M-NET Movies Round-up – Episode 1 (Matthew Kalil)
Welcome to the M-NET Movies Round-up with Spling.
In the first episode, we welcome special guest Matthew Kalil to help Spling countdown his Top Ten films coming to M-NET Movies as part of the Fan Favourites Festival this October.
Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Podbean
Spling: Welcome to the MNET Movies Monthly Round-up. I’m Spling and I am joined by Matthew Kalil who is a dear friend of mine and also someone that you need to know about who is in the South African film industry with so much experience from across the board. He is a person of note, he has done it all. Yeah, he’s been to Iowa but there was a reason for it.
Matthew: There was…
Spling: And something that I’m very envious of and that’s being at the David Lynch Film School, a screenwriting guru with a book called ‘The Three Wells of Screenwriting’. He has done lectures all over the world and he is a filmmaker at heart and he has read a lot of great scripts and a lot of horrendous scripts.
Matthew: Yes, and I’ve also written a few great scripts and probably one or two horrendous ones which will stay at the bottom of the cupboard and never be seen. But it’s really good to be here Spling.
Spling: So folks we’re going to be talking about the Fan Favourites Festival that’s happening this October on MNET Movies 2 and that festival has been curated by the voters themselves because they got to choose which films are going to be part of that. There’s 25 films that you can catch on MNET Movies 2 and we are going to be talking about my favourite 10 of those 25.
Matthew: Fantastic. Yeah and you’ve shared them with me. They’re all very diverse, very different.
Spling: Whether you’re going on DStv Stream or you have a Decoder and MNET at home, that’s where you get it. Before we launch into that I wanted to chat to you about your book ‘The Three Wells of Screenwriting’.
Matthew: Yeah so thanks Spling. Yeah my book ‘The Three Wells of Screenwriting’ was written a few years ago and it just came about because I noticed that a lot of people really struggled when they were being creative in the creative process in the moment to create stuff that was meaningful, insightful, deep and kind of specific to them. Like the point of the book is to write the kind of scripts that only you could write and very specific to your experience and life experience. Not writing from your life but using your experiences in the world to create in a way. And the basic premise is there’s three different wells we draw from when we create. The first one is the external sources well. We draw from other movies we’ve seen. The second one is the imagination well. We make it up. And the third one is the memory well. We draw from our own personal memories.
Spling: Yeah I read the book and I really loved it in the way that it gets you to approach things from a different angle. Sometimes you will be looking at a scene with a very fixed idea. Like I think you even referenced this in the book itself where you’re talking about funerals and how when you watch a Hollywood movie most funerals have got a very similar, it’s almost like a genre in and of itself.
Matthew: Yeah if I say to anyone listening now just like think for a second about what you imagine when you think about a funeral and I promise you some of you are thinking of green grass, graves, rain, people with umbrellas, cars, somebody with a little Bible, like a little kind of a hole with people dropping sand on in there you know from their hands. All these kind of cliches that we’ve seen in many many movies. It doesn’t have any resonance. It doesn’t have anything that really moves you. Do you think about your own life and funerals you’ve been to? I bet you you could drag some really interesting stuff up that’s really moving and that’s sort of the point of the book in a nutshell.
Spling: So what I’m going to be doing now is from the film that is at number 10 to the top rated film we’re going to be chatting about what’s coming up at the Fan Favourites.
Matthew: …and I’ll be jumping in and seeing when I agree.
Spling: … and I hope you do. Please challenge me. So right at number 10 we have got My Girl which is a film starring Anna Chomsky and Macaulay Culkin who blew up with Home Alone and had such a great childhood actor kind of thing happening back then in the ’90s.
Matthew: Yeah and in this one he’s got a lot more emotional depth I think than in Home Alone and this one is one of these films that they don’t make anymore. They don’t make films like this where it’s kind of really feel good. There’s no clear antagonist. It’s just kind of nostalgia for an America that doesn’t exist anymore possibly but maybe never existed. It’s really sweet. Sweet is the word and wholesome and coming-of-age but really funny as well like really kind of hilarious moments.
