Cold War Movie Draft (w/ Elijah Davidson)

Eli (00:01.771)
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast where we do deep dives and two directors and their filmographies I am your host Eli price and we are here on episode 106 of the podcast We enjoyed a great conversation about bridge of spies last week if you didn't catch that make sure to go check that out But I have my guest from last week returning

Elijah Davidson is coming back for a Cold War movie draft. How are you feeling? Are you feeling cold about it? Are you feeling...

Elijah Davidson (00:37.934)
Would it help?

Eli (00:39.479)
What it that's good pool good good pool from last week. Yeah

Elijah Davidson (00:46.094)
I decided to come here as a completely different person for this episode. I'm gonna be my spy version of myself. So I'm gonna give you stillness and quiet, and it's up to you to not follow me down. I'm just joking, that'd be horrible podcasting, wouldn't it? If someone was just very quiet on a podcast the entire time, that'd be the worst.

Eli (00:53.143)
You

Okay.

Eli (01:04.373)
Yeah, you'd be surprised. Sometimes you have to really carry the weight of the conversation, but you know, it's all good. That's what I signed up for when I decided to make a podcast. So, is to talk into the void and maybe someone will listen.

Elijah Davidson (01:11.768)
conversation. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (01:16.694)
Uh-huh. I won't make you... That's right. But hopefully not at the void. The person you're talking to should not be a void. That would be a bad experience. I'm still me. If you don't know who I am, and this is your first episode, I'm gonna say just wherever you got this episode, go to that place and get the one before and listen to me on that one.

Eli (01:27.135)
Right, yes, yes. Yes, exactly.

Eli (01:46.1)
Exactly.

Elijah Davidson (01:46.542)
I'm not going to tell you anything else about myself on this one. So it is. You have to be a completionist to understand who I am.

Eli (01:49.557)
Yeah, it's on the last one. Go listen to the last one.

Yeah, I love it. That makes my job easier. I can just go, we can just go straight into the content now. If you've never listened to a movie draft episode before, it is, it's just, we're just picking movies from a category. So it just happens to be Cold War movies to go along with Bridges Spies, which sometimes I've...

Elijah Davidson (02:02.519)
Yeah, for real.

Eli (02:24.631)
I exclude the movie that we talked about from the as an option. I don't I'm afraid of not having enough. I don't know. I'm sure I'll have enough. We'll we'll set it aside for now. Let's let's go ahead and say Bridgespies. It's the Bridgespies memorial draft. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (02:29.888)
in the draft.

Elijah Davidson (02:48.353)
Memorial list. Memorial draft. Yeah, okay. All right. I'm not gonna pick it anyway, so that's fine. I got tons of movies on here. That wasn't gonna be one of them. Mid-tier Spielberg's not making my draft.

Eli (02:54.197)
Okay, that's good.

Okay, good.

I haven't seen enough that I've found... there's probably movies that I've seen that I could say are Cold War movies that I just didn't think of. So my list is my list. We'll see how it turns out. Before we jump into the draft, I thought I would ask this question. What, other than like obviously being set in the Cold War and Cold War things, what defines a Cold War movie for you?

Elijah Davidson (03:30.382)
Well, I started this, preparing for this, by making a list of all the kinds of Cold War movies that I could think of. And so I have a list of one, two, three, four, five, six, nine different categories of like Cold War kinds of movies. I also set up a couple of rules for myself when it came to the movie. So there are Cold War movies that are

Eli (03:37.424)
Mm, that's fun, yeah.

Eli (03:47.767)
Who?

Elijah Davidson (03:59.03)
not about the United States and Russia, but I felt like they needed true Cold War movies because being the American that I am, or about the United States and Russia on some level. so British ones don't really count. So James Bond, for the most part, does not count for me as Cold War movies, even though it's probably like the quintessential Cold War-like franchise. But there's nothing cold about what's going on in James Bond movies either, you know? So anyway, there's that.

Eli (04:05.879)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (04:10.016)
Okay.

Eli (04:18.369)
Fair, yeah.

Eli (04:24.503)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (04:28.685)
But I back you want my categories that yeah, so

Eli (04:31.987)
Yeah, sure. I can think of a few off the top of my head, but I didn't think about it in that way.

Elijah Davidson (04:36.479)
Okay, here's what I got. So the big one in pretty much like all movies after the atomic bomb was dropped are about this is nuclear anxiety. Nuclear war anxiety is huge. That's a kind of Cold War movie. There's movies where that's the center of what's going on. McCarthyism and like the witch hunt thing, that's a huge part of the Cold War. Like that's not always Russia exactly, but it's like communism scare. So it's like Russia by...

Eli (04:52.961)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Davidson (05:04.833)
think it's all about Americans hating each other or being afraid of each other because of this climate they were living under. There are Cold War movies that are just giant metaphors for the Cold War but aren't explicitly about the Cold War. So I put those under the category of metaphor, big giant metaphor movies. I'm not going to mention any right now because I'm giving away any pics here. There are spy movies. There are spy, in the whole espionage.

Eli (05:25.195)
Right, we might draft them. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (05:32.595)
Genre of movie like is a huge part that all came out of the Cold War And then there's military Cold War movies that aren't spy movies. So about military operations during the Cold War Big part of what they are Then and this is a fun category. There are Cold War movies for kids There are lots of Cold War movies for kids Because it was important to make kids afraid of being killed by communists. I guess you wanted to be prepared, you know

Eli (05:40.94)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (05:51.819)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (05:59.105)
Sure, of course.

Elijah Davidson (06:02.444)
So that's a big one. There's a Cold War overlapped with sci-fi as a genre and like the sci-fi genre coming into the fore in like the world because it really didn't exist much prior to the Cold War. So there are all kinds of sci-fi, very explicitly science fiction Cold War movies. That's one of my things. And then of course you got your comedies. They're Cold War comedies. Don't forget about the Cold War comedies. They're fun.

Because you got to laugh about this insanity that you know we were all dealing with And then nonfiction there are nonfiction Cold War films a lot of really great films that are nonfiction films that are Cold War Cold War centered films so I I worked with all those categories and making up my my list of possibilities for this draft Yeah, how about you what defines it for you?

Eli (06:51.297)
Yeah. Yeah. So, so for, mean, I guess to me, like,

The Cold War movies, as I've caught up with a few and thought about ones I've seen, they have these kind of like, there's this through line of, it's almost like a feeling or atmosphere that runs, and a lot of it has to do with different ways that fear manifests, I think. There's like, whether it's like dread or,

Elijah Davidson (07:24.14)
Hmm.

Eli (07:28.855)
Sometimes it's more like political manifestations like xenophobia or like, you know military action in those sorts of movies sometimes the fear manifests and just kind of like You know, mentioned sci-fi movies. So sometimes like in those sorts of Cold War movies the fear manifests and just this like Dread of the unknown like not knowing what's gonna happen like what could happen? There's

Elijah Davidson (07:36.844)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (07:59.019)
There's, there's fear in the more exciting way sometimes with like conspiracy and espionage. but that's still kind of like rooted in this, anxious fear of not knowing like, what's the cause of something or what's going to happen. and so I, I think that's like one of the big things to me that like, I was noticing seems to run through all of these movies is just like,

is just that fear and the different ways it manifests. And I think the you naming all those categories, you could probably go through and like, there's like probably one or two major ways that fear manifests in each of those categories. So that's kind of what I was thinking of. Did you, so is, did you make a challenge for yourself to like try to draft ones from different categories?

Elijah Davidson (08:29.74)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (08:42.218)
yeah. for sure. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (08:54.026)
Yeah, I wanted to try to as many categories as I could in my picks.

