Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to five minute film Finder, brought to you by Pioneer Library system.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Welcome to five minute film Finder, brought to you by Pioneer library system. My name is Darren, and with me today, I have a first time guest on the podcast. Welcome, Samuel.
Why don't you introduce yourself, Samuel? Say hi to everybody.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Hello, my name is Samuel and I work for Pioneer library system.
So happy to be know this is a dream come true to be on the five minute film finder.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Dream come true. You hear that, everybody? Dream come true. That's great.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Yeah, love movies. And so now instead of just subjecting my coworkers to me talking incessantly about movies, I can now subject the entire customer base of library system.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Yeah, me first, but everybody when they listen. Great.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Excellent.
Good to hear it. Today we're going to talk about two movies. As usual, we have chosen a couple of 90s movies.
I have judgment night. And what movie did you choose, Samuel?
[00:01:14] Speaker A: I chose dead presidents.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Dead presidents. And had you seen dead presidents before?
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Yes, kind of came across it earlier this year through another podcast focused on 90s films and stuff and gave it a watch. And I was like, you know, I really like this. Would love to talk about it. Great. Yeah.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: And brought you on the podcast. Yeah, perfect. And did you watch the judgment night?
[00:01:39] Speaker A: I did watch judgment.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Had you seen it before?
[00:01:41] Speaker A: I had not seen judgment night before.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: All right, I'm getting my perfect time around.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: All right, perfect. We'll have lots to talk about then. So I think I'm going to start. So we'll queue up. Wilhelm, we're going to have five minutes to talk about judgment night, which you can catch on Hoopla if you have a pioneer library system card. So judgment night came out 1993, starring Emilio Estevez, Cuba gooding Jr. And Stephen Dorf in a pretty early role, I think he's 1920 years old. Dennis Leary plays the bad guy. They focus a lot on him. He does a lot of talking. There's almost half of the dialogue is him just talking to himself in this movie, which is kind of interesting, just yelling into the void. Lots of close up of his mouth and some weird stuff like that.
Directed by Stephen Hopkins, which he's not known for much. Predator two, which is a favorite of mine, but again, not known for very much other than that.
But it's a weird movie. Right. It's one that I felt like I had remembered a little more fondly.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Than maybe I should have, but I don't know. What did you think? Did you have a good time watching it?
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. It was fun.
In a tense way. Right. Because it is about guys, like, running for their lives.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Basically the entire movie. The plot is they're going to a boxing match and stuff happens. They go to the big city and it goes bad and everything. They have to run for their lives because there's gangsters looking for them.
[00:03:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: And I think that what's so cool about it is you get these different sets, right.
Where they can really play up tension. Like the rail car scene with one of the bad guys just, like, scratching a nail.
That's awesome. And even, like, the. Is it department store they end up in.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Yeah, the end. The end scene in the movie.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Yep. It gives them a lot of cool, I think, shots, like when he's like, Emilio's characters. Like Frank Francis. Frank Francis, yeah.
[00:03:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: I can't believe I forgot his name. Dennis Leary says it so often.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: Francis.
[00:04:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: But he's like, amidst, like, wind chimes or something. So you get some really cool shots in there. So, yeah, a lot of fun.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Yeah. I thought it was interesting. I felt like there was some strong shots.
So. So acting here and there. Right. But it could have been scenes from a better movie. It's weird that, like, you know, there were some really good scenes, well constructed stuff, you know, music on point in a lot of the scenes. It worked really well.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: It's just.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: It was a bomb. Like, nobody liked it, I guess.
And there's some stuff that didn't age super well.
It was nice that the city wasn't portrayed as, like, a racial thing. The city being bad. The people that were bad were white people for the most part. In the movie, Dennis Leary played the main bad guy. And then there was another bad guy. I don't know if you recognize Peter Green, the actor from Pulp Fiction. He plays one of the nastiest guys in pulp Fiction.
He's a guy that, when he pops up, I get excited about the. A lot of those scenes with them worked pretty well, I think.
But I think the interactions between the main characters was my biggest problem. Okay. That stuff just seemed a little forced.
Suddenly Cuba Gooden Jr's character is wanting to be heroic and their inner fighting and stuff just seemed a little forced as they're trying to run for their lives. But all in all, like I said, I think it was pretty fun.
I just wanted more. Dennis Leary yelling into the.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: I mean, yeah, that's. It's the rooftop scene where he's negotiating with the.
He's very. You get that sense of resentment come through and it's, you know, I said.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: He'S given more to do just in the way the things that he talks and the close ups of his face and him getting all excited. And that's Dennis Leary. That's what he does.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: But, yeah, I mean, it's rad.
That scene is really great.
