Best Film Ever

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Best Film Ever episodes

October 06Episode 351 - Psycho
“We all go a little mad sometimes.”
Join Ian & Megs for our 351st episode as we check into the Bates Motel, definitely avoid Cabin One and discover why showers have never quite felt the same since for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) — one of the most influential films ever made, one of cinema’s greatest exercises in audience manipulation… and perhaps a slightly stranger viewing experience than its reputation suggests.
Liam isn’t with us this week — he checked into the Bates Motel and Norman assures us he checked out first thing this morning. We have absolutely no reason to question that.
Kev is also absent. His mother wouldn’t let him come.
This week we discuss:
The extraordinary construction of Norman Bates — Anthony Perkins gives us one of cinema’s great characters long before we completely understand who we’re looking at. Awkward, charming, vulnerable, funny and quietly unsettling: how does Hitchcock make Norman someone we instinctively like at almost exactly the moment we should be becoming afraid of him?
The narrative pivot that changed movies — Psycho spends almost its entire opening act convincing us that Marion Crane is the protagonist and that the stolen $40,000 is the story. Then Hitchcock pulls the floor out from underneath us. Is the shower scene’s real brilliance not simply that Marion dies, but that the entire movie we thought we were watching dies with her?
And then it pivots again — Marion’s crime disappears, Norman becomes our point of identification and eventually the film shifts towards Lila and Sam investigating what happened. Psycho repeatedly hands the narrative from one character to another. Is that structural instability part of its genius — or one reason the middle of the film occasionally feels less propulsive than its reputation suggests?
Those pacing issues — for a film remembered as relentlessly suspenseful, there are stretches where Psycho moves remarkably slowly. We talk about whether that deliberate patience increases the tension, whether some sequences simply drag, and how differently the film plays when you already know exactly what is waiting in the fruit cellar.
Can a movie survive when its
greatest pleasure is a twist everybody already knows? Norman Bates and Mother may be one of the least secret twists in cinema history. So what remains once surprise has disappeared? Does Psycho become richer on repeat viewing because we can watch Hitchcock constructing the deception — or does losing the revelation inevitably remove some of the film’s power?
The shower scene beyond the shower scene — one of the most famous sequences ever filmed has almost escaped the movie surrounding it. Does its enormous cultural reputation distort the way we watch Psycho now, leaving us waiting for moments we already know rather than experiencing the story Hitchcock originally designed?
Anthony Perkins is doing an extraordinary amount of work — the nervous laughter, the pauses, the tiny flashes of irritation whenever Marion mentions his mother. Once we know the truth, how much of Norman’s performance changes meaning without Perkins ever appearing to deliberately “play the twist”?
Marion Crane and the movie that disappears with her — Janet Leigh gives the first half enormous emotional weight, particularly as Marion begins regretting the decision that brought her to the motel. Does killing her make Psycho thrillingly unpredictable, or does the film sacrifice its most compelling emotional storyline for the sake of its greatest trick?
That psychologist scene. After Hitchcock has spent the entire film communicating through images, performance and implication, a psychiatrist arrives and essentially explains the movie to us. For a modern audience, it can feel astonishingly clunky — almost like somebody walking onstage after the curtain falls to explain what we just watched.
But did audiences in 1960 actually need it? Ideas surrounding dissociative identity, gender, sexuality and mental illness were understood very differently by mainstream audiences. We ask whether the scene becomes more defensible when considered historically — not necessarily because its psychology is accurate, but because Hitchcock may have needed to give contemporary viewers a framework through which to process what they had just seen.
And the performance within that infamous scene is actually excellent — Simon Oakland delivers an enormous amount of exposition with authority and conviction. So can something simultaneously be a strong performance and clumsy storytelling? And is our problem really with the scene itself, or simply with how radically cinematic language has changed since 1960?
Hitchcock versus the audience — stolen money, voyeurism, false protagonists, sympathetic murderers, hidden identities. Psycho continually makes us invest emotionally in something before revealing that we have been looking in completely the wrong direction. How much of the film is really about Norman Bates — and how much is Hitchcock demonstrating just how easily an audience can be controlled?
And finally, whether Psycho is the Best Film Ever — a film containing some of the greatest sequences, characters and filmmaking decisions in cinema history, but one where the pieces might actually be more perfect than the experience of watching the whole thing.
