Equilibrium

[00:00:00] Welcome to Movie Oubliette, the film review podcast for movies that most people have mercifully forgotten. I'm Dan and I'm Conrad and in each episode we drag a forsaken film out of the Oubliette. Discuss it and judge it to decide whether it should be set free

[00:00:22] or whether it should be thrown back and consigned to oblivion forever. Movie Oubliette, Movie Oubliette, Maybe review the films others tend to forget. Come with us and let the movie oubliette. Greetings listeners and welcome to Movie Oubliette episode 155, the hemispheres spanning podcast with me Dan

[00:00:49] learning furiously about house plants here in Melbourne Australia. And me Conrad, recovering from watching long legs in Cambridge UK. Oh, I've heard about that movie. In this podcast we discuss forgotten genre films, horror, sci-fi and fantasy

[00:01:07] because in the dystopian future we don't want to have feelings, right Conrad? No. No. They're too bothersome. We don't want to feel things. No. So how was long legs? Well speaking of feeling things, gosh that's a disturbing movie.

[00:01:28] I saw the sort of trailer teasers that they were putting out and brilliant marketing. Yeah, it's a really stylish trailer. It's film directed by Osgoode Perkins who's quite the auteur I think.

[00:01:42] But I like the trailers because they're all really short like five second, ten second trailers and not showing much at all. Like that's great marketing. Like I remember back in the 90s even like the movie The Matrix

[00:01:55] they used to have these giant billboards that just all it said on the billboard was what is the matrix? And then it got this kind of like a hubbub about like what is this? What is this movie?

[00:02:06] It's like people didn't even know what it was. That's great marketing for this movie long legs. Yeah, it is. I mean you get the sense that it's a thriller for sure possibly a horror but you didn't really know what the story was.

[00:02:20] But essentially it's a serial killer thriller but with a supernatural twist and Nick Cage is fucking terrifying. Oh wow, yeah. Okay, I'm definitely going to check it out. So anything in the mailbag today? What have our listeners been saying?

[00:02:40] Chazilla got in touch about Shallow Grave and said this movie couldn't be any more 90s if it tried. The clothes, the hair, the cynicism, the humour. I love it when you guys exhumed these shallowly buried gems. Laughed my arse off when Juliet took off with a ringer.

[00:03:00] At least it wasn't full of Walters dirty undies. The whites. If I'm ever reincarnated, my one wish would be to come back with you and McGregor's hair. Yeah, it's good hair right?

[00:03:13] It's pretty impressive. Huge main. I don't think I've ever seen him with hair that long in another movie. No. Thanks Chazilla. I loved hearing from you. And of course we heard from Serge of Cold Crash Pictures. Hello Serge.

[00:03:28] And he said, I had no clue what to make of Shallow Grave when I first saw it back in 2012. But after a dozen years in the workforce, I'm like, no, yeah. Capitalism will absolutely turn you into an expert at nothing but hustling and cruelty.

[00:03:44] Yeah. That's kind of true. He says, Movie Oobliyat's mileage or brackets, kilometre-age seems to have varied when they reviewed it on their latest podcast. But I find it quite enjoyable. I love movies about despicable people doing terrible things

[00:04:02] and then making the audience wonder if they're going to get away with it. Yeah, me too. And just to clear that up for you Serge, it's all miles in the UK. Is it miles in Australia and New Zealand? No, definitely not. It's all the metric system here.

[00:04:18] What really surprises me when I was in the UK and being in the car with Google Maps, you know, narrating where to go, it's preposterous. It's like 406 feet turn left. Like who knows how long that is? That's ridiculous. That is ridiculous.

[00:04:40] It's really weird in this country because I don't know whether Gen Z has moved on, but certainly for my generation we just seem to have both in our heads. So we're using centimetres when we're doing some things and then we switch to Imperial for miles.

[00:04:57] I don't know. It's really weird if we do both. Yeah. I remember going to the supermarket and fruit would be in kilograms, right? But then you would weigh yourself in what stone? Stone and pounds. Yeah, what's up with that?

[00:05:12] I don't know. We're very strange. I think we're just sort of transitional, but it's still all the road signs, everything's in miles. It's really confusing. It's just so much easier to meet us in kilometres. We're strange, but our listeners aren't strange.

[00:05:28] They're fascinating, wonderful people. Thank you for writing to us. Yes, thank you, thank you, thank you. So Dan, what will we be doing today? Well, I'll go get it now. I'm in some sort of quaint little hidden room back here. Oh, what's in it?

[00:05:48] All sorts of stuff like art and this snow globe. There's a record player. Let me put on some music. Ooh, fancy. Oh, is that the Mona Lisa in the corner? Oh, he's a movie on the table. Of course. Well, you really should learn to knock. Okay, I'm back.

[00:06:09] What did you bring back with you this time? Well, today we will be discussing a 2002 sci-fi action movie that was actually chosen by one of our patrons. It is the movie Equilibrium. Yeah, chosen by Filma Fissionado. Yes, so I have seen this movie.

[00:06:29] I'm not sure whether you had Conrad, but it's written and directed by Kurt Wimmer, starring Christian Bale, Sean Bean, Sean Pertwee, Angus McFadden, Tay Diggs, Emily Watson and William Fickner. Or Fikner. How do you pronounce his last name? I've always said Fikner, but I could be wrong.

[00:06:51] Yeah, okay. He's one of those actors I see everywhere, but I never can remember his name. Yeah, same. Okay, and what happens in this movie? Well, following the utter destruction caused by World War III, the city state of Lybria has abolished human emotions

[00:07:13] with all forms of expression, art, music, literature to be incinerated. To repress emotions completely, the populace must inject the drug prosium scheduled throughout the day citywide. Leading Lybria is the father, head of the governing Tetragrammaton Council. Its police force are the Grammaton Clerics,

[00:07:38] the top ranked cleric being our main character, Neo. I mean John Preston. But when his trusted partner, Partridge, is revealed to be feeling emotions a sense offender, Preston starts questioning the supposed dangers of human emotions. His doubts increase when he stops taking the drug prosium,

[00:08:02] meets the mysterious Mary, and later even rendezvous with the underground sense rebellion. But will his new cleric partner, Brand, discover his newfound ability to feel? Will Preston save Mary from being burned like a sense witch? Will I stop laughing every time they say sense offender

[00:08:26] because it sounds like a sex offender? We'll find out. We will find out after the break. We will. We are back to talk about Equilibrium, chosen by our patron, film aficionado. Had you seen this movie Conrad in 2002? No, I wasn't even that aware of it.

