Let's Finally Watch This

It's 1925. The Russian Revolution is over. Vladimir Lenin believes that “the cinema is for us the most important of the arts," leading the Soviet Union to create the world's first professional film school. With a genius for editing that is still discussed today, director Sergei Eisenstein creates a movie that was once considered the greatest movie ever made.

Battleship Potemkin tells the inspired-by-a-true-story tale of the sailors of the titular battleship and their struggle against their oppressive officers and government. It's art, but it's also propaganda.

What Battleship Potemkin offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: an entry point to discuss Soviet montage theory and the Kuleshov effect; a masterfully edited silent epic; the famous Odessa Steps sequence; and a powerfully visceral film.

Show Notes

It's 1915. Film is innovating, but some companies don't believe that longer features are viable. Enter director D.W. Griffith, who with The Birth of a Nation, pushed the medium forward with a three-plus-hour historical drama that is often considered the first film masterpiece.

Featuring white Southerners as the heroes against uneducated, just-freed slaves, it is also undeniably racist and one of the most controversial films of all time.

What The Birth of a Nation offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: a pioneering example of early film full of impressive scale, technique, and talent; a deeply one-sided view of Reconstruction; an unironic triumphal scene with the KKK as the good guys; and a whole lot to wrestle with concerning the intersection of great filmmaking and deplorable themes.

Show Notes

Welcome to Season 4 of Let's Finally Watch This.

It's 1905. Movies are in their infancy, including Dutch film. This silent Dutch comedy, directed by Willy Mullens, begins with a man napping in a beach chair until he is surrounded by the incoming tide. And then he removes his pants to keep them dry. And then...well, the movie is less than 6 minutes long, so I don't want to spoil it.

What The Misadventure of a French Gentleman Without Pants at the Zandvoort Beach offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies (besides an outrageously long title): a front row seat to movie-as-novelty, extras who stare at the camera, part chase and part "actuality," and the experience of watching the oldest surviving Dutch film.

Show Notes

Here's a surprise mega-length bonus episode for you! We join forces with Kordell Cabe and Justin Warfle, hosts of The Consensus Movie podcast, to journey through the last century of cinema history and share our favorite movies from each decade. Join us for a wide-ranging discussion of the movies that have impacted us from the 1920s on.

It's time to wrap up our third season of Let's Finally Watch This. We start by making a few observation about this season as a whole before diving into the heart of the episode--our Ranking of Essentialness for this season's movies! We also share our personal favorites from the season.

Thanks for joining us for yet another journey through the decades of film!

Show Notes

It's 2014. Franchise movies abound, and American blockbusters are making bank around the world. But some directors, like Wes Anderson, are making movies that defy blockbuster conventions and that experiment with film style. The Grand Budapest Hotel, considered by many to be Anderson's magnum opus, follows concierge Monsieur Gustave and his Lobby Boy protege Zero as Gustave inherits a famous painting, is accused of murder, breaks out of jail, and escapes from fascist Zubrowkan troops (among other escapades).

What The Grand Budapest Hotel offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: a star-studded cast, including Ralph Fiennes, Adrian Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, and Owen Wilson, among others; a nostalgia for the culture of old Europe; an odd couple pairing with fussy, pompous Gustave and simple-minded Zero; and Anderson's unique, meticulously constructed style.

Show Notes

It's 2004. Teen movies exploded as a genre in the 1980s and have continued largely unabated since. With Mean Girls, comedian Tina Fey helps bring forth a teen movie that resonates with its viewers, both reflecting high school girl culture and critiquing it. The plot follows previously homeschooled Cady Heron's involvement in the popular girl clique "The Plastics," her slow transformation into a Plastic herself, and the fallout that follows.

What Mean Girls offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: an honest look at mean girl culture; rumors, gossip, and a Burn Book; laughs alongside the moral fall and recovery of Cady Heron; and possible flashbacks to your public school career.

Show Notes

It's 1994. The top-grossing film is The Lion King, but right after that is Forrest Gump. Gump, played by Tom Hanks, wins audiences with his memorable phrases ("Life is like a box of chocolates"), his optimistic outlook, and his "right place, right time" escapades through American history. It's a comedy, a drama, and a movie that left its mark on culture.

What Forrest Gump offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: a singular, iconic character perfectly played by Tom Hanks; a meditation on the tumultuous second half of the 20th century; a series of fortuitous events where the nice guy always comes out on top; and a story that refuses to fit neatly into normal categories.

Show Notes

It's 1984. A glance at the year's top ten grossing movies shows we're deep into the blockbuster era. Director James Cameron makes his mark on science fiction with The Terminator, an action-thriller that combines the relentless threat of a horror movie with a time travel backstory--and it captured the culture's imagination. It's a film that even if you haven't seen it, you know about Skynet, the Terminator robots, and Sarah Connor.

What The Terminator offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: Arnold Schwarzenegger as a relentless killing machine; a well-constructed backstory that takes a small cast and gives it big stakes; plenty of violence and mayhem; and the iconic line, "I'll be back."

Show Notes

It's 1974. It's the height of New Hollywood, and Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski, is a quintessential example of the darker subject matter and bleak outlook often associated with the movement. Considered one of the greatest movies of all time, this neo-noir crime drama follows private investigator J. J. Gittes, played by Jack Nicholson, as he digs into a world of government corruption, murder, and tangled family relationships amidst a Los Angeles drought.

What Chinatown offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: a tightly written, highly regarded script; a compelling mystery based in Los Angeles's historical water wars; a complicated femme fatale who knows more than she is willing to share; and a bleak, though famous, ending.

Show Notes