Eli (08:57.271)
Okay, we're gonna do five each, so you'll be able to hit at least five.

Elijah Davidson (09:01.204)
Yeah, so I'm gonna add one thing to this, like what makes a Cold War movie thing. in my Come and See project when I was going through film history, know, after World War II, are like, there's a of different kinds of movies that are made, but for a while, like there's kind of like two movies that are made. One movie is All These Soldiers, All These Men.

Eli (09:05.418)
Okay.

Eli (09:09.559)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Davidson (09:30.861)
for the most part, I almost all men, off at war and they've learned to kill people really good. And now they have to come home and be peaceful. How do we do that? Like that's like most movies, like after World War II. And that's the Western, that's film noir, it's it's melodrama, it's everything. It's all over the place. The other giant thing that happens in like every movie's about this is the fear of the atomic bomb.

Eli (10:00.855)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Davidson (10:01.054)
and what that means for the fact that we can destroy the world. That's it. Those are the two movies. both of those things are kind of Cold War things, but the atomic bomb thing is majorly a Cold War thing. And so that's the big fear. That's the fear of the Cold War, is that something's gonna snap and we're all gonna blow up.

Eli (10:12.759)
Yeah, very.

Eli (10:21.441)
Yeah. Yeah. And along with that too, the Tom Hanks, talked about growing up in that era. He said they, they were taught to fear the, the possibility. He was basically, he was basically saying like, they didn't like, they hated the Soviets because they were basically taught there are these people on the opposite side of the world.

from us that stand for all the opposite things that we stand for that that want to force their way of life upon us and so that was like that was his kind of like Looking back how he kind of remembered What he was taught during that time which I thought was interesting so it's it's like the fear of the atomic bomb of destroying the world but also like this fear that there's this like

Elijah Davidson (10:57.462)
Right.

Elijah Davidson (11:16.982)
being eradicated, being wiped out. Yeah.

Eli (11:17.897)
Yeah, there's this like anti-version of all of your virtues that is going to come and like change completely the essence of who you and your country is, you know? Yeah, and I think that's... I'm not gonna... yeah, we'll get into the movies as we go and... yeah. But yeah, so we've done one draft before.

Elijah Davidson (11:29.13)
Mm-hmm. Mm. Wow.

Elijah Davidson (11:39.126)
Yeah, let's do it.

Eli (11:44.759)
together you got the first pick on that one so I will take the first pick on this one and this is very tough

Elijah Davidson (11:52.992)
Okay.

Eli (12:02.807)
I almost want to want to give you the first pick just to make this but But I'm gonna yeah, I know but it should be hard on myself I'm gonna I'm gonna go with one that is Very very much revered that I actually caught up with leading up to this I've never seen checked it out from the good old library because it wasn't

Elijah Davidson (12:07.955)
I'll take it if you do. I'm not gonna complain.

Eli (12:31.637)
Well, I take that back. It was on Tubi, but I was like, well, I can, I can watch it without ads, from the library. but, I caught up with, the third man from 1949, Carol Reed, 1949. you're, you're, it's like, it's the start of it all, you know, but somehow like, even though it's at the very, the very beginning, it's.

Elijah Davidson (12:45.157)
yeah, what a great movie. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (12:54.74)
It is, yeah.

Eli (13:01.161)
It's all there. All of the, that fear that, I mean, you're, you're in the, you're in post-war Vienna. So you kind of have like this occupation of all these people who don't know who they can trust. all there in the same city. and then just like, there's, there's this mystery. There's this kind of like, there's the spy element in that movie.

Elijah Davidson (13:02.475)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (13:30.647)
Even though like he's not he's just a writer. He's not really a spy, but he's doing spy stuff, you know Yeah and then there's there's the there's the friend who not not to give too, you know try to be less less spoilery with with these movie drafts, but there's you know, the friend who has Gone to another part of the world and left all the virtues

Elijah Davidson (13:30.76)
yeah.

Elijah Davidson (13:36.949)
doing spy stuff, looking for his friend. Yeah, looking for Harry. Yeah.

Eli (14:00.577)
that you thought they stood for behind. Yeah, there's, yeah, it's all there. There's, along with a little bit of romance and, or lack thereof really. Yeah, as, yeah, I won't comment too much on that. There's a very like huge ending that I was like, man, that was great. But yeah.

Elijah Davidson (14:13.707)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Elijah Davidson (14:25.759)
Yeah. Oh man. Graham Greene. That's that's a Graham Greene story. that yeah that's that's one of the best. You know you'll often hear people call that an Orson Welles movie because he is in it but he just yeah but he does not direct it. People talk about like as if he directed it but it's Carol Reed. Carol Reed is due. That's it. That's one of those perfect movies that I can just like watch like any time and kind of get like sucked into.

Eli (14:32.8)
Yeah,

Eli (14:39.221)
He's, he's, I was surprised. I was like, yeah.

Eli (14:51.52)
Yeah.

Eli (14:55.285)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (14:55.763)
it's just that zither. my god. The score is just like this zither that It's like carnivalesque but like vaguely threatening at the same time

Eli (14:59.285)
Yeah, it is.

Eli (15:06.261)
Yeah, it creates this weird atmosphere because a lot of the movie is very thrilling, also like this... Yeah, the zither is kind of like... Almost feels out of place, but also this man is like out of place in this city.

Elijah Davidson (15:09.492)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (15:20.96)
Yeah.

Is that a place? Yeah, and it feels like vaguely Eastern European somehow and like pitching different places. It's just amazing. Like that whole movie is just perfect. So great.

Eli (15:27.893)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (15:32.191)
Yeah, so that was one that I was like, I would love to have this on my list and I wasn't sure if it was on yours, but yeah.

Elijah Davidson (15:36.299)
What a good one to catch up on.

Elijah Davidson (15:42.793)
Well, great, I'm glad you picked that one. I can pick what I wanted to pick first. I can't pick that movie because of course one of my rules is we have to be dealing with, it's a British film and so, a lot of Americans in it, don't get me wrong, but.

Eli (15:51.94)
yeah.

Eli (15:57.077)
Yeah, well, I might be taking multiple that you're not even allowing yourself to take, so.

Elijah Davidson (16:02.867)
Yeah, mine had to be America and Russia on some level. well, I'm happy to pick my first choice, which not only do I think it's the greatest Cold War film, perhaps I think it's this filmmaker's greatest film. I don't think it's the greatest film ever made, but it's pretty high up there, though. I mean, it's pushing up the top 10. Some days you'd ask me, it probably is a top tenner.

Eli (16:27.606)
Okay.

Elijah Davidson (16:33.947)
They actually have a list of all those movies and I always say that any movie in the top 25 of my rank list of the greatest films of all time, give me a different day and that's the best movie ever made. You you know, top 25. And this is one of those. So my number one choice here is going to be Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb because it is, it gets all these things from me. I mean, it's just...

Eli (16:42.017)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (16:45.355)
Yeah, sure.

Eli (16:54.465)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (17:02.603)
I that nuclear anxiety thing, it's a comedy. You get the weird paranoia stuff going on throughout it. It's, you got some spies. got Peter Sellers, and Peter Sellers, and Peter Sellers again. I mean, can't go wrong there. It's black and white. feels right about black and white for a Cold War thing, you know? Yeah, just, mean, like I said, might be the greatest movie ever made.

Eli (17:03.851)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (17:19.159)
Yeah.

Eli (17:26.049)
Yeah, yeah.

Elijah Davidson (17:32.245)
do. So, can't go wrong there.