[00:08:59] The sense I had was it was a rip off of the Matrix. And the sort of people that talked about it were people that I didn't really get on with. So I thought, well, I'm not going to like this movie. What about you? Yeah, I remember watching it.

[00:09:12] I think one of my friends who was a film student, she played it to me. And yeah, the first thing you think of is the Matrix. There are some scenes that feel like they've just been taken from the Matrix.

[00:09:25] Like the pillar fight scene with all the guns and that sort of big hallway feels very much like the lobby scene in the Matrix where they're flipping through pillars and all sorts of shooting and stuff like that. The fighting is so stylized.

[00:09:41] Like it could not come from any other decade, but the early 2000s or late 90s. Like it is very much like Blade and the Matrix and Resident Evil and Underworld. It's got that really almost dance like quality to the fight scenes. Like everything is just perfectly landing.

[00:10:03] It's like a choreographed dance. And also our main character, Preston, he just never gets a scratch on. Oh, he does get one scratch, I think. But he never gets hurt. He's just invincible. Yes, it's very much of its era.

[00:10:18] Although the director Kurt Wimmer rejects the comparisons with the Matrix. Really? Yeah, in fact, he points towards the Matrix sequels and the settings for the sequels. You know, fighting in an ornate room rather than sort of an industrial sort of sleek corporate looking lobby.

[00:10:38] He thinks that the Matrix sequels ripped off equilibrium. I suspect he doesn't explicitly say that, but he claims that it's possibly the other way round in terms of influence. And instead, he was looking much more towards the historical depictions of dystopian futures and authoritarian societies

[00:11:00] and people resisting them and a hero that breaks the whole thing down for everybody and saves the society. So he was looking things like Metropolis in 1984, Alphaville, the French New Wave film from 65, Fahrenheit 451, THX 1138. So he's thinking of those as sort of springboards

[00:11:23] for a very particular fantasy that he wanted to tell. Yeah, I mean, the two movies that came to mind in terms of like setting and plot and premise were definitely 1984, George Orwell and Ray Babri's Fahrenheit 451, especially Fahrenheit 451 because in that movie, books are banned

[00:11:44] and the books are burnt and this felt very similar. I mean, they're incinerating art and books and anything that has expression or any creativity or anything related to feeling. And it did almost feel like it was those two books together into this movie.

[00:12:05] Yeah, no, I made the connection immediately because the opening scene, sort of to give you an action scene and to see John Preston and Sean Bean doing their day job. So they're these clerics, they're the... Instead of the thought police, they're the sense police.

[00:12:19] They're out there cracking down. I mean, I do question the whole premise of needing a new police force to have slicked back hair, long black coats, two handguns and ninja reflexes to deal with people who feel something on a Thursday afternoon.

[00:12:33] But anyway, they raid an illegal classical Renaissance painting den in the opening scene, which makes a change from drugs or something. Then they burn the Mona Lisa and you hear screaming on the soundtrack. Yeah, yeah. So I immediately thought of Fahrenheit 451.

[00:12:56] Yes, that scene apparently the actor that they show first as sort of the ringleader of this illegal art organization. Yeah, sort of an underground Sotheby's. Yeah, exactly. So that actor is Dominic Purcell. He's Australian and apparently the director,

[00:13:19] when we wanted him to be the lead, he wanted him to read for the lead. But the studios were like, well, who's this guy? Like he's unknown. But then he became incredibly famous with Prison Break, because he's one of the sort of two leads in Prison Break.

[00:13:35] He was also in Blade Three and DC's Legends of Tomorrow. So become a much more famous actor now. But yeah, I did like the premise. Like I mean, this whole dystopian future thing, totalitarian government, it kind of does speak to me. I enjoyed 1984 when I read it.

[00:13:56] This also kind of reminded me a little bit of Brazil as well, which I really like. And it kind of almost has this retro futuristic look as well to the city. You've got blimps in the background. Everything's almost sepia-toned, but not quite.

[00:14:15] It has this, yeah, like not steampunk, but retro future where it's almost like what the future looks like to people from the 50s, which was kind of interesting. It's almost got like corporate attire. I mean, I guess Soviet attire. And religious too.

[00:14:33] And religious, yeah, with a leader that is pretty much like, almost like a religious cult leader. I saw recently some footage come from North Korea, and it kind of reminded me of scenes from this movie where everyone's dressed exactly the same.

[00:14:47] Everyone's adhering to all the laws and not showing any form of creativity or expression or anything. Everything is just monochrome. And I think the film benefited greatly from where they shot the movie, which is in what was East Berlin and East Germany. Roundabouts of the time.

[00:15:07] So it's after the wall had come down obviously, because that was in the early 90s. But there still hadn't been an awful lot of investment and redevelopment yet. So they are filming in a lot of brutalist Nazi architecture. So it's a lot of sharp angles and massive edifices

[00:15:26] showing strength and might and power. And it's all concrete and gray and brutal looking. So they got an enormous amount of production value for very little. Yeah, yeah. I mean, for the most part, the visual look of this movie is pretty impressive, considering how small the budget was.

[00:15:45] I think it was only like 20 million. Yeah. It's tiny for this type of movie. There are some scenes where they've tried to spruce it up a bit with CGI and of course, 2002 CGI. They're the best CGI at times. No, it's not.

[00:16:01] Some of the sort of green screen effects are not great. Like it's almost TV movie looking, flat and very digital. But for the most part, yeah. I think the director in the commentary was quite innovative with how he shot a bunch of this scenes

[00:16:20] to make them look much more impressive than they actually were, especially all the fight scenes, which he claims there was no wire work, which is incredible. Because I swear that it looks like wire work. Yeah, loads of people think that there are just like,

[00:16:34] same era crouching tiger head and dragon that it's a lot of sort of graceful, beautiful wire work that's going on. Yeah. And credit to him, there aren't any really cheesy slow mo scenes, which you would expect from a movie like this. No, there is one. Is there?

[00:16:51] Yeah, there's the scene where John sort of starts fighting his own. Oh, yes, yes, yes. That's right. With the guns as hammers. The guns retract these kind of, I don't even know what you call them, like nails or... I don't know what it is. Yeah.

[00:17:08] John lets a bunch of feelers escape and fights the same six police guys for about a minute and a half, including a period of step printed slow motion where they didn't shoot it in slow mo and they've tried to make it slow mo in post

[00:17:21] with stirring music from Clowes Bedelt underneath it. But yeah, it goes on a bit. I felt like it could have been cut in half because the first half of it is, yeah, the fake slow mo and it's cheesy. And also there's no damage as well.

[00:17:38] So he's hitting all these guys and they're kind of groaning and... But you don't see anything smash and then the second half of that scene, then he starts smashing helmets and like really doing damage. And I think the second half works. The first half, not so much.

