Discover the true history behind Julie & Julia, the movie inspired by the blogger Julie Powell and infamous chef & author Julia Childs. Does the film still hold up? We discuss the publishing journey of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, talk about the performances of Stanley Tucci and Meryl Streep, discuss the generational gap between each character, and finally, we play the Rotten Tomatoes game for Meryl Streep's filmography!
This time hosts Gaz and Mel discover the true history behind Netflix's The Two Popes. We delve into the lives of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis and the fascinating conversations they have. Mel explains how the true story differs from the movie. We also dive into the secret details of how a new Pope is selected during Conclave, talk about the age old debate of conservative vs progressive values, and critique gender representation in the film.
It's time to get into the details of the true story of the movie I, Tonya, starring Margot Robbie. How accurate is the movie to the true crime? Was Tonya Harding actually involved in the incident? And what effect did the 24 hour news cycle have on the real events? Join us as we extensively critique both the movie and the history behind it.
It's our last show of the year! It's time to talk Ridley's Scott's new epic Napoleon (2023). We extensively critique both the movie and the history behind it. Is Napoleon Bonaparte accurately portrayed? Is Joaquin Phoenix the right person to play the famous Emperor? Above all, is the movie just any good? (Spoiler: it's complicated).
Vogue! Anna Wintour! Haute couture fashion! This month we talk about 2006's The Devil Wears Prada and critique how the movie holds up today. How close is Meryl Streep's character to the real Anna Wintour? And we discuss Anna Wintour documentary The September Issue and what it tells us about the fashion magazine industry.
Get out your fake tan and body oil! For this month we talk about 2004's Troy. Is Brad Pitt really miscast? Do the love stories make no sense? Is the movie just ridiculious? We say Yes! to all of these things and get into the reasons why.
As sign-posted by the unfairly maligned girl-power scene in Avengers: Endgame, having three female leads in a $270 million dollar blockbuster is a step in the right direction, if a lately plotted one. It’s a shame the enormous and over-compensated human machinery of the Marvel Studios empire have simply fumbled the task of placing them in a story that illustrates their talents. As we watch the effective charisma of each performer fly across the screen, we’re assaulted with an abundance of dull, gentrified storytelling from a studio suffering from it’s own success.
You’re acceptance of Saltburn’s entertainment is connected to your willingness to spend time with unlikable characters. Our outsider is Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), a scouser Oxford undergraduate who’s lost amongst the university’s upper-class privilege. He struggles to fit in. He gets the worst seat in the dining hall. He isn’t invited to the Christmas party.
Jonathan Glazer’s disciplined The Zone of Interest (2023) is both a treatise on peripheral horror and an audacious act of demythologising. In the foreground, he adopts the slow living of upper-echelon Nazi life with it’s cups of tea and washing of long leather boots. In the background, the appalling questions raise their dreadful heads to turn domestic drama into appalling horror.
Napoleon huffs and puffs his way through the French emperor’s greatest hits, spinning a bleak and darkly colored yarn heavy on scale but light on personal revelations.
I’ve heard that Fincher splits his work into two categories, movies and films. Se7en (1995) is a movie, an audience pleasing thriller with conventional crime table-setting. Not low-brow exactly, but greasy and gruesome in its traditional mystery scares. But The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) is a ‘film’, because thematically it’s a serious, unconventional, head-scratching experience full of thinly veiled philosophizing on the nature of life and death.
With the atrocious The Exorcist: Believer in theaters, David Gordon Green has reminded us of something that has been clear for decades: William Friedkin’s The Exorcist is not a franchise-able horror property. And the reason is because The Exorcist (1973) isn’t a horror movie, it’s a mystery.