Eli (17:32.363)
Yeah, yeah, I I this was the other one I was looking at so Yeah Yeah, so it's almost like you did get the first the first pick anyway Yeah, I was looking at this one and So if I if I had been thinking about like your stipulation you put on yourself I might have went with this one, but I wasn't

Elijah Davidson (17:37.813)
Yeah, for your top choice. Yeah, good. I'm glad I got it. I love it. I love it so much.

I got my first pick.

Elijah Davidson (17:58.301)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (18:00.971)
But yeah, that's probably the right first choice. Man, Dr. Strangelove is, it's, yeah.

Elijah Davidson (18:09.258)
It's also just a movie I will watch at any time. know? Like, and the thing that gets so good that no, I don't think any other Cold War movie quite gets is how absurd it all is. Right? Like, the sheer absurdity of living under that kind of anxiety, that kind of belief that there is this anti-US out there that's gonna like wipe you out, the absurdity of it all. The one's complete inability to reconcile all of the absurdity of that.

Eli (18:20.945)
Yeah.

Eli (18:38.773)
Yeah. Yeah. This is madness.

Elijah Davidson (18:39.262)
That's Dr. Strangelove. That's the correct way you should feel about all those things. Yeah.

Eli (18:46.327)
Man, yeah, that's a that's one I've only seen once So I need to revisit it Because when I saw it the first time I knew it was a comedy But it did take me like a little bit into the movie to get on the wavelength Which is weird because like typically that sort of like that sort of humor is like right up my alley But I don't know what it was. Just it took me a while to like

Elijah Davidson (19:03.881)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (19:12.138)
Uh-huh.

Eli (19:15.723)
get on the wavelength. think it's because it is also a brutally violent war film in sections that I was like, it kept pulling my mind in that direction. I'm sure that's, not just sure, I'm positive that's all on purpose.

Elijah Davidson (19:25.578)
Uh-huh.

Elijah Davidson (19:31.86)
Yeah, yeah.

It reminds you that Kubrick began his career as a photographer, a journalist, because it has some of those kind of aspects going on too, in the middle of the forest, which is what it all was. It was very real and people shooting each other and it was also ridiculous. So yeah, anyway. Yeah.

Eli (19:43.947)
Yeah.

Eli (19:53.823)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. All right, so for my second one.

Eli (20:05.719)
I think this is just like So this is this is this pick is gonna be two things this pick is gonna be To counterbalance you having dr. Strangelove and getting some getting some extra votes coming my way But also like recently revisited this movie for the podcast And it's it's kind of like half

Elijah Davidson (20:16.81)
You

Elijah Davidson (20:21.052)
You

Eli (20:33.399)
a World War II movie and half a Cold War movie. And yes, I did recently cover it on the podcast finally to round out the Christopher Nolan movies. I'm gonna go with Oppenheimer. It really rose in my estimation on the re-watch for the show and then all the research into it. It's obviously like you have a good portion

Elijah Davidson (20:36.778)
Hmm.

Elijah Davidson (20:49.204)
There you go. Yeah.

Eli (21:03.095)
about the development of the bomb, which is not during the Cold War era, but the movie isn't really about that. One of the things we talked about in that episode is there's a whole hour of movie after that, and that hour after it is what the movie is really about. And what the movie's wrestling with in that last hour is what the Cold War was all about.

Elijah Davidson (21:08.988)
Right. But it creates it.

Right.

Elijah Davidson (21:20.926)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Elijah Davidson (21:31.7)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (21:32.631)
And so like yeah, so I think this is very much like a Cold War Movie in the sense that like the real point of the movie even though like two-thirds of it I don't know I guess like you can't even say two-thirds of it is not Cold War because you have a lot of like jumping back and forth and so Yeah is is yeah

Elijah Davidson (21:53.99)
You have all this stuff with Robert Downey Jr. throughout the whole movie. Not just the end.

Eli (22:02.593)
But yeah, just like wrestling with the fact that what you've unlocked, you know, what is this thing that I've unleashed? And it's not even like, it's not even dealing with, should I have done this? You're past that point. It's dealing with like, what do we do now that this is the cat's out of the bag? And I think that's like, you know, it's a very important thing to wrestle with.

Elijah Davidson (22:09.299)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Davidson (22:20.979)
Yep.

Elijah Davidson (22:25.982)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (22:32.087)
and think about. Yeah, that's what I'm going with. it's, yeah, it's one that I think deserves to be picked early, but also the plus is that it maybe will counterbalance a little bit of the Strange Love pick. Because I don't know how many people have seen the third man. Yeah, hopefully more people will now. All right, you're up. Your second pick.

Elijah Davidson (22:50.897)
Yeah, hopefully more people can see that movie.

I'm up,

Eli (23:00.119)
Was Oppenheimer on your list?

Elijah Davidson (23:02.693)
It was on my audible mention list. I mean, I have it down there in case you picked everything else that I wanted to pick. Yeah, great movie. I think I put it down there and didn't put it higher up because so much of it does deal with the development of the bomb, which seemed very pre-Cold War to me.

Eli (23:05.537)
Okay.

Eli (23:18.017)
Yeah. Yeah, it's fair.

Eli (23:23.733)
Yeah, but like I said, my list is shallower than yours.

Elijah Davidson (23:29.147)
Okay, I'm gonna go okay for my next pick I actually have a little tree and like if you pick one I go over here and all that kind of stuff, you know But I'm kind of wanting to Diverge all this is the problem with the draft. I want to diverge already. I Shouldn't I just stick with my what I want to do here. Yes. Okay My second pick I'm gonna take Rocky for Yes, I am Rocky for is my second pick

Eli (23:37.929)
Ooh, okay.

Eli (23:55.189)
Okay. Rocky four.

Elijah Davidson (23:58.716)
Yep. And here's why. It's explicitly a Cold War movie. You got Rocky winning the Cold War by boxing and making a great speech that wins them all over with love. But it's ridiculous because of course that's not how anything ends. It's about as 80s as it gets in that sense. So the Cold War was

Eli (24:04.778)
yeah.

Eli (24:09.228)
Yes.

Eli (24:22.295)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Davidson (24:26.547)
pretty much over by the time Rocky IV is coming out. So it's kind of taking a victory lap or tap dancing on someone's grave at this point. But it's everything people wanted to see in the 80s. It's also just a frickin' great fun movie. I love Rocky IV. It has some of the best training montages of any Rocky movie. And of course Rocky has to go to Russia to really get strong, know, as a train like a Russian kind of thing.

Eli (24:51.414)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Davidson (24:56.061)
tough to back up. Also, the cinematography of that movie is just beautiful. Like it's a gorgeous movie. No one talks about this, I don't think. How gorgeous Rocky IV is. Rocky III is pretty too. Rocky IV is absolutely gorgeous. Like there are shots of within the ring, when they're boxing from the ring, that is just, it's incredible. I mean, it's like, it's like you're watching like God's fight.

You know, like it's just absolutely awesome. The way that that movie is shot. And you get all this most ridiculous kind of Cold War stuff that we got. So Rocky IV, next pick. It's also fun. You Dolph Lundgren, I know. I mean, come on. Come on. You get a robot. Don't watch the re-edit, because you want to keep that robot in there. Because it's an 80s movie, so you've got to have a robot making wisecracks. That's what it's all about. So Rocky IV. Yeah.

Eli (25:34.347)
Yeah. And I mean, you get Dov Longren too, I mean. Yeah.

Eli (25:48.863)
Yeah, Yeah, for sure. That's one that like, I, it's been so, so long since I've seen it. And I thought about it the other day. I was like, I need to put that on my list. You know, I have a little private letterbox list where I like kind of compiled them all. And then I forgot to put it on here. So, you know, but, but yeah, great pick. Can't go wrong with Rocky four.

