Movie Mindset - Oscars Preview ‘26
The Movies…. Are back. The Mindset….Continues. Bet you thought we had forgotten? Will and Hesse get in right under the gun for another Movie Mindset Oscars Special. Our two professional film critics and acclaimed indie film stars discuss this year’s finest offerings from Tinsel Town and debate which among them deserves to be immortalized with that finest of names “Oscar.”
Will PTA finally have his crowning moment of glory this year or will it be One Disappointment After Another for the wunderkind director as he’s snubbed yet again…
Who will win the ideological battle over fascism this year? Will it be The Secret Agent, which maintains that fascism is bad or F:1 which stands for Fascism = #1?
Is having a parent evil, or is being a parent evil? And Is it better to exist or not to? Films like this year’s Frankenstein, Sentimental Value and Hamnet all delve into this tricky and universal human dilemma.
The Best Actor race is among the tightest in recent memory with many industry insiders saying it’s going to come down to Michael B Jordan playing a set of twins who are divided over eating pussy and becoming a vampire and Timothee Chalamet who plays an arrogant, pushy Jewish guy who gets everything he wants and conquers the world.
Will and Hesse discuss all this and more! Also Train Dreams? Place your bets NOW on which of this year’s movies will win, and which ones each of these professional film critics still haven’t seen!
Comments (297)
No love for No Other Choice is crazy
Agreed, Die My Love, Naked Gun II, It Was Just An Accident, and The Mastermind were pretty lit
Speed Racer is a lock for 2028
Walter Abish is a genius, and “How German Is It” has THE best book cover of all time
Not enough love for Park Chan-wooks No Other Choice. One of the best shot movies I’ve ever seen.
B C x. .
For a guy that loves movies, will sure has some bad taste!
Lex Walton da 🐐 no 🧢
ok you get one “periodt” per ep k babe?
you used OK/k twice in one half sentence, simmer
Honestly, I thought Sinners was very good, but not great. A solid 5 bags of popcorn and 1 ham-fisted metaphor. All I knew going in was it was a Vampire movie, and as I kept watching it I had the opposite feeling of that Simpsons moment. I was just think "Please, let's NOT get to the fire work factory". Also, this movie was "influenced" by From Dusk Til Dawn in the way that Abby was "influenced" by The Exorcist.
Mindset lately; Marky Mark having a cd shoved in his mouth and being forced to drink oil in Three Kings.
Mindset lately; Marky Mark having a cd shoved in his mouth and being forced to drink oil in Three Kings.
the best films never get oscars.
Good god Hesse constantly reminds us how little she knows. Will please bring on guests that know something especially if you’ve watched less of the nominees than most listeners
Maybe somebody who cares enough about film to watch them more than a day before you have to talk about them out of obligation
Will entirely misunderstood Sinners. Not surprising but absolutely pathetic and sad. Hesse misunderstood it, too, but not as badly
Pathetic and sad? Jesus dude chill. It’s not Black Panther
Ahh I feel like I live in a delusion with the collective praise that I hear for Sentimental Value. I really enjoyed Worst Person in the World but found the writing in this to be so on the nose, and pretty charmless. The flashback scenes did all the heavy lifting in the film and even so, felt generic. Stellan was sick in Andor but c’mon, he just plays gruff old guy in this who stares wistfully into the ocean. We just eat it up when a foreign film looks like ikea and is kinda nuanced?
Y'all should do a one-movie ep on Ronin and only talk about the car chases
Will already did on episode 85 of Sleazoids
I GOT THE OSCAR FEVER! HoPE yoU GoT it ToO!
I didn't see Begonia, so when they started talking about the 'developmentally disabled cousin' I assumed that was the role Stavros played...
time... Period.
Who the fuck is Shelby?!
Will's take on Bugonia being just anger having watched it is so validating
YES THE IF I HAD LEGS ID KICK U COMPARISON god damn dude I couldn't agree more. Don's death is just sadistic to the character and the viewer and life itself
It would be great if you all debated Brianna Joy Gray about one battle after another. I think her critique was that this movie was critical of the left, but it was critical of the left by liberals.
Hesse’s laugh brightens my day 🥲
Casting O'Leary spoiled Marty Supreme. A total failure. If he is gonna be cast, make it a real snuff film starring him.
So tired of people virtue signaling through their media consumption.
Wow this episode is rough lol. Not sure I can sit through these outside of the Halloween ones tbh
Joseph Kahnzikki
Hesse not saying anything about Jacob Elordi other than how tell her is is killing me
Sinners was beat for beat from dusk till Dawn, all the same strength and all the same weaknesses.
Double-Unc Status
Did they not see Pearl? I thought Mia Goth was good in that.
“The musical sequence in Sinners was too literal” might be the dumbest Will take I’ve ever heard
Hesse: “I haven’t seen it.”