Become a Patron of this podcast and support the BFE at
https://www.patreon.com/BFE
2 hr 42 min
September 29Episode 350 - Crocodile Dundee
“That's not a knife. THAT'S a knife.”
Join Ian & Megs for our 350th episode as we leave the Australian outback behind, head for New York City and discover just how far charm, confidence and an extremely large knife can take you in Peter Faiman’s Crocodile Dundee (1986).
Liam isn’t with us this week — he tried telling Mick Dundee that he knew his way around the Australian wilderness. He has not been seen since.
Kev is also absent, having become distracted by the promise of a Walkabout Creek drinking session and apparently forgotten there was a podcast to record.
This week we discuss:
Mick Dundee as a character creation — Paul Hogan creates someone instantly recognisable, enormously charismatic and almost impossible not to like. But is Mick himself significantly better than the movie built around him?
Great character. Great movie? Crocodile Dundee gives us an iconic central character, memorable scenes and lines that have survived for forty years — but do those ingredients disguise a surprisingly thin story?
Memorable moments aren’t the same thing as narrative — the crocodile attack, the knife, the bar scenes, the subway ending. We remember an extraordinary amount of Crocodile Dundee, but does remembering the individual moments make us overestimate the strength of the film connecting them together?
The movie effectively changes genre halfway through — the Australian section plays almost like an adventure comedy, while New York turns Mick into a fish-out-of-water character. Which half works better, and does the film ever feel completely whole?
Paul Hogan’s performance — understated, relaxed and rarely chasing the punchline. How much of the movie’s success comes simply from Hogan understanding exactly how much — and how little — Mick Dundee needs to do?
Sue Charlton is much harder to understand than Mick — she is fascinated by Mick, romantically attached to Richard and seemingly capable of treating both men with remarkable cruelty depending upon what the scene requires.
Susan, Richard and Mick — this relationship increasingly frustrated us. Richard is certainly not presented as particularly sympathetic, but Sue repeatedly humiliates him, keeps him emotionally dangling and then seems surprised by his reactions. Meanwhile, she also plays with Mick’s feelings while refusing to be honest about what she actually wants.
Does the romance actually work? Mick and Sue have obvious chemistry, but does the screenplay earn their relationship — or are we simply carried along by Hogan and Linda Kozlowski until that enormously charming final scene tells us everything has worked out?
The changing comedy of Crocodile Dundee — some jokes remain beautifully simple and effective; others very clearly belong to 1986. How much can we separate the film’s enormous cultural impact from the parts that have aged awkwardly?
New York through Mick’s eyes — the movie’s best trick might be reversing our expectations. Mick initially appears to be the strange outsider, yet his straightforward view of the world often makes everyone around him seem considerably stranger.
And finally, whether Crocodile Dundee is the Best Film Ever — or simply one of cinema’s great reminders that creating an unforgettable character and giving him unforgettable lines is not necessarily the same thing as telling an unforgettable story.
Become a Patron of this podcast and support the BFE at
https://www.patreon.com/BFE
We are very thankful to the following Patreon backers for their generous support:
Juleen from It Goes Down In The PM
Hermes Auslander
James DeGuzman
Synthia
Shai Bergerfroind
Ariannah Who Loves BFE The Most
Paul Komoroski
Duane Smith (Duane Smith!)
Andy Dickson
Aashrey
Chris Pedersen
Randal Silva
Nate The Great
Rev Bruce
Richard
Ryan Kuketz
Dirk Diggler
Stew from the Stew World Order podcast
NorfolkDomus
John Humphrey's Right Foot
Timmy Tim Tim
Youth Hosteling with Chris Eubank
Buy some BFE merch at https://my-store-b4e4d4.creator-spring.com/.
Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor
Also, massive thanks to Moonlight Social for our age game theme song. You can catch more from them at https://www.moonlightsocialmusic.com/
2 hr 40 min
September 22Episode 349 - High Fidelity
“What really matters is what you like, not what you are like.”
Join Ian & Liam for our 349th episode as we alphabetise the vinyl, rank our emotional catastrophes and head back to Championship Vinyl for Stephen Frears’ High Fidelity (2000).
Megs isn’t with us this week — Rob asked her to rank her five worst break-ups and she decided she’d rather never speak to any of us again. Kev has disappeared into a record shop and refuses to come out until everyone agrees his Top Five Albums list is objectively correct.
This week we discuss:
John Cusack as Rob Gordon — charismatic, funny, self-aware... and still somehow completely incapable of recognising that he might be the problem.
