Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
76:19 – 82:55… get. From staycations to weekend getaways, great hotel deals are just one swipe away. So go to hoteltonight.com or download the app to unlock your Daily Drop. Apex Mountain. I think it's an interesting question if this is Spike at the peak of his powers. Yes. The peak of his filmmaking powers? Yes. Absolutely. 100% yes. No, not Malcolm X. No. Not, I don't know, 25th Hour. Not Mo' Better Blues. Because the peak that he, the apex. What about Four Little Girls? See, this is an interesting conversation. Like, he is one of the best nonfiction filmmakers ever, right? And the thing, and I don't know what he would say …
The whole segment, as transcribed
If you want to swipe again, you can unlock a new deal every day. It's a great way to take an even more spontaneous trip because you never know what you're going to get. From staycations to weekend getaways, great hotel deals are just one swipe away. So go to hoteltonight.com or download the app to unlock your Daily Drop. Apex Mountain. I think it's an interesting question if this is Spike at the peak of his powers. Yes. The peak of his filmmaking powers? Yes. Absolutely. 100% yes. No, not Malcolm X. No. Not, I don't know, 25th Hour. Not Mo' Better Blues. Because the peak that he, the apex. What about Four Little Girls? See, this is an interesting conversation. Like, he is one of the best nonfiction filmmakers ever, right? And the thing, and I don't know what he would say about what his relationship is to figuring out how to make those movies. But part of their greatness is he has to figure them out after he shot them. And the problem with some of his movies, even his very good ones, is sometimes screenwriting. This is a Black Klansman thing too. There's some parts of that movie which I think are very effective, and there's some parts of it where I'm like, I don't really understand this story. Right. How did this movie end? Right. I mean, sometimes there's perfection, like Inside Man is perfection. Incredible. And a lot of that perfection, I mean, I think the thing, the reason that I'm saying do the right thing is the apex of his filmmaking, at least his fiction filmmaking, is that the screenplay is perfect. I mean, Tom Shulman won the Oscar, but that is the real travesty, right? I could have lived with, I mean, I don't care if it didn't get a Best Picture nomination. Like, I would never have expected it to. It's remembered because Driving Miss Daisy won. Right. That's why, you know, that's been adjudicated over and over again. Did y'all just move to America? Because I just don't, I don't know, there are no circumstances, even in 2019, where Do the Right Thing is winning Best Picture over anything. I hate to break it to everybody, not happening. But the not winning of the original screenplay category, screenplay Oscar is just crazy. It is. Apex out in Danny Aiello? Yeah. I mean, it's the best performance he ever gave in a movie. He's great. Turturro? No. What would be your Turturro apex, do you know? Oh, there's so many. Some of them in Spike Lee movies, right? He's so good in Jungle Fever. Yeah. He's so good in Jungle Fever. Yeah. I mean, but come on, Barton Fink. He's really good at directing himself. Like, he's good in all the movies he makes with himself. He's good in that Transformers movie. I mean, I'm just like off the top of my head, great Turturro. Oh my God, Gloria Bell? I was hoping we would get into Transformers on this podcast, so I appreciate you bringing that up. John Turturro, never a dull moment with that man, and he gets sexier as he ages. Wow. Did you see Gloria Bell? I did. I don't want to spoil Gloria Bell for people who haven't seen it. I felt a great deal of pain for his character. Oh, sure. But nonetheless. Like a real sadness. But shut up. Okay. Before we even get there, he's just sexy now. Okay. He was not sexy. Barton Fink wasn't sexy. No, purposefully. I don't think the character's designed to be sexy. I understand that. Okay, okay. But I'm just saying, like, he is. The mink? Is he the mink? No. What's his name? What's the character's name in Miller's Crossing? Oh, uh... Oh, fuck. Oh, this... He's also really good in that, too. Yeah. Is it the mink? No, I think that's Buscemi. Shame on me. The one Irish gangster movie. I can't remember the name of the character. I can't remember. Um... Who else? Apex Mountain. Anybody else? You got a lot of people here who you're like, who is that? Who is Sam Jackson? Who is Rosie Perez? Right, right, right. Who is Martin Lawrence? But nobody's... But nobody at the peak of their powers, right? I mean, it's the Apex Mountain, the spike. Okay. Joey Pants Award for that guy. I mentioned Frank Vincent. Yeah. One of the all-time that guys. It could always be... Right, I was going to say it could always be Frank Vincent. Frankie Faison, who I think people would later know as like a... From The Wire and a lot of films over the years. Roger Guinevere Smith. Mm-hmm. Who we've talked about now. Miguel Sandoval as one of the cops? Who else? I don't know. Giancarlo Esposito used to be... Yes, until Breaking Bad. Used to be the winner of this category. Yeah. Six years ago, and now no more. I don't know. I guess it would have to be Faison. Okay. I mean, Frank Vincent is... I mean, I guess it's Frank Vincent because it's always Frank Vincent. Yeah. That's why he's in this movie in some weird way. Do you think he has moved beyond that guy-ness? No. Okay. Saul Rubineck Award for overacting. Oh, God. I did write down Giancarlo Esposito here. That was your pick? I wouldn't pick it. I know bugging out is meant to be bugging out. That's the whole point. And I know that an overperformance is purposeful. But there are times when I'm like... Chill. Maybe not so much. We're losing some of the subtlety of this. It's Ruby Day. Oh, my God. It's Ruby Day. I'm just going to say it. Wow. I thought I was taking a chance by going after Esposito. Well, there's something about Mother Sister that makes all the sense in the world for her doing too much. But it's not so much that it's a terrible... It's not a bad performance. But there's something about the burning it down part where I'm just like... I'm still in shock by it. And I think my choice of it being her is that I'd like, Mother Sister 2? Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah. It's more of that. I accept. It's not even that Ruby Dee's bad. I don't have a single nit to pick. We've said this is a perfect movie a bunch of times. I mean, we did talk about Tina. Yeah. And Rosie Perez. Yeah. To me, that's not like a storytelling problem. Oh, yes. I don't think that there's anything that happens in the movie. That's an extra diegetic problem. Right. I think the key nit to pick is that there are a lot of people who are like, why did Mookie do that? But we're not having that conversation. Best quote. There's a bunch of them. I did write down, which is something that had gotten past me in the past, but re-watching it. Black Panther eat pizza. We eat pizza. Oh, yeah. Holding the comic book.
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