Contra Zoom Pod

Fantasia Festival is still going on, but we had the chance to interview two directors who had their films screening at this years fest! 

First up both Dakota and Rachel chat with KC Carthew, the director of Fantasia's opening night film Polaris, afterwards Rachel goes solo as she talks to Berkley Brady the director of Dark Nature.

Read Dakota and Rachel's reviews of Polaris and Sara Clements review of Dark Nature.

Follow Rachel on Twitter and check out her website for more great reviews.

Listen to Contra Zoom on Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Overcast, RadioPublic, Breaker, Podcast Addict and more!

Please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Send us a screenshot of your 5 star rating and review to [email protected] and we will send you free stickers!

Thank you Eric and Kevin Smale for the original theme songs, Jimere for the interlude music and Stephanie Prior for designing the logo.

Follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook and visit our official website.

Dakota and Rachel share their picks for their top five movies of the year so far and a few honourable mentions!

Dakota's picks were After Yang, The Batman, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Top Gun: Maverick and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

Rachel's picks were Ambulance, Apples, Ashgrove, Cha Cha Real Smooth and Fire of Love.

Read Rachel's contributions to That Shelf's best movies of the year list.

Follow Rachel on Twitter and check out her website for more great reviews.

Listen to Contra Zoom on Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Overcast, RadioPublic, Breaker, Podcast Addict and more!

Please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Send us a screenshot of your 5 star rating and review to [email protected] and we will send you free stickers!

Thank you Eric and Kevin Smale for the original theme songs, Jimere for the interlude music and Stephanie Prior for designing the logo.

Follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook and visit our official website.

We return with coverage of this year's Toronto Japanese Film Festival which showcases the finest Japanese films that are often getting either Canadian or International premiere's, giving audiences a chance to finally see the best movies coming out of Japan. We covered the festival last year on 155: Toronto Japanese Film Festival. On this show we talk about Midnight Swan (which won Best Film at the 2021 Japanese Academy Awards), The Pursuit of Perfection, It's a Flickering Life (2022 Best Film nominee), Ribbon and The Pass: Last Days of the Samurai.

Read Rachel's reviews of Midnight Swan, The Pursuit of Perfection, Ribbon and Junk Head.

Follow the TJFF on Twitter and Instagram. 

Follow Rachel on Twitter and check out her website for more great reviews.

Listen to Contra Zoom on Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Overcast, RadioPublic, Breaker, Podcast Addict and more!

Please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Send us a screenshot of your 5 star rating and review to [email protected] and we will send you free stickers!

Thank you Eric and Kevin Smale for the original theme songs, Jimere for the interlude music and Stephanie Prior for designing the logo.

Follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook and visit our official website.

For our special 200th episode Dakota and Rachel decided to look back at films that made them the movie watchers they are today. From fond early moviegoing memories to the first time they were challenged to what made them want to be a critic. They picked five films each and got some voicemails from friends of the show who wanted to share their picks!

Dakota's picks: The Birds/North By Northwest, The Shawshank Redemption, 12 Angry Men, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Great Beauty.

Rachel's picks: The Lion King, The Skulls, Superbad, Soul and The Sound of Music. 

How many picks have you seen? Check out our Letterboxd list!

To learn the full history of Contra Zoom, listen to Better Know a Contributor - Dakota Arsenault.

Read Dakota's inspiring review of The Great Beauty. 

Watch The Inevitable Downfall of the Judd Apatow Comedy.

Special thanks to Brodie Cotnam (Halloween), Matthew Simpson from Awesome Friday (Jurassic Park), Alex Watson (Black Narcissus), Calum MacNab from Scaretroducing (Flight of the Navigator) and Thomas Stoneham-Judge from For Reel (Cloverfield) for sending in voicemail clips of movies that made them!  

Follow Rachel on Twitter and check out her website for more great reviews.

Listen to Contra Zoom on Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Overcast, RadioPublic, Breaker, Podcast Addict and more!

Please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Send us a screenshot of your 5 star rating and review to [email protected] and we will send you free stickers!

Thank you Eric and Kevin Smale for the original theme songs, Jimere for the interlude music and Stephanie Prior for designing the logo.

Follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook and visit our official website.

For the last two year's for my birthday I've dedicated the podcast to celebrating some of my all time favourite movies! In 2020 there was 114: 30 Films in 30 Years and in 2021 it was 157: Best Films Through the Decades. Returning after being on last year's birthday special is Bil Antoniou, last heard on episode 189: 2022 Oscar Recap. We go through ten different film genres and name our favourite films from each of them! See our picks below (Dakota's first, then Bil's)!

Comedy: What We Do in the Shadows and Auntie Mame

Crime: Hell or High Water and L.A. Confidential

Musical: Amadeus and Topsy-Turvy

Documentary: O.J.: Made in America and Hearts and Minds

Animated: Fantastic Mr. Fox and Fantasia

SciFi: Ex Machina and 2001: A Space Odyssey

Horror: Rosemary's Baby and Halloween

Romance: Portrait of a Lady on Fire and All The Heaven Allows

Action: Seven Samurai and Goldfinger

Biopic: Love & Mercy and Out of Africa

How many of our picks have you seen? Compare on our Letterboxd list.

Read Bil's That Criterion Shelf article about Judy Garland and The 25 Best Biopics of All Time, that Bil contributed to. Visit My Old Addiction and follow Bil on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Check out Bad Gay Movies on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Listen to Contra Zoom on Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Overcast, RadioPublic, Breaker, Podcast Addict and more!