Elijah Davidson (26:17.705)
you

Eli (26:19.659)
All right, so.

Eli (26:24.695)
Alright, you went Rocky 4. You're kind of forcing my hand of where you're making me go. I have much less of a structured plan than you. So I'm kind of like, even though I picked first, I feel like I'm following your lead at this point. Man. Okay, we only have five picks though, and I do want to get... There's a couple that I do definitely want to...

Elijah Davidson (26:36.627)
You

Elijah Davidson (26:42.451)
Okay.

Eli (26:53.087)
Okay, if I make this pick I can still get Some of the others that I want to get okay, so Rocky 4 is an is Even more of a populist pick I think than dr. Strangelove, so I'm gonna have to counterbalance that with Brad Bird's the Iron Giant Yeah a cold a Cold War coded kids movie made outside of the Cold War

Elijah Davidson (27:07.849)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Davidson (27:14.067)
Good pick.

Eli (27:22.423)
This is a movie I grew up with, you know, right?

Elijah Davidson (27:25.703)
Yeah. Hey, but Brad Bird grew up in the Cold War. So, yeah. Yep.

Eli (27:29.075)
Right that and I was gonna say that so made by someone that did did experience it and I've i've always liked the iron giant but then I you know remember liking it but then I watched it a few years ago as an adult and like was like crying at the end and I was like this movie is so much better than I could have ever appreciated when I was a kid and

Elijah Davidson (27:34.153)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Davidson (27:41.715)
Yeah.

Eli (27:58.657)
But yeah, mean, it's definitely, it's completely coated with Cold War anxieties and fears, but one of the most like, maybe one of the most optimistic, hopeful, tender-hearted Cold War movies you could watch. I love a movie with a good sacrificial hero, of course, so that's definitely in there.

Elijah Davidson (28:05.063)
yeah.

Elijah Davidson (28:14.938)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (28:24.392)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (28:28.373)
Yeah, gives you hope that maybe people can see things in light of what they really are instead of projecting your fears onto them.

Elijah Davidson (28:39.079)
Yeah.

I it. Very good. I had that on my list. It was going to be my next pick. yeah, so you swipe one there from me. But there was a little part of me, a little part of me that almost didn't put it on my list because I feel like the Russia part, the Soviet part of that movie is the most subdued. Like they mentioned them. They're like, we don't know where this came from. This come from Russia. knows? Like from Soviets, who knows?

Eli (28:48.129)
Yes.

Eli (29:06.039)
sure.

Elijah Davidson (29:10.436)
It is part of it. It's part of what the anxiety is all about. It's a little bit more subdued. But I had it on my list because it's one of those like for kids movies, it's animation. These are all great things to get on your draft, get on your team. Iron Giant's amazing. My son loves the Iron Giant. And so he'll frequently ask to watch the Iron Giant. Yeah, yeah. It plays well. It's so visual. Kids like the things without a whole lot of talking.

Eli (29:12.875)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (29:23.316)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Eli (29:29.367)
haven't done that one yet. I need to though.

Eli (29:39.935)
Yeah, and he loves robots, so.

Elijah Davidson (29:40.857)
So good. What kid doesn't love robots? boy doesn't love robots. Okay, but this is good. I don't mind that you picked it because this now lets me take my little tree of paths, whatever, you know, to go to one that I'm really excited to pick. So I'm up. I'm up, right? I'm going to pick what I believe is the most important Cold War film of all. May not be the greatest.

Eli (29:53.313)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (29:59.467)
Yep, you're up.

Eli (30:07.881)
Okay, this is exciting.

Elijah Davidson (30:10.17)
It may not be the greatest, but I think it is, I would say, almost inarguably the most important Cold War film at all. And it is the movie, is the animated short, almost all, it's not all animated, but partially animated film, Duck and Cover. The film that was shown, short film, that was shown in classrooms across the country to train kids how to...

Eli (30:27.744)
Okay.

Elijah Davidson (30:36.304)
respond to a nuclear bomb. So you actually see it in Bridge of Spies. You see clips from it in Bridge of Spies. They're watching it in class. You see clips from it in The Iron Giant. They actually watch a little thing. It's the little turtle that jumps down in Ducks and Cover. That little short film is called Duck and Cover. And it was used to communicate to kids like both like

Eli (30:41.237)
Okay.

Eli (30:50.955)
Yeah, uh-huh.

Eli (30:55.19)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (31:02.3)
this is how you survive in quotation marks, a nuclear blast or whatever, but also just to prepare them to get them thinking about, to get them being afraid of all the things that might happen to them if things don't go well, to help them understand what was going on in the world. it's the one that all these filmmakers talk about having watched in school, and that shows up in all their movies because of that. So I get one.

Eli (31:12.534)
Yeah.

Eli (31:24.629)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (31:31.59)
Now I get an animation, I get one for kids. And it's not nonfiction exactly, but it kind of like straddles the line there. So you can watch Duck and Cover online. Of course, it was made by the US government, so it's open or whatever they call that. You can go watch it on Wikipedia, right? Wikimedia right now. Watch the little thing. It's kind of amazing to think that they were showing it to kids. Yeah.

Eli (31:34.327)
Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli (31:44.044)
Yeah.

Eli (31:57.963)
Yeah, I need to go watch it. I've never... Yeah, I think I've seen just like little clips like you mentioned in Bridges of Spies or some in Iron Giant. But yeah, I need to go watch the whole thing.

Elijah Davidson (32:06.406)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

The other thing that I, when I was watching it in preparation for this, watching it again, what I really thought about was how our kids aren't prepared for nuclear fallout. What they are prepared for in school is school shootings. And there is no film that they all watch to prepare for school shootings, but you can imagine that kind of thing being produced. The same kind of thing to like, both prepares you for something that the adult's are afraid is gonna happen to them.

Eli (32:28.215)
Hmm.

Eli (32:35.35)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (32:40.698)
and communicates them the danger that they're in that they might otherwise think about. anyway,

Eli (32:46.775)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Along those same lines, going back to Oppenheimer, you know, we talked, I think I talked about in that episode, um, one of the things that like spurred, no, he was already like making the film at this point, but like one of the things that like really spurred him on to like, okay, I'm doing the right thing was, um, he was talking about it. Uh, they were talking about it at home and his son was like, I don't think anyone cares about like nuclear warfare anymore.

Elijah Davidson (33:01.682)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Davidson (33:17.205)
my gosh.

Eli (33:17.783)
And no one was just kind of like, yeah, I've definitely got to make this movie. Yeah. So yeah, interesting how that all works. yeah. All right. My next pick is, okay, I already have three. I only get two more. Okay. My next pick, I'm going to go ahead and take this. It's a...

Elijah Davidson (33:22.022)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (33:29.628)
Yeah.

Eli (33:45.591)
comedy counteractive to Strangelove. One of the reasons I didn't take Strangelove first was because I would have been perfectly okay. I was gonna take one of two comedies. You probably already know what it is. yeah, so I was like, if I don't get Strangelove, if he takes it next, I'll eventually take this one. And I'm gonna take Armando Iannucci's The Death of Stalin. Yeah, yeah.

Elijah Davidson (34:12.209)
Have fun, what a fun movie.

Eli (34:14.423)
really really fun movie but like I think I think the thing that this and

Strangelove have in common is like they are like uproariously hilarious until they're not and yeah and I think that's like the point of both of them is to is like you said it's that this is another one that like really maybe not quite like as masterfully like shows the absurdity of it all as as Dr. Strangelove obviously this is kind of

Elijah Davidson (34:30.215)
Yeah.

