What the corpus says about The Whale (2022)

You are a clerk at Video Culture, a video store. A customer just finished The Whale (2022) and wants to know what to watch next.

Below is what people who love movies said on three podcasts (Blank Check, The Rewatchables, The Big Picture) about The Whale (2022) and the films around it, one line each. Every line starts with where it came from, in brackets: [show · episode · time · speaker (how sure we are it was them)]. A [pairs] line says how often two films were put side by side. A [speaker] line says what that person likes. A [bits] line lists a show's running bits: a format, not an opinion.

[Blank Check — Patreon · The Curious Case of Benjamin Button · 0:20:13 · unknown (0.30)] The Whale ↔ The Curious Case of Benjamin Button · industry · Both campaigns withheld the star's transformed look. · "The Benjamin button film was even more withholding, you know, and it really worked until it kind of doesn't because you eventually do have to see the thing."
[Blank Check · Wendell & Wild · 0:28:36 · David Sims (0.70)] Wendell and Wild ↔ The Whale · viewing schedule · David planned to see The Whale right after Wendell & Wild at TIFF but skipped it after the Airbnb ordeal. · "I was supposed to see the whale next."
[Blank Check — Patreon · The Curious Case of Benjamin Button · 0:01:30 · unknown (0.30)] F. Scott Fitzgerald ⇒ The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (the host's read) · lineage · The film is adapted from Fitzgerald's short story, though the speakers say it shares little with it. · "It's quite, it's, it doesn't have too much in common with the film, right?"
[Blank Check · Wendell & Wild · 0:53:45 · Griffin Newman (0.50)] Jordan Peele ⇒ Wendell and Wild (the maker said so: Selick's account of seeing Key and Peele) · lineage · Selick saw Key and Peele on Comedy Central and realized they were Wendell and Wild. · "then it hit me, Wendell and Wild."
[Blank Check — Patreon · The Curious Case of Benjamin Button · 0:42:01 · unknown (0.30)] F. Scott Fitzgerald ⇒ The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (the host's read) · lineage · By the time Roth finished, the film resembles the story in name only. · "By the time he's done with it, the movie has no resemblance to Benjamin Button apart from, it's called Benjamin Button."
[Blank Check · Wendell & Wild · 1:09:45 · Griffin Newman (0.50)] Pablo Lobato ⇒ Wendell and Wild (the host's read) · lineage · Selick picked a flat, cutout caricature style that should not be adaptable to 3D and asked the team to build it. · "Wendolyn Wilde, Argentinian artist, Pablo Lobato, is the big inspiration for the look of a lot of these guys."
[Blank Check — Patreon · The Curious Case of Benjamin Button · 0:43:40 · unknown (0.30)] Joan Didion → The Curious Case of Benjamin Button · lineage · A line in the film was something Roth's mother said in the hospital, tied by the speaker to Didion's Year of Magical Thinking. · "Joan Didian's book, the year of magical thinking."
[Blank Check · Wendell & Wild · 1:32:50 · David Sims (0.50)] Wendell and Wild ↔ The Nightmare Before Christmas · theme · Nightmare has one major objective everyone is on; Wendell & Wild is just so much plot. · "Night before Christmas has like one major objective that everyone's right on."
[Blank Check — Patreon · David Fincher Music Videos · 1:59:12 · unknown (0.30)] Love Is Strong (Rolling Stones video) ⇒ The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (the host's read) · lineage · A host guesses the Stones' giant-scale effects helped Fincher on Benjamin Button. · "Well, and I bet this helped for Benjamin Button eventually."
[Blank Check · Wendell & Wild · 1:16:53 · David Sims (0.50)] Wendell and Wild ↔ Beetlejuice · craft · Wendell and Wild are Beetlejuice-like in that the story is really about the human teen (Lydia/Kat) and they are the colorful characters. · "They're Beetlejuicy in the movie in that it's like, well, it's really about Lydia."
[The Big Picture · ‘The Killer’ Is Cold-Blooded Genius. And Something More · 1:05:56 · Adam Nayman (0.90)] The Killer ↔ The Curious Case of Benjamin Button · theme · The lonely dinner with Tilda Swinton in a hollow restaurant echoes Benjamin Button's end-of-the-world connection scene, here without sentimental shtick. · "the stuff with Tilda Swinton is very interestingly evocative of Benjamin Button, like this lonely dinner in this big hollow restaurant that feels like it's at the end of the world"
