Podcast Like It's ...

Phil and Emily continue the Angelina Jolie action films miniseries with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider — The Cradle of Life (2003), joined by Carson Betts and Caroline Thompson, co-hosts of the How Have You Not Seen It podcast. All four participants are watching this film for the first time. This is relevant information.

The Cradle of Life follows Lara Croft racing to find Pandora's Box before a rogue scientist with strong Peter Thiel energy can use it as a biological weapon, with complications provided by her ex-lover Terry Sheridan, played by Gerard Butler. It cost $95 million, grossed $160 million worldwide, and opened July 25th, 2003 against Spy Kids 3D, Pirates of the Caribbean, Bad Boys 2, and Seabiscuit. It received three stars from Roger Ebert, which nearly convinced Emily to see it in theaters that summer. She saw The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen instead. Phil does not believe she made the better choice. The film was also banned in China for giving the impression of a country in chaos overrun by secret societies. Hollywood had not yet figured that out.

The consensus is that this movie is more competent than the first Tomb Raider along nearly every axis, which somehow makes it less enjoyable. Phil calls it dumb and not fun, as opposed to the first film, which was dumb and fun. Emily notes the big action set piece in the middle is a shootout in a lab, which she finds strange given the title. The group also covers Jan de Bont's filmography and what it means that this was his final film, the Sasquatch creatures that the script introduces and then declines to explain, and the actual Cradle of Life, which turns out to be visually underwhelming in a way that Carson compares to a YouTube video that will not load.

The true climax, Carson argues, was always going to be in Lara's heart.

This is the third installment of the miniseries on Angelina Jolie's 2000s action films, following Gone in 60 Seconds and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

Follow the show and guests:

Podcast Like It's... — https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits
Phil Iscove — https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James — https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
Carson Betts — https://www.instagram.com/carsonlbetts
Caroline Thompson — https://www.instagram.com/sportclimbbarbie
How Have You Not Seen It — https://www.instagram.com/hhynspod
💜 Patreon (bonus episodes and video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits
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Phil and Emily continue the Angelina Jolie action films miniseries with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), joined by BJ Colangelo and Harmony Colangelo, co-hosts of the This Ends at Prom podcast. BJ and Harmony previously joined the show for Hard-Boiled, which Phil describes as a superior action movie. Harmony agrees with everything about that sentence.

Tomb Raider follows aristocrat archaeologist Lara Croft racing against the villainous Illuminati to retrieve the two halves of the Triangle of Light before a rare planetary alignment allows them to unlock its power over time. It cost $150 million, grossed $274 million worldwide, and opened June 15th, 2001 against Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Shrek, Swordfish, Pearl Harbor, and Evolution. Paramount had purchased the video game rights in 1998. No fewer than seven screenwriters took a pass at the script before Simon West stitched something together and pointed a camera at Angelina Jolie.

The group agrees on several things: Jolie is perfectly cast, clearly having a blast, and simply is Lara Croft in a way that very few actors embody a character that completely. They do not agree on much else. Phil's issues are with the script, specifically a 45-minute delay before the film bothers to explain what is actually at stake. Harmony's defense is that this is video game logic, anything is possible, and sometimes you just want to watch someone cool do cool things. Emily ran into Angelina Jolie at a grocery store once and has thoughts.

Daniel Craig is also in this movie. Nobody can identify what accent he is doing. Emily has a theory involving one specific block in Lincoln, Nebraska.
This is the second installment of the miniseries on Angelina Jolie's 2000s action films, following Gone in 60 Seconds.

Follow the show and guests:
Podcast Like It's... — https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits
Phil Iscove — https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James — https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
BJ Colangelo — https://www.instagram.com/bjcolangelo
Harmony Colangelo — https://www.instagram.com/harmonycolangelo
This Ends at Prom — https://www.instagram.com/thisendsatprom
💜 Patreon (bonus episodes and video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Phil and Emily are joined by LaToya Ferguson to kick off a new miniseries on Angelina Jolie's action films of the 2000s, beginning with Gone in 60 Seconds (2000). LaToya is a TV writer, critic, and co-host of the Empire Diaries podcast. She has appeared on the show before, covering The Other Sister and Ladybugs on previous installments. She wanted to cover Mr. and Mrs. Smith. She did not get Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Gone in 60 Seconds follows retired master car thief Memphis Raines, forced back into the game to steal 50 high-end cars in one night to save his brother from a ruthless crime boss. It cost $100 million, grossed $237 million worldwide, outperforming both Remember the Titans and Coyote Ugly from the same Bruckheimer production year. Angelina Jolie had just won the Oscar. The film was sold entirely on her. She is barely in it. Nicolas Cage plays the lead, does not radiate car energy, and shares with Jolie what Emily describes as the opposite of chemistry. The movie goes dull at exactly the moment it should not, Frances Fisher has less screen time than the dog, and Christopher Eccleston delivers the villain line "it never rains, but it pours" with complete conviction.

