'The Rewatchables,' a film podcast from the Ringer Podcast Network, features The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and a roundtable of people from the Ringer universe discussing movies they can’t seem to stop watching. Listen to the complete archives of 150-plus movies, including 'The Hangover,' 'Godfather 2,' 'Dunkirk,' 'Creed,' and many more classics, on our special 'Rewatchables' page on The Ringer.
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The life of Samuel Johnson? Now that I met you, would you object to never seeing me again? My name is Donnie Smith, and I have lots of love to give. Is that what you hope It's not what you deserve. It's what you take. He's dying. He's dying very very rapidly. Sometimes people need a little help. Sometimes people need to be forgiven. We did our. Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, we're here to talk about Magnolia, which bill you described as the weirdest fucking movie ever made? My son actually came down. Oh my god. During the last 20 minutes of this movie, because I was watching it. And there were it was raining frogs, and he kinda stopped. And he looked at the TV. And he's like, what's going on? Why is it raining frogs? And I was like, Ben, people have been asking this for 20 years. I don't wanna shit on this movie because I really like it. It's also one of the most frustrating movies, I think, of the last 30 years because there's the potential for it really could have been great. And I think he knows it. Because when we had it on the podcast, he's like, oh, man, what was I doing? I should have cut 35 minutes from this thing. Now what he should have cut, I guess, is his own question, but It's just there's so many brilliant moments in it, and it the fact that cruise didn't win the Oscars, the biggest outrage, probably of this entire series of podcasts that we've done. Chris, the he that Bill's referring to is Paul Thomas Anderson. Big big year of mine, as you know. Yeah. I love Paul Thomas. Where were you when you first saw Magnolia? What what stage of life were you at? Way too young to really appreciate what this movie was about, probably, had not really gotten in touch with, like, the idea of of regret yet. Which I think this move when you watch this movie again, you see that that's how much it's about. It's about whether or not you can move on from the past, whether or not you can atone, whether you deserve to, This is just, like, the coquiest movie, I think I've ever seen. It really
Would say Requiem for a Dream, like, great movie. I wouldn't wanna sit through it again. I don't know why I wanted to sit through Manchester by the Sea three times, but the movie is an amazing movie. I I joined the chorus of people who went, oh my god, as soon as it showed up on my feed. And I listened to it, and it was a great podcast. Yeah. Listen. We're just trying to have good podcast here. But I'll never rewatch that movie. Well, here's a movie we've all rewatched many times, War of the Roses. There's no winning in this movie. There's only degrees of losing. War of the Roses is next. I just wanna smash your face in. Come on. Guess what Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito are doing for Christmas. We're making a love story. When trouble begins, it comes at you from directions you'd never expect. The yellow areas are mine. The red areas are hers. This seems rational, Zeebo. I got more square footage. The war of the roses. Rate it off. Alright. The children of divorce are here. Here we are. This is so real. We're back, baby. This is my pic. I missed Kramer versus Kramer. Yeah. This is our first rewatchables together, ever. No. That's not true. Is that true? I think so. That can't be true. I I guess maybe rewatchables. Yeah. This is so the first of all, just test for witness right here, right now. Yeah. Next year is the 3rd anniversary. Yeah. Great. Get witness on the bus. Sure. We got we got Harrison right here. Exactly. There he is. Exactly. So I miss Kramer versus Kramer. Sorry. Yeah. No. It it was alright. It was it was a great month, and I listened to that podcast at home and had a lot of feelings. But this might actually be the more on point child or divorce movie for me. Wow. Interesting. It's it's an important cinematic pantheon for all of us, and I think that your, like, mood of the moment probably dictates what divorce movie is on your
It goes back to when I did my old column and I did a baseball hall of fame pyramid. That was an idea from my buddy Gus' dad, Wally Ramsey, and we blew it out. And we created levels, and we did this whole pyramid. So then when I did my basketball book, I really wanted to do the basketball hall of fame pyramid, which was 5 levels, 96 players in all. And the bottom level of the pyramid, the concept was you walk into the Hall of Fame, the lowest possible level are all the players that basically just made it. And then as you start going up the stairs, the next level is a better level of players, and it keeps going until you get to the 5th level, which were the best players. I was thinking about a mini pyramid for prison movies and what that would look like. So, basically, you have the first movie at the top, the next level is 2 movies, the next level is 3 movies, the next level is 4 movies, and the bottom level is 5 movies. And I think Shawshank is at the top for me. Okay. You probably disagree. What would you have at the top? I think I'd probably have cool hand Luke at the top, but I I I I