[Blank Check · Wendell & Wild · 1:28:33 · David Sims (0.40)] Wendell and Wild ↔ Coraline · craft · The kindness shown to Kat, with quiet sadness, is likened to the boredom sequences in Coraline. · "it's it's similar to the sort of the boredom sequences and core line where, uh, Everyone's kind to cat."
[Blank Check — Patreon · The Curious Case of Benjamin Button · 0:26:08 · Richard Lawson (0.60)] Meet Joe Black ↔ The Curious Case of Benjamin Button · theme · Meet Joe Black is Brad Pitt's other epic about death; the speaker rewatched it right after Button. · "Brad Pitt's other somewhat misbegotten epic about death, meet Joe Black."
[Blank Check · Wendell & Wild · 1:52:28 · Griffin Newman (0.50)] Wendell and Wild ↔ Avatar · craft · Big sci-fi blockbusters like Inception and Avatar earn their virtuoso final acts with an hour of clumsy exposition; Wendell & Wild operates the same way. · "And they're things like Inception or Avatar, where you're like, you know what?"
[Blank Check — Patreon · The Curious Case of Benjamin Button · 1:35:21 · unknown (0.30)] Being There ↔ The Curious Case of Benjamin Button · theme · The speaker likens people projecting wisdom onto Benjamin's silence to Chauncey Gardner. · "There's a bit of a Chauncey Gardner where they're like projecting onto his silence."
[Blank Check · Wendell & Wild · 1:53:13 · Griffin Newman (0.50)] Wendell and Wild ↔ Inception · craft · The whole movie spends its running time on clumsy rules-exposition so the final act can pay off, like Inception. · "the whole movie is Inception style explaining to you, well, this is a kick, and this is a totem"
[Blank Check — Patreon · The Curious Case of Benjamin Button · 1:44:06 · unknown (0.30)] Magnolia ↔ The Curious Case of Benjamin Button · theme · The car-accident sequence feels a little like Magnolia, but the film is the anti-Magnolia on connectedness. · "This is sort of the anti-magnolia, which is like Ricky J is saying, like, surely these things mean something."
[Blank Check · Wendell & Wild · 2:12:32 · Griffin Newman (0.60)] Wendell and Wild ↔ Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery · craft · Griffin hoped a second viewing would work like Glass Onion, with setup gaining meaning, but it did not. · "I was curious if watching it a 2nd time, it would have like a glass onion effect"
[speaker] David Sims · latest sketch, Blank Check · The Last Temptation of Christ · Prepares history: novel, casting, budgets, box office. Reveres the film and thinks it reads as a normal ground-level story. A sucker for Hollywood deal backstory and box office game. · stances: Praises Keitel and Dafoe casting; Respects Scorsese's persistence and Corman discipline; The film is now well regarded though not 'canonical Marty'
[bits] The Big Picture: Drafts (Hosts and guests draft films in rounds; every pick is a recommendation with an argument); Hall of Fame (A star's or director's best, ranked and argued); Countdowns (Ranked lists, top five or top ten)
[bits] Blank Check: The box office game (Guessing the film's opening weekend and what it was up against); The sung theme ("Blank Check with Griffin and David", sung; the transcriber garbles it)

Recommend three to six films, and only films that appear in these lines. A series, a TV film, or a franchise counts too when a line recommends it or pairs it with The Whale (2022); name it the way the line names it. Don't recommend The Whale (2022) itself. For each one, give one short reason in your own words and say whose reason it is: the show, named exactly as the brackets name it, and the speaker when the line names one (an "unknown" speaker is just the show). If the lines are thin, say so plainly rather than stretching them.

Keep a contrast a contrast. When a line sets two films apart, the reason is how they differ; never turn it into a way they're alike. A line with ⇒ puts the source first and what drew on it second, and one marked "the maker said so" is still the host reporting it: say who said it, and never state an influence as fact.

You know only what's on these lines. Add no fact they don't state: not who directed a film, not what kind of film it is, not when it came out, unless a line says so. Say nothing about the store or how anything rents here.

Talk the way a clerk talks to a customer at the counter: plain text, titles written plainly with no asterisks or other markup, no headings, no lists of more than six, no JSON.