Just here to yell at you both for not mentioning No Other Choice and the, frankly, racist omission Park Chan-Wook, but otherwise great episode! I thought you were crazy for saying Amy Madigan but that's why you guys are the professionals.
I felt like it was less "Irish vampires" and the vampirism was representative of assimilation. Sorta Irish people becoming just another white American, which is why Hailee Steinfield character got got first, cuz she's white passing and lives apart from the other black people
They entirely misunderstood the movie and the point of the Irish in it
on behalf of all 12 of Chapo’s Brazilian listeners I accept Will Menaker’s apology and forgive him for his sins against our nation (not watching I’m still here last year)
I'm glad that, despite liking it so much, Will gave a valid critique of OBAA (the fetishization of youth in general to fix your fuck ups). However, razoring off everything else from a film just to assess the "emotional" also rubs me the wrong way, and I think Will's specific example only entails razoring off one emotion to just have another. Being put off by the final implication of OBAA IS just as much of an emotional reaction as feeling warm and fuzzy about it. The idea of just giving it up and leaving it to the next generation that the film implies gave me a sinking feeling. Even if we take the idea of just assessing a film emotionally in general, I have to ask, what the hell does that mean? Part of the beauty of film is that it allows us to see how clean divisions between emotions and concepts don't hold. Politics is emotionally charged and art is already politically charged, even if it isn't explicitly like OBAA. So many responses to the political critiques of this movie hinge on the suspension of other elements (politics, representation) from the raw emotional ride of the film as if these elements aren't deeply interconnected. If you're going to act as if they aren't, go watch a fucking marvel movie.
Tbh no notes; appreciate the insights to save time at the “box office,” (requests made to my friend who manages the friend group’s server)
Chapo needs to do a full Emerald Fennell takedown in a couple of years when she releases another inevitably terrible film. But girls only. Kath and Hesse, Amber maybe
Would be sick to get the writer of Bugonia on the Pod and just ask him questions about the film, and the criticisms expressed. Would enjoy hearing their response
Will getting Sweden mixed up with Norway. SWEDEN collaborated with the nazis. Norway was occupied and had an effective resistance militia. There’s no “history of fascism” to reckon with in Norway.
Norway’s PM Quisling is now synonymous with fascist collaboration.
i loved eddington but never has a movie made me feel so terrible. Total blackpill
i loved eddington precisely because it's so blackpilled; i already feel like america is a violent stupid nightmare society and seeing it portrayed that way in film is weirdly comforting because at least i know i'm not the only one who sees things this way and it gives me something to show people to get the vibe across to them in a way that's more digestible than just me ranting
Re: the secret agent, I also thought it was excellent but disagree with Will regarding his somewhat more pessimistic assessment of the end. Conversely, I read the end as evidence of the film's humanist, hopeful bent; while fascism is powerful in its ability to control, torture, and kill, we have agency and get to decide how to remember, which is a powerful choice that fascism cannot defeat generation to generation. I think the Udo Kier side story is not a coincidence in this vein, and that it's one of the best Holocaust films that's not actually about the Holocaust. Fantastic movie. Great episode yall!
Train Dreams actually kinda was about an autistic guy
Honestly I thought Mickey 17 was great and deserved some more recognition. As another actor who played multiple characters, I liked Pattinson more than Jordan.
Mia Goth is very good in Claire Denis' good movie High Life, featuring R Pats, Andre 3000, and evil Juliette Binoche fucking a machine devil.
The fuck machine! How did I forget??? Gonna go torture my roommates with that film immediately!
I agree with Will on movies. I disagree with Hesse. Period.
Love how wrong Hesse’s predictions always are, love you queen 💕
PERIOD!
F1 is a Mecha movie [children groomed from infancy to pilot glorious, awesome, cutting edge battle machines to defend their national honor have strong emotional responses as the soul of the machine resists mind-integration and inflicts gruesome injury upon them]
get in the racecar shinji
I have nothing new to say about OBAA, but I do really dislike Will and Hesse's take on the movie's message to leave the revolution to the kids. The people ruining the world right now are PTA's age and older, so I don't think he gets a pass on saying "it's too late for me to change anything." Sure, I think some of the "leftist critique" of the movie is annoying, but I think the two hosts are approaching criticism of the movie's politics in bad faith.