Eli (34:50.689)
from the opposite side, the opposite point of view, definitely like show, on full display, the absurdity of everything. And really like, really like when the movie, when this movie ends, it's, you're not laughing anymore, really. And, you know, that's how it's supposed to be, but you really are laughing all the way up until like the last moment.

Elijah Davidson (35:01.799)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Davidson (35:10.182)
yeah, no.

Eli (35:20.607)
of the film and then title cards come across the screen and you're like, wow, I guess this isn't funny. Yeah. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (35:30.213)
Yeah, that made me feel sick actually when it was all said and done. Yeah. You need to set this all like that, isn't it? It's also a good pick because, you know, we may be tempted to think that the Cold War just completely ended when Rocky beat Ivan Drago and made that impassioned speech. Like we may think it was all over them. But, you know, you look at like the kinds of tensions we have between the United States and Russia right now. And, you know, we're...

Eli (35:45.717)
Right.

Elijah Davidson (35:59.944)
So much of what the Trump administration did in their first term and now again, this is all just 80s shit all over again. They're still living in a Cold War mindset and the tensions are still the same. A movie like Death of Stalin, you could look at that movie and say, well, that's not about the Cold War, that's about now. And Ian Uchie might say, yeah, both. It's not over. We're still doing this thing.

Eli (36:11.882)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (36:20.405)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (36:29.329)
these are the seeds of it, you know? Yeah, good pick.

Eli (36:31.339)
yeah. there's even like, yeah, mean, it's like Cold War, then like speaking to like modern politics of this, like there's this sequence that I was like laughing, like laughing out loud through the whole thing where the Michael Palin character is like giving this like monologue where like everyone keeps like, they're voting on some motion and everyone like keeps putting their hands up to like,

Elijah Davidson (36:42.641)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (37:00.089)
Yeah.

Eli (37:00.373)
vote for it or not, because he's like going back and forth with his argument. And he like finally ends on it. And then they all like, okay, so yeah, we are voting for this. you know, I can't, I couldn't help but think about like, a Trump speech and how like, you're never really sure what he's gonna land on until the end of it. And it's like, what is this guy even like, what are we even doing here? Like what are

Elijah Davidson (37:04.266)
huh.

Elijah Davidson (37:20.014)
huh.

Elijah Davidson (37:24.119)
huh.

Elijah Davidson (37:29.85)
Yeah.

Eli (37:31.383)
Yes, love to that. But yeah, your fourth pick is up.

Elijah Davidson (37:37.433)
Okay. All right. So this is fun. Because I'm gonna pick... I'm gonna pick... Yeah, I'm gonna do it. So my fourth pick... I'm gonna hit... I'm gonna hit... Spies? So I've already got Nuclear Anxiety off my list of things. I've got... I've got Metaphor with Rocky and Boxing. I've got...

Eli (37:55.937)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Davidson (38:06.182)
for kids with Duck and Cover. Also a little bit of non-fiction there. I got comedy with Strangelove. I don't have, I mean, I don't have sci-fi yet. Strangelove's not really sci-fi. I may not get sci-fi before this is all over. I've only got two more picks. But I'm gonna get military right now and I'm gonna get spies. That's important. I think that's more important than getting...

Eli (38:20.512)
No.

Elijah Davidson (38:32.858)
than getting sci-fi maybe. So I'm gonna take the hunt for red, I'm taking the hunt for red October.

Eli (38:34.721)
Fair, yeah, that's fair.

And this is one that I haven't seen, that I was hoping to catch up with but didn't get to.

Elijah Davidson (38:43.918)
Okay, Hunter October, that's my fourth pick for sure. Not only is it a movie that I love, it also gets into that, it's a Cold War movie for sure. They got some defecting Russians here with their nuclear sub.

Eli (38:56.823)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Davidson (39:02.81)
a defecting Russian with a Scottish accent. So plays right into our Bridgespies thing we got going on there. Defecting this time and not the other way around. It's just a freaking great movie too. It's just, after October, it's just about as fun as it gets. Quintessential dad movie, you know? I feel like I spent a lot of my childhood sitting on the couch, laying on the couch on my dad watch Red October on TV in the evening because it was just on, you know?

Eli (39:08.353)
Yep.

Elijah Davidson (39:31.078)
I'm feeling in love with it all that, but it just holds up. It's a great movie. You've never seen it, you gotta watch it. You will love it. I'm so happy you haven't seen it because that means there's this great movie that you get to watch in the future. So yeah.

Eli (39:37.771)
Yeah, I do need to watch it.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's on the list. It's on the list to be to be visited. OK. I mean, I guess you also have like you're not going to take a Bond movie, but at least you get Sean Connery. So. So, yeah, you got that going for you.

Elijah Davidson (40:00.409)
That's right, too. I do. That's helpful.

Elijah Davidson (40:07.622)
I got a great spy too. Jack Ryan is a great spy and he's more like that real kind of spy. mean some of his movies are not, some of his stories are not that realistic but he's more of real kind of spy, kind of like Abel. He's a normal guy, he's an analyst, you know.

Eli (40:09.845)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (40:19.18)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (40:28.171)
Yeah, I guess, yeah, I don't have a spot, like a full on spy movie, even though you could say the third man definitely like, like we said, doing spy stuff. So, okay, this is my, is this, this is my last pick that yeah, that's true. This is my last pick. There's one movie that I caught up with not.

Elijah Davidson (40:39.653)
yeah, it's a spy movie.

There's spies in Oppenheimer too. Come on y'all. There's spies in Oppenheimer.

Eli (40:57.023)
terribly long ago that I loved. That is probably a hot take for a favorite movie from this director. I'm gonna leave it for an honorable mention though because I like you I also want to get a sci-fi movie in and I have two on my list that I think are really good.

I'm pretty sure I've taken one in a different draft before.

Elijah Davidson (41:33.166)
You the iron giant in there, got a sci-fi-

Eli (41:36.663)
That's true, that is sci-fi technically. But I don't... I just didn't think of it as sci-fi. I was thinking of it in a whole different category. You're just not wanting me to take your sci-fi movie.

Elijah Davidson (41:39.172)
Yeah, there's no, I it's an alien robot from space, it's sci-fi.

Elijah Davidson (41:47.27)
Yeah.

It's mind games. I'm trying to, I'm just trying to get you to do what you want to do. That also helps me get what I want.

Eli (41:56.553)
Okay, there's one... I think there's... I think you probably have two... I think you have probably have two sci-fi movies that might be the same ones.

Elijah Davidson (42:01.19)
and negotiating.

Elijah Davidson (42:07.822)
I've got a lot of movies left, so I'm gonna be happy with whatever I get to pick.

Eli (42:09.897)
Okay, yeah. All right, I'm gonna go with one. I'm pretty sure I've taken it a past draft, way in the past, but it's so good.

Elijah Davidson (42:21.702)
Did you win that draft though? Did you win that draft? Okay.

Eli (42:24.161)
think so. Probably. I win a lot of drafts. Just saying. I do. So okay, this movie I could go the high road and take the movie that I haven't drafted before, but I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna take the one that I watched and loved. I need to watch it again because I loved it so much the first time. I'm gonna take

Elijah Davidson (42:28.326)
You do a lot of drafts, so...

Eli (42:52.363)
The 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Such a great movie, like, full like, overflowing with fear and anxiety of that thing that I was talking about that Hanks brought up of someone from the opposite end of where, in this case, I guess the galaxy, that is...

Elijah Davidson (42:55.856)
Good choice. Good movie.

Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (43:19.014)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (43:21.141)
The anti of everything you are and is taking over slowly and quietly underneath the surface and yeah, love Invasion of the Body Snatchers and it's it's one of those just like man, why can't we make like solid like amazing all the way through 80 minute movies anymore? Yeah Why does every movie have to be two and a half hours? I don't know but

Elijah Davidson (43:42.404)
I know, right? Forgot how.

Elijah Davidson (43:50.64)
For real. I agree. The only one that should be is Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning. That can be as long as we want it to be.

Eli (43:54.615)
You

you know, I'll agree to disagree on that one, but

Elijah Davidson (44:02.693)
You

Eli (44:04.919)
I do you know, I guess I'll go finish reading your your take and maybe you'll persuade me in your newsletter after we finish But yeah, I'm taking invasion of the body snatchers incredible incredible movie

Elijah Davidson (44:11.909)
No, all you'll be persuaded of is what you already know, which is that I love it. So, someone loves it.

Elijah Davidson (44:23.365)
Good choice. Been remade twice. Been remade twice. I watched the 70s one for the first time a couple weeks ago. When you watch that movie, watch it at night. Watch it in a room that can be very dark because that is the darkest movie like the cinematography. I'm not joking, that is the darkest movie I have ever seen. And I watched it in the middle of the day and that was a mistake.

Eli (44:26.037)
Yep, I haven't seen the remakes, I've only seen the original.

Eli (44:47.415)
Have you seen the movie from this year, Wolfman, though? Because I could barely see that movie in theaters.

Elijah Davidson (44:52.965)
No, I haven't. Oh yeah? Well the thing is, they make a lot of dark movies nowadays, and I think it's because they're lazy. But like, Haskell Wexler was trying to be just as dark as he could possibly be. He was like, what if we made a film noir, but like made it in color, and tried to make the shadows as black as we possibly can. And it's incredible. It's a good movie.

Eli (45:00.97)
It felt like it on that one.

Eli (45:19.381)
Okay, yeah, I've heard good things about the 70s one, so.

Elijah Davidson (45:22.981)
But the one in the 50s, the 70s one is not a Cold War movie though, it's about other stuff. Different definitely is, yeah, for sure.

Eli (45:27.191)
Sure, this one definitely is. All right, so I'm assuming you're going sci-fi with your last pick too. Okay, fair.

Elijah Davidson (45:33.446)
My last pick? I'm not going to go to sci-fi actually. There's something else that I feel like is, you hit sci-fi good, there's something else that think is important to hit that we haven't talked about yet, and that is McCarthyism. I think it's important to talk about McCarthyism, and I feel like I would be doing it to service to my...

Eli (45:48.649)
Okay. Hmm. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (45:59.586)
my film scholar-ness and my film history-ness to not talk about McCarthyism. Because the effect that McCarthyism and the Red Scare had on Hollywood was, I mean, it's almost immeasurable. Talk about people like Dalton Trumbo, you we talked about in the episode about, like, what they did to him and there's so many others, or whatever. And so I'm going to pick on The Waterfront. It,

Eli (46:10.901)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (46:21.569)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Elijah Davidson (46:28.185)
Aliyah Kazan's film that is not about the Cold War at all. It's about dock workers, Marlon Brando. But you know what the movie is really about, Kazan famously named names to the House of American Committee and was reviled in Hollywood because of that. And On the Waterfront is not his

Eli (46:50.444)
Mm.

Elijah Davidson (46:54.981)
For one thing, it's just an excellent movie. So if it wasn't a good movie, no, this wouldn't matter at all. But it's an amazingly good movie with one of the best priests you'll ever see in a film. But anyway, it's a great movie. it's not really his, it is kind of his defense about why he named names. It's not his defense saying like, it was right to name names because they're a communist. It's his defense in saying,

One side was saying name names because I owe it to society. And the other side was saying don't name names because I owe it to my fellow colleagues or whatever. What really ultimately had to matter then was personal conviction and me doing what I thought was right.

And it's a movie about doing what you think is right, even though everybody else is telling you not to do it. Both people you love and people you hate are telling you not to do something or to do something or not do something. And you have to say true to your sense of right and wrong, which I think ties in well with the Bridge of Spies and what Donovan was trying to Everybody else was like, don't defend this guy. And he did because it was the right thing to do. Everybody else was like, don't go over there and try to solve the thing. And he did.

Eli (47:46.113)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (47:51.009)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (48:10.715)
because it was the right thing to do. And that's kind of like the underlying, again, I'm not sitting here defending Aliya Kazan for naming names. That's a whole huge conversation about whether he should have done that or not. But it's a really fascinating film about if you are in a time when there are voices all around you telling you what to do, how do you...

maintain your convictions, which is what like people in this country had to deal with like under that kind of red scare McCarthyism thing. It wasn't even the Russians, it was just us being afraid of each other and how do you make your way through that? huge impact on...

Eli (48:50.913)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (48:56.901)
absolutely enormous impact on film history. There were people who were blacklisted because they were supposedly communist. There were people who were blacklisted because they named names. There were people who, I mean, it was just like a whole thing. Yeah, was a huge deal. So I wanted a McCarthyism movie on the list. The other one that...

Eli (48:59.467)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (49:24.459)
I had another one that I thought about maybe to be an honorable mention. about it in a minute. But On the Waterfront, great movie. If you've never seen it, absolutely amazing movie.

Eli (49:27.637)
Yeah, sure, we can do honorable mentions.

Yeah, another huge, huge blind spot for me.

Elijah Davidson (49:37.101)
Yeah, speaking of third man, Orson Welles was asked about Aliyah Kazan one time and he said something to basically what he said was that he was

He did an unforgivable thing by naming names and like ruining people's lives by doing that. And also an amazing director, because he is just an amazing director. And nonetheless, Martin Scorsese, you know, I adore him and adore his films. yeah, all can be true. And yeah, anyway, on the waterfront, pick. I got every movie that was on my top five list except the Iron Giant. So yeah.

Eli (50:00.757)
Yeah.

Eli (50:06.583)
Both can be true.

Eli (50:19.243)
Man, well, yeah. Yeah, I feel decent about mine. Yeah, it's I love all these movies, but yeah, it's. This was a tough one for me. I feel like I had a ton of blind spots that I wanted to fill in, but just didn't have time for. But I love all the movies I picked. But yeah, we'll we'll see how it goes. I did.

Elijah Davidson (50:20.374)
Yeah, very good.

Elijah Davidson (50:27.406)
Good list. I like all those movies. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (50:44.354)
Yeah.

Eli (50:49.007)
I get two, I did take two that were like new watches in The Third Man and Death of Stalin. Those are two that I caught up with for this. So, I'm glad I watched those. Yeah, do you have, do you want to name a few honorable mentions that you want to get put out there?

Elijah Davidson (50:55.726)
Mm-hmm. That's good.

Elijah Davidson (51:06.252)
Yeah, mean, you, yeah, sure. mean, I would have chosen The Iron Giant. That was my number three pick. I almost took it at number two because I thought you might pick it. But I wanted Rocky. Because I'm, I love Rocky IV. No, John Frankenheimer is the Manchurian candidate. Amazing, amazing movie. Pretty good remake too, for that matter.

Eli (51:12.3)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (51:17.751)
you

Eli (51:25.611)
Yeah, that was another that I was thinking about.

Elijah Davidson (51:33.641)
But the original one is just one of those movies. The first time I saw that movie, I was like, gosh, my parents showed it to us when I was probably like 11 or 12 years old. I just, my parents were always showing us great movies. And I couldn't believe that movie when I saw it the first time. Like I just was on the floor with how suspenseful and how good that movie was. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, you took that one. Day the Earth Stood Still, I almost took that. Yeah, that was the one. I almost took that one for my last pick.