[00:17:54] No, you're right. I heard in the commentary though the director said that whole scene only took 30 minutes to film. That's right. Yeah, he didn't have time to do lots of set ups. And he credits Christian Bale with this because Christian, I think he is known

[00:18:08] kind of like Keanu actually for his dedication to physically perfecting a role, being in great shape for a particular role. And Christian was coming off of American Psycho. So he was in great shape. I don't know if you remember the opening,

[00:18:23] getting ready for work scene in American Psycho. He's in prime condition. And apparently he did not need a lot of takes to get a lot of this physical choreography right. He was first time on all of it. So it's pretty impressive.

[00:18:38] Yeah, so that scene that we were talking about, I think they did five takes and then they had enough to cut together that whole scene. And the director said that normally a scene like that would take a whole day. Easily. 30 minutes. Yeah. In and out.

[00:18:56] I think Christian Bale's a good choice for this character. He is very good at portraying people who are slightly sociopathic and devoid of emotion on the one hand and then incredibly committed to a cause on the other hand. He's quite good at that.

[00:19:15] Thus, you know, he was cast as Batman shortly afterwards for Christopher Nolan. It suits him quite well coming from American Psycho. I would debate that actually. I think he's kind of miscast because he does do the cold-hearted, emotionless like psychopath really well. And also it worked for Batman

[00:19:36] because obviously Batman's emotionless, but also Bruce Wayne's a bit of an asshole. He's supposed to be arrogant and this rich guy. It's his character that he hides behind as a civilian. So I don't know whether he does the warmth that well. No. Like when he starts feeling things

[00:19:53] and he stops taking the drug prosium which represses the emotions. He starts feeling things. I don't know. It felt a little forced. Like I didn't feel like Christian Bale is a very warm guy in general. No, and certainly if you read news articles about him

[00:20:10] I think he's a problematic person. Yeah. I mean there have been instance of him screaming at crew onset that were recorded and leaked and I think there was an allegation of him abusing members of his family at one point but I don't know whether they bore out

[00:20:27] or certainly was reported that he was physically abusive. Right. Yeah. So I don't know whether he was cast that well when he becomes this feeling emotionful person. No, that's a fair point. I think yeah. He is much better at playing a sociopath

[00:20:43] than he is at playing a romantic lead. But that's one thing that this film does not have even though you have Emily Watson as this sense offender to use that questionable phrase. I have to say throughout the movie when I was watching with my wife

[00:21:00] every time they said sense offender it literally sounded like they were saying sex offender and so they're growing around screaming like sex offender. You're a sex offender and I was just like oh my god this is too much. It's too much.

[00:21:17] Well at least the police brutality would make a little bit more sense if they were sex offender. Yeah. Sorry Emily Watson. Emily Watson. Yeah no this film is quite bloodless in terms of passion. There's no romance in this movie really. No. I mean you've got Emily Watson

[00:21:34] who is a sort of a resistance fighter, a sense offender who is arrested and I think she is used as a catalyst for his awakening and his turning against the principles that ruled his life and starts questioning things because she's caught and she is spoilers executed

[00:21:53] and I think she reminds him visually and just in terms of what's happening to her off his wife because his wife was dragged away for feeling something and burnt to a crisp. But although the scenes where he's in an interrogation room with Emily Watson

[00:22:09] as he starts feeling things because he's not taking his drugs they do become a little bit more intimate maybe or there's a frisson of something there. There isn't really any romance in this movie. I do like by the way just as an aside

[00:22:23] that even though she's in prison they do let Emily Watson have some lipstick and a nice dress which is really kind of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah that's true. I was surprised as well because I thought okay here's the love interest

[00:22:39] but then you also find out that she had a relation with Partridge so his or Preston's former partner Sean Bean that is reported to be a sense offender and is executed by Preston which is a stunning scene by the way I'll talk about it in the movies

[00:22:59] and I feel like that is more the catalyst because he trusts his partner so much but then he finds out that he is feeling things and it kind of starts the doubt in him of maybe feelings are good like maybe I should feel things

[00:23:14] and then finding out that Mary was with Partridge but yeah I did think oh is this going to be a new love interest is he going to steal his partner's girlfriend but it didn't happen and I was surprised that she does get executed

[00:23:32] and he does not save her. This movie is pretty bleak it's pretty depressing for like 90% of the movie. Yeah apparently in the original script she was supposed to survive and come back at the end but the director said that he decided

[00:23:49] against it because if she did it would be a betrayal of her main function in the movie which is to inspire Christian Bale's character John Preston to bring down the whole government and destroy father she had to be martyred

[00:24:04] she had to die in order for him to do what he did. I think he's right he's absolutely right it's a brave choice. Yeah it's incredibly heart wrenching that scene and it's kind of set up almost like a witch burning as well which is interesting.

[00:24:20] That's a good comparison I hadn't thought of that. Because she almost looks like it she's got this hood on and I did like how when Preston was watching the footage of his wife getting let off and watching himself before when he was still under the drug control

[00:24:39] he was very impressed with the rest of his emotions and seeing a completely different person in himself when his wife is being let away and so he tries to change that. Yeah heart wrenching scene. Sean Bean does live up to his reputation as always getting killed

[00:24:57] in every movie. He dies in 18 minutes in this movie which I don't know is that a record for him? Sean Bean you can't catch a break because he's got a lot of characters role. In this case it was kind of built into the role

[00:25:14] because they knew they needed somebody with the gravitas to pull off this role and to have an impact on the audience but when he was shopping around the director looking for an actor to play this part not many people were interested

[00:25:28] because it's like I'm not in much of the story am I why am I bothering so Sean Bean obviously is just a sucker for this guy. I mean he's amazing despite how small his role was. Yeah like you said it does have gravitas

[00:25:42] he does really affect the character and does pull off that moment as being very pivotal in the movie. It plants a seed that I think John's interactions with Mary then fertilizing development grow because it's their conversations that I think really helped shape his thinking.

[00:26:00] Yeah yeah good to see Sean Pertwee again we just saw him and Doc Soldiers back again as the father. Yeah sort of the Wizard of Oz but in a glass cage just giving speeches and appearing in the background saying things about how it would be much better

[00:26:17] if the world is the same all the time so that you can go into each moment with the confidence that it's been lived before he's like this zen guru of boringness. Yeah yeah. Very similar to the big brother in 1984 but then the twist Dupont

[00:26:36] sort of the he's like a cleric officer or captain or something. Yeah. The head of the police big twist here he turns out to be the father all along. Yeah he's the leader the leaders died long time ago. So there's nothing behind the curtain.

