From Under The Rock

With awards season now rapidly shrinking in our rear view, we thought this week we'd aim for something more brief and more fun, while featuring another delightful animated film as animation never gets enough attention or love. This week, it's Studio Ghibli's charming 1992 entry "Porco Rosso." Starring Michael Keaton, Cary Elwes, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, and Susan Egan (in the English translation that is), this story of a man-turned-pig who's the best pilot in all of the Mediterranean combines Miyazaki's classic charm with all of his usual warnings about letting ourselves get so distracted by conflict and destruction that we forget to focus on love, family, and the things that really matter. Serious topics for sure, but this one still kept us captivated and smiling from start to finish. Join us!

With just a couple days to go before the 97th Academy Awards, this week we're covering what was once maybe a presumptive favorite to walk away with Best Picture, but now runs neck and neck alongside others due to an A.I. controversy and, frankly, one of the most obscene runtimes Hollywood has ever delivered to us. Yes indeed, it's "The Brutalist." Featuring absolutely beautiful, nuanced performances from Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, and Guy Pearce, this half-gorgeous, half-obtuse slog through the story of fictional brutalist architect Laszlo Toth really had a lot of potential, but just left your hosts wondering "Did this script see a second draft?" Listen along with us to cut a couple hours out of your Brutalist experience. ^_~

With the Oscars right around the corner, this week we finally took the plunge and braved "The Substance." Boasting a better score with critics than with audiences, this movie is undoubtedly a shocking one, and one that is almost certainly not for the faint of heart (or stomach), but holy hell did this movie have something to say and did it ever say it well. Starring Demi Moore in what many have called her greatest performance ever, alongside Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid, this agressively Hollywood, aggressively neon tragedy mixed body horror with biting satire to put together a cocktail that was truly enrapturing from start to finish. You won't be able to look away, even if you want to...

As awards season marches on, this week we took a look at one of the dark-horse darlings of 2024: Anora. Already the winner of the Critics' Choice Award for Best Picture and the coveted Palme d'Or from the Cannes Film Festival, this visceral Cinderella story gone wrong features a powerhouse performance from Mikey Madison as the titular Anora. It is a story of perceived love, performed love, and the tribulations of a young woman whose only crime was thinking that finally fate was giving her a chance to be the lucky one. Quite the Valentine's Day special indeed. Hold onto your butts, dear listeners, this one is intense.

This week as we continue to cover films in the running to be honored at the 97th Oscars next month, we're taking a quick detour from Best Picture nominees to cover one of the nominees for Best Animated Feature Film - The Wild Robot. Starring Lupita Nyong'o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Catherine O'Hara, Matt Berry, and Mark Hamill (what a cast!), this heartfelt tale about community and kindness being the most important survival skills anyone can learn definitely tugged at both your hosts' heartstrings and really rang true as an important message in these turbulent times we're all trying to soldier through. Honestly, this one could've (and maybe should've) been a Best Picture nominee. Join us!

After a much needed week off, and now with Oscar nominations officially having been announced, we're back with another episode covering one of the movies you'll certainly be hearing a lot about in the coming weeks leading up to the 97th Academy Awards: Emilia Pérez. Starring Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, and Selena Gomez, this unique and controversial film follows the story of a Mexican cartel leader desperately in need of help to leave behind the violence (and gender) of her old life to finally undergo gender affirming care to become the woman she has always known herself to be and live her truth. Definitely not one to miss out on, join us!

With the Golden Globes just recently behind us and awards season now in full swing, we once again turn our attention to the upcoming Academy Awards in March, much as we did for a few weeks last year. This year, we're endeavoring to bring you more of the Best Picture nominees than the three we managed in 2024, and with already limited time between now and the Oscars currently scheduled for March 2nd, we're getting a bit of a headstart, despite not yet having official nomination announcements. Going with our best instincts for some films ~most likely~ to be nominated for the next couple of weeks until we have the official list. This week: Conclave. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Jonathan Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini, this gripping thriller from inside the very heart of the Catholic Church brought us a powerhouse performance from Fiennes, a grimacingly delightful amount of political allegory, and a truly unexpected twist that left both of us pleasantly surprised at this movie's capacity to surprise us. Definitely not one to miss, dear listeners!

Happy New Year, listeners! As we look ahead now to all the ambition and promise of the new year, this week we watched a film featuring one of the most ambitious and accomplished characters of all time - the great Sherlock Holmes. In this iteration, he is portrayed by the incomparable Sir Ian McKellen, who alongside Laura Linney, Milo Parker, and Hiroyuki Sanada, delivers an incredibly heartfelt and moving performance as a version of Holmes perhaps previously unseen and unexplored. An older Holmes who is beginning to lose just a bit of that brilliant mind of his and is struggling desperately to cling to enough of it to piece together the answer to one last mystery...

Merry Christmas, dear listeners! This week we covered one of the most iconic, most heartfelt, and most meme-ified Christmas movies of all time: "Love, Actually." Starring just about every last one of your favorite British stars (Grant, Thompson, Firth, Rickman, Nighy, Ejiofor, Atkinson, Knightley, etc. the list LITERALLY goes on an on), this magnum opus from Richard Curtis examines the complexities of countless different forms and feelings of love, and gives real comedic and profound context to the complex emotions many of us experience during this magical and unique time of year. Join us!

As the holiday season rolls along, the warmth of community swells all around us to the point of almost sometimes seeming just a little magic. And in some cases, like those of the fictional towns from the delightfully silly, cookie-cutter Christmas romance movies that come out every year, that magic is more than just a little real. Enter "Hot Frosty," one of 2024's most ridiculously entertaining such films, starring recovering Mean Girl Lacey Chabert across from hunky-snowman-granted-life-through-the-power-of-holiday-cheer Dustin Milligan. This movie is and was pretty much everything we expected it to be and not a single moment of boredom was had. Come join us for this delightfully silly little flick.