Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
60:37 – 65:18… Can you guess the body count in the movie? It's like 30. I'm gonna go lower. Do you want to go higher or lower, Bill? Lower. Lower, lower, boom! 22. Okay. Apex Mountain. Mm-hmm. This is where we decide if it was the person's apex of their career. Oh. This exact... When this movie came out. So it's when they had the most cachet, the ability to get the most projects done. At their time. It's just never been better. At their time. At the time. I don't know if any... I mean, the Coens weren't... Like I was saying, they didn't do that. I think you can make case for Brolin. This opened up like a whole A-list path …
The whole segment, as transcribed
I'm glad. I'm glad. Some sort of ideas for this. Can you guess the body count in the movie? It's like 30. I'm gonna go lower. Do you want to go higher or lower, Bill? Lower. Lower, lower, boom! 22. Okay. Apex Mountain. Mm-hmm. This is where we decide if it was the person's apex of their career. Oh. This exact... When this movie came out. So it's when they had the most cachet, the ability to get the most projects done. At their time. It's just never been better. At their time. At the time. I don't know if any... I mean, the Coens weren't... Like I was saying, they didn't do that. I think you can make case for Brolin. This opened up like a whole A-list path for him. But you could make the argument that Avengers, he's like more popular now than ever. Yeah. I mean, he also did... You know, he was nominated for an Oscar for Milk, I think, the next year. His thing was just more like this movie happened. I remember Milk happened. And then he was George W. Bush and all the Stone movies. And all these... It was just suddenly he was in all these things. He was an American Gangster this year, too. American Gangster. Yeah. He just knocked out of it. Maybe the George Bush movie was. I don't know. Coen Brothers? Fargo? Fargo? When were they at the peak of their powers? This is probably it because they win the Oscar? I would say this. I don't think they've dipped very far. No, I don't think they've dipped at all. Where does this rank in like... Is this like a top three Coens for you? Is it outside of the top three? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think it's... I mean... Yeah, there's different eras of them. It's like the early era stuff, which is like Raising Arizona and Miller's Cross and Barton Fink, Blood Simple. Like all those I really love. And then it's like Fargo happens and you kind of have like this new... I don't know why. It's not like the movie. But they get a little bit sleeker and a little bit like less crazy or something. But I think this and A Serious Man are the two I like the most of this era. Javier Bardem? I mean, this is one of the most identifiable characters in the last 50 years. It's probably this or Skyfall in terms of like Apex Mountain, but I think... Ooh, Skyfall. He's just pretty much great. I really like Skyfall. Yeah, he's a great actor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's in a really good movie that came out earlier this year called Everybody Knows, which is with him and Penelope Cruz. And they're like... It's set during a wedding in like a small Spanish village. And there's a kidnapping and they have to like find this teenage girl who's been kidnapped from this wedding. And it's just set over the course of this weekend. It's so good. Is it in the theater? It was out earlier this year. Yeah. Who directed that? The Iranian filmmaker. I can't remember his name off the top of my head. I'm going to the Joey Pants Award for the best that guy. There's like seven that guys in this movie. Oh, Asgard Faraday. Yeah. Oh, cool. There's like seven Coen brothers that guys in this movie and I don't even know really how to pick. I mean, I love the guy who he flips the coin with. Gas station guy? The gas station. Yeah, I don't even know what his name is, so he wins. He's unreal. I also think the woman at the hotel, she's like, what do you want? Like when she's getting mad at Sugar. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like her. Wait, is this the Joey Pants Award? Yeah. I would say the kid who's like, look at that fucking bone is Caleb Landry Drones. Who's now like since been in a bunch of stuff. Oh, that's a good one. That's cool. Yeah. That's a good one. Would this movie have been better with Danny Trejo, Steve Buscemi, or Michael K. Williams? No. Danny Trejo, they could have worked into this. You really want him in most things, though, right? Trejo? Yeah. We try to work him in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just, you wouldn't need any sort of, he just is so hard looking. No one would pull over and be like, hey, man, you know, you're okay? All right. All right. Before we hit the final third of the pod, let's talk about Luminary really quickly. They've launched a bunch of great original shows you can only find on their platform, including our little spinoff series to the Rewatchables. It's called the Rewatchables 1999. Basically, you know, the cousin of this podcast. It dissects some of our favorite movies from 1999, which was an all-time great year in film. Each episode, much like this show, breaks down a movie of our choice with some highly specific categories and a couple of new ones that we came up with, but you'll get the most rewatchable scene, who won the movie, all that stuff. We've already done American Pie, Office Space, The Matrix, Austin Powers 2, a whole bunch of them. You can make sure to check out all the other great podcasts on Luminary, like Poetics with
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