We are so excited to welcome back Tribune News Service film critic Katie Walsh to discuss one of the most beloved American filmmakers! When will “Oscar for Sandman” happen? Well, in 2002, Adam Sandler had his first attempt at the Gold with an esoteric, anxious romantic comedy by Paul Thomas Anderson, Punch-Drunk Love. While the film perfectly matches Anderson’s sensibility with Sandler’s manic comedic chops, this bittersweet and left-of-center romance was ultimately more of a (still not unanimous) critical darling, too odd for the Academy’s tastes.



This week, we talk about PTA’s pivot into the film’s small-scale specificity after the sprawl of Magnolia and Boogie Nights. We also discuss how past brushes with Oscar-friendly fare position Sandler for this year’s Jay Kelly, Jack Nicholson as Sandler’s champion at the Cannes Film Festival, and the MTV Movie Awards Best Kiss.



Topics also include Jon Brion’s score, supermarket movies, and the former green color of Healthy Choice.

Grab your half-butter-half-salt popcorn because this week, we’ve got something to make you howl! After the critically-hailed success of Waiting for Guffman, Christopher Guest returned with another improvisational comedy set in a world of deeply specific eccentrics played by an ensemble of geniuses. Best in Show is set in a world of competitive dog shows, with all the beloved pooches mirrored in their idiosyncratic owners. The film helped cement Guest’s brand of humor and earn an ever-expanding devoted fanbase, but Oscar was just out of reach.



This episode, we talk about how the film’s precursor run was more robust than you think and the Guest films’ increasing Oscar pedigree. We also talk about the film’s endless quotability, how Fred Willard became the performance to be singled out from the ensemble, and the bittersweetness that runs through Guest’s work.



Topics also include the 2000 Best Original Song race, lingering misunderstandings around improvisational vs. scripted, and Almost Famous.

With Meryl currently on her first film set in years, what better time than to dance, jive, and generally speaking have the time of our lives. We’ve invited our friend, writer and programmer Jorge Molina to discuss the Meryl movie that didn’t get her an Oscar nomination in 2008. A post 9/11 hit on the stage, Mamma Mia! tells the story of a bride who invites three men to her wedding who might be her father, all set to the music of ABBA. The film showed off against Batman himself to become a global smash (if not one with critics), and it remains a rewatch classic.



This episode, we discuss our origins with the musical and Meryl’s other 2008 performance. We also talk about the film’s ensemble including the divine Amanda Seyfried, our favorite numbers from the film, and whose voice fares the worst when singing.



Topics also include Chris Klein’s bad audition, Tom and Rita, and downloading Oscar medleys to an iPhone.

You might not expect a family-friendly live action Disney movie to draw awards attention, but not all of those types of films star Jamie Lee Curtis. In 2003, JLC starred in a Freaky Friday remake starring then ascendant teen star Lindsay Lohan. The two spin comedy gold as a tenuous mother and daughter who wake one morning to find they’ve been body swapped. Lohan show smart comedy chops as the square mother, but it was Curtis in rebellious teenage mode that earned high praise, including a Golden Globe nomination.



This episode, we talk about Lohan’s fast rise of films in the aughts and Curtis’ place in the 2003 Best Actress race. We also discuss director Mark Waters, Curtis’ prestige road to a Supporting Actress Oscar win, and the film’s aughts fashion.



Topics also include Kept, Lois Duncan books, and The Hives vs. The Vines.

After a pair of successful adventure movies together with Robert Zemeckis, the trio of Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito got the band back together for one last time in 1989. With DeVito in the director’s chair and adapted from the Warren Adler novel, The War of the Roses follows the disintegration of one materialistic couple and the divorce battle that ensues. It’s an acidicly comedic satire that nevertheless became a holiday season hit, but failed to capture Oscar’s affection.



This episode, we talk about DeVito’s directorial career and the film’s muddled framing device. We also talk about the Oscar legacy of Driving Miss Daisy, Turner’s too brief period as a commanding leading lady, and Douglas’ emergence into serious leading man.



Topics also include Romancing the Stone‘s horniness, entering the paté business, the chandelier finale.

