Catherine Zeta-Jones is the new addition and carries the most somber part of the film; this participant finds her delightful, with more chemistry with Pitt than Roberts has with Clooney. — Chris Ryan
Clooney and Roberts have chemistry for a couple further along; Zeta-Jones and Pitt also have chemistry, but in her scenes you are not with the crew and want to spend time with the other guys. — Amanda Dobbins
Making Isabel the daughter of Lamarck at the end is a bridge too far. — Chris Ryan
Another view: Zeta-Jones is not well served opposite a cast that already did this once; she worked with Soderbergh several times, hasn't made a movie in seven years, and her best moment remains High Fidelity. — Sean Fennessey
The hosts call themselves mixed on her; one found her very appealing on rewatch. — Chris Ryan
The reunion of the crew is nominated; Scott Khan (as transcribed) is called really good, and the 'it was one job that we did together' proprietary-stance exchange is quoted, with a take where a cast member cracks up kept in. — Chris Ryan
The breakdown of the Vanderwood heist is nominated for Damon objecting to calling someone a freak and invoking Emily Dickinson; it plays like an Altman scene of overlapping dialogue, and subtitles reveal Pitt muttering 'don't touch my food.' — Chris Ryan
The Matsui meeting with Robbie Coltrane is a five-minute scene in which no one knows what anyone is saying, capped by Damon reciting the lyrics to Kashmir. — Chris Ryan
The train-station banter about how old Rusty is ('How old do you think I am?') is nominated. — Chris Ryan
Rusty and Danny getting drunk on red wine and watching Happy Days dubbed in Italian is nominated, with praise for the Potsie dubbing. — Chris Ryan
Bruce Willis in the hotel, the whole Tess-comes-to-Rome stretch, the Faberge theft and the Night Fox's capoeira dance all feed the last 25 minutes before the final reveals. — Chris Ryan
The reintroduction of the crew is singled out, especially Danny in the bank at the start, which has Thomas Crown Affair energy; his choosing not to rob the bank pivots the film from a grittier American tale to an international extravaganza. — Sean Fennessey
The bank opening is also a nod to the start of Out of Sight; Rusty visiting Tover Grace (as transcribed) and the matador-suit stand-up routine are further nominees. — Sean Fennessey
The film's title cards and timelines do not add up, but it is a movie of flashing moments, such as the Night Fox's story about Lamarca and the American businessman played by producer Jerry Weintraub. — Sean Fennessey
Cherry Jones's moment with Damon in the truck ('You told Dad') is one of the funniest in the film, as is her chewing gum when she enters the jail cell.
Runners-up: the Matsui meeting as a distillation of these movies, with Clooney's deadpan stillness and Damon's Kashmir timing, and Pitt and Clooney watching Happy Days, which this participant's husband called a beautiful movie about male intimacy. — Amanda Dobbins
The Happy Days scene is inverted minutes later when Rusty bares his soul and a tired Danny pays him no attention. — Amanda Dobbins
The pick is the whole Tess-goes-to-Rome sequence; another voice says it would be their pick too, and the bit is described as a whiteboard idea the movie was built around.
The bit is a genuine risk, compared to Curb Your Enthusiasm casting real people as bad versions of themselves; the meta aspect is suggested as why Bill wanted this as a flawed rewatchable. — Sean Fennessey
Viewers either find it delightful or ask whether Danny looks just like George Clooney if Tess looks like Julia Roberts; the message-board reading is mocked.
The scene needs outside knowledge: Damon recounting The Sixth Sense to Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts's husband's real name being Danny, and the real name of Willis's daughter Tallulah. — Amanda Dobbins
Damon's and Roberts's reactions when Willis walks in make the scene; Roberts's face is called possibly some of the greatest American acting, and they reportedly tried 23 versions of the scene. — Chris Ryan
The Marcy publicist exchange is praised for its specificity about studio versus personal publicists on a European press tour.
