Weekend Watchlist: Violent Night, The Eternal Daughter and Emancipation

Episode notes

MIA Hi! Welcome to Weekend Watchlist, a look at what’s screening and streaming brought to you by The Letterboxd Show. I’m Mia, they’re Mitchell…

MITCHELL Hello!

MIA And together we’ll dig through what’s dropping this weekend, last weekend, recent trends on Letterboxd and we’ll also take a peek at our own watchlists—all under 30 minutes or your money back.

MITCHELL Mia, hello. We are right in the middle of the holiday season in the US at least, we’ve got some Thanksgiving food in us, getting geared up for Christmas and it’s this weird little spot for movies between the two holidays where the awards players are out there, some blockbuster things, [Avatar: The Way of Water] on the horizon. People don’t want to maybe throw out their hugest movies right before [Avatar: The Way of Water] is about to come out. But we’ve got an eclectic little mix of like wintery movies going right now. We’ll be talking about Killer Santa and Violent Night, double Tilda Swinton in The Eternal Daughter and the return of Oscar winner Will Smith with Emancipation. Then we’ll look back to see what everyone thought of last week’s releases, your community reviews tagged Weekend Watchlist, and of course, our own shuffled watchlists, which you and I watched some of the bleakest movies that have ever existed.

MIA Oh, yes, yes, we did Mitchell. And let’s start off with the movie that may not be as bleak as the title implies. Dashing through the blood, Santa’s coming to slay, Violent Night! Directed by Tommy Wirkola on 14,000 watchlists. This is coming out wide in theaters. “When a team of mercenaries breaks into a wealthy family compound on Christmas Eve taking everyone inside hostage, the team isn’t prepared for a surprise combatant—Santa Claus is on the grounds and he’s about to show why this Nick is no saint.”

MITCHELL That’s a very playful synopsis, I think probably fits the tone of what people can expect for this movie. David Harbour is playing Santa Claus. He’s getting into that like the Stranger Things vibe where he’s like mixing the comedy. He’s bringing a little bit of sass with all of his performances that he’s doing lately. And I think Tommy Wirkola, people who don’t know him, he directed Dead Snow, which was a another like winter horror movie with zombie Nazis that came out like ten years ago, that I really dug. It’s a very like dark kind of comedy. Very bloody, very gory. I’m expecting maybe Violent Night to be similar to it. How do you feel? What are your vibes generally on Christmas horror?

MIA Christmas horror is kind of fascinating because you’re taking this wholesome, nice holiday and really tearing it up. So I think it’s an interesting genre. I’ve never, actually I don’t need to say that I have never been much of a Christmas person. That’s very Scroogie of me to say.

MITCHELL That’s fine, that’s fine.

MIA Okay. Can I it that? Okay.

MITCHELL Yeah, absolutely.

MIA I just, I lean Halloween rather than Christmas is what I’ll say. But I think that the most interesting thing about this is the sexification of Santa. David Harbour really taps into like the lumberjack thing that some people are into. That’s not my community, but I totally respect it. As somebody from Portland, I have to respect the lumberjack aesthetic. And I mean, if we take a look at this poster, we got to talk about the poster really quick. Santa’s legs are spread, holding like a phallic hammer thing.

MITCHELL Large sledgehammer on this man.

MIA Yes. Yes. They’re really really leaning into that which I think is interesting. There’s also been this Killer Santa trend lately. There’s another film coming out called Christmas Bloody Christmas.

MITCHELL Yeah, I feel like it’s a fun thing with like, Killer Santa. There’s this movie called P2 that came out in like 2007 that Alexandre Aja wrote. I don’t think he directed it. But Wes Bentley plays like a mall Santa Claus who terrorizes a girl in a parking garage. It’s a lot of fun. That’s a weird one. Wes Bentley as Santa is really a blast.

MIA Wes Bentley as Santa is something I have never expected.

MITCHELL It’s a hoot. And I’ve just recently watched the movie The Silent Partner from the ’70s with Elliott Gould and Christopher Plummer plays a murderous Santa Claus in that. It’s a thing! People are just like scared of Santas or something.

