Ready to feel the adrenaline surge of '70s Formula One racing? Buckle up as Katy and I, Natey, take you for a high-speed spin through the heart-pounding drama of "Rush." We kick things off with a bit of humor around those everyday household sounds before shifting into the gripping rivalry of James Hunt and Niki Lauda. Get set for a deep dive into their thrilling, danger-laden world, as we analyze not just the fast-paced on-track action, but the off-track humanity that shaped these legendary figures. From Ron Howard's distinctive direction to the powerful performances, we're unpacking it all.
As if you're seated right there in the pit lane, Katy and I explore the authenticity that "Rush" brings to the silver screen, capturing the essence of Lauda's harrowing ordeal and Hunt's magnetic allure. We wrestle with our allegiances, pondering the question: who truly deserves the checkered flag in this tale of triumph and tragedy? Our conversation navigates the complex moral landscape laid out by these flawed heroes, while also considering the delicate task of portraying such iconic personalities. We promise you'll leave this episode with a newfound appreciation for the art of biographical filmmaking and maybe a favorite racer in your heart.
Finally, as we coast to a stop, we ponder the intoxicating allure of living on the edge. Katy and I share our thoughts on the paradox that by flirting with danger, these racers seemed to feel most alive. As we bid you adieu, we're revving the engines for our next cinematic pit stop, the classic war epic "Platoon." So, throw on your helmet and join us for this electrifying journey through celluloid history. Remember, it's not just about the speed—it's about the legacy.
Ready to feel the adrenaline surge of '70s Formula One racing? Buckle up as Katy and I, Natey, take you for a high-speed spin through the heart-pounding drama of "Rush." We kick things off with a bit of humor around those everyday household sounds before shifting into the gripping rivalry of James Hunt and Niki Lauda. Get set for a deep dive into their thrilling, danger-laden world, as we analyze not just the fast-paced on-track action, but the off-track humanity that shaped these legendary figures. From Ron Howard's distinctive direction to the powerful performances, we're unpacking it all.
As if you're seated right there in the pit lane, Katy and I explore the authenticity that "Rush" brings to the silver screen, capturing the essence of Lauda's harrowing ordeal and Hunt's magnetic allure. We wrestle with our allegiances, pondering the question: who truly deserves the checkered flag in this tale of triumph and tragedy? Our conversation navigates the complex moral landscape laid out by these flawed heroes, while also considering the delicate task of portraying such iconic personalities. We promise you'll leave this episode with a newfound appreciation for the art of biographical filmmaking and maybe a favorite racer in your heart.
Finally, as we coast to a stop, we ponder the intoxicating allure of living on the edge. Katy and I share our thoughts on the paradox that by flirting with danger, these racers seemed to feel most alive. As we bid you adieu, we're revving the engines for our next cinematic pit stop, the classic war epic "Platoon." So, throw on your helmet and join us for this electrifying journey through celluloid history. Remember, it's not just about the speed—it's about the legacy.
One's a movie buff, one watches movies, just enough Together. Fun will be had by all. This is Nadie and Katie at the Movies.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome to a brand new episode of Nady and Katie at the Movies. I am your host, Nathan aka Nady, of course, and with me on today's episode is my good friend Katie. Hi Katie, how are you?
Speaker 3:I am doing great. I just I don't know if you could hear by a dryer. It sounds like there's a helicopter taking flight in my house. Side question what is the loudest appliance in your house? The loudest appliance in my house? Side question what is the?
Speaker 2:loudest appliance in your house, the loudest appliance in my house.
Speaker 3:I feel like everyone has the one appliance in their house that they're like. This is ungodly loud, Like our blenders.
Speaker 2:It would probably be the washer.
Speaker 3:The washer. Yeah, it used to be our dishwasher. It was like you could hear the water splashing around, and that's why we got Bosch Brought to you by Bosch today.
Speaker 2:You know what else is really loud? The sound of racing cars going in circles, because they always turn left. And what does racing cars have to do with today's episode? What? If you listened to last week's episode, then you would know that we're talking about Rush. No, not the band. Isn't that a band?
Speaker 3:And not Rush Hour.
Speaker 2:No, we're not talking about Rush Hour, the classic Chris Tucker Jackie Chan franchise. No, not on our 250 best movies of all time list. This is Rush. Before we can talk about this movie, we gotta go over the synopsis. Rush is about the merciless 1970s rivalry between Formula one rivals james hunt and nikki lada. Rush stars daniel broome, chris hemsworth and olivia wilde.