Tess's accent coaching and the Cockney accent draw a Dick Van Dyke comparison.
The Julia Roberts hotel scene is declared the most rewatchable scene, with the whole Tess experience close behind. — Chris Ryan
Roberts is underused in the first film, but here she joins the crew as the 12th, as in the paint-mixing 'too much ox blood' moment.
In the formal casting what-ifs, most having been covered already, the one new item is that Fincher cast Emily Ratajkowski on a recommendation from Ben Affleck, which the hosts find the funniest thing they have heard and worth a shout-out, joking about hiring her as a football writer to cover the NFC.
Jon Hamm was going to play Nick but Matthew Weiner would not let him out of his contract for the last season of Mad Men, the way The Office accommodated Ed Helms filming The Hangover at night; the part could have ignited Hamm's career as Don Draper in a bad marriage, though whether Hamm would have done the side dick is called the only question that matters.
The case against Hamm is that the role needs innate likability, and nobody ever simply liked Don Draper even if Hamm is loved in The Town and Baby Driver; the counter is that Nick is supposed to seem rationally likable yet somehow repellent, which Hamm could swing.
The relationship we have with Hamm is with Don Draper, while with Affleck it is with Affleck the public person; a Hamm version would still have been a good movie, because the film is about marriage, what women and men say they want, stardom and the media, bigger than Fincher's narcissism explanation; another voice thinks Hamm would have been good but loves that Affleck did this at the point of his completed comeback.
Tom Cruise as Nick Dunn is floated, with one voice calling the idea amazing, and rejected by the rest: he is too short and lacks Affleck's bulk and wide shoulders, you need to believe Nick can keep up with Amy, you need to see his belly exposed when he rolls over, and nobody can picture Cruise sitting down for Battlefield 3; Clooney fifteen years earlier is possible but a little too skinny.
Reese Witherspoon obtained the film rights intending to produce and play Amy, met Fincher and somehow gave the part up; the hosts cannot picture her riding Neil Patrick Harris covered in blood, finding her too earnest, open and likable to go dead-eyed the way Amy requires.
Other names reported for Amy: Charlize and Natalie Portman, both of whom would have been interesting though Charlize carries baggage as an actress, Emily Blunt, Rooney Mara whom Fincher had just worked with, Olivia Wilde, and strangest of all Dancing with the Stars' Julianne Hough, who got far down the road before her bid at a serious acting career stalled.
Fincher wanted an actress with a Faye Dunaway in Chinatown persona, someone who has experienced avenues of pain no one can articulate; he settled on Rosamund Pike because at 35 she could pass for 29 or 40, she was an only child like Amy, and after four or five of her movies he had never got a beat on her, an opacity he found interesting, when the natural move would have been Charlize.
Fincher has always had an eye for unproven, on-the-cusp talent, Pitt in Seven, Eisenberg and Rooney Mara in The Social Network, Mahershala Ali and Taraji Henson in Benjamin Button; the hosts expected Pike's career to go somewhere else after her Oscar nomination, and before this her notable role was Jack Reacher, an embarrassing part two years earlier.
Asked whether baggage with a real celebrity hurts a part like this, the answer is that for Amy you need to be totally confused about the person, the opposite of the Affleck character whom you must root for implicitly, so somebody you have never seen before makes it scarier. — Shea Serrano
Pike's biggest role until then was Jane Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, the book that turns up in the bookshop where they have sex.
Tarantino wanted James Woods and made five cash offers, which Woods' agent refused without telling him because they were below his salary; Woods fired the agent after learning the story, and Tarantino never told him which role; online speculation says Mr. Orange, which the hosts doubt given Woods' age, preferring him as Mr. White.
Tarantino wrote Mr. Pink for himself; Madsen auditioned for Pink, Vincent Gallo turned it down, which is doubted as half-assed research, Tim Roth almost played it, and Tom Sizemore was a finalist, which could have broken brains.
