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THE LOST CITY OF Z

Before James Gray hung Brad Pitt on wires and took him to space, he first brought a different blonde to the Amazon (the rainforest) to encounter snakes, torrential rains, and an insect extracted from his ear during the shooting of he writer-director’s first Amazon (the company) Studios distributed film THE LOST CITY OF Z (2016).

Charlie Hunnam is that blonde, the -e is intentional as that’s the more common British spelling and despite an American accent convincing enough to fool Gray, a man of many impersonations, Charlie’s a bloke. His Percy Fawcett protagonist is joined by fellow Brit and future Batman Robert Pattinson as the pair of British explorers (and WWI soldiers) map out the Bolivia-Brazil border in an adaptation of the nonfiction bestseller of the same name (although the Americans, per its author, say the final word-letter as “zee” instead of “zed”). Also cast and a contemporaneous Spiderman is Tom Holland as Fawcett’s son Jack Fawcett, who will take the place of Pattinson’s composite character Henry Costin in Percy’s final voyage back into the jungle to seek the titular lost city.

For this sixth of eight Gray episodes, guest Shannon returns, host Ken stays ill, co-host Ryan gushes, and the lone Gen Zedder Thomas has read the book. Opinions are mixed this week, with guest Shannon believing the proper title of the film should be The Lost City of Zzz (snooze sound) while Ryan’s been Zed-pilled into believing it an amazing film.

Next episode, potentially a very special guest who might have watched that week’s film.

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We Own the Night

For Season 16 Episode 5, TGTPTU dives deep into what writer-director James Gray considers the conclusion of his NYC crime trilogy WE OWN THE NIGHT (2007) while also starting the first of two planned sizzurp episodes with host Ken sick and sipping on some strong cold medicine. And joining this top to the third temporal pincer™️ pairing is special guest and inveterate bookworm Shannon.

For his third film, and second time being booed at Cannes (Harvey Scissorhands’ cut of The Yards being the occasion for his first), Gray after seven years in development had his first financial success with his unique, untrademarked combination of family drama, crime, and Greek tragedy. Together again but reversing roles from The Yards, Mark Wahlberg plays supporting as Cpt Joe Grusinsky while Joaquin Phoenix takes the lead as night club manager Bobby Green/Grusinsky. That slash becomes important as Bobby has adopted his dead mother’s surname prior to the start of the movie to distance himself from his brother Joe and their Deputy Chief cop daddy Burt Grusinsky, played by Robert Duvall. When Brother Captain Joe’s pursuit of a drug smuggler leads to his family being targeted by the Russian Mob who are also owners of Bobby’s club and his surrogate family, Bobby’s different last name comes in handy as he goes undercover for the po-po.

Oh, and it’s a period piece occurring in the late-80s set in NYC, so cover those squares on your Gray bingo card.

This ep, guest Shannon bumps on overwritten cop dialogue culled from Gray’s NYPD ride-alongs; former co-host Jack weighs in off-mic on Gray’s best use of CGI for rain during the car chase scene; Ryan suggests this is the last Phoenix role before he became too fussy, and Ken suggests it's the last of Wahlberg actually being interesting while effectively suppressing a cough; Ryan questions the merits of the temporal pincer movement being applied to Gray’s filmography; and Thomas considers it his favorite Gray film of the five he’s watched.

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As if the fourth in a horror film series, this week TGTPTU goes to space! In Season 16, Ep 4 of Gray Matter (working title), Ken, Thomas, and Ryan discuss writer-director James Gray’s AD ASTRA (2019) as their unpatented pincer movement continues along the auteur’s eight-movie filmography.

Cowritten with a television writer of meager IMDB credits, Gray’s highest budget film to date sends astronaut and resting heart rate champion Roy Richard McBride (Brad Pitt) to the furthest reaches of the explored solar system in order to present him jump scares and (un)excusable homicides on his journey in a near future to retrieve his father played by Tommy Lee Jones who apparently can’t get enough being in outer space (see Season 2, Ep 8 for our Space Cowboys coverage). Because this is a Gray joint, you know daddy and son are gonna have some emotional reckoning. What you might not be expecting are a moon car chase, falling from near orbit to Earth, or kickflipping a shuttle’s flotsam while grinding a wicked rail of an asteroid belt (at least one of these happens, no further spoilers).

Like last week’s ep, Gray did not have final cut (i.e., the film rights; he might have had the professional, high-performance video editing software designed by Apple for macOS and iPadOS, although there is a strong possibility he had neither), which allowed for surprise research revelations by Ken, Tom, and Ryan and a wish for a hard media release of the Director’s Cut audio track.

