The Counselor (with Michael Aghajanian)

Rotten Rewind

"For those that understand they're living the last days of the world, death acquires a different meaning. The extinction of all reality is a concept no resignation can encompass."
This week's guest, Michael Aghajanian, has described Ridley Scott's 2013 bomb "The Counselor" as a "flagship Rotten Rewind movie." This is, after all, a movie that opens with Michael Fassbender finger-fucking Penelope Cruz while telling her she has "the most luscious pussy in all of Christendom," and later features a now notorious scene where Cameron Diaz fucks the windshield of a Ferrari. Sadly, in 2013, critics and audiences weren't ready for 2 hours of beautiful actors reciting verbose monologues about the nature of violence and destiny in between scenes of graphic beheadings and Cameron Diaz fucking a car. Thankfully, it's been 9 years since Ridley Scott brought Cormac McCarthy's first produced original screenplay to the big screen and we, as a society, have accepted that we are living in the last days of the world.
So how does "The Counselor" stack up against podcast heavyweights like "In the Cut," "Bamboozled" and "Vanilla Sky?" Is this really one of the few Ridley Scott films that Tony Scott could have directed? Did Javier Bardem really base his look on mega producer Brian Grazer? Is Brad Pitt in the middle of a pussy-eating Renaissance? Could anyone have filled Cameron Diaz's shoes as a gold-toothed Machiavellian ice queen with tacky leopard tattoos? Is McCarthy's worldview too nihilistic or just right for our apocalyptic times? Does truth really have no temperature? Find out right now on America's most celebrated podcast.

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