Spling: It’s set in 1972. It’s about a girl called Vada and she is the daughter of a mortician who has a funeral parlour and after her mom dies she becomes very preoccupied with death. Obviously being in a funeral parlour there’s going to be a lot of that and it stars Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis. Next up we have number 9, 300: Rise of an Empire. This is obviously the follow-on from 300 the Frank Miller graphic novel adaptation that caught everyone’s imagination and the ridiculously ripped abs.
Matthew: …and it’s really fun in terms of the Frank Miller adaptation and what’s interesting for me about this is that it’s this graphic novel into movies which you can only do with CG at that time. It was really like the director could have a vision of something and really create it on the screen almost paint on the screen and this is the one.
Spling: I think if you try to think of a film that is just macho if you if you had to think of a film that is totally macho this would be the film I would think of.
Matthew: Yeah, yeah for me it’s The Fast and the Furious but it’s got a similar vibe.
Spling: And it’s got Gerard Butler who sort of blew up in this film. I mean before this who was he and then playing King Leonidas and obviously “this is Sparta”.
Matthew: …classic lines, classic moments.
He just kind of blew up I mean that set his career in motion and now he’s this king of action movies and continues to do them. He’s in Kandahar this month and he’s also in Last Scene Alive so he’s got two films showing beyond this but he isn’t actually in 300: Rise of an Empire. It’s a guy named Sullivan Stapleton who takes the lead in this and we’ve also got Eva Green so it’s one of these follow-ons that actually basically takes it to the sea.
Matthew: Yeah.
Spling: It’s a standoff between the Grecians and Persians. If you love the first one there’s a lot more of that blood, gore, action extravaganza and done in such an arthouse style. And then we have at number eight Bad Boys: Ride or Die. Now that is a franchise that’s been going for an age. I remember the first one Michael Bay sort of kick off and obviously the chemistry between Martin Lawrence and Will Smith continues.
Matthew: Absolutely it’s almost to the point now where they’re riffing off the franchise. They’re almost becoming self-aware in the movie of that they’re in a franchise and they’re almost… almost referring to themselves as characters in a way.
Spling: Yeah that that self-deprecation and that sort of one-upmanship and that bromance thing that they’ve got working for them. They each had their own sitcoms at one point. Both are very charming guys with an incredible knack for comedy and timing and they also are so versatile because here they are doing all the action and we know Will Smith from that. Martin Lawrence more sort of action comedy with Blue Streak and that kind of thing. But if you loved Bad Boys 1, 2 and 3 this is them going rogue when their captain is framed for something and they wanted to try and clear his name.
Matthew: Yeah.
Spling: …it’s a lot of fun. It’s action-packed. It’s relentless. It’s breathless. It’s everything you’ve loved about the previous Bad Boys movies rolled into one.
Matthew: Yep check it out.
Spling: Then we have Crazy Rich Asians which is just such a fresh take on the Hollywood rom-com.
Matthew: It was very seminal when it came out in terms of representation as well like representation of Asian people that were not stereotypes anymore in in Hollywood but very lush and the visuals are so beautiful and you know it really it’s Singapore right?
Spling: Yes.
Matthew: …and it’s just so beautiful.
Spling: Having Constance Wu doing her thing as this woman from the States who is you know there’s that Prince and Me kind of movie.
Matthew: Fish-out-of-water as well.
Spling: Yeah trying to meet the family, live up to expectations and then having this wealthy property tycoon boyfriend who’s introducing his girlfriend to the family. It’s just so much fun and it is just so clean and fresh and funny! So that was number seven. We’re now moving down to number six. King Kong. This is not the 1932 version.
Matthew: 2005…
Spling: This is the 2005 one. I just got to say it’s got three of my favourite actors. Adrian Brody. Love his work. Jack Black.
