Has any director achieved more than Chantal Akerman while still in their 20s? The only comparison point is really Orson Welles. This is the woman who made Jeanne Dielman, voted the greatest film of all-time by Sight & Sound, when she was 24, and the masterpieces kept coming.

In this episode, Matt and Chris dive into what makes Chantal Akerman's early masterpieces so special, from their daring and changing form, redefining what cinema could be, to their deeply personal, human, and touching connections.

We will also explore why these films put so many people off, even pissing them off, and the controversy around Jeanne Dielman in particular - but more importantly, we will discuss each of the 4 major feature films Akerman made in the 70s - timestamps included:

• Je tu il elle / I, You, He, She (1974) - 00:17:12
• Jeanne Dielman (1975)- 00:32:45
• News From Home (1976) - 00:52:07
• Les rendez-vous d'Anna / The Meetings of Anna (1978) - 01:05:01

We also made the decision to include the more often overlooked 5th major film she made immediately after her 4 early masterpieces:

• Toute une nuit / A Whole Night (1982) - 01:16:40

A worthy inclusion in this set? Let us know, but we felt we had to talk about it!

Are biopics mostly just lazy summaries of Wikipedia articles? A production mill of comfort food aimed to cash in on the icons of your youth/past? Or: Are they great insights into intriguing people of the past and present?

Join us as our hosts share their disdain for conventional biographies, before being told - by IMDb - just how many biopics they actually love.

For 13 years, the ICMForum has hosted a poll of obscure favourites. In that time, only 6 films have won.

In this episode, we discuss we discuss each winner in detail, and talk about why you NEED to seek them out.

Oh, and the 14th edition is going on right now. You can submit your vote up until the 30th of September.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:10:19 - Letter Never Sent

00:26:53 - Sundays and Cybele

00:49.09 - Muddy River

01:03:48 - Carriage to Vienna

01:15:37 - Rapture

01:32:42 - Birth Certificate

Buster Keaton was so dedicated to his craft that he broke his neck and still finished the take. Then showed up the next day.

In this episode, we trace his rise from Fatty Arbuckle's sidekick to his own master, ending the journey while Keaton was still at the top of the world, with his last solo-directorial effort in the silent era: The General.

We'll chat through his best shorts, with particular focus on One Week and The High Sign, get into his first attempt at a feature film with Three Ages, and then cover his two arguably best films, Sherlock Jr. and The General.

Along the way, we'll pause to just awe at the incredibly creative, hilarious, and often death-defying gags and stunts, and talk about why he remains icon to this day.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:10:22 - Fatty Archbuckle's Sidekick

00:17:47 - One Week

00:30:02 - The High Sign

00:35:02 - Three Ages

00:45:40 - Sherlock Jr

00:54:13 - The General

How many films will we be able to agree on this time? Listen in as Arthur, Chris, Sol, and Tom reveal their top 10 films of 2024.

Spoiler: As usual, even our number 1s are not safe from criticism, though we did have a few surprising overlaps and agreements.

And while we may not see eye to eye on everything, we do seem to all have one thing in common: the belief that 2024 was a pretty amazing year for cinema.

The ICMForum community has voted on the best films of the 2020s (so far). Join us as we present and react to their (our) choices, with a surprising number of disagreements!

In this episode, we go through the top 50. Feel free to explore the complete list of ICMForum's Top 250 of the 2020s.

You can also see the list on IMDb and iCheckMovies.

Do you love exactly the same films for exactly the same reasons as you did 10-20-30+ years ago?

In this episode, we try to figure out how and why taste changes, and explore how different our preferences are from when we first got into cinema.

We will also ponder the very serious possibility that cinema acts as a literal drug, where the more exposed we are, the stronger a fix we need.

Could it be that we are all on the same path to more and more extreme tastes, be it experimental cinema or the goriest horrors we can find?

Listen in and find out.

Showgirls went from being considered one of the worst films of all time to one of the best in less than 30 years.

How does a film go from winning both Worst Picture and Worst Picture of the Decade at the Razzies to being in They Shoot Pictures Don't They's Top 1000?

Was everyone who saw it then just "wrong"? Did they come in with the wrong expectations? Or: Was Showgirls just too ahead of its time?

In this episode, Sol and Arthur tackle these and more questions while complaining, over and over again, how none of the original haters wanted to rewatch the film and join the podcast.

Should everyone just bite the bullet and see Showgirls again?

He made the B-movie about a rubber tyre killing people with its psychic powers. He had superheroes give monsters cancer and stoners raise a dog-sized fly. Quentin Dupieux is weird. He's surreal. And ... kinda trashy and lowbrow when he wants. 

In this episode, we turn everything on its head, starting with his most recent film (that we have all seen - Daaaaaalí! - and working our way back to his very first mini-feature Nonfilm - as we try to figure out what makes him tick and how we could explain his films at a dinner party.

Timestamps:

Intro: 00:00:00

Dinner Party Pitch - 00:03:00

Daaaaaalí! - 00:12:14

Yannick - 00:22:08

Smoking Causes Coughing - 00:34:07

Incredible but True - 00:39:38

Mandibules - 00:45:00

Deerskin - 00:51:17

Keep an Eye Out - 00:56:32

Reality - 00:59:23

Wrong Cops - 01:04:33

Wrong - 01:09:19

Rubber - 01:11:46

Steak - 01:19:43

Nonfilm - 01:23:17