We’re ringing in another year on the pod with our 350TH EPISODE!! In 2006, Broadway imported the National Theatre production of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, an ensemble piece following a group of college hopeful students and their philosophically opposed teachers. The Broadway production became a Tony record-making sensation. However, prior to the transfer, the entire cast completed a film version that would arrive later in the year after the Broadway fever had cooled.



This episode, we talk about why this film marks a place in THOB history and the film’s complicated presentation of queerness and predation. We also talk about Richard Griffiths’ lauded performance, Fox Searchlight’s busy 2006, and our favorites from the past year of the show.



Topics also include the mixed bag of 2006 contenders, the successful young male cast, and college admissions culture.

We’re thrilled to welcome back author and Who? Weekly co-host Bobby Finger this week to talk about a fun modest thriller that helped turn one of our favorites into an industry darling. In 2001, director duo Scott McGehee and David Siegel brought thriller adaptation The Deep End to Sundance starring queer art cinema icon Tilda Swinton. As a mother who goes to great lengths to protect her closeted teenage son who she suspects of murdering his older lover, Swinton is a revelation and perhaps gave the first signs that she was at home in traditional fare as she was in the avant garde.



This episode, we talk about our love for Swinton and she joins our Six Timers Club. We also talk about the wide-reaching but under-discussed filmography of McGehee/Siegel, Goran Visnjic’s moment in time, and Lake Tahoe as a thriller vibe.



Topics also include Joe’s ABC era, our favorite Tilda performances, and the 2001 Best Actress race.

We close out Pride Month with one of our favorite queer films from the past decade, 2017’s BPM. From French director Robin Campillo, BPM follow a group of ACT UP activists during the height of the AIDS epidemic. With Campillo’s emotional and intuitive style of observation, the film shows the labors of political organization in all the warts of in-fighting and disagreement, but also the beauty of human connection amidst dire circumstances. The film was France’s International Feature submission, but didn’t even make the shortlist despite its high acclaim.



This episode, we discuss what makes the film all the moving and valuable in our current moment. We also talk about Nahuel Perez Biscayart’s moving lead performance, France’s current dry spell of winning the International Feature Oscar, and the Cannes Film Festival where BPM won the Grand Prix.



Topics also include The Orchard, gay people not being a monolith, and other 2017 queer movies. 

After a career as an actress, Sarah Polley made her directorial debut with Away From Her, landing Oscar nominations for both her screenplay and Julie Christie’s performance. Her follow-up would be a slight gear shift: the intimate character study of infidelity, Take This Waltz. The film stars Michelle Williams as a writer who begins to feel a divide between her and her husband (Seth Rogen), exacerbated by her lust for her rickshaw-operating neighbor (Luke Kirby). 



This episode, we talk about our love for Polley and the film’s inquisitive (if a bit divisive) portrait of marital malaise. We also discuss Sarah Silverman’s well-regarded supporting performance, Rogen’s very booked-and-busy first years of stardom, and the film’s expert use of “Video Killed the Radio Star.”



Topics also include Toronto geography, Dying for Sex, and Williams joins our Six Timers Club.

Our friend and theme music composer Taylor Cole returns to us this week to talk about one of our most beloved stars on This Had Oscar Buzz, Shirley MacLaine. After finally winning her Oscar for Terms of Endearment, MacLaine took a few well-earned years off. Her return was this tale of a hardened piano teacher and the young Indian student, Manek (Navin Chowdhry), that she takes on. But even with a showcase for MacLaine at the head of an ensemble that also included Dame Peggy Ashcroft, this chamber drama didn’t garner enough attention to land in the Academy’s graces.



This week, we talk about director John Schlesinger and MacLaine’s late 1980s run of iconic roles. We also discuss music teacher philosophies, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala working outside of Merchant/Ivory, and the 1988 Best Actress race including the famous three-way tie at the Golden Globes.



Topics also include Twiggy, MacLaine sparring with Letterman, and other awards show ties.

After his A Little Princess adaptation earned a duo of Oscar nominations, Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón followed that up with another literary adaptation, a modernization of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. With hot young stars Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow as the central lovers and Oscar winners Anne Bancroft and Robert De Niro in support, the film transplanted Dickens’ social climbing classic to America’s southern coast and the New York City art scene. With some behind-the-scenes struggle and middling results, the film was pushed from its planned Christmas 1997 release into January, still eclipsed by Titanic.