Chris Nolan’s late-career cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (listen back to Season 12 for more on the lenser so nice they named him twice) shoots this beautiful film. Ad Astra garnered Gray’s first and to date only Academy nomination for Best Sound Mixing, which host Ken is in real time appalled by what films received Academy noms for Best Special Effects to the exclusion of this film’s many practical VFX. Also, Ken struggles to name Robert McKee to really land a movie reference despite covering Adaptation in both the pod’s Nicolas Cage (Season 3) and Meryl Streep (Season 8) coverage; Ryan has galaxy brain generational conflict ideas about the movie’s themes; and Tom tries placing the flick among the good space movies of the past decade.

Factoid: The film was released in France under the tile “Ad Astra,” which means “to the stars” in Latin and in Finland as “Ad Astra,” which also means “to the stars” in Latin.

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The Yards

A family crime drama set in New York City with a sick mother, ambivalently abusive father figure, and nudity along with a role for Domenick Lombardozzi (The Wire’s Herc)? Get out your James Gray bingo cards, because Season 16 Gray Poop On (working title) persists with TGTPTU continuing in Episode 3 its temporal pincer movement covering the auteur’s second film THE YARDS (2000).

Filmed on film in the spring and summer of 1998 but due to studio delays and reshoots not released until the fall of 2000, The Yards stars the still up-and-coming Mark Walburg as Leo Handler just out of jail and being led back into a life of crime by Joaquin Phoenix as Willie Gutierrez, the guy dating and soon betrothed to Leo’s cousin and possible love interest Erica Soltz played by a pre-Monster Charlize Theron. This trio of rising stars is supported by a trio of 70s hall of famers (James Caan, Ellen Burstyn, and Faye Dunaway) in a story about NYC train maintenance, government corruption, family loyalties, and the need for proper bannisters.

Cowritten with Matt Reeves (opinions vary) and shot with multiple POV characters, Gray would find the story in the editing room (and subsequent reshoots) by winnowing it down to Walburg’s singular perspective only to have that story mollified (or straight-up mauled from Gray’s perspective) by a studio-noted happier ending.

This ep, you won’t be getting Ken’s half-hour discussion with Ryan about Theron’s surprising nude scene, but Thomas will provide context for international and homeschool listeners in the U.S., Myanmar, and Liberia.

Thank you for choo-choo-choosing to listen.

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Armageddon Time

This week in Season 16’s Going Gray (working title), Episode 2 will cover the writer-director’s 2022 autobiographical film about his Jewish American assimilative upbringing and formative childhood events slightly beyond his ken that will have the potential to lead him to become the legendary director we know today, that same director whose film we are—

Wait, no, you’ve not heard TGTPTU cover this one. Seriously, no, sorry to contradict, but you’re wrong. TGTPTU is not redux-ing the previously covered The Fabelmans (that was Season 14’s gimmick). This is Season 16, if you’ll let your no-so-humble scribe finish, which covers the directorial work of Gen X filmmaker James Gray, including his deeply personal film that was a stupendous box office failure ARMAGEDDON TIME (2022).

Gray’s most recent film is somehow even more personal than his first (just covered in the season’s inaugural episode as part of TGTPU’s temporal pincer movement), with Armageddon Time set historically in 1980 in time for the election of Ronald Reagan to the U.S. presidency, which may or may not factor more largely into the narrative. With a few noted exceptions by the pod’s purist contingent, Gray’s focus remains with his POV character Paul. Played by child actor Banks Repeta who, along with Jaylin Webb as his friend Johnny, brings an amazing performance alongside heavyweights Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, and Anthony Hopkins as Paul’s mother, father, and grandfather respectively and who each will, in their own ways, help the sixth-grade Paul’s insights into social inequity and struggles.

Note: Despite its MPAA R rating and the many similarities in plot as raised during the podcast, Gray’s most recent film is not a Requiem for a Dream retelling and there is zero ass-to-ass.

This week, Ken has all the feels and appears, despite his graphic novel’s striking similarity to Gray’s film, to not be pursuing the Harlan Ellison legal route for residuals; Tom’s lukewarm; and Ryan’s meh. Discussion of these disparate reactions leads to comparison with and exploration of The Fabelmans (2022), Mid90s (2018), and other nostalgic, coming-of-age films by writer-directors in recent years.

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LITTLE ODESSA (1994)

A new season (Season 16) in a new year (2026 CE), and The Good, The Pod, and The Ugly returns to its roots with its unpatented temporal pincer movement covering the directorial filmography of American auteur James Gray. And in keeping with this homecoming, we begin our Touch of Gray Season with the Gen X filmmaker’s first feature endeavor LITTLE ODESSA (1994).

Made at the unripened age of twenty-three after being recruited out of USC film school, Gray’s inaugural film is a mixture of the highly personal (reflecting his own mother’s terminal brain cancer, father’s temper, and family’s Slavic Jewish émigré origins) with trappings of the crime genre (hitman with ice cold blood in his veins returns to the one place he promised never to return, viz. New York City, i.e. Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach a.k.a. Little Odessa), each and together building to a profoundly unhappy ending.