Speaker 2:So I had heard of this movie before. I don't remember if it did really well in the box office. I can't remember. I vaguely remember it being out. I did not know that Ron Howard directed it. That was crazy. Pretty sure he's directed this one.
Speaker 2:I've watched so many movies that they could all be moving all together. But if Ron Howard directed it, he directed a pretty good movie, because if you can take a subject like race car driving, which I am not a big fan of, I don't care about it. But if you can take that and make me intrigued and it's also based on a true story of real people, which I'm a sucker for those kind of movies, this movie does all the things for me. So let's get right into our likes dislikes, of course, just like with any movie that I like.
Speaker 2:The number one reason I like a movie is because the acting I think chris hemsworth and daniel burrow do really good playing these real life people and there were moments and we'll get into some dislikes a little bit there were moments that I was kind of like, okay, I guess they're trying to show that Chris Hemsworth's character was kind of a bad boy and he did bad boy things, but some of it was kind of unnecessary for me a little bit. And there were times that Daniel Brorow's accent kind of annoyed me a little bit, but I'm assuming that's how the guy really talked in real life. So there's that, katieie. What did you think of the acting in the movie rush?
Speaker 3:well, I love me some. Hemsworth brothers. First of all, and I did remember I think you said this on our last episode that these guys were both in marvel um, except the, the, not crimson or the other guy, his name, he was a bad guy in the other one. So I think in some ways my brain was triggered to think of nikki lauda as the bad guy, literally just because of the acting, uh, or the actors, I mean, um. But yeah, I thought it was incredible. Even our supporting cast, like the, the lover, the love interest, the wives, the um, some of the other folks that were involved, some of his like help, what are they called? Like their crew. I thought everyone did a great job.
Speaker 3:And they show at the very end of the movie my favorite thing about real. I love when things are based on a true story and you get to see images or clips of the real people. I love that. So there's not a ton, but at the end of it you do see some like flashes between the acting, the actors and the real alive. You know Mickey Lauda and James Hunt, and it is like spot on, like if you told me that, I don't know, I maybe not wouldn't be able to spot the difference. Not to give away too many spoilers yet, but like there's a something they one of them gets into a bad accident and it greatly disfigures their face and even like the cosmetics on that. And then looking at what the um, the real person's face looked like and really like I just thought it was an incredible job. I'd be if I was watching and I was nikki lauda. I'd been like is that me, is that really?
Speaker 2:me. Well, apparently he did see this movie and he was like, shoot. He didn't say shoot, shoot, that's really me up there. So he was very impressed. He also said that it was very accurate to what actually went on, even though obviously hollywood takes some liberties with the rivalry. Were they really that big of enemies to each other? Maybe, maybe not, but I thought this movie was really intense and it kind of was intense in a negative way and I kind of will dip into my dislikes a little bit. I wasn't sure who I was supposed to root for.
Speaker 2:During this movie there were moments where you kind of felt that bad for Chris Hemsworth character because of what was going on in his personal life and that that's what drove him to even want to win even more. And then you feel bad for the other character because, like you said, he gets in a car accident, a really bad accident, and he basically has to watch this guy, chris hemsworth character, take his place on all these races and you're like, is he gonna start racing again? And then he decides to race again and but it's like a really big back and forth because they're both kind of jerks, they. They both have moments of being simply like you sympathize for them, but then at the same time, there are majority of the moments you're like, wow, these guys both deserve to not win anything because they're just not good dudes Did. Did you have that feeling? Or were you rooting for one person over the other, cause you said that the Mickey Lada guy kind of felt like the villain? Did he feel like the villain the whole time?
Speaker 3:Again, it's just because of the like. It's one of those you know where you have. People say that there's prejudice over like looks, like people treat good-looking people differently, and I feel like that was actually. The audience is maybe possibly doing what happened in real life and what they even talk about is like actually Nicky Lauda's character sort of plays off of this, of like he calls himself ugly multiple times in the movie and, um, whereas like James Hunt's care, uh, james Hunt is constantly calling him a rat, which I just think it was hilarious, like he kept calling him rat. And then Nicky Lauda is like, yeah, I do look like a rat, like that's, I do kind of look like that. Um, so they're playing off of that like, yes, of course you lean a little bit towards the one that's more attractive and fun, not the guy who's like methodical, like does he have a soul? You're not drawn to that character.