Sizemore's Natural Born Killers character is the brother of Seymour Scagnetti, one of the most messed-up characters in movie history; asked which part he wanted and why, Sizemore told Tarantino 'the action is the juice'; Buscemi originally auditioned for Mr. White.
George Clooney read for Mr. Blonde, which the hosts can see, and later did From Dusk Till Dawn; Christopher Walken refused Mr. Blonde, almost too obvious a choice, perhaps never even replying to the script.
Robert Forster auditioned for Joe Cabot; one host never thought Forster was that great, including in Jackie Brown, and never bought the attraction with Pam Gray (as transcribed), which the others call a crazy, bad take given his Oscar nomination; he would still have been better than Lawrence Tierney.
Tony Scott read both scripts, wanted Reservoir Dogs and was told he could have True Romance; his version would have shown the heist with more cop stuff, a Hans Zimmer score instead of seventies songs, and Gary Oldman as Mr. Blonde with dreadlocks and gold teeth.
Cross-echoes with True Romance: 'a diddle-at-joe' to Drexel's 'damned if I know', and Mr. White saying he used to work with Alabama; the theatrical release has no female speaking parts beyond the woman who shoots Mr. Orange, nor does this podcast.
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'.
The candidates are Clooney, Pitt, Damon or Soderbergh; the first pick is Brad Pitt, as much as that host loves George Clooney, called a plot twist: effervescent, understated, perfect, and also so hot.
A further endorsement of Pitt, not counted as a ballot because it may be the same voice as the first pick: watching every second of him, his voice and that suit; Clooney gets to play this character in life and movies all the time, including at Harry and Meghan's wedding, while Pitt rarely gets this role, so it is good for his legend; he is an astonishing sidekick for a guy who otherwise has to carry Meet Joe Black, standing to the side eating snacks and delivering one-liners; he won easily.
The case for George Clooney: his biggest hit except Gravity, which does not really need him; the only real franchise he has been part of, since people forget the Batman movie; he has stayed one of the most famous people in the world for 25 years without doing what stars do to stay huge, and this was the one time he leaned into the center of his celebrity, and the movie does not work without him; the argument is liked, since after Michael Clayton there are few signature Clooney performances, but he found love so he is fine.
How the heist works, walked through; the rebuilt vault sits within sight of the Bellagio fountains; the bouncer pounds on Clooney for 30 to 40 minutes; the casinos would never allow filming inside, so vaults cannot work this way; casino cash disperses quickly; no casino would call a SWAT team or trust one British consultant; only about three security guards; Lyman Zerga's access to Benedict is debated; the heist still stands up under the stress test
One host never completely understood how the heist worked and paid closer attention the night before than in thirty other viewings; the walkthrough begins: they rebuild what they presume is the Bellagio vault in a warehouse from captured footage and the blueprints.
First nitpick: the rebuilt vault appears to be no more than 300 feet from the actual Bellagio, with the fountains visible behind it, which Vegas surveillance would catch; the counter is that this is pre-boom real estate, the Strip is less than two miles with open land everywhere, and in any case it is a movie and movie logic is accepted.
The rebuilt vault is a misdirection, since the audience thinks they are practicing; they stage their own heist on film, carrying bags marked with an X, the technician cuts that loop into the security system during the blackout on fight night, Terry Benedict presumes it is live, a SWAT team is called, the call is intercepted and the eleven arrive as the SWAT team and rob the vault while Benedict believes the robbers are still inside.
The blackout exists to change the footage the security team sees, hence the Ella Fitzgerald, and to kill the lasers while Clooney and Damon go down the real elevator shaft with the guy in the cart; Basher needs the electromagnetic pulse machine underground; a favorite rediscovery is Pitt talking to Terry Benedict while wearing a SWAT uniform.
The entire heist depends on Matt Damon pickpocketing Terry Benedict in the interrogation room and on the specific bouncer selling a beating on George Clooney for what seems like 30 to 40 minutes without anyone asking how he is not dead; if any of it goes differently the whole thing is off.