honestly I don't think that was actually the message at all, there is a leftist revolutionary movement in the background of the entire second half of the film which is actually successfully doing the work of helping people and it's not made up exclusively of kids the point to me was that the 75ers were a failed group because they were addicted to spectacle, which to me was distinct from the group that Sensei is working with who actually manage to quietly evacuate an entire apartment block to protect the residents from the gestapo while Bob is busy crying and pissing his pants on the phone because the operator doesn't realise he's talking to a HERO like him later on Bob is freed from captivity by another part of this group who, again, isn't firing a SAW in a crop-top in the desert but is a nurse who presumably works directly with the community being victimised by the nazis and might as well not even have a name because what they're doing is fundamentally not about them as an individual there's also a mirror of this concept in the Christmas Adventurers Club assassins which Hesse noted; Lockjaw is a clown who basically fucks everything up because he got too horny, the guy they send in after would never allow his libido to get in the way of his work to make the world that he and his masters want to see created my take away from the film was mostly that if you approach a revolution genuinely as "one battle after another" then your revolution will fail, but if you build communities and collectivism then not only will you succeed in your goal of actually making peoples' lives better but you will be ready when the battles you are forced to fight turn up at your door
eddington gets best picture from me, but really love obaa. marty supreme would be my third favorite film from 2025.
if anyone saw stavs cult movie that shit was the best comedy of the year
I dunno I really liked infinity pool I thought she was hella disturbing
as an Australian you kind of want to support a film with two of our prettiest specimens as the leads but as soon as the Wuthering Heights press tour started and every interview with Margot Robbie was some variation of "aur naur Jacob had me turning on the dehumidifier cos he just got me DRIPPING WET" I think everyone clocked that the movie was going to be dogshit
“Aur naur” perfect phonetic spelling on this. The Australian accent is going too far with this one.
Bugonia's ending was terrible IMO. They had a chance to say something but just kinda made it into a bad Twilight Zone episode. I do really like the movie until like the very end but damn it's a doozy.
Great ep
The absolute disrespect these two have for people’s names is almost as funny as the jokes
lol when Will butchered ‘Kosinski’ into ko-snikky and then Hesse just followed suit and said it the same way. brutal! period
Also Hessa we love you but stop trying to make Period happen thnx 🙏
1:07:51 Can't believe they didn't peg the association of this kind of constantly deferred plot and anxiety with Kafka.
Mia Goth Pearl my beloved
Yeah that was a very un-mindset take from Will there, she's fantastic.
Usually enjoy Hesse but why do this if you haven’t watched half of these movies and have absolutely no sense of how the Academy votes on these things re: predictions
How many avatar movies until Will realizes it’s Quaritch and not Quatritch
drives me insane
Will got a serious Oscar prediction talent
He was reading the next week's Wikipedia article but the signal cut out when he tried to scroll down to best cinematography
Will continuing the reactionary turn.
?
Whew almost got spoiled on Bugonia
Too much Chalamet glazing. He’s just ok.
Bugonia is a solid movie. Seems to me like its message is that CEOs and rich people are aliens who will eventually kill us all.
except that in the movie it's made explicit that the aliens (metaphor for rich people) have actually been trying to stop us from killing each other and they can't do it because apparently humans are just inherently evil which means the aliens (rich people) actually aren't responsible for anything and nothing they do matters. it's malthusian thatcherite nihilism which both relieves the aliens (rich people) of responsibility and gives them moral justification for committing unlimited genocide. detestable self-justifying elite worldview; spiritually israeli.
Hesse completely unlistenable to in this. ‘F1’ cross referenced about 1000 times lol horrendous
That Hamnet discussion is brutal guys
Honestly wholeheartedly agreed with their take. The use of “on the nature of daylight” almost made me walk out of the movie.
Sinners was embarrassingly bad. Why is it being regarded as a prestige masterpiece? Something very 2016 identity politics about it
I've only seen like 3 people dislike sinners and you're the third
as a child I would always cry at the end of My Cousin Vinny because I loved the characters so much and wanted to keep going on adventures with them. That movie gets MY Oscar.
Does anyone else notice the pure joy in Hesse's voice whenever she drops an f-slur?
Whom amongst
Ayy racing mentioned on Chapo. You got an undefeated ice racing champion right here nbd.
The good Mia Goth movies are Infinity Pool and Pearl.
I think the only movie I saw that was nominated this year was OBAA because i spent the rest of my time watching unwatchable Tubi horror schlock, but I thought it was fun. Is it okay for movies just to be fun now?
I love being in the movie mindset
yea say "period" its funny
this comment is actually ableist. PERiod
OBAA was fun but the ending mostly ruined it for me. The daughter is living in a shared old trailer with her dad, then leaves to drive like 6 hrs to go protest, and you get this idiotic happy song to tell you everything’s gonna be alright, the kids will save us. It’s just another a movie about an old white guy getting a redo in life and not fucking it up as badly this time. The Christmas club is fun, no notes. The driving scene was pretty creative. Benicio is everything
Thinking about it more my real problem is that for me the A-plot with Leo and his bullshit is the least interesting stuff to me by far.
A very old man being treated like a make a wish kid while the young people get nothing, is this a movie or the white house am i right folks?
I didn’t see this anywhere but Bugonia is a remake of the low budget Korean movie “Save the green planet” which is hilarious. I haven’t seen Bugonia but making it non humorous sounds awful. Also did they take out the gunfight with the bee hive?
okay yeah they definitely took out the "bee hive gunfight" and now i absolutely need to see the original lol. also you didn't miss anything by skipping bugonia.