This episode, we talk about the film’s modernized mixed bag and Cuarón before Y Tu Mamá También. We also discuss the Christmas 1997 trend of drawing a naked lady, the Best Actress race when Bancroft won for The Miracle Worker, and Paltrow in the leadup to her Oscar win.



Topics also include Tori Amos, voiceover narration, and late 90s Donna Karan.

At the beginning of the aughts, both Halle Berry and Benicia Del Toro were riding high on Oscar wins. In 2007, they both paired up for Things We Lost in the Fire, a melodrama from Danish director Susanne Bier. From a script by Collateral Beauty scribe Allan Loeb, the film cast Berry as a grieving wife who invites her dead husband’s addict best friend (played by Del Toro) to live in their home. Reviews were respectable and the film was widely predicted at the start of the season, but after bombing at the box office, it quickly evaporated from voters’ memories.



This episode, we discuss the film as emblematic of a dying breed of melodrama and its narrative proximity to the film both actors won their Oscars for. We also talk about Bier’s multiple films in the International Feature race, Del Toro’s few film roles between Oscar and this, and the critical drubbing Berry faced for Catwoman.



Topics also include poster fonts, The Velvet Underground needle drops, and Agnès Varda and Toni Morrison watching Sin City.

Festival Fever comes to an end this week with a look at the last major film festival of the year, the New York Film Festival. In 2022, Noah Baumbach follow-up up his biggest Oscar success, Marriage Story, by tackling Don DeLillo’s unadaptable novel White Noise. The satire stars Adam Driver as the leading professor in “Hitler studies” whose family faces chaos and confusion from a cataclysmic disaster known as the Airborne Toxic Event. Prestigiously opening NYFF (after also opening Venice), the film left many scratching their heads.



This episode, we talk about our hopes for Baumbach’s upcoming Jay Kelly and the history of NYFF openers. We also talk about the film’s closing sequence set to LCD Soundsystem, Greta Gerwig’s acting return in the film, and the film’s large budget.



Topics also include 2022 Original Song, Little Hugs (which we incorrectly call Huggies), and the film’s production design.

This week, Festival Fever gives us our first Baz! Strictly Ballroom gave then-stage director Baz Luhrman his debut film, one of a number of Australian comedies that would achieve cult followings in the US. But this tale of young ballroom dancers who take artistic license and fall in love on the way also became a hit at the Toronto International Film Festival, winning the coveted People’s Choice Award. With a spring release the next year, the film is the only one of Luhrman’s to not be nominated by Oscar in any category.



This episode, we talk about the maximalist appeal of Baz and the road to TIFF’s People’s Choice Award becoming such an Oscar predictor. We also discuss the film’s first success as a midnight film in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, star Tara Morice’s exquisite performance, and the film’s surprise strong showing with BAFTA.



Topics also include Kath & Kim, “Time After Time,” and the 1993 Golden Globe musical/comedy lineup.

estival Fever continues this week with a forgotten adaptation and the Venice Film Festival. Tom Stoppard earned his first Tony Award for Best Play for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, an absurdist spoof of Hamlet and various theatre tropes from the perspective of two of the Bard’s minor characters. A film version was long delayed before Stoppard took over the director’s chair himself for his debut. Casting young actors Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the interchangeable twosome, the film earned the festival’s Golden Lion despite mild reviews.



This episode, we talk about the history of the Golden Lion and how we think this film joined those ranks. We also discuss Oldman and Roth’s breakthrough in Mike Leigh’s Meantime, their major successes immediately after Stoppard’s film, and Richard Dreyfuss’ broad performance as The Player.



Topics also include Chloe Zhao’s upcoming Hamnet, listeners not being able to tell us apart, and our favorite Golden Lion winners.

We’re kicking off this year’s May Miniseries this week! Introducing: Festival Fever!! We’re spending all month discussing the ethos around some of the most important film festivals–and if you subscribe to our Patreon, the mini has already begun! After the COVID year shut down the Cannes Film Festival for the first time in decades, 2021 rebounded with a robust edition. The Palme d’Or winner was a controversial pick: Julia Ducournau’s sophomore thriller Titane. The film garnered headlines for its audacious, no-holds-barred look at gender, parent-child relationships, and umm a serial killer who gets impregnated by a car.