Matthew: Oh he’s great in this.
Spling: How could they be in the same film?
Matthew: I don’t know. I think but Jack Black stands in actually for Peter Jackson. I think he’s sort of like a Peter Jackson stand-in.
Spling: You’re actually right.
Yeah yeah absolutely. You’re spot on there and then of course Naomi Watts. There’s a tie-in here to what we were saying in the beginning. David Lynch, Mulholland Drive. That’s where Naomi Watts made her big breakthrough but she is just a wonderful actress and does such a phenomenal job in this film as being the so-called “damsel in distress”.
Matthew: Yeah she’s the Fay Wray replacement from the original King Kong.
Spling: And Peter Jackson had come off the Lord of the Rings trilogy so this to me was kind of like a fun film.
Matthew: He wanted to make it for years apparently.
Spling: Much like Lord of the Rings. So another passion project and you can see the love he’s poured into this film.
Matthew: You can see what I really like about it is the homage to the original one but also just the way he’s painting America in that time. The beautiful lushness of images and it’s just beautiful. Every frame is beautiful. One of the things about this as well is it was pretty much like a director imagining anything he could imagine. It’s like okay King Kong versus a T-Rex. Okay great. Dinosaurs chasing him. Dinosaurs falling off cliffs! Like anything you could possibly imagine and then they would just do it.
Spling: It really opened doors for him the whole CG thing. I remember hearing about John Boorman who made Excalibur and he wanted to do Lord of the Rings but at that time in 1981 they just didn’t have the visual effects technology to actually carry the film. So Peter Jackson kind of came in at the right time and definitely coasted on that wave. So we’re into the top five and the next film is Batman Begins from a little director by the name of Christopher Nolan who has now become this monolithic force within the cinema world. So Batman Begins I think was quite a revolutionary film in superhero terms because it was like you said gritty. It was like a crime epic and I think Heat was one of the films I think that inspired The Dark Knight but I think in terms of that scale of crime thriller it was really trying to ground superhero thing.
Matthew: I think it’s interesting they’re trying to ground it but they still kept it fantasy. So Gotham is still a fantasy city but it’s still trying to be grounded.
Spling: And Christian Bale taking on the role of Batman. Morgan Freeman in there as well. So going for the cut above he’s always so clinical and he’s always so grand and there’s that sense of grandeur and there’s that balance between commercial appeal and arthouse aesthetic that he really gets so right with his films. Coming in at number 4 is a film that a lot of people listening to this are going to be like what you know how could that be at number 4 because this film is like the number one film for so many people especially rugby players. It’s a film about a general turned slave turned gladiator…
Matthew: …called Gladiator.
Spling: It is one of the films that really sticks out for me. It’s got such a haunting soundtrack and so powerful. The one theme from this film and then the line what we do in life echoes in…
Matthew:… to eternity.
Spling: Love that quote. So yeah that film is just so epic. It’s a sword and sandal film that is like one of the best.
Matthew: Everything is perfect in this movie in terms of the production value is really great and the performances and the emotion of the characters and the story it’s just it’s just it’s like a smooth ride with quite a lot of blood and stabbing and all of that.
Spling: And then we have a film at number three that is so heartwarming. It’s so uplifting. It’s such a beautiful family film adventure. It’s called E.T. The Extraterrestrial.
Matthew: It’s really Spielberg being Spielberg at the highest level sort of post Jaws. Yeah just so well done. Every single moment is just so cinematic but it’s beautiful the way the storytelling unfolds in a really magical mystical way.
Spling: The way I saw it thinking back about it is that this is kind of the story of a kid who brings home a stray dog.
Matthew: Yeah.
Spling: Instead of a dog we’ve got an alien and how that all plays out in a much more personalised how the alien anthropomorphises.
Matthew: It’s a really clever movie and actually here’s a fun fact for you if you want to watch it again. In the original one the CIA agents all had guns at the end and they were like threatening the kids with the guns and in the later versions they actually edited out the guns and turned them into walkie talkies and so it was like less threatening for kids.