[00:06:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: It does feel like not to make this podcast about the 90s, but it does feel of its time.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: Very 90s. Right. Even like the motorhome. Right?
[00:06:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:36] Speaker B: With the marble floors.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't catch that the first time. I watched it. The second time, watched it twice, trying to do my homework, and I was like, oh, marble floors.
It was definitely, definitely a fun.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: I like that they never really said what he did.
[00:06:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: Jeremy Peasant's character played. He was. He was the right, like. And he had. Okay, and that looks like we are out of time. That is Wilhelm telling us. We have talked for five minutes. Samuel, what do you think, your first experience on the talking about movies? You have a good time? Are you ready to talk about yours?
[00:07:13] Speaker A: I'm having a great time. Ready to dive into dead presidents if you are.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Great. Let's go.
[00:07:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: We'll take a short break here. Need 1 second, and we'll be right back.
All right, everybody, welcome back. We are ready to talk about our next movie that is dead presidents. Samuel, I'll let you go with awesome.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:07:40] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: I chose dead presidents.
Kind of came across this movie a couple months ago, watched it, didn't know what I thought of it, and then kind of the way I judge movies is if I keep thinking about the movie, I'm just like, I think this is a good movie. And so I like to return to them. And so I've watched this a couple of times now. Have you watched it before?
[00:08:01] Speaker B: I have, yeah. I've seen it a few.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: It is so it's directed by the Hughes brothers, who did minister society, and then also, weirdly, book of Eli and.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: Kind of a favorite of mine. Love it.
[00:08:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: And so the range, they're not giving you the same thing over and over again. These are very three totally different movies.
So dead presidents is interesting because it follows the life of a black Vietnam vet kind of before he goes off to Vietnam, and he kind of chooses it because the two influences in his life, his father was a korean war vet, and then Keith David's character, who he works for run in numbers, was also a korean vet. And so he kind of chooses this path. And a lot of the movie, it sort of ends up being a heist movie in the end, but a lot of it is about returning from Vietnam and the struggles he faces trying to find work. Struggling with PTSD.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: A good half of the movie is the lead up to, like, people talk about it as a heist movie, but that doesn't really give it justice because there is a lot more to it, especially the opening, the beginning, and the lead up to where he goes.
[00:09:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: So I think this is what draws me to this movie is it's incredibly rich thematically.
So you get issues of race, PTSD, kind of war, poverty and things like that, and addiction with Tucker's character. And I think it makes pretty early great role from.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Showing some good range there. Not just a.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: Think. You know, growing up, Chris Tucker was the guy in rush hour. For me to see him in these more serious roles, it's incredible to watch kind of the performance he turns.
I think when I first was exposed to this movie, one thing it was likened to was if you took a Scorsese movie and substituted an italian american neighborhood with a black neighborhood.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: It kind of has that feeling, very similar feel. Right. There's a lot of buildup with family and the different influences on the character's lives in a movie. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's a good comparison, the way that they show his possible life paths and the choices that he does make and why he might make them and where he goes with that and how it ends up going at the end of the movie.
[00:10:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: I think if you like a movie like mean streets, I think this would be a good movie to kind of turn on and watch.
I think it's kind of got that vibe to it.
So that's kind of what drew me to this movie and what has kept me thinking about this movie a lot is just, like, how rich it is thematically.
When you watched it, were there parts of it that really stood out to you?
[00:11:15] Speaker B: I feel like the imagery of the heist with their faces and stuff, that's what they used in the promotional material and stuff when I first saw that. Right.
I'm a 90s kid. Right. I thought that was cool. I thought it was super cool, the stuff. But it's interesting, right?
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Greatest movie poster of all time.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: I mean, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. And him looking up. Right? Yeah, very 90s movie.
In a similar way that you get a lot of.
Just the way they shoot things and stuff like that. But I think it's a great movie.
Better movie than probably my movie that I chose. But like you said, it has a lot to say, and I think that they show you just like I said a really interesting character development. Lorenz Tate's great.
I like him in a lot of things.
Postman, which is not a great movie either. That people don't like that I love. He's in that.
And then Keith David is always great to see. I'll listen to him talk, basically, just do whatever he doesn't know. So getting those little tastes of that early roles for some of those guys was great. Had a really good time.
I think that looks like we are out of time, everybody. That was Wilhelm.
Sorry we ran out of time on your movie, Samuel. No, it was great talking to you.
[00:12:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: About these movies that we watched from the 90s. Hope everybody had a good time listening. Anything else you'd like to say?
[00:13:04] Speaker A: No. Thanks for having me. Love talking about the movies. And it was kind of a fun trip to an era that I didn't really experience.
Yeah, it was awesome.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Excellent. Happy to have you on, man. Thanks.