MIA Somebody needs to make a Letterboxd list of all the killer Santa movies. I’m sure this already exists. I’m sure it does.

MITCHELL It’s gotta be out there somewhere.

MIA It’s gotta be out there.

MITCHELL Speaking of David Harbour thirsting, the reviews on Letterboxd are already popping off with a lot that. Servedthendied wrote a review on Letterboxd that just says: “Suddenly I’m a ho ho ho” which I assume has got to be David Harbour related.

MIA And Lia says: “wouldn’t mind sitting on his lap” So the marketing is working, it is working. It is working.

MITCHELL It’s working. They’re getting the Harbour heads in for that. If you want your holiday family horror in the more arthouse, esoteric variety, our indie queens Joanna Hogg and Tilda Swinton are back again, with The Eternal Daughter directed by Hogg. It’s on 20,000 watchlists distributing this weekend and limited theaters and on VOD, from A24. The synopsis for this one: “An artist and her elderly mother confront long buried secrets when they returned to a former family home now a hotel haunted by its mysterious past.” Mia, you and I have both seen The Eternal Daughter, what did you think about this one?

MIA I got to see this at AFI Fest and I really, really enjoyed it. It’s just, it’s such a mature and poignant ghost story that’s definitely—it’s so much more moving than scary. So if you hear ghost story, you’re like, ahhh, don’t worry, don’t worry. You may cry but you won’t scream. And Mitchell, we had kind of a similar experience watching this, would you like to share?

MITCHELL Yeah, so this movie is Tilda playing two characters, playing both the daughter and the mother and this and it is sort of a continuation of Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir  movies and she is playing the older versions of both her character and her daughter Honor Swinton Byrne’s character in those movies, Julie. So Tilda is playing the aged up versions of both of those characters and neither of us knew that going into it. I’m not sure how much they’re publicizing that element of the movie. It’s not a spoiler if everybody’s worried that we are spoiling the movie. She mentioned her name in the first like ten minutes of the movie. It’s talked about openly, Hogg is talking about it openly. But it is like not really in the marketing from what I was seeing. It’s obviously not in the synopsis. So I had no idea and when, as a big fan of The Souvenir movies, especially the second one when the younger Tilda says her name, Julie Hart in the first ten minutes of the movie, I literally gasped out loud. I was like, wait, I had to stop and check Wikipedia. Check to see like, she’s actually playing the same character? Right? And yeah, I mean, how was that for you? Especially seeing it at AFI Fest in this big theater like surrounded by people. What was that moment like for you?

MIA Oh, it was such a pleasant surprise to find out it was part of The Souvenir cinematic universe. I also want to stress that if you haven’t seen the two previous [The Souvenir], that’s okay. You will not be lost. But it does add a little bit of, you know, that emotional layer because it’s interesting to see this character grow up so much. You know, like we start with her when she’s in college and now she’s grown into Tilda Swinton. Wow!

MITCHELL David Sims wrote a review that I agree with. David said: “I need to go to a haunted a state where a northern lass will be rude to me immediately.” There is the concierge, or like the receptionist at this hotel is the nastiest piece of work ever. And she is, the actress’ name, Carly-Sophia Davies, who plays the receptionist. When I finished the movie, I looked her up to see what else she has done. This is her first movie, she hasn’t been in anything else! And she is so good. So funny and just rude as hell. Like the worst, the most fun hotel reception is to watch, but the worst if you were actually at this hotel to be around, would be an absolute nightmare.

MIA Oh yeah, I love there’s like just like this brief scene where she’s like on Instagram on the computer and then she sees Tilda Swinton and minimizes it. Which is just so true about the jobs like that. It was so funny. Yeah, this movie has some laughs too. It’s not all sad ghost stuff. Fran actually wrote in her review: “crazy to see her doing old Hogg (people having a bad time on vacation) with new Hogg (Julie Hart cinematic universe) simultaneously. lots to mull on here; had no clue what to expect. no complaints, though. there's a crash zoom on a dog :)” He he he!