Speaker 3:But I think and this is probably a really big like for me is, throughout the movie you do sort of transition, like I think you initially want to be wrote for James and the more you learn about each character, you sort of become swayed, and I think you even see that in James himself. Like you know, you have an easier job when it's a book and you can talk about someone's thoughts. But I think Chris Hemsworth did a great job of that kind of staring off and helping you see that he's thinking. There was quite a few scenes where you can tell the wheels are turning of like do I want to live this lifestyle? Is there meaning in my lifestyle Am I throwing things away? Almost like a little bit of a jealousy, like here I am calling this guy a rat and you're lame. But then you started seeing that jealousy of like I wish my brain thought the way that Nicky Lauda's brain thought.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can tell, this is one of the movies that Chris Hemsworth probably wanted to make because he had been known for Thor. I'm pretty sure this was made during, you know, during his time at Marvel. So he kind of wanted to branch out a little bit, understandably so, and I think he did a really good job with his acting in this film. Like you said, even in the moments where he wasn't really saying much, you could tell that he was actually in the moment and trying to try to give justice to this character, because if you watch the movie spoiler alert you find out that he, this guy, this guy died in real life, and so you kind of it's kind of probably more difficult to play a character of a person, a real person, who has passed away, because you don't want to do a disservice, you don't want to do be disrespectful to this person, which is why I kind of was like questioning why they had him do some of the things he does in the movie, and that kind of goes into another one of my dislikes, which was some of the unnecessary content.
Speaker 2:I started watching this movie and this is after watching another film that we were going to review, but we did not review this movie because of how bad the content was and I told Katie about it and I even told my wife about it because of how bad the content was. And I started watching this movie and there was some of that content. It wasn't as graphic as the other film, but there was like some some sex scenes in this movie and I texted katie I'm like all right, it's like only five minutes in this movie and there's already sex stuff. But that was like the only part.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, and to your point, it didn't, it didn't need to be in there. Like you can allude to it. Like there's a few scenes where you see like chris hamzler's characters like waking up and there's like two women in his bed, like that's not that I want to see that either, but that's all you do need is the insinuation. But there was, yeah, there was several um, there was nudity and I feel like in a race car movie that was not at all about any of the relationships very much. I mean a little bit, but you didn't, you didn't need to see it and it just kind of makes it a movie where I think a lot more.
Speaker 2:I would suggest it to a lot more people if they didn't have that in there yeah, and it goes back to what I was saying, like you want to try to not be disrespectful to this real life person and I'm like then why did they feel the need to have that content in there? But anyway, moving on from that because it really was a short, it wasn't a long drawn out thing Like the other film that we were going to review was that movie was whoo. I need to pray after watching that one. But this movie was really well done and we've already said before, the acting was phenomenal. Uh, it was semi-frustrating, but I think that kind of might have been what they were going for with the frustration of who you root for, who who like when they they both want to win so bad. Who do you root for in that situation?
Speaker 3:and then and you see, see who you not only see them develop and then you also see their relationship develop, which maybe I guess you said that Nikki kind of said they took liberty with, but like we hate each other and think so little of each other and then by the end there's this pretty deep respect. That and I thought that was very powerful. And if you go and look at the real pictures, I think maybe what Nikki is saying is like I think they were way more friends than foes. The movie played up their hatred more Because, yeah, almost every picture you see online is them like hugging each other and beaming and smiling. So it sounded like a way friendlier rivalry than it was initially or how it was presented.
Speaker 2:Well, and one subtle way they did it is and I really really like this after the car accident, nikki lotta goes on this press tour because he's talking about racing again and one of these reporters asks him asks him a really stupid question like hey, do you think your wife will love you now that you look like the way you do?
Speaker 2:And he was like, okay, this, this interview is over. And then Chris Hemsworth character takes this reporter into basically this cleaning closet and beats the crap out of it because of the question he asked. So, like those little moments show that, even though they kind of had this semi rivalry going on, that they probably did respect each other and at the end of the day day, that's what it came down to is, yeah, they may not have liked the methods that each of them went into racing, but they had a respect for each other and I think that's what probably nikki lotta saw in the film, even though they did lean very heavy on them, almost borderline hating each other at first. But if if nicolata is correct and they took liberties with it, there probably never was a hatred. There probably was a just mutual respect and they just wanted to beat each other because they're competitive people.
Speaker 3:They're just like best best friends of the world, like there's definitely still like I, I love you, man, but I also want you to lose because I want to win, like, of course, um, you know. This reminds me of what was that movie we watched, we reviewed last year. That was the racing movie based on a true story gran turismo gran turismo, yeah and uh.