A coming-of-age story for a man in his 30s — has Rob reached adulthood without ever actually growing up, and is the film really about emotional adolescence arriving about fifteen years late?
The strange A Christmas Carol connection — like Scrooge, Rob is forced to revisit his past, confront the stories he has told himself about his own unhappiness and realise that memory becomes much less comforting when other people get to challenge your version of events.
Breaking the fourth wall and controlling the narrative — does Rob talking directly to us make him more honest, or simply allow him to curate his own story in the same way he curates his record collection?
The Top Five obsession, music and taste as identity — are Rob’s lists just a funny character trait, or a defence mechanism that allows him to substitute having good taste for actually having a personality?
The ex-girlfriend tour and the women in Rob’s life — funny, revealing and deeply unhealthy. Does revisiting these relationships actually help Rob understand himself, and how much are we still trapped inside his self-centred perspective?
Barry, Dick and Jack Black before JACK BLACK — the supporting cast repeatedly threaten to walk away with the movie, while Jack Black seems to arrive already fully formed.
The ending and Rob’s emotional growth — does he genuinely mature, simply become more self-aware, or finally learn the fairly basic lesson that loving someone requires occasionally making the story about somebody other than yourself?
And finally, whether High Fidelity is the Best Film Ever — or simply the perfect film for anyone who has ever mistaken having excellent taste for having an excellent personality.
Become a Patron of this podcast and support the BFE at
https://www.patreon.com/BFE
We are very thankful to the following Patreon backers for their generous support:
Juleen from It Goes Down In The PM
Hermes Auslander
James DeGuzman
Synthia
Shai Bergerfroind
Ariannah Who Loves BFE The Most
Paul Komoroski
Duane Smith (Duane Smith!)
Andy Dickson
Aashrey
Chris Pedersen
Randal Silva
Nate The Great
Rev Bruce
Richard
Ryan Kuketz
Dirk Diggler
Stew from the Stew World Order podcast
NorfolkDomus
John Humphrey's Right Foot
Timmy Tim Tim
Youth Hosteling with Chris Eubank
Buy some BFE merch at https://my-store-b4e4d4.creator-spring.com/.
Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor
Also, massive thanks to Moonlight Social for our age game theme song. You can catch more from them at https://www.moonlightsocialmusic.com/
2 hr 56 min
September 15Episode 348 - Gran Torino (w/ BFF of the BFE: Hermes Auslander)
“Get off my lawn.”
Join Ian, Liam & Megs for our 348th episode as we pull the Gran Torino out of the garage and spend some time with the angriest man on the street for Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino (2008) — a film about racism, masculinity, community and the legacy we leave behind. Kev isn’t with us this week — Walt caught him looking at the Gran Torino and has been sitting on the porch staring at him ever since. Kev assures us he'll be allowed to move eventually. And we're delighted to welcome BFF of the BFE Hermes Auslander to help us unpack one of the most fascinating — and occasionally deeply uncomfortable — films of Eastwood's later career.
This week we discuss:
Clint Eastwood and legacy — how much does Gran Torino deliberately trade on everything Eastwood has represented on screen for the previous forty years?
Where does this rank among our Clint Eastwood films? We put Walt Kowalski up against the other Eastwood performances and movies we've covered on the BFE.
Masculinity according to Walt — tools, cars, beer, work and absolutely no discussion of feelings. Is the film celebrating this version of manhood or slowly dismantling it?
The creation of “the other” — Walt begins with an entire community reduced to stereotypes and slurs.
And the dismantling of “the other” — what happens once the people Walt has spent years categorising actually become people to him?
Walt and Thao — a mentorship that begins with an attempted car theft and becomes the emotional heart of the movie.
Sue — is she actually the person most responsible for breaking through Walt's defences?
The language of Gran Torino — can the film use racism to interrogate racism without occasionally becoming too comfortable with the joke?
The performances around Eastwood — does the decision to cast inexperienced Hmong actors add authenticity, or expose some pretty significant gaps in performance?
And is there one acting moment that nearly ruins the entire film? When Walt locks Thao away, does Bee Vang give us anything close to the desperation that this enormously important scene requires?
Walt's biological family versus the family next door — the people he's related to seem increasingly distant while the people he initially despises become his community.
Father Janovich is more important than he first appears — what begins as Walt mocking an inexperienced young priest develops into a relationship that becomes crucial to understanding the ending.