YES WILL I had the exact same response to Begonia, thank you
Watch the original Korean version “Save the green planet” it’s a comedy and a masterpiece.
Oscars are washed since they blanked the original Road House
I really dug bugonia but I am traditionally really bad at guessing 'twist' endings and legitimately was not sure where there were going with it so when they finally got there I was like WOAH! I thought it would either go off the rails into some sort of hallucinatory shitshow Jesse makes up or if could be real aliens. I also thought that kind of cynical ending was more of a comment on the bankruptcy of the conspiracy mindset - it seems to me like those people would truly damn all of humanity which I find very gross and weird. Still love the movie, but I have to agree with Will that is probably more reflection on the director, I don't think it was as deep as I made it out to be. All in all, the best part of this movie was that I took my 80-year-old father to see it with me because I did not fully look into what it was about and thought it would be a good hang
Nobody mentioned Cars 3 as a pivotal hinge point in the Arc of the Boomerreich. Not only was there the player-to-coach motif, the student was (gasp) a GIRL. A girl of color, even. Who could have known that Cruz Ramirez was The Face That Launched 1,000 Anna Paulina Lunas.
And the rumors for cars 4 are 75 year old lightning mcqueen went on trt and is going back to the track so he can slam into a wall and kill 30 young cars.
I have not seen a lot of Mia Goth but I like your point where, at some point, you should just add up the number of good roles they have had in enjoyable movies. And if they are at zero or less than one a decade, maybe they aren't actually good actors. I am looking at you Glenn Close and Eddie Redmayne. On notice Joaquin Phoenix and Meryl Streep.
And the oscar for worst chapo side project goes too... movie mindset
PERIODT 🤣🤣🤣
Are we just not going to mention Naked Gun II? WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING, FOLKS!?
great point, that movie was hilarious. the writers did a great job capturing the style of that era's rapid-fire joke writing with updated material and liam neeson absolutely crushed it. also i cannot believe pamela anderson still looks that good.
I think Hesse set a new record rate of "Periodt."s Per Minute on this one
Absolutely insane tic to have developed since their last episode of this show
Interesting that Will can’t relate to not take seriously the films that aren’t made for him. (Sinners and Hamnet) Both missed the point with Hamnet.
What was the point other than an exhibition of grief?
The correct response was to tear up at the dirty work needle drop. Way to go!🦭🦭
Will really rocking with annoying white people right now
Somebody on letterboxd makes a point that ruined the Worst Person in the World guy's movies for me- to native speakers his dialogue comes off as schmaltz that we Americans buy as naturalistic in the subtitles. Put that in your head and it will spoil them all for you sorry
Yorgslop Lanthimshit is a glib, smug hack with a permanent adolescent smirk. The original Save the Green Planet is a beautiful film that despite having a similar ending on paper comes off entirely differently— heartbreaking and tender and very very sad.
I disagree with almost all of these takes but I love hearing Will and Hesse cook!
I think everyone here should list their age beside their criticism I think there's a solid division on age that's been long developing among the Movie Mindest- I'll start: Will's dislikes on point this year -48
Eddington, Bugonia, and One Battle all slapped, but I guess I'm built different in that I actually like movies. Hamnet and Marty also great, Sinners mid but fun.
Every single one of these movies was dogshit. Even if I liked them I wouldn’t risk my edgy cool factor by admitting it
Just gonna point out that the only positive thing Will said about any actress happened to be a teenager. At least he acknowledges his little misogyny corner lol.
Didn’t know Rose Byrne was a teenager. Damn I shouldn’t have spanned to it.
Woke Will struggling to pronounce Renate Reinsve but hitting a perfect pronunciation on Wunmi Mosaku
My fave ever was “Gaspar No”
Ok, how do we get Hessa to stop saying "period?"
We don’t because it rules when she does it
I've been too afraid to admit it, but 100% agree with Will that the time travel scene in Sinners was kinda corny and too literal and I don't get the praise
OBAA was like Marvel slop for people that watched too much of the West Wing with their parents.
also in the xmas club intro scene it straight up steals dialog from barry lyndon, violating the mst3k rule "don't remind me of a better movie in your movie"
High life: amaaazing Mia Goth movie. And Emma (for Hesse)
PLEASE MORE MOVIE CONTENT THE WORLD IS SO HORRIBLE NOW
Not mad that Delroy didn't win, whatever, but Hesse saying he's up and coming and is going to have plenty more chances. . . it's that kind of bullshit that makes me doubt some of her other takes.