Thanks to Brit producer Paul Webster who recruited Gray for this first film, Gray was able to bring on Tim Roth fresh from his acclaimed performance in Reservoir Dogs who was able to attract Edward Furlong, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, and Moira Kelly. Gray and team worked around losing a week to a record-setting blizzard in NYC, some days with only four hours to shoot, to create this two-hander crime+family (but not “crime family”) drama with the dominant hand played by Roth as the older brother hitman and other hand by Furlong as the younger brother under his father’s thumb and regularly truant from school. Redgrave and Schell play their parents. Kelly, two years removed from The Cutting Edge and Fire Walk with Me, plays Roth’s love interest. And fewer of these characters will be alive by the end of this film than you might expect outside of a Greek tragedy.

This week, additional research by Ken who watched the film within the film (Vengeance Valley, 1951), Ryan who explored Jewish funeral rites, and Thomas who on mic clarifies the actual size of Little Odessa.

Oh, and in a callback to the preceding Season 15, there are some satisfyingly strong squibs.

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PASSION OF THE CHRIST

“And in the ending days of two-thousand, twenty-five in the Year of our Bloodied Lord (R.I.P.), the three unwise men of TGTPTU shall gather and in their folly alloweth the unholy host Thomas to select the season’s Christmas-adjacent movie. And there will be great wailing and weeping and gnashing of ill-cared for teeth by his selection. Yet the episode shall not be mid. The hosts shall bloody nail it. And there shall be great rejoicing in one accord upon its record.”

-The Book of Ryan (or on its cover) 5:16-17, Revised New King Jim Edition

Yes, ho-ho-humbug, it’s our annual cross to bear: The Christmas-adjacent movie to end the year. In a rare moment of collective (fatigue / wisdom / pure awesomeness / mental constipation / fugue ß strike as appropriate), The Good The Pod and The Ugly hosts Ken and Ryan have allowed Thomas to pick the flick this season. He took a chance on a film he’d always wanted to but hadn’t seen, and that cinema selection took them to church! Tom picked the Mel Gibson co-written, co-produced, and solely(soul-ly?)-directed, Jesus story spoiler: THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004).

To their eternal credit, the hosts with no loyalty to any of the major- or bush-league Christian denominations managed to keep civil and polite, if not to each other then to the source material and Gibson’s passionate release. Ryan’s Catholic upbringing comes in handy for this, his third viewing, as he explains the church’s different classifications of visions and what parts of the film pull from scripture and which are attributable to a 19th century fever dream.

This ep, Ken talks sexy Satan, Ryan talks sexy Jesus, guest Jack has an unsexy hot take takeoff and landing, and his fellow Gen Z’er Tom sticks it to the olds after mis-Clarking. Skip to the end of the ep for a brief year-end recap of the best and worst first-watched and re-watched films covered in 2025 or skip further for spoilers from Ken as he shares his bulk-pricing Christmas presents for his fellow hosts.

In the new year, TGTPTU takes a Graycation (or is Going Gray or lets its Gray Pride shine) with the start of Season 16, tentatively titled By the Powers of (James) Gray’s Skull. And that’s the gospel truth.

Answer to the question raised during the episode: We’re Not Going to Take It.

Keith Moon wept.

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bRyan’s Song

While the squib portion has ended with a bang (and some whimpers), Season 15 continues to stretch to the end of Year 2025. This ep we celebrate the contributions to the pod from one of TGTPTU’s three hosts: Ryan. Exceptionally written show notes rarely get noticed by listeners and editing is the art of concealment, so given the injustices of the universe, hosts Thomas and Ken interview the pod’s newest host and its six-time theme song writer-and-performer Ryan regarding his compositions, his process, and his Swiftie fandom along with what to do when a musician knocks on your front door.

The human jukebox with self-described photographic(?) memory for songs regales listeners with tales like his childhood stardom on the California circuit before the Super Bowl sold out(?), but don’t worry, we interrupt Ryan to replay the bangers you’ve come to love between all the yabber.

Some might call this a filler episode. What’s wrong with filler? It makes otherwise fish-lipped host Thomas’s teeth flaps luscious and his butt badonkadonk. Also, it’s a free podcast, you ingrates. You get what you pay for except when it comes to these theme songs as they’re worth so much more than what we commissioned them from Ryan for. Some appreciators of dad humor might even say TGTPTU got them for a song.

So shut up and listen back over the years with your hosts.

Next week is a bye week, and we’re likely on smoko the week after that, but join us in mid-December for the final ep of the season and a seasonal holiday tradition as TGTPTU covers a Christmas adjacent film.

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