[00:26:53] But I think that was always the same with big brother too big brother doesn't actually exist it's a construct it's an idea I think at one point Dupont does say something about the message itself isn't important it's our adherence to it

[00:27:06] it doesn't matter you've just got to have blind faith and stick to this regime no matter what. Yeah yeah yeah. I thought the actor played that character quite well. What's his name? Angus McFedden he plays a character that you really love to hate.

[00:27:21] Yeah I'm not sure he convinces as much in the fighting scenes. Yeah he looks like he's struggling to keep up with Christian Bire. He really does he's not that formidable which is a shame because John also has like a climactic scene with his partner

[00:27:39] Brandt Teydigs who they have a really good sort of sparring partnership throughout clearly his partner wants to you know get promoted above him and so on take over he's really ambitious. Yeah and they fight quite a few times you know they have their fantastic

[00:27:55] kendo scene which has lots of exposition in it which is quite clever because it gets across the antagonistic nature of their relationship through the supposedly just training physical training but then when it comes to their climactic battle it lasts like three

[00:28:09] seconds and then he slices his face off. Yeah yeah yeah it's very quick I mean it's almost like I think he was the director was trying to subvert expectations you know you expect a big fight at the end and it's just over in like three seconds

[00:28:26] because Christian Bale's character is just that good he is invincible he slices through everyone he never gets a scratch he never gets shot ever. There's endless bullets infinite bullets in the movie like every handgun is an automatic rifle that shoots so many bullets and yeah none of them

[00:28:49] hit Preston. Of course not. What did you think about the fight scenes? I know they're ridiculous and stylised I like them for their beauty but I didn't like the fact that Preston doesn't get a scratch because there were no stakes it's like a Stephen

[00:29:09] Seagal movie. I don't ever feel like he's in danger because he never gets hurt. No which is kind of what they built up to in The Matrix with Neo is that it was kind of fun at the end when he realised that he could be

[00:29:23] invincible and then it was satisfying to see him develop but Preston's just great. He's great from the start of the movie to the end of the movie there's no development with his fighting he is just perfect in the whole way through. Yeah Neo there is a evolution

[00:29:40] like he doesn't even know how to fight at the start of the movie he gets the download or whatever he knows kung fu and then he does get like beaten to shit by Mr. Smith at many points during the movie like he is not at the same caliber

[00:29:58] as the agents and then yeah there is the climax of him being amazing at the end whereas there is no climax it's the same in every scene he's wins every time. He's perfect in every way. There's no stakes so there's almost no

[00:30:14] tension in any of the fight scenes. No and I have to say I found them ridiculous. They are. The whole idea of this gun Carter which Kurt Wimmer the director credits with making up himself as a teenager in his garden with his gun. It's kind of the human

[00:30:31] version of the last starfighter's death blossom secret weapon on the spaceship where you just lure your enemies to surround you and then you kill them at close range whilst wind milling your arms randomly and firing a gun but it's supposed to be this scientific calculation

[00:30:49] of every single gunfight that has resulted in this perfect combination of movements and angles. I'm sure it was very carefully choreographed and was executed brilliantly but it just looks like he's waving his arms everywhere and gunshots are going off. I just laughed. I thought

[00:31:09] I'm sure a 15 year old boy looks at this and thinks this is great but I was pissing myself every time it happened. I mean I was as well but I still was impressed. It still looks good. I don't know it's incredibly stylized and silly but it does

[00:31:27] I don't know, I still think it looks good. It looks strange though it's a strange way of fighting because you're shooting but it's kind of the mix Tai Chi in with the movement so it's kind of like very quick movements and shooting everywhere as well

[00:31:45] it's almost like he's just got his eyes closed and he's just like waving his arms around. It's strange I have to say, it is very strange. I couldn't make the leap into cool, I just thought it looked dumb The action scene where he's running through

[00:31:59] that hall and I think it finishes with him doing a back flip after he's like kicked a gun like a skateboard flip and the gun loops over him and then he catches it I roared with laughter I thought this is inches there's that imperial measurements again

[00:32:15] it's just inches away from being hot fuzz parody of action movies it's just so like dialed up to a level ridiculous. Oh yes, it is 100% I don't think it's quite as high there's another movie, Kurt Wimmer directed that is, yeah it's 11 in terms of like stylized

[00:32:37] action and there's ultraviolet even more than this, my goodness even more and there's so much CGI in that movie as well and the color grade is astounding that they okayed it everyone is smoothed so I don't think it's as bad as ultraviolet but it is

[00:32:57] ridiculous but that's the 2000s if you watch Blade the fight scenes are like this just absolutely bonkers like these landing moves and impacts are just not possible there's just no way but even the matrix if you really watch the matrix the first one or even

[00:33:17] the trilogy, the scenes are ridiculous all the fight scenes are ridiculous but that was the thing that was the trend of the 2000s and late 90s but there is an in-universe reason why the fight scenes in the matrix are ridiculous that is not reality

[00:33:33] it's depicted as not being reality whereas this is a fantasy it's an allegory, it's fun it's a spectacle, it's entertainment so it's not attempting to create sort of gritty Jason Bourne like improvisational this is operatic ridiculous spectacle of fight scenes but I didn't find

[00:33:53] it impressive and as well as that I was so bothered by the gun fetishes at minute and when you get to the point where we're even hand fighting with guns and firing guns off next to people's heads whilst we're doing pilates honestly it's just

[00:34:09] I tired of it quite quickly I think there's a sort of a personal taste to this type of action Well it speaks also to the director's tastes and leanings as well I mean he makes reference in the commentary that he does with his producer of them

[00:34:23] being at an NRA rally handing out leaflets for this movie so it probably appeals to that sort of mindset Yeah, yeah In the commentary the director also says it's a fantasy and from my point of view action is how men express romance on film they express

[00:34:43] their love by whipping us I mean which I found troubling I kind of get it because I loved action movies growing up and I live for this stuff and probably when I watched it I thought this was like the coolest thing ever I get that it is

[00:34:59] problematic yes we shouldn't express our feelings for pilates obviously No But I do get in terms of cinema and watching cinema and or even making cinema we like seeing action scenes we like seeing fight scenes we don't watch you know John-Claude Van Damme movies for the dialogue

[00:35:21] No, of course and I agree with you I get what you're saying and I love action movies too and I recognise that it's a story fantasy it's an entertainment but I guess the thing that I'm always thinking about is how we choose to represent masculinity

[00:35:37] in these stories and which stories we choose to tell but yeah this is one among many and it's not particularly gratuitous I did notice there wasn't a lot of gore No despite the casualties and absolute bloodshed like a lot of people die I saw an online tally