That kid is only 73 years old
Hell yeah Will!!!!! Ep full of good takes, bugonia and nightmare alley! Nightmare alley is so good, that movie lives in my head forever, think about it all the time, and the rest of his movies are a good watch-and-immediately-forgetters
The recent Criterion release of Nightmare Alley is the only Bluray I've purchased in 15 years, happy to hear the geeklove
Just had to drop in to defend "On the Nature of Daylight" by Max Richter. It employed perfectly in Arrival & was perfectly used in Hamnet. You can't discount a piece of music for being emotionally affective just because it is so good at it. Maybe using it can be hack, but it doesn't necessarily mean that every use is hack.
Becoming hack by definition makes every subsequent use of it hack
1000% agree on yorgos blathermos begonia or whatever- just seems like an edgelord 14 year old, going all the way back to dogtooth
THE SECRET AGENT HIVE RISEEEEEE
Maybe recency bias since I just watched it a couple days ago, but it immediately feels like one of my favorite movies in several years. Tânia Maria as Dona Sebastiana might be my pick for best supporting actress
i have the most controversial take of the entire comment section: Sinners was good. fun watch. not great. just a solid pretty entertaining movie.
Thank u Will and Hesse for this delectable slop. I love all the MM Oscar episodes, despite you both tragically failing to appreciate Challengers
I felt that! Challengers was great!
Wow pretty dismissive take on Chloe Zhao (whom they never bother to name), yet throw a bone to another del Toro diorama with poor writing. Nomadland was brilliant but I guess it’s not Casino
Goddamn right it's not
will’s point about the safdies’ movies being like an unending, pointless anxiety attack (which was somehow a positive) doesn’t really apply to benny’s solo projects (smashing machine, the curse) imo. josh needs sedatives. also marty supreme bad
Okay I thought I was crazy because I rewatched The Curse before Marty Supreme but I couldn't stop thinking about it as an incredibly subtle critique of Zionism
I don't think it is such a critique, but "incredibly subtle" might describe it. I certainly don't buy Will's Marty=Israel reading.
Nightmare Alley was Trash
Will, since last season F1 has gotten a lot more competitive and entertaining. Watch the last season of the Netflix show and you’ll get caught up. It’s the only sport I can think of where you can know a fair amount about every single competitor, only 22 of them.
I haven’t seen OBAA but I heard it was hella corny, Sinners was mid, Hamnet was mid, only good movie imo was Marty Supreme
MST3KItStinks.gif to your post
I loved Bugonia. Amazing performances, incredibly interesting use of music, and the characters & structure of the plot made it feel like a an adaptation of a lost Vonnegut novel
Emma 2020. One of the best Jane Austen adaptations and Mia Goth is great
ronin whips. will i think you will love bacurau
I’ll be damned if I take movie recommendations from the man who raved about “Janet Planet,” one of the most tedious snoozefests ever committed to celluloid.
BZZZZZT. Wrongo. Janet Planet is a masterpiece and so are a bunch of Annie Baker's plays. Swing and a miss from ya there, pal
Hesse had a Mindset Goon cave twith 4 screens at once. Trooper.
Another convo about bugonia w/o mention of save the green planet which builds a clear framework to dunk on yorgoss execution
I am 100% there with Will on Bugonia and Yorgos Lanthimos. In fact I feel the same way about One Battle After Another and Eddington. These movies are joyless and exhausting. Maybe this is me being too woke but in a time of open genocides and 764 antinatalist nihilist mass shooters I'm kind of done with the Gen X glib nihilism. Especially coming from the generation that, as a group, did very little culturally to push back against the societal downturn that they all bemoan. Give me some corny but well done revolutionary optimism any day rather than more "nothing matters and everything is bad because I have generalized anxiety" slop. We have enough! We've hit peak "elevated anxiety" slop! We need a moratorium period on these kinds of movies until we all learn to be happy again. We need a decade of Project Hail Mary hopecore to even the score.
Did you watch OBAA and Eddington and conclude “this is the same viewing experience and these directors are both trying to say the same thing”
inshallah mm ep 99 inherent vice // obaa
also no way will gives his secret Best actor pick to hesse’s other cohost’s brother wagner mora
Im sad there hasnt been a full workup on eddington
They did a full interview with ari about Eddington, pretty close
love Will and Hesse’s horror / classic movie takes but they miss the mark on the new stuff - Will is so wrong among Bugonia, that movie actually did what Ari Aster thought Eddington was doing - and I found the ending deeply sad, not cute or glib - in fact it seemed to me it had more deep animal empathy than any of Yorgos’s other films
Except the aliens’ mission was totally incoherent.
Pino-chee-o, Beni-chee-o… ? Is Hesse only pretending to be Italian?
Benny Cheeto. Penis Chokio.
Girl take a sip
Totally agree about Sinners. Loved the first hour-ish, became a big snooze when all the vampire shit kicked into gear and Coogler's Marvel brain took over. He has a lot of potential though and will definitely make an all time great movie someday
Hey, I thought you were me for a second. I was like, "I don't remember writing this."