Eli (51:41.231)
wow.

Eli (51:54.935)
Mm-hmm.

Yep, that was the other sci-fi that I had.

Elijah Davidson (52:03.684)
Because it's amazing. Everything about that movie is amazing. And it really gets the paranoia thing really good. Instead of on the waterfront, my backup McCarthy is a movie with High Noon, which is kind of the opposite of On the Waterfront. It's a movie where everyone's telling a guy to do something and he doesn't do it. And kind of stands up for what he's right.

Eli (52:20.918)
Okay.

Elijah Davidson (52:32.74)
It's about McCarthyism though, and at end of the movie, he's so disgusted with everybody who just kind of folded. just throws his badge on the ground and leaves, he's kind of done with everything. But it was explicitly made about that, about the House Un-American Committee. And I've loved High Noon forever. It's also one of those movies that's told in real time. I'm a sucker for a told in real time movie.

And then just, I mean, this is a silly comedy one, but Blast from the Past, the, Blast from the Past, the, oh, you gotta watch Blast from the Past. It's a, Brendan Fraser and his family thinks that there's a nuclear attack, so they go into their fallout shelter and they stay there for like 30 years and then come back up into the 90s and.

Eli (53:07.301)
Okay.

Elijah Davidson (53:26.594)
have to deal with the world when they went down in the 50s or whatever. It's so funny and so much fun. If you had taken Dr. Strangelove, I was going to be in trouble because I didn't really have a backup for that. It couldn't have been Blast for the Past, but I got to love a good comedy.

Eli (53:29.527)
That's great.

Eli (53:46.455)
Yeah, well I'm glad I gave you Dr. Strangelove then. That was a present from me to you.

Elijah Davidson (53:49.762)
Yeah, me too.

It was also very hard for me not to pick a James Bond movie. I love James Bond movies. And I might have broken my own rule to pick from Russia with Love, which is probably the best one. And you get the Russian stuff kind of explicitly.

Eli (53:57.515)
Gotcha.

Eli (54:04.725)
Yeah, I'm not, I'm funny about James Bond movies. It's one of those that I love the Craig ones, but I've never really connected very strongly with the older ones. I've watched through like one or two of each iteration and I've never really connected with many of them. So I don't know what it is about it.

Elijah Davidson (54:22.487)
the older ones.

Elijah Davidson (54:31.171)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Eli (54:34.293)
I like the idea and the... I don't know. It's probably just me. Definitely just me. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (54:39.213)
Hmm. Yeah, I grew up with them. My dad loved them. So I grew up watching them. And then there's a handful of movies that like, guess technically are Cold War movies, but like, I don't know, like North by Northwest, right? Like it's spies, but there's no explicit Russia to any of it. Like you just kind of assume, but, then, yeah.

Eli (54:53.535)
Right, it's kind of in the background, right.

Eli (55:00.683)
Yeah.

Eli (55:05.655)
It's definitely coded with those ideas. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (55:09.355)
Yeah, and then like Hitchcock made some actual Cold War movies like movies like Torrin Curtain That are actual Cold War movies and they're fine. They're not his best movies. They're fine I mean fine for Hitchcock is better than most movies, you know, but Yeah

Eli (55:17.451)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (55:24.339)
Right. Yeah. There's, did you, I never actually saw the movie called Cold War that was like Oscar, Oscar, didn't it get Oscar nominations? I think that's the only reason I really know about it, but yeah, never saw that one, but it is called Cold War, so I thought I'd mention it. Yes, so.

Elijah Davidson (55:34.979)
That's a movie. That's real good movie.

yeah, huh, yeah it's terrific, it's really good.

Yeah.

Eli (55:53.469)
My honorable mentions that I have seen but wasn't able to draft. The one that like I'm sad, I'm kind of sad not to have on my list. I caught up with this. When did I watch this? It must have been last year. I was watching through a bunch of Cindy Lumet movies that I haven't seen before and I've seen

Elijah Davidson (56:16.908)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (56:22.449)
I guess, let me see how many of his films I've seen by now. I've seen 10 of his films, so not a huge, he's directed a lot of films, but I've seen a lot of the big ones now. And Failsafe is my favorite. I really, it's so thrillingly constructed. And then, know, I mean, Henry Fonda.

Elijah Davidson (56:33.783)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (56:41.123)
So I'll save it a great movie.

Elijah Davidson (56:46.37)
Yeah.

Eli (56:52.499)
as the president is really fantastic. And yeah, I just like, I just enjoy the kind of like moral question and the moral, like it's like forcing you to think about, you know, what you would do and yeah, but all along the way, like just very thrillingly constructed with some like very, like very Cindy Lumet

montage-y visual craziness thrown in every once in a while that I love. That was one that I was kind of sad not to have on my list. And then, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Elijah Davidson (57:29.411)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Elijah Davidson (57:39.127)
Wait, wait, sorry, wait. You can't love Sidney Lumet and Failsafe and still say bad things about Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning because there is so much, there is so much Failsafe. There is so much Failsafe in that movie.

Eli (57:51.549)
It is. I was thinking about it while I was watching it and I was... it was. Yeah. The only problem is, the only problem for me is in Failsafe, we have a real countdown that is based on something that is real that we know that we can time. Whereas in Mission Impossible Final Reckoning, I don't know where they got this countdown from. Like, what is it counting down to? Did the entity tell them when he was gonna...

Elijah Davidson (58:17.867)
You

Eli (58:21.323)
when it was gonna get into their system or what?

Elijah Davidson (58:24.009)
Everything the countdown is Tom Cruise is the countdown. Tom Cruise, everything Ethan Hunt does speeds up the eventual things that will happen. He is time in that movie. He is time itself, which is great because he's a filmmaker. That's all they're doing is messing with time. He is time.

Eli (58:27.703)
I mean, that's the only justification I can make for it.

Eli (58:37.419)
Sure, yeah.

Eli (58:43.041)
Hey.

Eli (58:47.435)
Yeah. Hey, listen, I liked the final reckoning. I just didn't, I overall liked it, but man, the inside the sub and the biplane sequence is really holding up that one for me. Yeah, they are.

Elijah Davidson (59:04.077)
Incredible. Incredible. Those are good sequences. Another audible mention for me would have been the first Mission Impossible movie, which technically is not a Cold War movie because it came out in 1996. But you're still dealing with like Kiev and spies and spy lists. It's like it's a, it's based in a series that was a Cold War series, television series. So I thought about that one. It just didn't quite because the time.

Eli (59:15.765)
Okay. Right. Yeah.

Eli (59:24.779)
Right.

Eli (59:28.287)
Yeah. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (59:33.631)
When it was made, it quite work for me. anyway.

Eli (59:33.931)
Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. The other two that I want to shout out, that are, technically Cold War movies. just not in the way you would typically think about the Cold War. but a huge part of the Cold War was, this, these movements around the world of like anti-colonialism, liberation movements.

Elijah Davidson (01:00:00.375)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli (01:00:01.247)
huge huge part of the cold war the battle of algeres great great movie i hadn't seen it before so this was i i caught up with this didn't really fit in my five movies but if we had taken one more i probably would have taken it just to get out out of yours yeah

Elijah Davidson (01:00:04.47)
that a lot years amazing movie incredible movie

Elijah Davidson (01:00:19.33)
Yeah, I mean it was outside of the US-Russia thing for me. Yeah. But amazing movie. I one of my absolute favorite movies ever.