MITCHELL The dog, definitely a reason to see this movie alone is checking out the dog, a gorgeous dog.

MIA Well, let’s move on to a movie that... well I don’t know if there’s gonna be a dog in this one. Mitchell, do you think there will be a dog in the film Emancipation ?

MITCHELL Probably not. But nobody’s seen it yet. So maybe, we’re not seeing dog mentions in the reviews yet.

MIA Okay, Emancipation  directed by Antoine Fuqua. It is on 3.5 1000 watchlists. It’s coming out in limited theaters followed by an Apple TV+ release on December 9. It is inspired by the gripping true story of a man who would do anything for his family and for freedom. When Peter, an enslaved man, risked his life to escape and return to his family. He embarks on a perilous journey of love and endurance. So we’re burying the lead that Will Smith is the star of Emancipation .

MITCHELL I’ll just quickly, I’ll get on like my soapbox for a second because I’ve been seeing, he’s been starting to do, Smith has been starting to do like the the press rounds for the movie and of course people just keep bringing up the the slap from the Oscars and everything. It’s expected, it’s obviously what’s going to get brought up and I’ll just say briefly, I think it’s absurd that this even needs to be like part of the conversation with this movie. Especially, I get that it was a huge moment like we were all you know, jaw-dropped when it happened. But the fact that like, he has to be out there saying like, “I understand if people don’t forgive me for it and won’t watch the movie because of it” and everything when two years ago, the Oscars almost gave Glenn Close a win for a movie that basically helped fuel like a right wing nut job into getting into office in the US. And just this year, a movie came out by an itted sex offender with the movie starring like half of Hollywood in it and he doesn’t have to do a press tour where he’s apologizing for anything or whatever. I just think it’s a shame that a movie, especially a movie like this, which is obviously like about a really important story and he’s putting a lot of himself into, has to be doing a press round that’s majority about this. And I feel like I haven’t, Emancipation  I haven’t seen a lot of press for it, I haven’t seen a lot of marketing for it. And maybe it has something to do with Apple TV+ kind of strategy. But it feels like a movie that if it had come out five years ago, it would be getting a lot more attention and awards kind of bias and whatever. And maybe because of the shroud of the slap stuff and everything isn’t and that’s a shame. I’m excited to see it. I like Antoine Fuqua a lot. He’s a director who goes into like genre territory more often than not. People know him from Training Day and The Guilty he did with Jake Gyllenhaal last year and stuff like that. And it’s interesting that he’s doing this prestige drama kind of thing. I’m curious to see like what he’ll do with that.

MIA Yeah, just to reiterate, it does suck that the movie will at least for the foreseeable future, just be totally bogged down by that slap incident and it sucks that we even have to talk about it again because by talking about it, we’re resurrecting it, we’re resurrecting the discourse.

MITCHELL I’m part of the problem, I’ll it it.

MIA Yeah, we’re being part of the problem but it’s sadly, it’s relevant to the film, especially since there’s no reviews out yet, there’s not a lot of press as you were saying.

MITCHELL Yeah nobody’s ****seen it yet. But you know the reviews will come in, like you said limited theaters this week and then Apple TV+ next week so we can definitely spotlight some reviews coming up once people are able to check it out. Let’s head into taking kind of a quick look back at some stuff that you and I have been watching. We’ll check out some of last week’s releases. Let’s just dive into last weekend. Let’s do a little look at what’s going on with Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery directed by Rian Johnson. All the talk on Twitter is the theatrical one week release with Netflix and then now it’s not available anywhere and it’ll be on Netflix around Christmas time. Everybody’s talking about whether that’s the right call for Netflix for theaters, etc, etc. But it’s from people who have seen it in that theatrical release, it’s doing pretty well, 4.1 average on Letterboxd. And I’ll say, I was looking through the reviews tagged Weekend Watchlist, thank you everybody who does that, to see what people were saying about it. I have not seen Glass Onion yet, I was feeling so much anxiety looking through these reviews, terrified of any spoilers out there.