Phil makes the case for where this sits in the Bruckheimer era and why it signals the end of something, Emily misses the era of movies that made audiences want to steal cars, and LaToya has thoughts about Nicolas Cage, Billy Bob Thornton, and what actual dirtbag energy looks like on screen. They also get into whether Gone in 60 Seconds quietly paved the way for Fast and Furious, and why Phil rides for Sorcerer's Apprentice to the dismay of everyone present.

This episode opens the miniseries on Angelina Jolie's 2000s action films, with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider up next.

Follow the show and guests:
Podcast Like It's... — https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits
Phil Iscove — https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James — https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
LaToya Ferguson — https://www.instagram.com/thelafergs
💜 Patreon (bonus episodes and video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Phil and Emily are joined by film critic, screenwriter, and Hip Pocket podcast host Drew McWeeny to discuss Where the Wild Things Are (2009), the Spike Jonze adaptation of Maurice Sendak's 85-word picture book that cost roughly $100 million, barely broke even, got one Blu-ray release, and has been sitting in a strange kind of limbo ever since.

Drew has been close to this film longer than almost anyone outside the production. He saw a rough cut in Pasadena before a single effects shot was completed, got a personal call from Legendary Pictures founder Thomas Tull asking for his honest reaction, and later sat down with Spike Jonze himself for two hours as the film fought to find its finish line. Phil thinks it's a miracle it exists at all. Emily finds it formally audacious and sometimes frustrating in equal measure. Drew thinks it's a great film. He also thinks it might not be a film for children.

The three dig into the full production story, from the Jim Henson Company's 50-pound creature heads that got scrapped six weeks before filming to Spike's decision to shoot everything handheld with no green screens and no tracking dots on any of the creatures. They talk about why James Gandolfini was the perfect choice for Carol, what the voice cast recorded running around a black box theater instead of isolated booths, and what it means to watch this movie as a parent who has been the angry one in the room.

This episode wraps up the show's Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman miniseries, following Adaptation and Synecdoche, New York.

Follow the show and guests:
Podcast Like It's 2000s — https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits2000s
Phil Iscove — https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James — https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
Drew McWeeny — https://www.instagram.com/drewmcweeny
💜 Patreon (bonus episodes and video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits
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Phil and Emily are joined by Angie Han, TV critic at The Hollywood Reporter, to discuss Synecdoche, NY (2008), Charlie Kaufman's audacious directorial debut and the film Roger Ebert called the best of the 2000s.

Kaufman wrote and directed this hallucinatory portrait of Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an ailing theater director who uses a MacArthur Fellowship to build a life-size replica of New York City inside a warehouse. As the decades pass and his art consumes his life, the film tunnels deeper into mortality, creative obsession, and the quiet horror of living in a body that won't cooperate. Originally conceived as a horror film with Spike Jonze, Synecdoche, NY opened in October 2008 against High School Musical 3 and Saw 5, made $4.5 million on a $20 million budget, and has since been ranked among the greatest films of the 21st century by the BBC, the Guardian, and Time.

Phil finds it deeply triggering as a self-described hypochondriac. Angie has seen it a dozen times and finds it weirdly soothing. Emily thinks it's funnier than people give it credit for. All three dig into why this film bombed commercially and became a critical touchstone, what it means to watch it in your 20s versus your 40s, and why it still doesn't have a Criterion edition.

Follow the show and guests:
Podcast Like It's... — https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits
Phil Iscove — https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James — https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
Angie Han — https://www.instagram.com/ajhan06
💜 Patreon (bonus episodes and video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.