Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
52:41 – 56:35… run in his Jaguar in the first opening scenes is probably the winner. But Sidney Pollack does the most with the time he has on the screen. Let's talk about Apex Mountain, whether or not this person was performing at their absolute peak in this movie. Is this Apex Mountain for Tony Gilroy? Do you guys have any other Gilroy that you would put over it? Hmm. This would basically be the Bourne movies? Yeah. I was going to say, I'm only really a fan of the first Bourne movie. I am a big, big fan of the Bourne movie that Gilroy actually directed, The Bourne Legacy. Right, right. I haven't seen that one. Well, it's …
The whole segment, as transcribed
Dennis O'Hare, I think I'm going to give a different award to, but you know, he deserves, I mean, in the truest sense of the Dion Waiters award, Dennis O'Hare as the guy who does the hit and run in his Jaguar in the first opening scenes is probably the winner. But Sidney Pollack does the most with the time he has on the screen. Let's talk about Apex Mountain, whether or not this person was performing at their absolute peak in this movie. Is this Apex Mountain for Tony Gilroy? Do you guys have any other Gilroy that you would put over it? Hmm. This would basically be the Bourne movies? Yeah. I was going to say, I'm only really a fan of the first Bourne movie. I am a big, big fan of the Bourne movie that Gilroy actually directed, The Bourne Legacy. Right, right. I haven't seen that one. Well, it's been a long time since I've seen the Bourne Legacy. There's a lot of interesting homoeroticism between Jeremy Renner and Oscar Isaac in that movie. Oh, if I knew that. Is it as interesting as the homoeroticism between, in Skyfall? It's a little less explicit. There's not topping that. But they do spend a night in a cabin together. There's also just, it is one of the great Edward Norton performances, like the unsung Edward Norton performance in Bourne Legacy. It's basically 55 to 60 minutes of like a perfect movie. And then it turns into a hour long car chase through Manila, which is still pretty cool, but is like really exhausting. But that being said, I think that this is easily Tony Gilroy's Apex Mountain. Do you guys think that this is Apex Mountain for George Clooney? I do. And I do. The thing is, there are not a ton of Clooney performances. I'm saying this through clenched teeth. It's not that the mic is messed up. There are not a ton of Clooney performances that I love. He's really, there's a precision to Clooney as Michael Clayton. There's the, I don't know, that's the magic, man. He's really doing the razzle-pazzle. Michael Clayton, without overdoing anything. That's the thing. He's not, because he's not leaning on a hero trope or he's not really playing a dirtbag. It's like the fact that he is sort of, he's really riding a line that seems like it should make that role defined by ambivalence. But I don't know. He's just, he nails it. He just nails it in this hard to articulate way for me. LZ, what do you think? Um, I, I also, I think this is like peak phase two Clooney. Okay. I think this is my favorite performance of like the second half of his career. Like, I feel like out of sight is phase one. Yes. And then we, this is kind of just kicks off him playing a sad sack. And also just him playing a character that no woman is attracted to in this movie. I thought that was an interesting, you know, Clooney look. Yeah. Um, not sure it's realistic, but who can say. Um, I also think this is the beginning of peak Tilda Swinton in America. So let's talk about that. Yeah. And also I just rewatched her Oscar speech for this movie and I highly recommend it because she makes fun of George Clooney and Batman. And it's really, she says that he wore his, uh, his Batman costume with the nipples under his Michael Clayton suit. Um, and Clooney's like in the first row of the Oscars ceremony, like laughing. That was a good Oscars era. I feel like she, like that was like a, we got good crowds. The vibes were pretty good. The movies being rewarded were pretty good. Oh seven, you know, the oh eight Oscars had like a really great crop of films to talk about. Yeah. I mean, I think that's one thing I wanted to bring up about this movie too, is I do think, I still think it's underrated in a strange way. And I think it got lost in the shuffle of a really good award season. And just, you know, so Clooney was up for the Oscar. He lost inevitably to Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood, like one of the most inevitable best actor Oscars ever given, which is kind of a bummer because I think any other year almost this would, that would be like the Clooney performance, um, that he finally gets his best actor for. And it's maybe it's just never going to happen for him. Michael Clayton style just never fully lives up to it.
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