fuqua's modern, propulsive direction; Ethan Hawke's career moment
Hearing the Dr. Dre song takes one host straight back to 2001, the second decade of hip hop, with Dre then turning up in the movie later; the music and the legitimately L.A. feel are that host's pick.
The two performances discussed for thirty minutes still work perfectly; the film sits close to where TV was heading, the anti-hero era of The Shield that became consistent in cop and drug-dealer stories, and the Denzel performance splits the difference between that and the Sidney Lumet and French Connection documentary grit of the 70s, in a period with fewer crime movies than anyone in the room would like.
The direction is totally modern with nothing dated, like Fight Club; Fuqua is slick and bright, Hollywood dirty, with great pace and propulsive movies even when they are not good, a cross between Michael Bay and William Friedkin, and the locations are authentic even though parts of this movie do not hang together.
Ethan Hawke has aged nicely, this being the next step after Reality Bites, Before Sunrise and Gattaca; they will give him an Oscar at 70 for a grand old man performance even though he deserved one for six or seven movies, like a player who never won the MVP but could have.
The new category is introduced as something these podcasts have circled before; it is expected to be really funny for a Roadhouse episode, with a case that Ben Gazzara was robbed in 1989 and for the Jeff Healy Band (as transcribed) for Best Original Song.
Several of those nominees are liked, In the Bedroom a lot and Gosford Park pretty good, but Fuqua and Training Day should have been nominated; Lord of the Rings was a tough hang that soaked up nominations for years in a way Star Wars never could, even though one host would take Star Wars a hundred times.
Early validation from a nomination might have set Fuqua on a different course, since the movies he made after this resemble Training Day; Denzel's Best Actor win over Russell Crowe, Sean Penn in I Am Sam, Will Smith in Ali and Tom Wilkinson in In the Bedroom is fine, and Halle Berry won for Monsters Ball (as transcribed).
As in Rain Man, where Tom Cruise is the best person in the movie but Dustin Hoffman won, the performer who blows everyone away obscures how good the other one was; Hawke had to avoid being blown away by Denzel, be on PCP for half an hour and be believable in the fight scenes, which is likened to Chris Paul playing on a hamstring.
Nobody here would pick Kingsley in Sexy Beast over Hawke, though he is good in it; two-hander movies like Butch and Sundance, The Sting, The Color of Money and Rain Man raise the question of how filmmakers present the straight man, and Redford is seen as more important than Hoffman in All the President's Men.
Hawke is in more scenes and the movie starts in his house, so he could be argued as the lead with Denzel supporting, but really both were best actors, and doing it otherwise is like making Geena Davis supporting in Thelma and Louise.
Later, on the phone, the Hawke loss to Jim Broadbent is called terrible and one of the few times an actor was right there with Denzel, alongside Viola in Fences, Morgan Freeman in Glory and Hanks in Philadelphia; he should have gotten that award.
Earlier, the hosts note Denzel had only a supporting Oscar before this, having been passed over for Malcolm X, He Got Game, The Hurricane and Remember the Titans.