MIA Was the Letterboxd community kind and did they mark anything that was a spoiler correctly? Were you okay?

MITCHELL They did. From what I was seeing, they did. I was seeing a lot of spoiler flagged, reviews marked spoilers, so I didn’t look at those. I looked at just the ones that were not and I have not been spoiled on anything which is very, I appreciate that deeply.

MIA Thank you, Letterboxd community. Marco says: “Benoit Blanc—” I have to always say it like that. You know I do.

MITCHELL I was hoping you’d read that one.

**MIA ”**Benoit Blanc is becoming the Paddington of mysteries and Rian Johnson it’s Paul King.”

MITCHELL For Letterboxd specifically, very big praise..

MIA Mitchell, you have been receiving a bunch of screeners, haven’t you?

MITCHELL Yes, yes, thank you.

MIA Can you catch us up?

MITCHELL Nice teeing that up. Yeah, I’ve been getting, finally, as we know I don’t go to the movie theater, so I haven’t been getting to see a lot of the stuff that you and Slim have been checking out over the past couple of months. But finally, I’m in a critics group, not to brag. And I finally have been getting some of those screeners that come in over the holiday season for like awards voting time and I’ve been catching up on a bunch of this stuff that’s been coming out—haven’t gotten Glass Onion yet. What’s up Netflix? I did get White Noise last night, so I’ll check that out soon. But the big moment for me I did finally get to see my boy Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile . But yeah, after a year of feverish anticipation, I saw the Lyle, and I’m gonna be honest Mia, I love that boy. Four out of five for me. I really had a great time with it. You know, people have been out there like, “Oh, is this a bit? Is Mitchell joking about wanting to see Lyle? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” No, I was very much looking forward to it. You got Scoot McNairy in there, you got Constance Woo in there. I was excited for it. And it’s even better than I was expecting it to be. I think Lyle is not getting the credit he deserves on Letterboxd, we gotta get that rating up. I found it a very heartwarming movie about finding your voice, about not pressuring other people to be anything other than what they want to be and about that kind of, that validation that you feel with community and people who just accept you for who you are and how that can let you let your full self sing and flourish and just be out in the world. I really loved my sweet Lyle.

MIA [sings in baby voice] I like it like that. I like it like that. That is how we are introduced to Lyle, by the way, in the film.

MITCHELL It is. A young baby Lyle. Yeah, I was watching it with my partner Samm. And when when I was hearing this small little voice, I literally look over at Samm and I go, “I think that’s Lyle. I think that’s baby Lyle.” [Mia & Mitchell laugh] And it was!

MIA It was! Who else could sing like that? Oh man. I’m so glad you finally got to see Lyle. I’m very, very happy for you. It is a cute movie about anxiety.

MITCHELL It really is. Yeah, it really is.

MIA I was anxious kid, I’m an anxious adult. If I had seen this as a little scared kid, I do think it would have validated me. It’s a sweet film.

MITCHELL That’s the thing, man. I really related to it. Even as a 32 year old adult, but yeah, especially as a kid. I think more kids should check it out. I hope now that it’s out on like VOD and stuff more kids should check it out.

MIA All the kids listening…

MITCHELL Yeah, all the kids listening to Weekend Watchlist, go check it out. But you, you finally got to catch up with a very big blind spot for you that I think is about, you know, I think most people would agree is the same level or so quality of film and the film culture, the history probably going to be around the same level on the new Sight and Sound list that’s going to drop the same day as this episode. What did you finally catch up with?