acknowledge that Shawshank is probably gonna be most people's pick. Also, Shawshank, if we hadn't done it yet, would have been a lock for rock bottom month. K. Because I don't think anyone hit a bigger rock bottom than Andy Dufresne. No. I Probably not. The sisters raping him for 2 years, and Red's going, I do believe those were the worst 2 years for Andy. New bruises every day. It's like, yeah. It was probably that was probably the worst for Andy. Alright. So you have Cool Hand Luke. I had that in the second level. So Shawshank, next level, Cool Hand Luke and Bad Boys Yeah. Which we already did on the rewatchables. Then the level right below, Jericho Mile, longest yard, and Shot Caller. So I have Shot Caller as my 6th favorite movie right now. Yeah. So above Blood In, Blood Out, above yeah. Okay. Next here, blood in, blood out, Brewbaker, American History Accent, Escape from Alcatraz, and then the bottom level, the entry level, when you walk into my little mini
Like, you know well, I actually I'll wait till we go to casting what ifs because I have I have some questions about that. Who is Lonergan if you're looking at the last 50 years? Who is he who's in who's swimming in his pool? Well, in terms of, like, going from stage to screen, you could go with Mammut or Tom Stoppard, somebody like that. Mammut is definitely a big influencer. Does do some rewrite work and some Hollywood stuff to The the person that's most familiar to me is Alexander Payne, where it's, like, writer, director, underrated as a filmmaker, very celebrated as a writer. Alexander Payne also does a lot of script work. The script doctoring Lonergan's like a legendary script doctor. So You think that's how he is making money is the script doctor stuff. The year to year? Yeah. Yeah. I think he's the guy who come who's like, you have 30 days to fix this movie, and write good jokes, and that's something that he's really good at. Because, like, even his really, really sad movies are pretty funny. Yeah. Well, he's also I I just don't have a feel for him because he's also the guy who's, like, yeah. I'm gonna put myself in this as the guy who sarcastically says, hey. Nice parenting. Nice fucking cameo. Big part in you can count on me. He plays the priest. You know? And he's in that movie a lot. And he's not a bad actor. Is he in Margaret? He must have a cameo of some kind. Yeah. I didn't rewatch Margaret before this. Where are the movie nerds with Margaret right now? It's that perfect thing where because it was lost for so long and people were dying to see it. As soon as it came out, people were like, masterpiece. Like, they you you have to, like, protect the artist and protect it. I remember really, really loving it when I saw it, but it it is much more unusual and harder to penetrate than the 2 movies in between. You a fan? Yeah. But similar to what Sean was saying, I remember what did you have the DVD of the extended cut? And it started getting passed around. So I remember watching his copy, and I was like, we gotta love this because this is, like, a secret movie that we got, and we have to, like, really But now the extended cut, you can get it. Yeah. Yeah. You can get it now. You you just couldn't see it for a long, long time. It's it's it's a beautiful movie, but it is a bit more, like, emotionally abstract, I think, than, like, Manchester Red Sea, which is
Not positive it's true, but it seems too weird not to be true. Garcia refused to attend the wrap party. Interesting. Oh, I thought you were about to say in the research, it appears to be true that Gere fought Garcia's girl. Oh, really? Just to get in character. Just to get in character. Acting. Right. Awesome 1990, 30 Cops. This is kinda the we're about to hit, especially in LA. We're about to hit a 5 year stretcher where this becomes the dominant theme, not only in LA, but in the country. Yep. And this movie's early on it, and this is kind of the end of the dirty cops as popcorn entertainment era. Yeah. When does it start? Like, I mean It shit Rodney King shifts it. Yeah. It's changed. You can't do it quite this way. Even colors has it, like, that there is, like, something redeemable about you know what I mean? Like Well, the I mean, they're they're in Colors, they're more renegade cops than they are dirty cops because they still have some cop type ethos. Yes. But post Colorless has not aged well. No. I know. Colors will not be on the rewatches. Like, not Which is really saying something because we're doing Internet fairs. Right. The color is like, whew. But, like, once we really started to interrogate policing in a real way, these movies kinda went I mean, training day is is the is the the biggest one since that time, but these movies kinda changed a little bit. Training day is in a completely different prism, and it knows it. This movie is kinda like, yeah, it's fun to watch Richard Gere be a dirty cop. We should have more dirty cop movies. And then 3 years later, we're like, Yeah. I was rooting for him. Yeah. Like, I it it when 8 kids to pay for. Yeah. 8 kids. Go get it. Richard. When the shit happens with the van and the guy, I was like, goddamn. Not my man, Peck. What is Peck gonna do now? Like Right. Like, what is, like, what what do who is Peck gonna have to fuck to get out of this situation? He's gotta hit up another pimp. He's gotta, like, have sex with the mayor's wife. Right. His sentence commuted. This movie has lines like, you've had 3 180 ones for excessive forces in the last 10 months.