The ultimate nitpick: the movie only exists because casinos agreed to let it film inside, so this cannot be how casino vaults work; nobody knows what is inside one, and the money is dispersed quickly to many locations; no casino would entrust its security to one cool British guy, none would call a SWAT team rather than its own people, and there are essentially three security guys, the same one manning cameras, watching the vault and calling the doctor who turns out to be Brad Pitt.
In Vegas now you have to show a room key to reach the elevator bank at night; sneaking through doors like Scott Kahn and Casey Affleck, or hacking a casino's computer system, would probably end your life.
The Lyman Zerga part is confusing, and someone with no credentials or known identity getting that much time with a casino owner is doubted; the counter is that Vegas is vapid enough that pretending to have money gets you where you want, but Terry Benedict is established as handling every matter himself and knowing every whale, so would he delegate an unknown object entering his vault from a possible arms dealer, and Google existed in 2001; still, the heist stands up under the stress test, its confusing nature helps it, and it never gets too deep in the weeds.
Brad Pitt is a 100 percent yes: never loved more than as Rusty Ryan, not close, met with a wow and a to-each-their-own aside, and a third voice agrees with both.
This is the closest anyone will get to hanging out with Brad Pitt, the hoped-for good version, a shrimp cocktail chewing joke machine, as opposed to a man at a party talking about his architecture and a fancy table; one host likes a few performances more but calls this his most charming and least actory; he is scaling the mountain.
Clooney draws a no and a yes; one case is for ER and The Perfect Storm, which catapulted him to movie stardom while he filmed an ER episode; another says this is who he is supposed to be, Clooney at his essential, with Clayton and Out of Sight heard but not preferred.
He is better at this than capital-A acting; he channels Nick Clooney and essentially hosts a TV show in the how-we're-going-to-do-the-job monologue; per the director's commentary the monologue was shot about a hundred times over two nights for coverage of nine people, timed to the blueprint video, with his close-ups last; his athletic side fits, since good athletes nail repetition, and he was drafted by the Reds and plays basketball.
Another yes for Clooney: when he goes serious like Siriana (as transcribed) he grits his teeth and overdoes it, and in comedy he goes wide-eyed and hammy like Buster Keaton, even in the jokey Out of Sight with Steve Zahn; this is one of the only movies where preternatural cool is the whole point; another is torn between Out of Sight, more honest about a career criminal and schlubby, and this, so the vote is split.
Matt Damon is not: no chance; candidates are The Martian, Good Will Hunting (incredible despite being so early), Bourne (not enough talking) and Ripley, a great movie but Paltrow's apex and Jude's rather than his.
Soderbergh gets a nope, with Behind the Candelabra guessed; the case for this film is that it is the last time he was concerned with relevance, forgoing experimentation to work inside a studio system he has openly said he hates, which he did three times, underwriting his liqueur business; another loves his small movies, would watch The Limey every day, and thinks Out of Sight is his best; there is adoration for the Nick (as transcribed), provocative and beautifully shot, canceled because no one else cared.
Ocean's Eleven is chosen as Soderbergh's apex and seconded, against the earlier nope and the preference for Out of Sight, so that vote is split too.
Ocean's Twelve belongs to the experimental side of Soderbergh, commenting on the idea of a sequel better than anyone could; he is an accomplished technical filmmaker who, unlike most auteurs, understands the enjoyment of going to a movie, visible in his year-end culture diaries watching Social Network twenty times; she is here to have fun, and this film is the thesis statement for that attitude. — Amanda Dobbins
Three candidates cover it: the tone, George Clooney's suits, and the heist.
