Phil and Emily are joined by film journalist and podcaster Blake Howard (One Heat Minute Productions) to close out the 2000s Best Actress Oscar follow-ups mini-series with Michael Mann's Public Enemies (2009). Johnny Depp's John Dillinger robs Depression-era banks and romances Marion Cotillard's Billie Frechette while Christian Bale's Melvin Purvis and Billy Crudup's J. Edgar Hoover build the modern FBI around catching him. It opened July 3, 2009 against Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and made $214 million on a $100 million budget, and Phil, who left the theater disappointed that summer expecting Heat meets The Untouchables, has come all the way around on it.

The three dig into the early digital photography everyone hated in 2009 and why it plays so much better now that projectors can actually show it, Mann's refusal to sentimentalize his outlaw (Ebert's read that the movie shrugs off myth gets a workout), Bale's understated Purvis in the year after The Dark Knight, Crudup's version of Hoover as the guy who quietly wins the movie, and the Depp-and-Bale on-set story that may or may not have happened. Blake makes the case for Public Enemies as the best film in the whole mini-series, and Phil agrees, then ranks the whole run, from this one at the top down to Pay It Forward dead last. There's a real case here for Public Enemies as the Michael Mann movie that got caught between the audience he had and the one he was about to find. Cold, beautiful, and stubborn about it. Same as the movie.

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Phil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
Blake Howard - https://www.instagram.com/oneblakeminute

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