The Sandra Bullock Movie Star Playbook and ‘Practical Magic 2.’ Plus: ‘Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger.’

Key takeaways

• The Oasis documentary earns near-universal praise for restraint: directors Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern skip most archival footage and instead build the film around present-day fan stories (a nonverbal autistic teen who first spoke to ask for "Talk Tonight," a woman naming her dog Bonehead) and city-by-city concert footage tied to specific songs, letting Liam and Noel's reconciliation play out almost entirely through body language (the handhold walkout, the closing hug and kiss) rather than narration.
• "Practical Magic 2" underperforms both creatively and commercially (tracking at $46 million, opening to $30 million) because the script sidelines Nicole Kidman's Jillian into comic relief, gives Sandra Bullock mostly stuttering-based jokes instead of real wit, and drops in confusing character-age choices (the daughters are aged up 20 years from the source material) without explaining the shift.
• Both hosts diagnose the film's tone problem as a mismatch with the original: the 1998 "Practical Magic" worked as cozy, sensory "girls' sleepover" cinema with a real emotional metaphor about risking love despite loss, while the sequel drops the "practical" magic entirely in favor of a generic CGI third-act battle and heavy product placement (Ninja blenders, American Airlines).
• The group traces Sandra Bullock's filmography gap: after her 2013 "Gravity"/"The Heat" peak, she's made only six films in roughly a decade (Ocean's 8, Bird Box, The Unforgivable, The Lost City, Bullet Train, Practical Magic 2), reflecting both a deliberate step back for family life and a shrinking market for the star-driven romantic comedies that built her career.
• Their fantasy-casting exercise proposes Soderbergh (who nearly directed Ocean's 8) or Lynne Ramsay to reinvent her, floats a meta showbiz-aging dramedy opposite Jennifer Lawrence, and suggests pairing her against "kookier" co-stars like Glen Powell, Robert Pattinson, or Timothée Chalamet rather than another girl-next-door type—arguing her established "movie star playbook" needs a genuine swerve, not another legacy sequel.
• Venice's Golden Lion went to "Woman Unknown" (Mahmoud Tuki) despite a chaotic, subtitle-error-marred premiere, while the buzzier "Possible Love" only took the Silver Lion; prompting the hosts to note the festival's pattern of surprising, sometimes head-scratching award choices (see: Joker).

Notable moments

• "Dudes rock. Music is amazing. Fandom is gorgeous."; Yassi's one-line verdict on the Oasis documentary.
• Yassi's real-life account of flying to London same-day for the Wembley Oasis show with a stranger named Chad, including an emergency mid-crowd rescue of his friend Joe.
• "I don't have any comedy... it's fairly grim"; the hosts noting Practical Magic 2 leans on a boyfriend-in-a-coma plot instead of the jokes that made the original charming.
• The recurring bit where Sean and Amanda mock the film's single half-second Lee Pace dance cameo to "Lime in the Coconut" as unsatisfying fan service.
• Debate over whether Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein"-adjacent "Digger" will secretly be a musical, despite Variety's denial.
• "I think it's a for-fans document, for sure, and it's a very British document"; assessing who the Oasis film is really made for.
• The extended riff imagining absurd Sandra Bullock sequels, including "While You Were Napping" and a Girls Trip-style ensemble reboot.
• Amanda's aside about Alan Ritchson's real-life motorcycle altercation, derailing the group briefly from Venice talk.

Time saved: 1 hour, 30 minutes.