MIA I caught up with All the President’s Men. I saw this movie for the first time ever. I don’t know how the hell I got through journalism and film school and most of the X Files without seeing it. I just don’t know what happened but I freakin loved it. I gave it five stars and a heart. That is not something I often do on a first viewing. But there’s like this six minute single-take that I didn’t even notice was a single-take because it’s acted and directed so damn well, it’s when Robert Redford is on the phone with multiple sources. And he’s like switching back and forth. It was so incredible. And I also love when they, he and Dustin Hoffman just go to McDonald’s. They go to McDonald’s several times in the movie and just kind of hanging out there and eat their quarter pounders. Dustin Hoffman at one point is just, he’s munching on a plain burger patty with no bun. It’s incredible. And then Robert Redford has like six different cups around him for some reason. It’s like they’ve been there forever. It’s just the production design is, I’ve never seen anything like it. It is a very well deserved production design Oscar. And I think it deserved many more. I actually, I prefer this to Network.

MITCHELL Oh, wow.

MIA Which that was the other big journalism movie that year.

MITCHELL Yeah, I really dig it too. It’s such a great movie. And I think that it’s one of those ones that you love on a first viewing and then it only gets better on rewatches too. I had seen it, the first time I saw it I was like a teenager and then I watched it again when I got my updated COVID booster shot last month and was really sick for a day or whatever. I just watched it, laid up in bed and it’s weirdly even though it is about, you know, cracking Watergate and everything, so it’s like this very like heavy time in American history and kind of bleak time about not trusting the people who are supposed to be looking out for us kind of stuff. It’s also very soothing just watching these guys going through the process of breaking the story and yeah, those moments that you talked about, the McDonald’s conversations, I love that you called that out because watching them just be in the McDonald’s and going back and forth with each other and having that weird mixture of like, they clearly, these guys don’t like each other, but they kind of need each other. They kind of maybe respect each other, maybe not at the beginning, but sort of grow to. It’s a very weird dynamic between the two of them that I really enjoyed watching.

MIA Well, we have no updates from Jack this week, unfortunately, tragic. So we’re just gonna go right into our watchlist shuffles.

MITCHELL These are not the Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile  of the watchlist shuffle world. So my movie that I got on the last shuffle was Clearcut, folk horror movie. It’s on Severin Films, all the haunts be ours folk horror boxset which came out recently and yeah, I mean it is a wrenching watch of a movie. Graham Greene plays an indigenous activist who kidnaps a liberal lawyer who kind of failed to protect the communities of land from a logging mill manager. And then, you know, he also kidnaps the manager as well. And he basically like, just puts them through, it almost brings to mind like a Saw kind of thing, but not as torture porn-y as like the Saw movies, but there are some grueling stuff to watch. He just puts them through this sort of trial of making them both kind of pay for their complicity and destroying this land. And it’s really interesting. It’s really, it’s a tough watch. There’s some brutal scenes. I don’t know if I want to give anything away for what happens but it’s hard to watch. I really loved it. It’s very effective. And I think that it does a great job of capturing the kind of duality of being a crappy white person who is complicit in, you know, what happens to other communities in this country, and especially what we’ve done to the Indigenous people who, you know, founded this country and we’re here long before us and everything. I wanted to just quickly highlight Ryan Silberstein’s review on Letterboxd said: “If you can give up the fight and return to your office at any time, you don’t know what it’s like to fight for survival.” and I felt like that was a really good point that was made. But you, you checked out maybe even bleaker of a movie than Clear Cut. When you this last week, I definitely had a moment of, oh, Mia’s in for it.

MIA Oh man. I was really in for it. So honestly, everyone, I watched this at seven o’clock in the morning.

MITCHELL Jesus.

MIA This is a film about brutal murder. It is about a man breaking into a home to kill a woman and her children. So that is a wild way to start your day. I totally see why so many reviews are like rave four plus stars, no heart, they say they’re never going to watch it again. I totally understand that. You know what, I can’t imagine watching this again. But honestly, I probably will, because again, watching it at seven in the morning is maybe not the most ideal. Not most ideal time for this one. It’s also based on a true story.

MITCHELL That’s true. Yeah, I forget about that.

MIA It’s nice to forget about that, isn’t it?