Frankenstein STUNK
"keep dropping em right into the trash" - made me realize that will is sounding like tom scharpling talking about movies he doesn't like
100%
I thought the ending of One Battle was a lot more cynical than you guys did. The whole movie is hammering how evil the phone is and then at the end, Leo is completely captured by it, waving off his daughter to go do the revolution for him.
The phone?
I tried reading the Hamnet book years ago and quit because of how unbelievably annoying and numbing it was to read each line of narration in a stream of consciousness that reiterates every single description at least three times. I thought a screen adaptation would make it less soporific but if the only goal is to make you 🫵 cry then it's always going to be weak soup
Truly the lowest effort movie podcast of all time
So weird Will, i never cry at movies either but goddammit, when Dirty Work needle drops, up to the part when Leonardo cries in front of infinti's teacher- I was super emotional too
I thought Del Toro’s adaptation of Frankenstein was incredibly touching. He took it in a way I wouldn’t have predicted. Best movie of the year.
it was good but will never win. f1, Train dreams and one battle only for the boomers
"It was just and accident" and "no other choice" were two of the best movies of the year it is sad that they don't watch non-american movies at all
I really liked No Other Choice, but I couldn't help but feel (in my very limited viewing of Korean cinema) that it was treading the same ground as Parasite, a laid-off father going to extreme lengths to defend his family, the same humor, the same scene of loud music overscoring slapstick violence. Compared to the other movies Park Chan Wook has made, at least.
Disappointed that Testament of Ann Lee got snubbed by both the Oscars and Movie Mindset. Great movie, incredible soundtrack
Will, crying during a commercial is a symptom of menopause.
best mia goth film is A CURE FOR WELLNESS directed by GORE VERBINKSI
this is SO true and hardly anyone knows it! pearl blows and so does that bs cronenberg's son made (sorry!) but a cure for wellness? one of the most underrated flicks of its decade
Oscars still oh so white, and so are these lazy takes
Speaking of lazy takes…
Re: Will’s take on Bugonia. Sincerity is back, baby! Reject nihilism, embrace sincerity
Bugonia was a pretty poor remake IMO. Compared to the film it's based on, Save the Green Planet!, it's pretty uninteresting.
Infinity Pool is a good Mia Goth movie
Would love to hear thoughts on Sirat, a must-see in-theaters because of the music
Real talk has Hesse ever had a coherent thought or conviction about film. Pls just get LexG in here 2026.
Pipe down slimthiccyaddle
Good lord what movie HAS Hesse seen
Train Dreams was fucking stupid. They change the "attempted murder of a Chinese man in which the main character participates" to the "successful murder of a Chinese man which the main character just sort of perplexedly watches happen." Toothless filmmaking. Bill Macy was great though
I got the opposite of Will from the ending of Bugonia. The tone of the music is ironic, but the montage of dead people felt really pointed. it didn't feel like "all these people deserved to die" it felt like "we have failed collectively." one of the images is a bunch of dead people, including many young children, on a pile of garbage. the feeling I got wasn't "say goodbye to these dumb humans" it was "why the fuck were these people living in an actual waste dump? what are we doing?" and that exasperated "what are we *doing*?" was my main takeaway from the film.
yes, this, 100%
Sinners was so good and sparked so many good thoughts for me ... One Battle After Another was okay, but the misogynoir was wild at the beginning of the film: the Black revolutionaries women were evil caricatures on real Black female revolutionaries of that time
obaa was basically a minstrel show
"he's always great, he's very tall...."
Bugonia fucking rocked
Great movie. Fairly substanceless but a really great watch. Saw it on my own and it was shocking, amd had a laugh rewatching it with friends.
QAA has a better grasp on Bugonia then Movie Mindset. sorry not sorry
Good Mia Goth movie: Suspiria remake.
It’ll never happen, but let’s get LexG on this season of Movie Mindset
Ok, please for future episodes. Please limit yourself to one "period" per episode. In begging you
Only thing I care about is Rose Byrne winning best actress
Hesse, I'm still in disbelief about James Caan dying as well. You're not alone.
Not only was the best movie of the year snubbed in the Oscar’s (No Other Choice) it wasn’t even mentioned on movie mindset.
as always, if you want to know who's going to clean up look at the technical nominations. the costume and production designers are a massive voting bloc, while pundits are only reliable at picking screenplay awards. mainstream pundits are especially useless because their sources on the horserace are producers, who are a smaller bloc. the costume and production design bloc is especially big this year because all of their friends do the same sort of work in the theatre world and take offense at the opera and ballet comments from Timmy (even if you're not wrong, don't be an asshole), so look for a big tilt towards sinners.