Spling: At number two we have got one of my favourite films at least in the top 20 I’d have to say and that is The Matrix with Keanu Reeves, Carrie Ann Moss, Lawrence Fishburne… what a wonderful film. What a mind-bending film.
It really felt as though the Wachowskis did something here that’s very similar to Ghost in the Shell and then that choreography with the kung fu and gunslinging. Yeah. It just is so awesome because now if someone wears a coat and sunglasses…
Matthew: …then they’re Neo.
Spling: Yeah.
Matthew: Yeah exactly and I think just so many things that they’re the bullet time thing time slicing they called it with a time you know where that special effect where you kind of the camera like wraps around the action and it sort of freezes and definitely changed cinema history in terms of what’s possible with visual effects and not just visual effects but like I guess the ballet of it all and how beautiful that is.
Spling: Yeah it’s quite funny with the CGI being so prominent in this because it’s talking about a world where it could be just programmed.
Matthew: Yeah we’re all living in a simulation.
Spling: Yes and so the handing over the handshake that’s happening with this film is quite interesting. We actually can create these dreams in these films and film as illusion but turn it into something that’s so real that yeah why couldn’t we be in a bubble somewhere being a battery to someone and how would we even know if that were the case?
Matthew: There’s deep philosophical questions going on in this movie and there’s a Rage Against the Machine song at the end which is always good.
Spling: Epic and red or blue pill, you decide. There are such memorable scenes.
Matthew: I don’t like two choices. It’s all on the spectrum for me between the red and the blue pill.
Spling: But there’s such memorable scenes in this film like when Agent Smith is interrogating Mr. Anderson and his mouth like closes over and when he reaches through the mirror and he’s like being dragged into the Matrix.
Matthew: And what’s interesting about that is both of those things have you know the mirrors ‘Alice in Wonderland’ the mouth being closed is like a grit painting I think so there’s like they’re tapping into kind of real deep cultural history.
Spling: So Matt we’re coming in for the number one film on this list and I think a lot of people will agree with me when I say The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is possibly the greatest fantasy film ever made. Yeah I would agree.
Matthew: I personally like the first Lord of the Rings the most but that was because I saw it in the cinema and it just blew me away. I saw it a few times in the cinema. I couldn’t believe what they were doing at the time. I’ve watched all of these again recently and I’m still blown away by just everything they do. It’s just it’s really just this was such a perfect project for everyone involved.
Spling: It does seem as though like how could you possibly improve it. Exactly. And Peter Jackson deciding to do all three at the same time to have that sense of continuity and setting it in New Zealand where it’s just so beautiful and just makes so much sense for this film. And also the fact that it’s four hours long and it like doesn’t feel four hours long. You are so wrapped up into this world.
Matthew: The joke about it is that it’s like this really long movie and stuff but it doesn’t feel like that at all when you watch it. I know you see Elijah Wood in the movie now and you’re like “carry the ring Frodo” no matter what he’s doing.
Spling: It’s almost worse than being a Bond you know. These are the Bond films you can go on for about six films probably you have to throw in the towel. So folks that’s it! That’s the top 10. Matt didn’t really I think he was quite nice to me about my selection. He didn’t really give me too much grief. Matt thank you so much for joining me on the M-NET Movies Monthly Roundup. A little token of thanks is a book that you may have heard of called ‘The Essence of Dreams: An Anthology of Film Reviews’. It’s a book that I’ve written.
Matthew: Oh fantastic.
Spling: There you go…and also a box of Mannabrew which is mesquite which is organically produced.
Matthew: Oh yes I’ve been meaning to try mesquite. This is the whole new rage.
Spling: It’s a superfood espresso basically but I think you’ll enjoy it.
Matthew: Cool I’m going to try.
Spling: Thanks for joining.
Matthew: Thank you.