Speaker 3:I just don't know anything about racing like in america. I think a lot of our brains when we think of racing, race cars, we think of Daytona 500 and NASCAR. Right, I don't. Nascar versus Formula One feels like a totally different vibe. You know there's not people with jorts and like yee-haw and beer. It's like this most sophisticated thing you have to have a lot of money to get into it. So I do think it was interesting seeing more about just that sport in general.
Speaker 3:But I think the movie highlights this and I really liked it about the movie that racing is dangerous, like especially back then this was, I guess, in the 70s, I think and you're, like they said some statistic in the beginning of the movie of like yeah, two people a year die, like that's just like a duh. And then there's multiple times in the movie before our main character gets in an accident where they watch someone like go off in a stretcher, um, and it's just crazy. And even the fact nikki lauda gets his face burnt off and just like cool, I'm gonna get back in there a few months from now. And like gets back in a race car. It still is competitive, like that's just crazy and I just really makes you appreciate how seldom it happens.
Speaker 3:Now I mean, maybe it happens more formula one than the NASCAR, but I guess is that sort of the thrill of it. People like to live on the edge and it does make you think about. Of course, james Hunt does drugs and sleeps around like the kind of adrenaline junkie that can handle race cars, probably needs that in all areas of his life and I thought they presented that pretty well, which I think that guy died pretty young. I was researching he like kind of did, unfortunately really really did live this crazy lifestyle and it never really stopped. There wasn't a point where he's like OK'm done, I'm gonna slow down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think he was like 45 and he died of a heart attack and, yeah, it's just sad, it is sad to to learn that that happened to him. Um, because of you know, probably multiple factors, but that is the movie rush. I thought it was very well done. It was very a surprise movie for me because, again, it's one of those movies that, yeah, I heard about but I didn't know if I really wanted to go see it, and so the only reason I watched it is because it's on this list and I'm glad I did because it was. It was really well done. So, katie, what would you give Rush? One to six stars.
Speaker 3:I like what you said. It definitely it's not a classic. I don't ever hear anyone talking about the movie rush. It sneaks up on you and for that reason I want to actually give it maybe a five, because it's not my typical movie, but I want to make sure I rate it well because I do think it's worth watching. It's a very interesting story and I do wish more people knew about it. Um, like I said, I'd never even knew much about it at the time. But even if you don't like racing, like me, it's still very inspiring and I liked it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you said, it reminded me of Gran Turismo because it came out of nowhere and I was like, eh, you know, I'll go see it. It kind of looks fun and it just it blew me away with the acting and the, just the storyline. And that is the same with this movie. So that's why I'm giving rush a 5.5 out of 6. The only reason I don't give it a 6 is because of the unnecessary content and I wasn't sure who to root for.
Speaker 3:But again, yeah, I think there's not necessarily other than competitiveness, there's not some other big role model like takeaway?
Speaker 2:so that is rush right there, and so if you want to know what we're going to be talking about next week, take a listen.
Speaker 4:Of all the movies you can see this year, only one has been acclaimed by every single critic. Vincent canby of the new york times calls it a singular achievement exceptionally moving, a great movie. Two big thumbs up say siskel and ebert. Mike clark of usa today gives it four stars as the year's most powerful film. See the one David Dindy of New York Magazine calls a great American movie Platoon, nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, now playing at a theater near you.
Speaker 2:That's right. We're going back to the classics. A classic war movie starring Willem Dafoe and a young, not crazy yet Charlie Sheen platoon. That's where we've been talking about, Katie. Have you ever seen platoon before? Never heard of it. I'd heard of it because it does have a classic. It's kind of on the poster of the movie this classic moment of Willem Dafoe with his arms up, and we'll talk about what that's all about and why that movie frustrated the crap moment of Willem Dafoe with his arms up, and we'll talk about what that's all about and why that movie frustrated the crap out of me as well.
Speaker 2:But before we talk about that, katie, is there anything you want to end this rush episode with?
Speaker 3:The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel. It's a wonderful way to live and it's the only way to drive.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to.
Speaker 1:Nadie and it's the only way to drive. Thanks for listening to Nady and Katie at the movies. Feel free to leave us a review so people can find the show. Follow us on all our social media platforms and if there's a movie that you want us to watch, feel free to contact us at nadyandkatie at gmailcom. Thanks for listening and have a great day.