‘Materialists’ and the Top Five Movie Love Triangles. Plus: ‘The Life of Chuck,’ With Mike Flanagan.

The Big Picture

The Ringer

Tv & Film

4.3 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2025

⏱️ 99 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sean and Amanda have an in-depth conversation and unpack their very mixed feelings on a pair of two new releases coming this weekend. They start with Celine Song's ‘Materialists’ and celebrate Song’s wonderful writing while also exploring their inability to connect to Dakota Johnson's and Pedro Pascal’s performances of the material (1:46). Then, they create their list of the top five movie love triangles of all time (45:10). Next, they discuss Mike Flanagan’s newest Stephen King adaptation, ‘The Life of Chuck,’ and explore why they think it will be such a divisive movie (53:57). Finally, Sean is joined by Flanagan to talk about his relationship to King, why he felt that this was the right time to make a shift away from horror, and how to tightrope walk the thin line between corniness and sincerity (1:21:01). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Mike Flanagan Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Friendly reminder that tickets for the Chicago screening and conversation around number 14 on our 25 for 25 list go on sale today.
0:08.9	Friday, June 13th at 10 a.m. Central Time.
0:12.3	We're headed to the music box theater in Chicago on Sunday, July 20th.
0:16.1	And ticket information is at the ringer.com slash events.
0:20.0	We'll see you at the movies.
0:31.7	Thank you. is at the ringer.com slash events. We'll see you with the movies. I'm Sean Fennacy.
0:32.9	I'm Amanda Dobbins.
0:33.9	And this is the big picture,
0:34.9	a conversation show about material things
0:37.4	and spiritual
0:38.1	journeys. Later in this episode, I'll be joined for the first time by Mike Flanagan. He's the writer,
0:42.7	director of the new film The Life of Chuck. The Stephen King adaptation won the audience award at
0:47.6	Tiff last year and is now in theaters around the country. Flanagan best known as a horror
0:51.4	filmmaker behind movies like Dr. Sleep, Gerald's Game and Oculus, as well as a string of successful Netflix TV shows,
0:57.7	including The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, and the Fall, The House of Usher.
1:01.1	I've been a big fan of Mike's for a long time, so very happy to chat with him about this departure for him as a movie.
1:06.5	We'll talk about that movie here on this podcast.
1:08.2	Stick around for our conversation. But first, we've got this pair of very interesting movies to dig into today. Amanda, how are you?
1:15.3	I'm well. It's nice to see you. Nice to see you. I love when we get a couple of movies that we can
1:21.2	argue about that. Well, just that are full of stuff that we're interested in. Yes. And to talk about.
1:26.6	And I sat through both of them fighting the impulse to text you multiple times.
1:31.5	It's the same.
	...

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