What does Walt actually leave behind? The Gran Torino matters, but his real legacy might have considerably less to do with the car.
Clint Eastwood playing Clint Eastwood — brilliantly weaponising his own screen persona, or occasionally drifting into self-parody?
That ending — after a career built around armed men solving problems with violence, Eastwood gives Walt one final confrontation and refuses to let him fire the gun.
But does everything finish a little too neatly? Walt gets his redemption, Thao gets the car and the gang problem gets wrapped up remarkably cleanly for a film that has spent so long dealing in messier realities.
Hermes joins us to tackle the redemption question — does learning to love a handful of people actually undo a lifetime of prejudice?
And finally, whether Gran Torino is the Best Film Ever — or Clint Eastwood putting his own cinematic legacy on trial.
Become a Patron of this podcast and support the BFE at
https://www.patreon.com/BFE
We are very thankful to the following Patreon backers for their generous support:
Juleen from It Goes Down In The PM
Hermes Auslander
James DeGuzman
Synthia
Shai Bergerfroind
Ariannah Who Loves BFE The Most
Paul Komoroski
Duane Smith (Duane Smith!)
Andy Dickson
Aashrey
Chris Pedersen
Randal Silva
Nate The Great
Rev Bruce
Richard
Ryan Kuketz
Dirk Diggler
Stew from the Stew World Order podcast
NorfolkDomus
John Humphrey's Right Foot
Timmy Tim Tim
Youth Hosteling with Chris Eubank
Buy some BFE merch at https://my-store-b4e4d4.creator-spring.com/.
Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor
Also, massive thanks to Moonlight Social for our age game theme song. You can catch more from them at https://www.moonlightsocialmusic.com/
5 hr 16 min
September 09 Fantasy Football Draft (2026) - The BFE Patreon League
Are you ready for some (fantasy) football? We're back with our Patrons once again and invited a returning special guest to join us to fill out the field We've got your BFE favourites - Ian, Liam, and KevDog, drafting live. We're also joined live by some of the BFE Patreon personalities, adding to the merriment and we've got a very special guest.
It's a peak behind the curtain as you catch the BFE group just kicking it as we pretend we know what we're doing with Fantasy Football. In between bites of Pizza and Chicken Nuggets we provide commentary on the picks by our absent drafters - whether they're drafting remotely or letting the computer do the heavy lifting)
There's pizza, banter, and a behind-the-scenes perspective that might help you know your BFE peeps a little bit better.
1 hr 50 min
September 08Episode 347 - Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
“All you motherfuckers are gonna pay.”
Join Ian & Liam for our 347th episode as we climb into a beat-up car, head for Hollywood and return to the View Askewniverse for Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) — a film containing approximately seventeen thousand celebrity cameos, several decades’ worth of jokes that have aged with varying degrees of dignity, and considerably more discussion of internet commenters than anyone in 2001 could possibly have realised would become relevant.
Megs isn’t with us this week — Justice invited her to join the girl gang and she immediately decided their road trip sounded considerably better than ours. Kev has gone to Hollywood to hunt down everyone who’s ever said anything mean about him on the internet. We tried to explain the scale of the task in 2026. He went anyway.
This week we discuss:
Are Jay and Silent Bob actually big enough characters to carry an entire movie? They work brilliantly wandering through the background of Kevin Smith's other films, but what happens when the supporting act suddenly has to become the main event?
Is the road trip the worst part of this road trip movie? The strange thing about Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is that it seems to get more entertaining the closer it gets to abandoning its actual plot. We ask whether everything involving getting to Hollywood is simply standing between us and the movie we really want to watch.
The more meta it gets, the more fun we're having — once Ben Affleck starts explaining the View Askewniverse, actors start playing themselves, Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season appears and Kevin Smith begins openly taking the piss out of his own career, the film suddenly finds another gear.
Kevin Smith celebrates his own cinematic universe years before Marvel made everybody obsessed with cinematic universes — characters, actors, locations and jokes from across his previous films all collide here. Is Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back effectively the Avengers: Endgame of dick and fart jokes?
We've aged out of this movie. But is that actually the movie's fault? There are jokes here that probably would have destroyed us twenty years ago and now generate rather more complicated reactions. Does no longer being the target audience make Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back a bad film — or did we simply make a questionable choice reviewing it in our forties?
