Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
68:22 – 77:19… about everything happening with Hickox. They feel true to the characters, too. Yeah. They do feel true to the characters. We did saw Rubenek. The Joey. Apex Mountain? What's that? Well, I was going to do Joey Pants really quickly just because I only had one. I had nothing for this. I have Hellstrom's assistant when he comes and picks up, this is really niche for me. Hellstrom's assistant, like the guy who drives Hellstrom to go pick up Shoshona at the movie theater the first time when he's like, get your ass in the car. Yeah. His driver is Egon Tiedemann from Dark, which is a big, the young, got blank …
The whole segment, as transcribed
You know, that's heady stuff for a Tarantino movie. And there's no, even though he is always inserting Easter eggs and things like that, there's something elevated about everything happening with Hickox. They feel true to the characters, too. Yeah. They do feel true to the characters. We did saw Rubenek. The Joey. Apex Mountain? What's that? Well, I was going to do Joey Pants really quickly just because I only had one. I had nothing for this. I have Hellstrom's assistant when he comes and picks up, this is really niche for me. Hellstrom's assistant, like the guy who drives Hellstrom to go pick up Shoshona at the movie theater the first time when he's like, get your ass in the car. Yeah. His driver is Egon Tiedemann from Dark, which is a big, the young, got blank stare. So. Not familiar. That's all I really got for the Joey Pants award. It's funny. I feel like everybody who is a Joey Pants is also kind of famous. Yeah. Yeah. So like Sam Levine, Paul Rust. These people are all. BJ Novak. BJ Novak. All very like sort of recognizable. Also, one little fun fact about them is that all of the bastards are also screenwriters. Yeah. Which is a kind of a clever Tarantino-esque flourish. Oh, gosh. I mean, in some ways, like Rod Taylor is a that guy in this movie. Sure. Because you can't really tell who it is and you haven't seen Rod Taylor. Joey Pants is usually saved for like the seventh, the guy who's sharing a title card with four other people and is always in that spot. I think maybe Denis Menachet. Okay. The L'Apidit. Okay. I think he's kind of like a French actor of note. Any of the more recent Bond movies or something? Wasn't he, didn't he do something like that? Let's look at his most recent roster. Well, if you're looking at his face and thinking he's familiar but can't figure out why, I guess he is with that guy. He's a Joey Pants. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not seeing him. I mean, he's in Assassin's Creed. No. Oh, so he's a Fassbender veteran. That's right. Okay. So that's the Joey Pants. So we're really only a couple of people. We did Saul Rubinek. Let's do Apex Mountain. Mm-hmm. Oh, you're stretching before this. Well, I mean. You're building up to something big. This is really one. This is a. You're scaling the mountain. One thing that we have to talk about. Mountains are a big thing in this movie. Pits Paloo. Yeah. Is this Tarantino's Apex Mountain? Oh, wow. What does this category mean? What does Apex Mountain mean, Chris? So I broke my foot yesterday. I have this new cast. Mallory's going to put an Adidas Continental on my foot and then strangle me. No, it basically means it's this person at the peak of their powers at this point, both commercially and artistically. Strangle me with your bare Jew hunting hands. Right? That's the new hit me with a truck. I think so. Do you try that one out on Twitter and see what your ratio is? I don't think it can be his Apex Mountain. Okay. You think Pulp is? He won the Screenplay Oscar at like 29 years old after making Pulp Fiction and was the toast of Hollywood and could have done anything in the world that he wanted to at that moment. Kind of did. And he did. And he made Jackie Brown a great film that is different. Yeah. So I don't think it's his Apex Mountain. Now that's different from Is This His Best Movie? Which is maybe something we should talk about. Right. So I think that he makes, he has three phases, essentially. Dogs, Fiction, and Brown, Elmore Leonard Underworld movies. That's phase one. Kill Bill and Grindhouse are martial arts exploitation raised to like an art house level. And then the third phase that we're in now is Bastards, Django, Hateful Eight, and Hollywood, which is this historical revisionism, alternate history. Right. Heavily, heavily, heavily influenced, if not explicitly Westerns. So I have a sentimental attachment to phase one because it essentially taught me how to understand pop culture. I like phase two, but it's not my favorite. And I think he's just one of the more interesting filmmakers still going. And the fact that he is able to make two and a half hour, incredibly talky movies like the way he's been doing for the last few years. And people