LA public radio station had a film critic round table and almost all were militant about predicting a Sinners sweep of the big awards. I fear they might be right
Hamnet was great IMO, people say it’s boring and that it’s also Oscar bait and idk how you can say all that and not feel the same about OBAA, I did think Hamnet and OBAA were the best movies of the year, but Eddington was great too but it’s not nominated ☹️
Senna didn't grow up poor! The beautiful F1 rich guy model is concrete.
Period
t.
Park Chan-wook and No Other Choice snubbed by both the Academy *and* Movie Mindset. Terrible! Hesse’s line about a $2,500/mo apartment in the US being worse than Anders Breivik’s prison cell hit too close to home.
Truth. NOC rocked. The beautiful story of a managerial class psycho. Sleazoids covered it at least.
if you like racing movies check out the anime movie Redline it’s very speed racer esque
Cinematic equivalent of an orgasm
I really liked Cool Adam in Marty Supreme but getting a Best Actor nom for that is fascinating to me
41 Pearl is a southern gothic master work
I thought Bugonia was extremely funny
Usually detest Yorgos and was fully expecting to hate Bugonia as well but was quite entertained and found it a very effective black comedy. Hated to see the cousin tortured, and could have done without the last sequence tho like just end it when she gets in the elevator
I'm not sure "Pearl" is a good movie, exactly... but it's the kind of schlocky fun I think Will could vibe with. It's also incredibly funny.
Pearl like all ti west movies suck ass
I saw all the best picture nominees except F1. I'm a 42 year old white man, so demographically, I'm likely to be a fan, but I'm not interested. My ranking of the best picutre nominees is One Battle After Another Marty Supreme Sentimental Value Sinners The Secret Agent Train Dreams Bugonia Frankenstein Hamnet The last 3 are in my bottom 10 of the 58 2025 films I've seen. It was Just an Accident is my favorite Oscar nominated film in any category that I saw this year. And Bi Gan's Resurrection is my favorite movie I saw overall this year (and also Resurrection is definitely my no. 1 film of the 2020s). My actual top 10 Resurrection It was just an Accident Magellan The Sound of Falling One Battle AfterAnother Sirat Eddingtoon Marty Supreme Sorry, Baby The Smashing Machine
Very glad to hear some sanity here…The Sinners stuff is out of control imo. Nice little genre flick with some neat touches but should not even be nominated in the top categories. Ok sure, you wanna throw it a best pic nom in an inflated category with 10 entries, that’s fine I guess (I’d even live w/ original screenplay though I DID NOT think it was a great screenplay) But I’d go as far as to say the tsunami of hype behind this thing borders on mass psychosis and I think many members of the press who know better are essentially riding a wave for reasons that extend beyond the primary task of film criticism. Yes, cultural context should always be considered as long as it doesn’t entirely transcend the actual merits. I just don’t think it does anyone any good to act like something is way better than it is, especially now given the state of the industry. So many liberal critics are in such a hurry to boost this thing for mostly superficial ideological reasons, they seem to be overlooking the far more pressing fact that it may just be a message to the industry that “this is an acceptable high point” going forward. Basically, we’ll settle for one notch above Marvel slop (there’s even a fucking post-credit sequence ffs) and that’s as good as it gets in 2026 and beyond. I simply refuse to believe that people who dedicate their lives to watching and writing about films are looking at Sinners with it’s video game mis en scene (for all the hoopla about aspect ratios and 70mm IMAX, the thing looks awfully basic and streaming-ready—that smooth, washed out look w/ some kind of colored filter glossy sheen and cheapish lighting that so many of today’s movies have as film and television/streaming series grow closer and closer to forming a hybrid medium) and its relatively unimaginative framing/blocking (another major mark of mediocrity in today’s Hollywood; no one seems to know how to compose a shot anymore—it’s that post-Nolan thing where it’s all close-ups or basic-bitch mediums w/ characters directly in the center of the frame, letting the dialogue do the bulk of the lifting etc) and honestly thinking to themselves that it’s the best film of the year!Let’s not pretend this is in the same ballpark as something like One Battle w/ its gorgeous tactile Vista Vision celluloid images, meticulous compositions, brilliantly inventive shot sequences etc. If we wanna lend any credence to the idea that we can actually steer culture based on gestures or signifiers (a notion I assume everyone here is rightly dubious of at best) then let’s at least make this a referendum on the kind of Hollywood filmmaking we want to see—a kind of filmmaking that is on the verge of extinction. Films like One Battle are like the rarest endangered species and imo if you really love film, it’s important to at least make any and all attempts, feeble as they may be, to preserve this kind of studio output. We may not see too many more of these.
Also don’t buy the hype. Delroy Lindo at least is great in it—a great actor totally deserving of recognition—but Michael B Jordan isn’t acting so much as modeling throughout the whole film. There isn’t a single shot in the movie where he doesn’t look like he just stepped out of the makeup trailer
I don’t watch the Oscars but I’ve come to look forward to listening to this every year
A notable snub for me (but not surprising) is 28 Years Later. For acting, Alfie Williams gives an amazing child actor leading man performance. And for original score, for the Scottish band Young Fathers.