Jason Mewes finally gets the entire stage — Jay has always been loud, crude and ridiculous, but can Mewes turn that into a character we actually want to follow for 100 minutes?
And then there's Silent Bob — Kevin Smith gives himself considerably less dialogue but considerably more responsibility. Does the Jay/Bob dynamic still work when the film can't simply deploy them for five minutes and move on?
What exactly did they say to Carrie Fisher? Princess Leia turns up as a nun, picks up two hitchhikers and finds herself involved in exactly the kind of joke you imagine her agent having several questions about. We investigate how on Earth Kevin Smith got her into this movie.
The cameos become an entire storytelling language — Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Mark Hamill, Chris Rock, Will Ferrell, Jon Stewart and seemingly everybody Kevin Smith had ever met. Which ones still absolutely kill, and when does recognising somebody become the joke?
Mark Hamill versus Cock-Knocker — because if you've somehow convinced Luke Skywalker to appear in your film, obviously you give him an enormous fist and make him fight Silent Bob.
The internet stuff has aged strangely well — the specific websites may have changed, but people anonymously saying horrible things about strangers online certainly haven't. Was Kevin Smith accidentally making a movie about the next quarter-century of internet culture?
The women of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back — Justice and the diamond thieves give the film something resembling an emotional storyline, but how well does that entire section survive a 2026 viewing?
Kevin Smith making a movie for Kevin Smith fans — there's almost no attempt to make this accessible to somebody walking into the View Askewniverse for the first time. Is that self-indulgence, or exactly why the film works when it works?
And finally, whether Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is the Best Film Ever — or a film we might have absolutely adored at 22 and have made the potentially catastrophic decision to revisit at 47.
Become a Patron of this podcast and support the BFE at
https://www.patreon.com/BFE
We are very thankful to the following Patreon backers for their generous support:
Juleen from It Goes Down In The PM
Hermes Auslander
James DeGuzman
Synthia
Shai Bergerfroind
Ariannah Who Loves BFE The Most
Paul Komoroski
Duane Smith (Duane Smith!)
Andy Dickson
Aashrey
Chris Pedersen
Randal Silva
Nate The Great
Rev Bruce
Richard
Ryan Kuketz
Dirk Diggler
Stew from the Stew World Order podcast
NorfolkDomus
John Humphrey's Right Foot
Timmy Tim Tim
Youth Hosteling with Chris Eubank
Buy some BFE merch at https://my-store-b4e4d4.creator-spring.com/.
Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor
Also, massive thanks to Moonlight Social for our age game theme song. You can catch more from them at https://www.moonlightsocialmusic.com/
2 hr 54 min
September 07 See It Or Skip It? - The End of Oak Street
FIRST 34:30: Spoiler-Free Review with our See It/Skip It Verdict
AFTER 34:30: Full Spoiler Review
It’s another edition of See It or Skip It and this time Ian is joined by James as they head to The End of Oak Street — David Robert Mitchell’s strange new collision of suburban family drama, science-fiction mystery and dinosaur-filled survival adventure.
Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor lead the Platt family, whose perfectly ordinary neighbourhood suddenly finds itself ripped out of suburbia and deposited somewhere very, very different. But does throwing a family, their house and apparently their entire street into the impossible make for a thrilling original blockbuster — or is The End of Oak Street trying to cram too many different movies into the same 99 minutes?
Ian and James dig into whether Mitchell — the filmmaker behind It Follows — can make the leap into big-budget spectacle without losing the sense of unease and mystery that made his earlier work so distinctive. Does the film actually have something interesting to say about family, home and what happens when everything familiar is suddenly stripped away? Or are we really just here to watch Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor run away from dinosaurs?
How well do Hathaway and McGregor sell the central family dynamic? Do Maisy Stella and Christian Convery give the younger Platts enough personality of their own? And when the film finally starts explaining exactly what has happened to Oak Street, does the answer make the mystery more satisfying — or was wondering what the hell was going on more fun than actually finding out?
The pair also get into the film’s action, Michael Giacchino’s score, its use of IMAX-scale spectacle and that wonderfully odd mixture of Spielbergian adventure, creature feature and domestic drama. Is this the kind of original studio blockbuster people keep insisting Hollywood doesn’t make anymore — and, if so, will audiences actually turn up when somebody finally makes one?
Can a movie about a suburban family transported into the unknown balance genuine emotional stakes with the simple pleasure of DINOSAURS? Does David Robert Mitchell successfully go big without losing what makes his filmmaking interesting? And perhaps most importantly: once your entire street has been transported through space and time, does the homeowners’ association still have jurisdiction?