Please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Send us a screenshot of your 5 star rating and review to [email protected] and we will send you free stickers!

Thank you Eric and Kevin Smale for the original theme songs, Jimere for the interlude music and Stephanie Prior for designing the logo.

Follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook and visit our official website.

In our third "A History Of..." series after the success charting the rise of NEON, A24 Films and The Criterion Collection we are looking at Laika Studios, a film studio that has revitalized the art of stop motion animation. The studio put out its first film in 2009 with Coraline and since then have released five Oscar nominated movies including Kubo & the Two Strings and ParaNorman. We trace their roots of the studio and how they grow out of another groundbreaking studio.

Watch the Will Vinton Oscar winning short Closed Mondays, Laika's first short film Moongirl and the original animatic for Kubo & The Two Strings.

Check out episode 171: The Unholy Trinity of Folk Horror as mentioned during the show. 

What "A History Of..." would you like us to cover next? 

Listen to Contra Zoom on Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Overcast, RadioPublic, Breaker, Podcast Addict and more!

Please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Send us a screenshot of your 5 star rating and review to [email protected] and we will send you free stickers!

Thank you Eric and Kevin Smale for the original theme songs, Jimere for the interlude music and Stephanie Prior for designing the logo.

Follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook and visit our official website.

In lieu of a full episode this week, we bring you the sixth in our series of bonus episodes, Better Know a Contributor, where we ask frequent guests of the show 10 Contra Zoom Pod movie questions so you can learn more about your favourite voices. On this show is Jeff Bulmer, one half of the Classic Movies Live podcast. We talk what made how Spanglish kept Jeff in check, his favourite movies (Requiem for a Dream, Spider-Man 2 and Redline), last movie turned off (Deep Water) and more!

Listen to Jeff's infamous Best Original Song rant from episode 147: Judas and the Mank.

Check out and subscribe to Classic Movies Live on Spotify and follow them on Twitter. Read Jeff's movie reviews on his personal site.

Check out previous Better Know a Contributor shows focusing on Dakota, Rachel, Sammy, Stephanie and Calum to learn more about the extended CZP family.

Listen to Contra Zoom on Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Overcast, RadioPublic, Breaker, Podcast Addict and more!

Please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Send us a screenshot of your 5 star rating and review to [email protected] and we will send you free stickers!

Thank you Eric and Kevin Smale for creating the awesome theme music and Stephanie Prior for designing the logo.

Follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook and visit our official website.

With the recent release of Crimes of the Future, the newest film directed by David Cronenberg and his first in almost a decade, we are celebrating the auteur's proper return to the body horror in quite a long time. We look at how body horror helps move the story along and what it has to offer in helping to better understand his films themes. We are focusing on The Fly, Videodrome and Naked Lunch and how they influenced Crimes of the Future. Joining the show for the first film is film critic Alisha Mughal. 

Read Alisha's review of Crimes of the Future and Rachel's David Cronenberg's 10 Greatest Body Horror Moments Ranked.

Follow Alisha on Twitter.

Follow Rachel on Twitter and check out her website for more great reviews.

Listen to Contra Zoom on Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Overcast, RadioPublic, Breaker, Podcast Addict and more!

Please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Send us a screenshot of your 5 star rating and review to [email protected] and we will send you free stickers!

Thank you Eric and Kevin Smale for the original theme songs, Jimere for the interlude music and Stephanie Prior for designing the logo.

Follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook and visit our official website.

We continue our series going through the entire catalog of A24's films. On this episode we are looking at 2014's Locke directed by Steven Knight. The film stars Tom Hardy as a man driving to a hospital as a woman prepares to give birth to his child. On this drive he has to fight potential consequences for making this decision, including telling his wife he cheated on her and his work that on the eve of a massive project he can not be there to oversee it. Joining the show is Thomas Stoneham-Judge is a film critic for the site For Reel.

Our double bill pairings include All is Lost (Dakota), Tape (Rachel) and Phone Booth (Thomas).

If you haven't heard our deep dive into the origins of A24, listen to episode 108: A History of A24 Films and our last episode in this series 194: A24 Retrospective - Under the Skin. Check out all previous Double Bill Pairings on Letterboxd.

Follow Thomas on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. 

Follow Rachel on Twitter and check out her website for more great reviews.

Listen to Contra Zoom on Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Overcast, RadioPublic, Breaker, Podcast Addict and more!

Please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Send us a screenshot of your 5 star rating and review to [email protected] and we will send you free stickers!

Thank you Eric and Kevin Smale for the original theme songs, Jimere for the interlude music and Stephanie Prior for designing the logo.

Follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook and visit our official website.

Make/Remake examines how two films that share the same story. Not to say what film was better or worse, but how they are similar and different while following the same arcs. This time we are looking at the 1962 J. Lee Thompson version of Cape Fear (a film celebrating its 60th anniversary this year) and the 1991 Martin Scorsese remake also called Cape Fear. Check out our past Make/Remake's for more great comparison episodes and see the Letterboxd list.

Follow Rachel on Twitter and check out her website for more great reviews.

Listen to Contra Zoom on Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Overcast, RadioPublic, Breaker, Podcast Addict and more!

Please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Send us a screenshot of your 5 star rating and review to [email protected] and we will send you free stickers!

Thank you Eric and Kevin Smale for the original theme songs, Jimere for the interlude music and Stephanie Prior for designing the logo.

Follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook and visit our official website.