MITCHELL Thankfully forgot about it. Yeah, Angst is, it’s a tough one to see. Samm and I watched it a while back and did the opposite of what you did. We watched it at like eleven o’clock at night and then tried to go to bed after which was just as weird and bad of a vibe as watching it first thing in the morning. So let’s check out what some people are logging and tagging their reviews as Weekend Watchlist, shuffling along with us. I did catch in looking through the Weekend Watchlist tag that Lunchmoney logged Angst as well. Maybe watched it based on you getting it on your shuffle. Lunchmoney said that the film is “a perfect example of filmmakers being aware of their constraints and working within them style and content are in step with each other.”

MIA Yes, there was also a scene that really reminded me of the Possession subway dance scene. It’s not as fun as that one. You know, she’s dancing around with the milk and everything.

MITCHELL Oh god, yeah, the one in Angst is just nasty, nasty.

MIA Yeah, yeah, but we have some more reviews from some nicer films. Such as this one from Jessica on When Harry Met Sally…: “I will never forgive this movie for very briefly causing me to be attracted to Billy Crystal.”

MITCHELL I want to shout out our own Gemma Gracewood, our beloved Editor-in-Chief, got to go to a screening of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, the film is not coming out for a few weeks, I think the end of December. So we’ll hear more about it in a future episode of Weekend Watchlist. But Gemma did log her review, she tagged it Weekend Watchlist, Gemma’s review said: “So jealous of the guy who got his face stepped on by Puss. But seriously, this cat sequel to a spin off of the Shrek films did not need to go this hard and to painterly craft luminary spectacle and mythological construction with flamenco soundtrack excellence. We put the thumb in the pie and it was delicious.” May Puss in Boots: The Last Wish be a new Paddington? Gemma mentioning the painterly craft made me think of kind of the unexpected excellence of Paddington’s production design.

MIA Her review really made me slammed the watchlist button. I love how much she loves Puss. I have a platonic love for Puss in Boots. I feel like he is my close personal friend. But as somebody who is married to the rat from Flushed Away—

MITCHELL And Merlin from Finding Nemo, right? That’s a big one for you?

MIA Yes, yes, yes. Oh yes, he has a beautiful voice. So I have a couple of cartoon animal husbands, in a totally normal way though, don’t worry.

MITCHELL Totally normal, we all do it.

MIA Yeah, so I really relate to Gemma wanting to be stepped on by Puss in Boots.

MITCHELL Well, let’s hit our final moment of the podcast. Let’s dive back into our own watchlists. Let’s shuffle them to see what we’re gonna get, what we have to watch before we come on the podcast again. For people who want to play along with us, head into your own watchlist, sort by shuffle, filter by service stream only, or filter whatever you want to filter by, that’s what we do so that people can watch along with us if they so choose. And then see what you get. What are you looking at Mia, for what you gotta watch next?

MIA Let me filter by services... [shuffle sound plays] Oh, man, I got another bleak one, Mitchell.

MITCHELL Oh no…

MIA But this is one I actually added to my watch list after listening to the James Gray episode of Four Faves. He talks about Killer of Sheep, 1978, directed by Charles Burnett. Yeah, I’m looking at the synopsis. It’s about working in drudgery at a slaughterhouse. So I’m in for another bleak week. But I am really looking forward to this one. James Gray was really raving about it. And I trust him.

MITCHELL It’s definitely, the slaughterhouse thing being in the synopsis, I think is a little bit misleading. That’s not like a big part of a movie. It really is like, it’s a very Neo-realist kind of just like, what what life is like. But it is bleak, but very, very effective. A very significant movie. I really love it. But yeah, it’s definitely not it’s not as nauseating to watch as Angst or something like that.

MIA I get scared when it has killer in the title, it’s talking about a slaughterhouse. I’m like, uh oh. And what did you get Mitchell? [shuffle sound plays]

MITCHELL I have gotten a movie called column. And yeah, I mean, Fun City Editions, they’re like a New York based boutique Blu-ray label. They’ve been killing it. I’m very excited to check this out. The images I’ve seen of it are exactly my kind of ’80s neon at night vibes. So, very excited to check it out. I of course have it on Blu-ray from Fun City Editions. Very excited to watch it.