All this and more in this week’s See It or Skip It review of The End of Oak Street — and of course, Ian and James will let you know if you should SEE IT or SKIP IT.
1 hr 12 min
September 01Episode 346 - Children of Men
“As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in.”
Join Ian, Liam & Megs for our 346th episode as we head into the bleak, terrifyingly plausible Britain of 2027 for Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006). Humanity hasn’t produced a child in eighteen years, society is collapsing, Britain has become an authoritarian state, and Clive Owen would really just like everyone to leave him alone. Kev isn’t with us this week — he attempted to enter the country without the correct paperwork and is currently enjoying the hospitality of the British government's immigration system.
And stick around for the Endgame, where we're joined by BFF of the BFE Synthia to help decide whether Children of Men deserves a place among the Best Films Ever.
This week we discuss:
How many screenwriters does it take to make Children of Men? Five credited writers had a hand in adapting P.D. James' novel. Does the finished film feel like the product of that many voices, or is Cuarón's vision strong enough to make it feel completely unified?
Clive Owen as Theo — an excellent actor giving a wonderfully understated performance, but was he a big enough movie star to carry a film this ambitious at the box office?
Michael Caine's Jasper becomes our most debated performance of the week — warm, funny and providing some desperately needed humanity... or playing in a completely different film from everybody around him?
How much world-building should the audience have to do? Children of Men famously refuses to stop and explain its dystopia, instead burying information in news reports, advertisements, background details and production design. Is that masterful "show, don't tell" filmmaking, or does the movie occasionally expect us to construct too much of its world on its behalf?
Ian digs into the screenplay — for a film with an enormous premise, why is the actual story remarkably simple, and does that simplicity allow the themes to become much bigger?
Liam explores hope in a hopeless world — when civilisation has effectively accepted its own extinction, what does the existence of one child actually represent?
Megs examines Kee's place within the story — is she given enough agency of her own, or does her importance as a symbol sometimes overwhelm her importance as a character?
Alfonso Cuarón's direction — those extraordinary long takes aren't simply technical flexes. How does keeping us trapped alongside Theo change the way we experience the violence around him?
The car sequence. We discuss how one seemingly impossible shot transforms from casual conversation to absolute nightmare without giving the audience a moment to escape.
The politics of Children of Men — refugees, nationalism, terrorism, state violence and fear of outsiders. Nearly twenty years after its release, has the film become even more uncomfortable to watch?
The production design — perhaps the film's greatest world-building weapon. From advertisements and graffiti to cages and buses, how much storytelling is happening in the corners of the frame?
The ceasefire — one of the most powerful sequences in the entire film. Does that brief moment of silence earn its enormous emotional impact?
And finally, with BFF of the BFE Synthia joining us for the Endgame, whether Children of Men is the Best Film Ever — or an extraordinary piece of filmmaking whose technical brilliance sometimes asks the audience to fill in more blanks than we'd like.
Become a Patron of this podcast and support the BFE at
https://www.patreon.com/BFE
We are very thankful to the following Patreon backers for their generous support:
Juleen from It Goes Down In The PM
Hermes Auslander
James DeGuzman
Synthia
Shai Bergerfroind
Ariannah Who Loves BFE The Most
Paul Komoroski
Duane Smith (Duane Smith!)
Andy Dickson
Aashrey
Chris Pedersen
Randal Silva
Nate The Great
Rev Bruce
Richard
Ryan Kuketz
Dirk Diggler
Stew from the Stew World Order podcast
NorfolkDomus
John Humphrey's Right Foot
Timmy Tim Tim
Youth Hosteling with Chris Eubank
Buy some BFE merch at https://my-store-b4e4d4.creator-spring.com/.
Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor
Also, massive thanks to Moonlight Social for our age game theme song. You can catch more from them at https://www.moonlightsocialmusic.com/
3 hr 58 min
August 25Episode 345 - The Last King of Scotland
“This is Africa. We do things differently here.”
Join Ian & Liam for our 345th episode as we head to 1970s Uganda for Kevin Macdonald’s The Last King of Scotland (2006), a film that puts us terrifyingly close to Idi Amin through the eyes of a fictional young Scottish doctor who discovers that getting into the dictator’s inner circle is considerably easier than getting back out. Megs isn’t with us this week — Amin has appointed her Minister of Something He Just Invented and she's sensibly keeping her head down. Kev? He mentioned that he disagreed with the President once and, well... nobody seems entirely sure where Kev is now.