Bozo mode
what about Avatar lol
truly, what about it? i made the mistake of seeing it in 3D which i found profoundly distracting, now i'm just waiting for a non-camrip version to be posted online. it seemed good though? i think it was better than avatar 2 but idk i really do need to watch it again. it is kinda insane how it came and went seemingly completely unnoticed by anyone including me and i watched it.
"It's the gay superbowl" Eurovision wants a word!
Bull Durham is basically a perfect movie.
“He’s so tall” is frying me
Timmy C too busy tryna suck off woody Allen to hit the gym an become a true star
bugonia and one battle after another are both bad movies written by midwit liberals to sneer at you, yes you, personally
You seem fun to be around!
Is there an Ant Man this year?
Will is hilariously basic. He’s lucky he’s hilarious lol
And we love it when he sings 😊
I’m starting to get the impression that Jacob Elordi might be tall. Further research may be required.
idk if Yorgos is actually making a value statement on Humanity being over i think that last scene really exists to encapsulate what all was lost, i think it’s a very neutral take on the end of humanity all said
A Will-style read on it may come as a consequence of being overburdened by facts about the slow but certain downfall of the US, (not suggesting you aren’t equally yoked with said facts btw)
I knew you guys would come through!!!!!!
Speed Racer mentioned!!!
Speed racer (2006) is a lock for best picture of 2026
Fake news, it came out in 2008
The style's different but Bugonia sticks to the Korean film it's based on - Save the Green Planet - pretty closely, including the ending. Though the ceo is an asshole Korean guy boss. In that sense no other choice is probably its closest relative in this year's crop.
Nah the ending / “punchline” is similar on paper but in practice Save the Green Planet comes across as heartbreakingly sad (credits montage really drives this home) whereas Bugonia comes across as more glib sneering from Lanthimos as usual.
This is one of my favorite episodes every year because Hessa is so not following the race and will be like "Will win: Hamnet, because that's what voters like."
I’ll never forget her betting that Women Talking would win Best Picture
Ok managed to survive until 49 minutes this time, until the insultingly bad Hamnet “review”. Might be my personal MM record.
Yeah normally I love MM takes but just say you hate women and tone poems. Didn’t bother to mention any other brilliant Chloe Zhao films, hrm wonder why
My insider information tells me One Battle After Another because it has the longest runtime and was easily a 5 bags of popcorn movie
I think its chances are higher now than when it came out because its portrayals have only been vindicated in the media ever since. ICE and CBP are so much more visible and in the culture now than even 6 months ago, the character of Bovino being so spot on to the Sean Penn character, etc.
I loved Killing of a Sacred Deer but the rest of Lanthimos’s catalogue hasn’t really connected with me.
Emma Stone is an albatross around his neck
I’ve got the Oscar fever, hope you’ve got it too!
Poor me some bubbly now, it’s all you gotta do!
It’s the gay Super Bowl and I’m the mvp!
Hesse: “By the description alone that’s exactly my type of shit.” (The Secret Agent) Then reveals she hasn’t seen it despite it being out for 4 months 🤦♂️🤦♂️ cmon people
Ok ntm on Hesse it takes a long time when you’ve got to watch speed racer halfway through each title 😞
I always try to listen to these episodes, but Will is such a hater it’s hard to believe he likes any movie. Only got 10 minutes in tbh
Don't listen to the haters Will and Hes. The show is called Movie Mindset people, not "I watched every single movie that came out this year mindset".
Always love the Hesse and Will energy. Feels like Hesse is so chaotic that Will has to play the straight guy, but Hesse is also clearly trying to play for the team and make a good show. It makes it feel wholesome. We love it folks.
It’s Oscar’s birthday!
Lfg
my cup runneth over
They did get my letters
Can you please watch the films 😭😭😭😭
Imagine watching the Oscar noms for the upcoming Oscar episode of your movie podcast. Just laughable. EDIT: I already feel mean and regret this comment, but also... c'mon.
Will doesn't get enough credit for clocking Yorgos as Borgos early on
Because he’s insanely wrong lol
I honestly thought you forgot
Can someone listen to the episode and let me know if they actually watched all the nominees this year? Would save me the 15 or so minutes until Hesse says "I actually didn't watch this one"
They start the show off letting us know which ones they haven’t watched. A much better way than they used to do it lol
I was pleasantly surprised by how pro-cunnilingus Sinners was, it’s one of the most coherent themes of the movie.
Major W
someone post their picks in the comments I CBA listening
Y'all had me worried Y'all weren't gonna do a preview this year. Buckle up mindsetters
Thank you lord for this blessing. looking forward to my amazon shift now
Need to find out if Will and Hesse hated Train Dreams as much as I did
Train dreams was so bad, thank you for the validation