00:00 - My mother was a extremely charitable woman.
00:03 - She loved Bruce Springsteen.
00:05 She used to sing "Thunder Road" to me
00:07 when I was going to sleep.
00:08 - Everything go okay?
00:10 - Everything went normal.
00:11 - It starts out and there's a harmonica.
00:14 - So "Thunder Road" is a film from 2018.
00:18 It's a sort of drama and tragic comedy.
00:20 So it's about a policeman in Texas
00:23 who's dealing with the death of his mother
00:25 whilst also going through a custody battle with his ex-wife.
00:28 And he's finding the whole thing very overwhelming
00:31 and very traumatic.
00:32 At the time of recording,
00:34 this film on IMDb gets seven out of 10.
00:37 And then over on Rotten Tomatoes,
00:39 the audience give it 91%
00:41 and then the critics give it 97%.
00:44 So Josh, this was picked by one of our guests, wasn't it?
00:47 - Yeah, this was picked by one of our guests,
00:49 a comedian called John Agathil.
00:51 He picked this mainly because he thought
00:52 that it was underseen and underrated.
00:55 It's a feature-length film.
00:56 It's based on a short film that's made by the same guy.
00:58 It's made by a guy called Jim Cummings,
01:00 who has written it and directed it
01:01 and stars in it and stuff like that.
01:03 Listen, I enjoyed it the first time I watched it,
01:05 but when I watched it again, I got a lot more from it.
01:08 And I loved it.
01:09 I really, really enjoyed it.
01:10 I mean, it's all on Jim Cummings as a character.
01:12 His performance, his writing,
01:15 the way the whole thing is executed.
01:17 The film is sort of punctuated by these big, long scenes
01:21 that are not edited.
01:22 He does big, long monologues about something.
01:25 And the way he does them is just,
01:27 it's quite mesmerizing.
01:28 You can't take your eyes off him.
01:29 - I'm fine.
01:31 I've never been better in my life.
01:33 - See me wrestle an alligator, help the alligator.
01:35 - I hadn't seen it before,
01:36 but I thought it was just absolutely excellent.
01:38 It gets the blend of tragedy and comedy just so perfect.
01:41 It's probably one of the best I've ever seen.
01:43 The performances in it are really strong
01:45 and the script is just excellent.
01:47 It feels so authentic and so real,
01:49 yet incredibly dramatic at the same time.
01:52 And I think there's just such a skill to getting that right
01:54 and without letting these situations
01:56 and these sort of very intense moments of grief
01:58 becoming too cheesy or maybe over the top.
02:00 The gravitas he has when he's on screen is incredible.
02:03 And this was just such a triumph.
02:05 Was there anything that you didn't like about the film?
02:07 - I personally don't have anything I didn't like about it,
02:09 but I can see how it might not be for you.
02:13 It very much is for me.
02:14 But if you're looking for something
02:15 that's a little bit more mainstream
02:16 or a little bit broader,
02:18 you might find this to be a little bit aimless
02:21 or not quite your tone.
02:22 What about you?
02:24 - Well, the only thing for me
02:24 was that I really didn't like the end credits.
02:27 I thought the font choice was really peculiar
02:29 and the way that they cross faded from one page to the next,
02:32 it just felt really strange and really student-like,
02:35 which was a real surprise
02:36 because the rest of the film felt so expertly done.
02:39 But that really is it.
02:40 And that's such small potatoes
02:41 considering some of the stuff that we look at in these films.
02:44 I think with those scores, the IMDb score,
02:46 the one in the seven,
02:47 I would definitely say that that's underrated,
02:50 but seeing as the critics gave it 97%,
02:52 that can't be underrated at all, I don't think.
02:54 - I'd probably say that might be appropriately rated though.
02:57 What do you think?
02:58 - It's probably appropriately rated
03:00 in that it's highly rated and we liked it.
03:02 I think it's underseen though.
03:03 I do think it's underseen.