[00:35:55] I think John kills over 130 people Yeah it's a lot of people I also noted all the bad guys they're all dressed the same and they all have motorcycle helmets on so I'm sure it's the same stunt people in every scene the same people because

[00:36:13] they could be a new one because they all dress exactly the same which is like you know that's cost-cutting to a T right there Yeah, it's very cunning the way that he does it because he wants to have impact and spectacle but he doesn't want to have

[00:36:25] gory stomach churning blood spraying effects all the time so most of the squibs that are going off are just blowing up sort of powder concrete or dust or something exploding everywhere so you get the connecticism and the visual stimulation and when he hits them

[00:36:41] he sort of hits their visors so he's shooting them in the face but it's the glass visor that explodes you're not seeing sort of blood and teeth flying everywhere yeah yeah yeah but you still get the visual stimulus rather than actually seeing anything horrific that the MPAA or

[00:36:57] other senses might have had a problem with exactly yeah yeah even when he slices Bran's face off I mean you do see his face slide off but there's a close-up of the sword that he uses and it's like one drop of blood

[00:37:11] I think that's pretty much the only drop of blood in the movie isn't it? Yeah, yeah, there's just like nothing yeah the commentary does reveal a lot of really innovative filmmaking so in the scene with Preston protecting the dog and he's doing one

[00:37:27] of these flips and gunfire and everything I think they attached a strobe to the gun and it's just a strobe light for that sort of gun flare effect which is really like such an interesting way of filming. Yeah and I think the squibs were tied to the

[00:37:43] gun going off so that they were perfectly synchronized every time you fired it which yeah again was an innovation at the time that hadn't really been done before yeah. Yeah, it's like the very opening scene I thought it was quite daring that when John goes into that

[00:37:57] room it's in darkness and the film is in darkness for like 10, 15 seconds and perfect silence yeah. That's a brave thing to do until the director whispers on the ADR track. Yeah, yeah, yeah I think he does mention on the commentary that a lot of

[00:38:13] people in cinemas thought there was something wrong with the projector. Yeah, you would. And when I was watching it on DVD I thought did my DVD player stop working like did it skip or something? It's broke. Yeah, yeah and then after that

[00:38:25] I think there's a lot of strobes footage of him shooting everybody but it's really weird it looks like a first person shooter of a 16 bit game because you just get these flash images of people as they slowly retreat backwards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aesthetically it was odd

[00:38:41] it was unusual. There's a lot of innovative stuff going on. Yeah, yeah. In terms of like using the budget and still maximising the visual look. Now it's time for Random Trivia! So Dan, what wonderful emotional piece of trivia did you find in your secret hideaway of Brick-a-brack today?

[00:39:05] Well, I'm sure you've heard this in the commentary but in the scene where Preston saves the puppy so they find this dog farm or something where these sense offenders have kept dogs for some reason. Why would you want to keep dogs? And there's this puppy

[00:39:27] this puppy almost runs away and Preston grabs it because they're now going to shoot all these dogs which is diabolical I have to say the scene almost took me out of the movie. It's like I'm turning it off right now. But Preston's got this puppy

[00:39:45] so the sound of the puppy wasn't actually a dog because the director was really dissatisfied with the sound library of dog sounds. So they hide a woman who's skill set was to imitate dog sounds and she was responsible for all the sort of characterisations

[00:40:05] of that puppy which is amazing like she sounds really good she sounds like a dog. She does Yeah although after I heard that and I watched the film again I could kind of tell but only because I'd been told I could tell it's a lady gang ooo

[00:40:25] I don't know I think she's pretty amazing it's very convincing. Yeah she is and that's our trivia So a movie about a world with no emotions I felt like the movie was quite emotionless it's quite bland in many places in terms of dialogue and interactions with people

[00:40:53] Yeah but at the same time you've got this fundamental problem that if nobody feels anything you have no drama Yeah. If nobody is angry or has any ambition or drive or jealousy or hatred you will have no drama and it's clear that all of the people

[00:41:13] that are even dosed up to the eyeballs on prosium still have all of those characteristics They're still bickering and sparring and pissing each other off and reacting with emotion so it's this odd no man's land Well I mean I think that is the plot hole

[00:41:29] of the movie though. If you have a world with no one has emotion then you wouldn't have brand to get his position as the head cleric You wouldn't have the father slash du pont trying to infiltrate the rebellion You wouldn't have anything

[00:41:45] like no one, everyone would just be neutral about everything. Yeah they would and nobody would be compelled to better themselves I mean this is the fundamental flaw in the movie is that it's pretty much a well established fact amongst anthropologists that the reason that human beings have survived

[00:42:03] is because we cooperate with each other and we have empathy If you take empathy away from people and they're just machines I mean how does a family even start? How did he have a wife and two kids? Yeah I was thinking that as well. It doesn't work

[00:42:19] Like how do you have sex when you feel nothing? Yeah I know How do you have kids? How do you raise children when you don't care whether they live or die? Yeah it doesn't work Fundamentally it doesn't work So it's just an allegory It's a fantasy

[00:42:35] And then you've got to accept it You accept it and then you imagine What is he commenting on? What's the sort of underlying thematic drive of the movie? Because it's got to be beyond authoritarian equals bad person overthrows government and causes complete social change

[00:42:53] which that's basically what it is But what is he trying to say? What is he fighting against? What Wimmer reveals is that his personal motivation was his concern about it's sort of the thought police that expressing certain views or feelings or opinions about something

[00:43:11] is in some way rejected or suppressed by society So I mean if you expanded it to now you'd be talking about council culture His sci-fi projecting things to their ultimate degree speculative criticism I guess you would call it a society where you're not allowed to express

[00:43:29] anything at all So your First Amendment rights are gone You're just not allowed to feel anything about anything Which is ridiculous because that's not what social criticism of people's points of view is about I mean it's about protecting minorities Usually So I'm not sure it's built on

[00:43:47] a very sturdy foundation or not one allegory with anyone I do think there is a certain amount of truth to it I guess why socialist and communist governments exist because there is a lot of control and there is less crime I guess or I don't know maybe not

[00:44:09] but that's sort of the idea of limiting people's expression limiting people's ability to be better than other people does kind of neutralize everything Yeah and being able to control that population easier I guess It's theoretical it doesn't really work in practice No

[00:44:31] I mean it's inhumane like your limiting choice but I think that sort of idea of what if that could happen What if we couldn't make everyone eat exactly the same food that they need to eat They would be a lot healthier than people choosing the terrible

[00:44:47] food that they choose to eat If we made everyone exercise in a right amount there would be a lot healthier rather than people choosing to go to the gym or not going to the gym So there's that sort of idea of like if you could control the population