This episode, we talk about the history of the Palme d’Or and the film’s unsuccessful placement as France’s International Feature submission. We also talk about our anticipation for Ducournau’s upcoming Cannes return with Alpha, Spike Lee accidentally spoiling the film’s win at Cannes, and queer reactions to the film.



Topics also include dancing firemen, Ducournau’s debut Raw, and our favorite Palme winners.

99HOMES_00014_CROP
(l to r) Andrew Garfield stars as ‘Dennis Nash’ and Michael Shannon as ‘Rick Carver’ in Broad Green Pictures release, 99 HOMES.
Credit: Hooman Bahrani / Broad Green Pictures



2014 fall festivals saw the debut of Ramen Bahrain’s 99 Homes, a dark crime saga centered around the housing crisis of the previous decade. Andrew Garfield (fresh off of his mildly received run of Spider-Man movies) stars as a father who tries to rebound from his eviction by taking up work with the slick real estate operator who evicted him, played by Michael Shannon. Once the film was released in the fall of 2015, Shannon earned Supporting Actor nominations at each of the major precursors, only to miss out on Oscar nomination morning.



This episode, we talk about Shannon’s snubbing and his two unlikely Supporting Actor nominations. We also discuss the short life of Broad Green Pictures, Garfield’s performance in Angels in America, and the 2015 Best Supporting Actor race.



Topics also include Joe’s first TIFF, Florida onscreen, and our upcoming May miniseries!

After passing off the reins of Veep, Armando Iannucci returned to movie screens with another political satire. Based on the graphic novel, The Death of Stalin farcically recounts the last days of the dictator and the scramble for power in the days after. With stars like Steve Buscemi, Jason Isaacs, and Simon Russell Beale, the film received solid reviews at its 2017 TIFF premiere and solid box office at its spring 2018 release. But thanks to BAFTA recognition and a Screenplay prize from the National Society of Film Critics, some folks predicted The Death of Stalin for a surprise Adapted Screenplay nomination that never came to be.



This episode, we talk about Iannucci’s career and how the surprise screenplay nomination for In The Loop stirred Oscar anticipation for this film as well. We also discuss the correct way to pronounce Buscemi, the film’s balance between serious-mindedness and farce, and our favorites from the film’s ensemble.



Topics also include the 2017 TIFF lineup and the 2018 Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor races.

With the whispers and rumors that Terrence Malick’s Jesus film The Way of the Wind maybe possibly perhaps who knows could finally premiere this year after filming in 2019, we thought it was time to discuss his work. One year after The Tree of Life earned Oscar nominations and the Palme d’Or, Malick had perhaps his fastest turnaround with To The Wonder. A semi-autobiographical tale of a cross-continental love affair souring once it reaches America, the film starred Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko and Rachel McAdams as the onscreen love triangle. But once the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, it earned some of Malick’s harshest notices to date.



This episode, we discuss the mixed reception around Malick’s post-Tree of Life work and our own divided thoughts on the film. We also discuss the several famous names left on Malick’s cutting room floor, Javier Bardem’s performance as the town priest, and Rachel McAdams joins our Six Timers Club.



Topics also include Roger Ebert’s final review, Kurylenko as an action star, and “to the wonder, to the walls.”

As we begin to get hyped for a new Kelly Reichardt film on the horizon with The Mastermind, The Atlantic staff writer Shirley Li joins us to discuss her 2016 triptych Certain Women. The film adapts three Maile Meloy stories into one film, with each following a different woman whose voice is stifled in their Montana circumstances. With several stars populating the ensemble including Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, and Kristen Stewart, its biggest awards success was with its breakthrough star, Lily Gladstone.



This episode, we talk about our love for Reichardt’s filmography and Gladstone’s silent long take powerhouse moment in the film. We also talk about Williams as the definitive Reichardt actor, Dern’s comic subtlety in the film, and parallel universes for the Oscar ceremony envelope snafu.



Topics also include Lucy, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Reichardt as a purveyor of care.