are like, yeah, I'm just going to go see this. I'm going to go see the road version of Hateful Eight, you know, in panoramic widescreen Technicolor. It's just remarkable in 2019. Yeah, it's a little bit of a TBD with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. You know, it's a little hard to say where, if that's a phase four for him or if this is a continuation of something or a throwback or I don't know if you and I have ever really had a big Tarantino conversation, Mal. I love Tarantino. I think this is my favorite Tarantino movie. I really, really, really love Django and I love Pulp Fiction. But this is the one that I find myself thinking about the most, craving a watch of the most and enjoying the most when I rewatch it. I do think it might be Apex Nun for Pitt. Yeah, that was the next one. Because, I mean, look at the, first of all, shout out to Brad Pitt. Who, in addition to being this last half century's most beautiful person and a very weird guy, just has extraordinary taste. And always is working with interesting and weird people and always trying to do something new. And is probably never ultimately going to get credit for it. And there's obviously this well-known cliche about how he's a character actor trapped in a leading man's body. But at this time, the run-up to this, he basically does Ocean's 13, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Burn After Reading, The Curious Case of Benjamin Bundan and Glorious Bastards in a row. All of those performances are completely different. Some of the best filmmakers alive. All incredible directors. Yeah. All like great challenges and all movies that can't happen without him. Yeah. So he's using his powers for good. Not all of them are hits. In fact, Jesse James, famously a bomb. Yeah, right. But is remembered by those who love it as maybe the best movie of the century. I don't necessarily feel that way. I think you like it. I think it's very, very great. I don't think it, yeah. And after this, he does a lot of great stuff. He does The Tree of Life. He does Moneyball. He does World War Z, Killing Them Softly, 12 Years a Slave, The Counselor. Produces a lot of really good stuff, too. Yes. And he's obviously still, he's in this new Tarantino movie. He hasn't gone anywhere necessarily. But that period feels like the most significant period of his career since his kind of 90s breakthrough. Okay. So we're a little bit split on Tarantino. You think no. I think arguably yes. You think arguably less? No. No. Okay. Yeah. Basically, nobody understands Apex Mountain. Pitt, yes. Waltz, yes. Kruger. Definitely for Waltz. Yes. Yeah. Laurent, yes. Oh, yeah. BJ Novak? No. It's The Office for him. No, I think we know The Office. When the office residuals hit? Oh, yeah. That's the Apex. All right. Picking Nits. Mm-hmm. Got a few. Of course. Come on. What are they? Oh, you don't have any? You don't want to start? I honestly don't. All right. I have one really big one that I'd like to open with. Okay. Okay. Operation Kino. Uh-huh. Do you guys know what Kino means? It is the German word for movie theater. Yeah. For cinema. So that's not a very subtle code name. I agree with you. What is that? I have this written down. Your mission to remove Hitler and the Nazis from planet Earth hinges on executing this plan, which anyone who hears you say Operation Kino is going to be able to figure out. Let's just say OPSEC for the Nazis in this world is not high order because they're just like, let's put everybody important in a theater the size of the Bowery Ballroom. It's just not exactly really well guarded. It's like they've got Wanda and that's it. I don't know. I suspect that there's not a universe. If any Italian filmmaker can just walk in off the street, how secure is it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I will say re-watching the movie when they let Antonio Margarete and Dominic DiCoco into the theater, I got confused for a second because I was like, wait, why did Wanda let them go in? Yeah. I had forgotten that he was purposefully allowing them to go in to bring the dynamite in to take care of the Nazi command. So that's another nit that I'd like to pick, though, is he has made his decision, okay? Though obviously the fact that he will follow through and kill Bridget in his interrogation of her delays your realization of what's happening there until his ultimate confrontation with or exchange with Aldo. What about everybody else who's a part of the security unit? What about literally everybody else? There is a massive mountain, getting back to mountains again, a mountain-sized pile of flammable film, not to mention literal dynamite around people's legs. And when they're walking up the stairs, you can just see it. It's just visible to the naked eye. What's everyone doing? It's the Jon Hamm picture, but with dynamite. Oh, God.
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