[00:45:03] in terms of thought or feelings it would be better for the population in terms of living longer being less crime I don't know I still think that the premise of the movie is interesting like I'm still fascinated by it It doesn't quite work because

[00:45:21] as I say if they really made people devoid of emotion it just we wouldn't function at all we'd probably all just die and let each other die it wouldn't work Yeah I think what you would need is you would have like levels

[00:45:33] you would have like the main majority of people on prosium and then you would have to have levels of people not on prosium to make decisions Yeah because I wasn't sure whether DuPont, the leader Well he starts screaming his head off at the end of the movie

[00:45:49] so it's fairly clear that he isn't I think it's one of those situations where it's do as I say not as I do You know there's a I think you're right there is a sense that I mean in any of these authoritarian regimes

[00:46:01] you always end up with this oligarchy of extremely rich people for whom none of the rules apply anyway and they're always living wonderful lives and everybody else is just repressed by fear and violence That's the problem The other thing that I think is

[00:46:17] the other thing that I think is important for the movie is that this whole order has been imposed in order to prevent World War 4 but it's being so heavily policed as Sean Bean's character says what are we doing then I mean they're just exacting violence

[00:46:35] and fear on people all the time It's a society that is constantly at war So how is that any better people ruthlessly without thought and they don't feel anything from it They don't know that they're killers and they're being No all full people like I guess that's better

[00:46:57] I mean I don't know I think that's what Sean Bean's character is trying to point out If we've eliminated violence more what are we doing because it's all that all day every day It's brutalising people What did you think about the end because it's different to 1984

[00:47:15] Well 1984 it's a very bleak ending because he becomes part of the people again and he believes in everything Do you think the film would have worked better if Preston got injected again and he just became a mindless citizen No I don't think so

[00:47:32] I mean it ends with the overthrow of the authority figures Yeah I mean obviously at the moment the idea that you achieve social change through assassinating your leader is probably not a great one Yeah But I mean I wasn't expecting it to end any other way Okay

[00:47:49] because I thought for a moment that was going to end in a very like a sad ending Because at one point you think Preston has double crossed brand so he swapped his gun so they track the gun the killing of these like police guys

[00:48:08] and it's actually Brands gun because Preston had swapped his gun with Brands gun and you think oh he's he's going to get away with it and then you see Brand later come back and say actually we planned this all along

[00:48:23] this is our only way that we could infiltrate the rebellion by making you think that you're feeling again and going against the regime but in fact you're working for us you're our mull or way into the rebellion It's total recall basically Yeah I thought oh shit

[00:48:44] this is not going to end very well but then he just slices everyone He wins anyway because he's invincible It's exactly the same as total recall it's the shock you're a triple agent without even knowing it ending No I was a bit disappointed with that

[00:48:58] I just thought oh really You're doing that I don't know I would have liked that to see that I don't know I mean it would have been an incredibly bleak movie if it ended low that way No I agree with you I think that would have been

[00:49:11] really sad Yeah I guess we should talk about the score so it's by our good friend Klaus Bedaut who we've seen score Solomon Kane It's a lot of choral music It does divulge into Matrix, techno-y electronic music at one point

[00:49:31] which is like are you sure you're not influenced by the Matrix I don't I think you're mistaken but yeah for the most part it's very almost religious sounding Yeah and I thought the same and also quite Soviet sounding a lot of male voice choirs in toning things

[00:49:48] The imagery of the film is quite mixed because on the one side the flag of the tetragrammaton the authority looks like a swastika and they're surrounded by fascist brutalist architecture so all of it is evoking very much a fascist authoritarian regime and yet the police are called clerics

[00:50:08] and it has a lot of religious iconography attached to it and then the music sounds somewhere between communist and religious I don't know it's quite an odd mishmash of different authoritarian regimes that we're just putting in a big pot I guess to be unspecific

[00:50:25] but in terms of the music it's very much the Hanzimmer remote control factory churning out the same plastic orchestral stuff that they did for the entire decade really from Pirates of the Caribbean onwards because a lot of people think that Hanzimmer did Pirates of the Caribbean

[00:50:42] he didn't it was Klaus Badal so all those themes that Hanz is playing at his concerts he didn't write them but yeah it's fine it's very hastily composed he got the gig when the previous composer's work was thrown out at the 11th hour the whole thing is synthesized

[00:50:58] it's all samples the orchestra is very boxy and synthy and fake and plastic sounding it did come across as kind of TV movie a little bit and also just a little bit too much of it I felt like there was just like a score all throughout

[00:51:16] in no moments where you could sort of let the dialogue breathe at all just constant score and very moody, like very spoon feeding emotions and tone which I hate yeah there are a couple of places where I thought it really worked and I can talk about those

[00:51:32] in the moves but particularly one thing I notice is where Preston faces DuPont and they're talking to each other Klaus is doing this massive thing in the background and you can tell that they clearly thought on the mixing desk that this is not great so they just

[00:51:48] slowly dial it out that just sounds pathetic though because there's this plastic orchestra screaming away in the background and you're just fading it out like it's the end of the record oh yeah no I didn't know, I think it was a bit of a mix bag

[00:52:04] yeah I mean I didn't hate it but I thought yeah it didn't quite work and at times incredibly cheesy when it gets into sort of matrix sounding electronic but yeah I don't know it was fine yeah okay moobly awards time where we nominate our favourite ass kicking

[00:52:35] infinite bullet whizzing flipping parts of the film in a number of sense offending categories best quote I feel like there were a lot of lines that were supposed to be quite profound and thought provoking there is one when Pristina is talking to Mary and she says

[00:52:55] without love and breath there's just a clock ticking yes I quite like that one I thought that was a good one it's good, it's good yeah but that's Emily Watson I think she's great my favourite quote was from brand actually and it's where

[00:53:13] earlier on in the film when you think that he's just like this really keen padawan apprentice eager to learn from his master yeah he says something about you know he's really great proud to be working with him because he thinks that you know

[00:53:27] working with him will make his career and then later in the movie when he betrays him and turns him in he says I told you I'd make my career with you Preston ah yes it's a fun call back and it just shows you

[00:53:43] how you can make your career through ambition and skull duggery mmm yeah yeah best hair or costume my favourite piece of hair and costume is the enforcer with the motorcycle helmet that has a segmented visor that when closed looks like a T for tetragrammaton

[00:54:01] but then when you think about it that means he's got a motorcycle helmet with a visor that's got a slit on it for his eyes which was the point of a visor that doesn't cover your eyes when you're riding a motorcycle yeah that's true