This week we discuss:
Forest Whitaker’s extraordinary, Oscar-winning Idi Amin — charming, funny, frightening and capable of changing the temperature of a room in seconds. Is this one of the great performances of the 21st century?
James McAvoy’s Nicholas Garrigan — naïve, arrogant, selfish and frequently infuriating. How important is it that the fictional character through whom we experience this story isn't particularly likeable?
Fact versus fiction — Garrigan never existed, but Amin certainly did. Does inserting a fictional white protagonist give audiences an effective route into Ugandan history, or unnecessarily place him at the centre of somebody else's tragedy?
Ian breaks down the film's construction of Amin — how does the film make us understand his charisma without ever asking us to excuse what lies beneath it?
Liam explores the seduction of proximity to power — Garrigan sees the warning signs remarkably early, so why does he keep finding reasons to stay?
How much did we actually know about Idi Amin and Uganda before watching the film? We explore the history behind the story and how closely the broad trajectory of Amin's dictatorship matches what we're shown.
The tonal transformation — the first act occasionally feels like an exciting adventure for a young doctor abroad. How effectively does the film tighten the screws until that same world becomes absolutely terrifying?
Amin the man versus Amin the monster — are the moments of humour, insecurity, paranoia and apparent warmth what make Whitaker's portrayal so frightening?
Garrigan's decisions — there's being naïve, there's making mistakes, and then there's Nicholas Garrigan. At what point did we stop sympathising with him and start shouting at the screen?
The women in Garrigan's story — does the film recognise the consequences of his behaviour toward them, or are they too often used to propel his journey?
The violence — much of the film holds back before suddenly refusing to do so. Does that restraint make the moments when Macdonald finally shows us the horror even more effective?
The final act — The Last King of Scotland eventually becomes almost unbearably tense. Does turning historical atrocity into thriller mechanics enhance the film's impact or risk trivialising the reality behind it?
And finally, whether The Last King of Scotland is the Best Film Ever — or a deeply uncomfortable historical drama elevated by one absolutely towering central performance.
Become a Patron of this podcast and support the BFE at
https://www.patreon.com/BFE
We are very thankful to the following Patreon backers for their generous support:
Juleen from It Goes Down In The PM
Hermes Auslander
James DeGuzman
Synthia
Shai Bergerfroind
Ariannah Who Loves BFE The Most
Paul Komoroski
Duane Smith (Duane Smith!)
Andy Dickson
Aashrey
Chris Pedersen
Randal Silva
Nate The Great
Rev Bruce
Richard
Ryan Kuketz
Dirk Diggler
Stew from the Stew World Order podcast
NorfolkDomus
John Humphrey's Right Foot
Timmy Tim Tim
Youth Hosteling with Chris Eubank
Buy some BFE merch at https://my-store-b4e4d4.creator-spring.com/.
Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor
Also, massive thanks to Moonlight Social for our age game theme song. You can catch more from them at https://www.moonlightsocialmusic.com/
3 hr 30 min
August 22 Media Madness - Best Films Ineligible For Review By The BFE
Angels & Demons or Thor? Interview with the Vampire or The Rock? What happens when some of our favourite films fall just short of the standards required to qualify for a regular Best Film Ever review? To be eligible for the BFE, a film needs to score either 85% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes OR 8.0 or higher on IMDb — which leaves an awful lot of beloved, ridiculous, divisive and occasionally brilliant movies stranded on the outside looking in.
So this week, we're giving the rejects their moment.
Joined by some of our Friends of the Podcast — Synthia, Paul Komoroski, Ariannah, Shai Bergerfroind and Hermes Auslander — we've assembled a field of the best films officially ineligible for review by the BFE and thrown them into a winner-takes-all knockout tournament. Expect films we can't believe aren't eligible, films whose scores suddenly make perfect sense, brutal head-to-head choices, questionable taste, furious campaigning and at least one result that will have somebody demanding an immediate change to the BFE constitution.
They may never qualify for a proper episode — but one of them is about to be crowned The Best Film Ineligible for Review by the BFE.
1 hr 47 min

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Your new favourite transatlantic film review podcast, trawling through the blockbusters and critical darlings in search of the best film ever.

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