Eli (01:00:27.539)
Yeah, it's incredible. I had to break it up just the way I had to watch it, and I think I would like it more if I sat through the whole thing all at once. I think I would like it even more, and I already thought it was incredibly made. The other one is non-fiction. I think the only non-fiction I had on my list.

Elijah Davidson (01:00:37.718)
much the other way through. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (01:00:44.746)
Yeah, incredible movie.

Eli (01:00:54.979)
And it was a movie I watched last year that I loved, Soundtrack to a Coup d'etat. Did you see this one? it's incredible. It's like a masterclass in what you can do with film editing to me, for one thing, because it's not really like a typical documentary. It's basically, the way I heard it described that I think is accurate is it's like a

Elijah Davidson (01:01:02.242)
I haven't seen that. No, I haven't seen that.

Elijah Davidson (01:01:13.046)
Hmm.

Eli (01:01:23.125)
It's like an essay style documentary. So it's all, it's made completely with archive footage and archive audio and title cards kind of cluing you in on what's going on in these images and this archive footage. And it's basically like following.

some this program that the US government employed where they were sending these jazz musicians around the world and they didn't know it but they were basically sending them as these covers for like they it was basically sending them to all these like places that were trying to decolonize and they were sending them in as a cover for CIA stuff and the jazz musicians didn't even know it.

Elijah Davidson (01:02:07.394)
Hmm.

Elijah Davidson (01:02:16.14)
Hmm.

Eli (01:02:16.351)
they were being used by the U S government for this. so, just a part of history that I had no idea anything about, never heard of that this happened. so, so just like, it like incredibly entry, like interesting and informational for me, but just like incredibly well made too. and you know, the, jazz music drives it.

Elijah Davidson (01:02:41.762)
Yeah.

Eli (01:02:45.921)
drives the movie and I love that. yeah, you should check it out.

Elijah Davidson (01:02:52.482)
Cool, sounds good, yeah.

Eli (01:02:54.109)
It's where can you watch it?

If your library has Canopy, it's on there. Yeah, so you can watch it there. Our libraries did not have that, so it makes me sad. I've emailed them, but that didn't do anything. Yeah, I'm sure.

Elijah Davidson (01:03:02.966)
Yeah, I can't be.

Elijah Davidson (01:03:15.106)
It's expensive. It's expensive for libraries. Yeah.

Eli (01:03:19.489)
But yeah, those were my two decolonization Cold War, two really great, great ones.

Elijah Davidson (01:03:25.846)
Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (01:03:29.974)
Yeah, most of those kind of were like off-limits for me because of my, I wanted the US-Soviet thing. And we didn't make very, America didn't make very many movies about decolonization. Unfortunately, we kind of just like embraced that and ran with it. And we said no Vietnam movies for this list. So that took off things like Apocalypse Now.

Eli (01:03:33.599)
Right. Yeah.

Eli (01:03:49.366)
We did, yeah.

Eli (01:03:53.705)
Right. Yeah, we, I didn't mention that at the top, but yeah, we did, we did, through our correspondence before recording take off Vietnam, cause that's kind of its own category. but I mean, I guess you could have taken like Korean war movies or,

Elijah Davidson (01:04:06.721)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Davidson (01:04:12.022)
I mean Manchurian Candidate technically is a Korean thing. I didn't take that movie. But yeah, no Vietnam. I also, quickly I would want to say because I chose, I kind of wanted to pick a Russian film. I thought about Tarkovsky. If any of his films really felt Cold War-ish. And the only one kind of does is Stalker.

Eli (01:04:13.771)
That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (01:04:29.153)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:04:35.04)
Mmm.

Elijah Davidson (01:04:42.042)
and it doesn't, I guess sacrifice maybe a little bit too. But again, but again, like they don't really feel Cold War to me for some reason. And then I also, because of my US Soviet thing, couldn't pick this, but Kieslowski's Decalogue. I love Polish films and films made from the other side of the

Eli (01:04:48.289)
Sacrifice is the one I haven't seen.

Eli (01:04:54.133)
Yeah.

Eli (01:05:04.651)
Hmm.

Elijah Davidson (01:05:11.17)
The Iron Curtain from that era and man, that Kieslowski made some good movies. And the decalogue to show you what, if you want to see, I mean, Kieslowski look, a pretty up close look at what life was like on the other side of The Iron Curtain. are, can't get better than that. yeah.

Eli (01:05:33.579)
Yeah, that's one that I've wanted to catch up with, but haven't gotten to, yeah.

Elijah Davidson (01:05:38.166)
Yeah, absolutely one of the most worthwhile things we'll ever watch.

Eli (01:05:43.383)
Cool. Sweet. We talked about a lot. There's a lot of them I haven't seen and a lot that we didn't talk about. you know, if there's any, we didn't even talk about like space race stuff. That's technically Cold War. But yeah, yeah. But yeah, there's, there's a ton of them out there. We, there's a, I guess like you picked a sports movie sort of, yeah. Boxing. So there's, there's others.

Elijah Davidson (01:05:45.676)
Cool, all right.

Elijah Davidson (01:05:51.49)
What a good movies.

Elijah Davidson (01:05:55.712)
Yeah, technically, yeah. Yeah, the right stuff would have been a good pick. Yeah.

Elijah Davidson (01:06:09.823)
I did, yeah, yeah, I did. I thought about that. There's a lot of good sports Cold War movies. None better than Rocky IV, but there's a lot of good ones.

Eli (01:06:13.889)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sure, yeah, of course. But yeah, if we didn't pick yours or mention the one that you wanted us to, then you can always... That's why, but if you want to air your grievances, you can. You can email the show or leave a voicemail. That's all in the episode description. It'll get totally dismissed as incorrect, but that's okay. You can still send it in. Right.

Elijah Davidson (01:06:26.485)
That's because I'm not as good as the ones we picked, that's why.

You

Elijah Davidson (01:06:44.405)
No, you're right about your opinion. Your opinion is your opinion. You're correct.

Eli (01:06:50.921)
man, well it is late for me and Elijah so we were gonna be done with our Cold War movie draft. Before we officially end, I should read back both lists in entirety. Elijah ended up with Dr. Strangelove, I'm not reading the whole title, Rocky IV,

Elijah Davidson (01:07:13.249)
or how I learned to stop boring a love bomb.

Eli (01:07:16.309)
Yes. Rocky Ford, Duck and Cover, The Hunt for Red October, and On the Waterfront. I ended up with The Third Man, Oppenheimer, The Iron Giant, The Death of Stalin, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Two great, great lists. Yours with some that I need to catch up with. that'll be...

Elijah Davidson (01:07:38.321)
I feel like if I had been able to pick the Iron Giant my list would have been bulletproof.

Eli (01:07:41.865)
You know, you're probably right, but you didn't, so...

Elijah Davidson (01:07:43.637)
But I'm very happy with Ducking Cover because it's the most important cold wear film.

Eli (01:07:47.383)
of all. Making little girls cry in Bridges Spies. yeah, great picks all around. Next week we'll be jumping into The BFG, a movie that has nothing to do with the Cold War. So, look forward to, I don't know, we'll find out in my research, I guess. The thing that none of us knew all along.

Elijah Davidson (01:07:49.331)
at all.

That's right.

Elijah Davidson (01:07:57.034)
You

Elijah Davidson (01:08:07.519)
Or does it?

Elijah Davidson (01:08:12.713)
You

Eli (01:08:17.463)
about the BFG and Roald Dahl. But yeah, that's all we have for the Cold War movies. Yeah, see you next week on the BFG. I've been Eli Price for Elijah Davidson. You've been listening to The Establishment Shot. We'll see you next time.