[00:54:17] it's stupid at all his mouth so basically all the bugs are going straight in there but he looks cool he looks really cool when it flips back it's great that's the main thing the main thing is it looks cool it doesn't matter if it makes any sense

[00:54:33] at all as long as it looks cool yeah exactly how about you my favourite here in costume I mean everyone wears monochrome throughout the entire film but Preston at one point right at the end he does wear a white sort of get up it almost looks

[00:54:49] Asian the jackets but it's more white and he has a nice blue sort of baby blue sash as well which is he does it's quite fetching I do feel like the most naughty thing about this movie is everyone does martial arts in every fight scene

[00:55:11] it's all martial arts and that's 100% from the matrix and onwards and it's like 99 hit and then suddenly everyone new martial arts no one did like fisticuffs like normal punching anymore it's always flying kicks and flips yeah very naughty it is yeah you're absolutely right

[00:55:35] I hadn't even thought of that I was more thinking about dystopian futures because that seemed to be big in the naughties not really sure why but Spielberg's Minority Report Aeon Flux Children of Men iRobot just lots of authoritarian dictatorships that we had to overthrow for some reason

[00:56:01] favorite scene my favorite scene in this movie was Mario Bryan's execution which you said was akin to a witch burning which I hadn't thought of but I thought it was genuinely powerful stirring stuff with Klaus Bedeltz music and Emily's performance and Christian Bell's performance

[00:56:23] because yeah you said that he watched the video of him just calmly watching his wife being led away and killed and not recognizing the person that he was on this drug and rushing to try and stop her from being killed and he doesn't make it

[00:56:41] and that's what brings about the third act and I thought oh it's nicely done nicely executed if you'll excuse me, I thought it was very good and I wasn't expecting her to die so I was really surprised oh it's yeah it is really

[00:56:55] harring especially when because you can see her face through the little slit in the big door that comes down so it's pretty pretty sashed. Yeah it's good stuff my favorite scene I like the way it was shot but the death scene of Partridge

[00:57:15] so it's in a church, it's in this sort of big I guess abandoned church and they've got all these light streams coming in through the background and how John Bean holds up a book of Yates just like a book it's almost similar to the scene

[00:57:31] in The Black Hole with the character holding up a book before he gets minced up by the robot but yeah execution style Preston shoots him in the head I think and he falls back through the book and then the pages kind of splatter everywhere no blood though

[00:57:55] but yeah the whole scene is very John Woo-esque it felt like are we gonna see doves at some point like I was wondering are there some doves in those shafts of light? Yeah no not quite most cliche moment I thought the biggest cliche in this movie

[00:58:17] possibly a new one is the snow globe of innocence oh yes yes first scene in Citizen Kane which apparently is the greatest movie of all time but there are also snow globes in the Richard Geith Riller Unfaithful and of course we've seen it ourselves in One Magic Christmas

[00:58:39] where it quite literally is used to show the shattering of innocence Harry Dean Stanton drops it to explain to Abby that this thing inside her mother has broken and he's got to fix it and in this movie Christian Bale picks up a snow globe and then drops it

[00:58:57] when all of a sudden all of his illusions are shattered and he experiences feelings listening to Beethoven yeah I mean works yeah there's a book cheesy isn't there it is yeah but it works so if it works why not my cliche

[00:59:17] I would like to point out is Bran's death scene so he does get his face sliced in half and I don't know what it is about the late 90s and early 2000s but that slow sort of falling of a body part a face or like a sliced

[00:59:35] in half body was very common around at that time so I think it happens in Blade I'm not sure but it definitely happens in Underworld I'm pretty sure someone gets sliced in half diagonally and it just slides off them yes they do reason and evil

[00:59:53] it's the scene in the laser room where someone gets sliced in half or like in cubes and they just fall apart and also in the movie cube as well there's I think another room with bladey things or whatever someone gets sliced in half

[01:00:09] but that sort of slice where you don't immediately notice that they've been sliced and then they just kind of slide away it was such a cliche of that sort of time of film making yeah and I think it's because the VFX could do it at last

[01:00:25] so everybody thought hey look at this thing we can do yeah exactly it's never practical it's always CGI Best Special Effect So my favourite special effect was slicing Bran's face off ah right yes one detail I really liked about it was that if you look closely

[01:00:45] in the overhead shot that ends the scene as Preston walks out of the room you can still see his face on the floor oh really? yeah it looks like back in the day when you used to get masks that you could cut out of the back of serial

[01:00:59] boxes it sort of looks like oh my god just sitting on the floor still looking kind of surprised which I liked wow okay I did not notice that yeah Favourite sound effect my favourite sound effect it just kind of made me laugh

[01:01:19] but it's the scene where Preston breaks one of the guys arms the bone like snaps in half and it's not the bone break sound that I liked it's the primal scream of excruciating pain coming from the guy when he gets his arm broken

[01:01:37] it's just so like yeah that's how I would sound as well well yeah not surprisingly because I mean there's a squib in there his arm doesn't just break it explodes it's really violent more so than it had ever been depicted before with a bone break

[01:01:57] and I think the director mentions that the guy that played the guy getting the bone break was an amputee so he doesn't have an actual arm there so it's just like a prosthetic that's being snapped in half so it's yeah it works though it really

[01:02:13] makes that scene convincing it does sound for you for me I just have a stupidest sound effect and it's just because I became really sensitised to it and it was during Preston's final fight with Dupont the sort of swiping noises for the gun

[01:02:29] carter or whatever the hell it is yeah there were just so many whew whew whew and I started you know once you hear it all of a sudden I'm just thinking what did they have like a sampling keyboard and they're just ramming their fingers against it

[01:02:45] to play thousands of different swooshes most funniest moment so this movie has one joke in it I think it's a deliberate joke after dispatching a whole squad of police who have discovered his dog John bends out of the shot and stands back up

[01:03:05] with a puppy in his arms with this really sort of stern blue steel look on his face throughout and it's clearly meant to be funny because he's all seriousness and cheekbones and there's his puppy in his arms so it's just it's funny it's clearly meant

[01:03:25] to be funny and the director said that it wasn't in the cut originally and then he put it back in because the audience loves it there is just something about this sort of man of action an acute dog that I think obviously John Wixman had great

[01:03:41] fun with that as a premise as well but yeah it's very funny I laughed a lot I actually laughed a lot at the first dog scene as well I mean not the shooting of the dogs obviously but the scene where prison picks up the puppy and he says

[01:03:57] oh it needs to be checked for diseases and he kind of walks off and then he comes back and he sees something else that was really funny like it felt like it's just a comedy suddenly because he's so stern and emotionless every other time