A sartorial question asks whether Clooney here invented the open shirt collar with a suit; invent is a strong word, he popularized or cemented a Vegas rich-guy cool look; his reserved navy, gray and white contrasts with Pitt's loudness and the Ted Nugent's shirt line, showing the alpha and omega of the pair; perfect frame, height, hair and tailoring for 2001, turning a look that can go Vegas lounge rat into Cary Grant; it may have started in Out of Sight after the Jennifer Lopez encounter.
Swingers, seen coming out of high school, is try-hard and stressful about Vegas: get the suits, drive six hours; this is effortless, as if everyone is at a spa though it was probably 101 degrees and everyone needed moisturizing cream; iridescent, shimmery clothes on Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts; one host loves Soderbergh and calls The Knicks (as transcribed) a favorite show.
The getting-a-gang-together sequence was reinvented here and has been ripped off for fifteen years, patently absurd like the Greaseman setup observed at Barnum's and the travels to Florida to get Saul; the tone is named as what aged best, encapsulating it all.
The heist, almost twenty years later, could have been technologically dependent and silly, but the mechanics still seem entirely plausible, a vault working that way and cutting a phone line, with no cheesy CGI or made-up words; smart or lucky, maybe both.
The field is narrowed to the actors themselves, Clooney, Wilkinson or Swinton, since Tony Gilroy has already received plenty of hosannas.
Wants to say Clooney, and does: part of the appeal is that he kind of lost too, embodying the film's sense of disappointment and loserdom in its afterlife, with both the movie and the performance underrated. — Lindsay Zoladz
Swinton's performance is called so potent that this is hard, but a further 'it's Wilkinson for me' follows, preposterously tight between the three; the transcript does not show whether this is the earlier Wilkinson voice or a third participant.
Swinton is the curveball: maybe not the winner, but the film might not work with Annette Bening as Karen, without the otherworldly, disorienting presence that keeps the whimsy going; 'you don't want the money' is called the best line delivery in the movie; styled and lit like a wax figure of a businesswoman, she plays the most normal person she has played in a long time yet is creepier for it, and nobody else would steal the scene and win the Oscar for it.
Having hit many unanswerable questions already, the one that keeps a participant up at night is why this movie was allowed to be made.
At the poster and trailer level it looks like solid ground, a movie about greed with a shady corporation and a shady law firm and a capable man making tough decisions, but the first conversation between Michael and Arthur is loopy, heightened, deranged and colorful, the tone then becomes ambitiously all over the place, and it is far more whimsical than any promotion or even the casting suggested; 'George Clooney is doing a serious role' does no justice to how loopy and insane it is, and you cannot get to 'I am Shiva, the God of Death' from a tagline about bringing them all down one by one. — Justin Charity
Is this Apex Mountain for Tony Gilroy: the only other contenders are the Bourne films; one participant is a fan only of the first Bourne, another a big fan of The Bourne Legacy, which Gilroy directed, with its homoeroticism between Jeremy Renner and Oscar Isaac (less explicit than Skyfall, though they spend a night in a cabin) and an unsung Edward Norton performance, 55 to 60 minutes of a perfect movie before an exhausting hour-long car chase through Manila; the conclusion is that this is easily Gilroy's Apex Mountain.
Asked whether this is Apex Mountain for George Clooney, the answer is 'I do': there are not a ton of Clooney performances the speaker loves, said through clenched teeth, but there is a precision here, the razzle dazzle without overdoing anything, neither leaning on a hero trope nor playing a dirtbag, riding a line that should make the role ambivalent, and he nails it.
This is peak phase-two Clooney and a favorite performance of the second half of his career, with Out of Sight as phase one; it kicks off his sad-sack period, playing a man no woman in the film is attracted to, which may not be realistic. — Lindsay Zoladz
Tilda Swinton is placed at the beginning of her American peak rather than at a summit; her Oscar speech for the film, recommended for rewatching, teased Clooney for wearing his Batman costume with the nipples under his Michael Clayton suit while he laughed in the front row, and the 2007 and 2008 Oscars are remembered as a good era with a great crop of films.