[01:04:13] he is yeah I think that's one of the ways that you humanize your character or make the audience buy into your central characters have them rescue a dog or be nice to children and we haven't seen him do anything nice to his children other than police

[01:04:29] their intake of prosium so it's nice to see him fall in love with a dog on site yeah it works alright and that's our move please that's our move please hi this is Jonathan King and you're listening to Movie Oobliette right it's final verdict time should equilibrium

[01:04:57] from 2002 be liberated to share its feelings with the rest of the world once more and be praised or should it be injected with prosium and be returned back to its emotionless abyss of the Oobliette lost forever Conrad equilibrium I do have an inkling that

[01:05:17] maybe he didn't like this movie no he didn't like this movie but I mean I can appreciate it I think the look of the movie the production value they got from shooting in former East Berlin and East Germany it looks great all of the work that

[01:05:35] they did on the fight scenes but the central premise of it just doesn't work you can't have a drama about people that don't feel anything and the idea of a society that bans emotion on the basis that it causes wars is risible

[01:05:49] so I mean you have to take it on the value of being a fantasy and just entertainment for the sake of it but I just I couldn't take any if it's seriously I was just laughing at the whole ridiculousness of it apart

[01:06:01] from a couple of scenes that I thought were quite moving like the execution of Mary's character but it's never going to appeal to me and so if I just put that aside and say okay would I recommend it as a piece of film making no I wouldn't

[01:06:19] I'm not surprised by that I think I might be swayed a little bit by nostalgia of that time I mean when I watched it I think I was like 19 or 20 it's very much of my generation it's so stylistic and matrix esque and I loved movies

[01:06:41] like that back then watching it now it's very dated and quite silly and kind of quite obviously low budget in scenes like it has kind of a flatness to it in a lot of the scenes even though it's really well shot and they did get a lot of

[01:07:03] productive value from very minimal budget and sort of resources it's innovative in terms of film making yeah I just know I know it's flawed I know it's silly the premise is outrageous but I kind of still like it it's interesting as well watching Christian

[01:07:21] Bale in a movie like this because I feel like he would never do a movie like this now but yeah he's in this so I don't know I think it's quite a sort of snapshot of the times and still it's almost like a guilty pleasure I don't know

[01:07:39] I'd recommend this not to everyone maybe only people that grew up in the 2000s but do you think it's like a good representation like a really like oh this is a hidden gem that was overlooked at the time this is a good piece of Naughty's action there

[01:07:57] yeah I think so I don't know I think Naughty's action movies are silly and ridiculous I think they all are like all of Jason Statham's transporter movies are stupid but they're still fun I don't know I still had fun with this movie okay

[01:08:15] I glad I mean I did not but that's fine to break this impasse we ought to fire from our patrons what they thought hello hell yes Conrad what have you been doing I've been working as a customer service chat bot for a delivery company how did that go

[01:08:31] the swearing is fun okay lovely okay can we have the vote please holy shit they voted to set it free they voted to set it free I am shocked by this wow I really thought I was going to be alone I really thought

[01:08:47] it's just maybe that bad that I like it but apparently not no apparently not so it wasn't unanimous it was 80-20 I am Eddie Coulter said it's been almost 15 years since I've seen equilibrium still found it pretty entertaining with good performances from Christian Bale and Sean Bean

[01:09:05] there's enough here that it should gun Tata itself out of the Oobliate film aficionado who chose this movie said back in college equilibrium was the local video rental stores answer to my question man those matrix sequels sure sucked what else do you have after re-watching the movie

[01:09:27] I'm happy to report that the frenetic action solid performances in overall Orwellian tone still hold up well sure the gun Tata concept is a bit silly and it criminally unto utilizes Sean Bean but the pros outweigh the cons I say lead equilibrium back flip out of the Oobliate

[01:09:47] to electronic music whilst dual wielding pistol yes yes yes but there was a flip side and of course that was Jasmine of course please toss this one back the amalgamation read ripoff of Fahrenheit 451 the matrix and ultraviolet seems like it could have been interesting

[01:10:11] but since the movie induces in its viewers as much emotion as its deadpan characters this is an unintentionally funny bore right and Jasmine was afraid that she was going to be the lone dissenting voice so Isaac bless him came to her rescue and said oh yes

[01:10:31] the equilibrium that really make me question the nature of the Oobliate because look I want the dope image of Christian Bale illuminated only by gunfire to live on forever but I really think this movie was forgotten for a reason it tries so hard to convince you how serious

[01:10:49] and deep it all is but the aesthetics are mega campy and it never really reaches the gravitas it tries to project like I can tell they want me to be moved by the puppy scene but it's too much almost as if the movie itself is waiting

[01:11:05] for the story to get it over with let's whiz past all this all well stuff so we can get back to the bang bang fights already so where do I go from here set it free on the basis that I like the vibes because the concept and shot

[01:11:19] composition of fun or send it back because I think the execution is overall lacking and that I wouldn't recommend it to anyone I guess this time I'll go with the latter if only so that Jasmine doesn't have to stand alone well done Isaac very nice

[01:11:39] but oh yes they have voted let's set it free yes yes bye bye equilibrium okay Conrad what film are we doing next episode well as you pointed out in the last episode we've done a lot of British movies this year so I thought it would be only fair

[01:11:59] to go down under next time so we will be looking at the 1978 Australian psychological thriller long weekend all right never heard of this movie no me neither it was recommended by the person who'll be joining us to discuss it well I'm always happy to check out Australian film

[01:12:25] yeah and something from the 70s too feels like we haven't done that in a while and listeners if you want to keep up to date find out when our episodes come out you can follow us on all our social media platforms as movieubliot

[01:12:39] and email us at movie.ubliot at gmail.com and if you want to support the show and keep the lights on head on over to Patreon where for as little as a dollar you can nominate films for future episodes like film aficionado did

[01:12:53] with this one I enjoyed that nomination even though not everyone did yeah for five dollars you get access to our exclusive monthly minnissos and for ten dollars you can be an executive producer like chisella eddy culter Isaac Sutton dr. doggy surge iconographer and ryan a potter

[01:13:13] yes yes yes thank you for all the support everyone we also have mission days at redbubble and a youtube channel and if you have not already given us a rating and review on apple podcast or whatever podcast platform you are listening to us on please do

[01:13:31] does help us out a lot and it costs you absolutely nothing yes and apparently if you use ridiculous superlatives it really spikes the algorithm and uh promotes your show gets it to the front page so yes use the most ridiculous praise that you can come up with

[01:13:53] yes please do please do alright chrono that's it for another episode until next time goodbye goodbye don't sense a fend be careful prestan you're treading on my dreams