This Had Oscar Buzz

In the years after his Oscar win for  The Untouchable s, Sean Connery remained a major movie star and box office draw. The latter proved untrue in 1990 when  The Russia House  fizzled at the holiday box office. Based on the John le Carré novel, the film follows Connery as a publisher pulled into espionage in Russia during perestroika, only to fall in love with an informant’s w...

In 2018, we were rooting for the comeback of director Karyn Kusama, emerging with the promising crime thriller  Destroyer . Centering on Nicole Kidman playing against type as a grizzled investigator haunted by a previous undercover case gone wrong, the film applies a serpentine structure to its breed of hard boiled LA noir to mixed results. After receiving a mixed reaction on the festival cir...

We have writer Emily St. James back with us this week, so naturally we’re breaking our own record for oldest film discussed on the show (after her episode on Moby Dick)! Based on the Broadway smash comedy,  Arsenic and Old Lace was Frank Capra’s intentional return to comedy after a string of serious movies. Starring Cary Grant as the critic nephew of two aging sisters, the farce u...

We’re back home from our latest trip to the Toronto International Film Festival! And as always, we’re offering you a buffet of our reactions from a week’s worth of movies that will be coming soon to a theatre near you! We talk about the newest People’s Choice Award winner  La Bola Negra , along with the International People’s Choice Award winner (and Best Actor conten...

After their 2017 exposé of the horrors Harvey Weinstein inflicted upon women for decades, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey detailed their process in their 2019 book  She Said . Post-pandemic, Maria Schrader directed an adaptation that reflected the lives of both reporters in tandem with their work and their struggle to get women on the record about the case. With a strong and sprawling ensemble l...

Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year,  Hedwig and the Angry Inch  is a musical like no other. A Off-Broadway smash in 1998 from creators John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask, Mitchell also starred as the titular volatile rocker who escaped East Berlin after a forced surgery to live as a woman, only to have her songs stolen by the protege she takes under her wing. For the film, M...

We welcome back Richard Lawson this week to discuss Tommy Lee Jones’s final (to date!) directorial effort, 2014’s  The Homesman . Led by Hilary Swank, the film follows a 19th century woman charged to transport three women with “prairie madness” across the Nebraska Territory. With Jones as a wayward man who assists her journey, the film debuted at Cannes and promised a...

As  The Odyssey  continues to prove to be a career peak for Christopher Nolan and possible return to the Oscar stage, we’re looking back at a very different take on Homer’s epic poem. In 2024,  The Return  reunited Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche as the Ithacan king and queen – but limited the story just to the fallout from Odysseus’s arrival back to...

Playing by Heart (1998) Directed by Willard Carroll Shown: Angelina Jolie, Ryan Phillippe In the bygone moviegoing trend of “interconnected stories of Angelenos,” this week’s episode is a forgotten entry with a loaded cast. Playing By Heart from writer/director Willard Carroll follows multiple stories of romantic struggles, with Gena Rowlands and Sean Connery as a TV chef and her...

It’s our 400th episode this week, so we had to go big. What could be more fitting than a notorious bomb with major star pedigree?! No stranger to misfires, Warren Beatty nevertheless was one of the biggest names in Hollywood that could generate buzz with any project – and more prophetically in this case – could have any budgetary or creative demand met.  Town and Country &nb...

Emmy winner Jeff Hiller joins us this week to talk about one of our beloved Nicole Holofcener’s earliest films.  Lovely and Amazing  follows a Los Angeles family of women burdened by insecurities, from the mother (Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn) opting in to liposuction to her two adult daughters who help her with a preteen adopted sister. Debuting at festivals in 2001, the film rele...

With  Spider-Man: Brand New Day  arriving in theatres this week, we’re looking back at director Destin Daniel Cretton’s 2013 debut,  Short Term 12 . Launched at SXSW and distributed in late summer by micro-indie Cinedigm, the film earned major critical support for its portrait of a child group home populated with compelling characters, both among its residents and the co...

We welcome back Oscar-nominated  My Year of Dicks  filmmaker Pamela Ribon this week for [gasp] our very first documentary episode! In 1988, Errol Morris made a documentary hit out of  The Thin Blue Line . Detailing police corruption and bias that led to the wrongful conviction of Robert W. Wood for a police shooting, the film became a non-fiction landmark for unpacking the the case&...

We’re back talking about Nicole Kidman’s post-Oscar years this week and  Griffin in Summer  filmmaker Nicholas Colia is here to join us! After winning her Oscar for The Hours, each of the many projects Kidman attached herself to carried some degree of pedigree and buzz. One of them just happened to be a famous disaster: 2004’s The Stepford Wives. A remake directed by Fr...

After becoming a critical and arthouse sensation with Memento, Christopher Nolan leaped to studio filmmaking with American remake Insomnia. The film (based on the 1997 Norwegian film) stars Al Pacino as a corrupt cop sent to Alaska to solve a murder, only to be caught in the web of the killer (Robin Williams). Though a successful summer … Continue reading "395 – Insomnia"

Letterboxd head of editorial Mitchell Beaupre returns to us this week to close out Pride month with one of Luca Guadagnino’s most divisive films. In 2024, with audiences still under the spell of Challengers, the director also brought to the screen a long-gestating passion project: an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ Queer. Starring Daniel Craig as Burroughs … Continue reading "394 – Queer (with...

On deck this week is a sentimental recent fav, Mike Mills’ beautiful black-and-white tribute to modern day youngsters and the state of mind that is “uncle.” C’Mon C’Mon casts Joaquin Phoenix as a radio journalist who takes in his sister’s kid when she has to handle the father’s mental health crisis. With Gaby Hoffman and Scoot McNairy … Continue reading "393 – C’Mon C’Mon"

We’re back to discussing the filmography of director Ridley Scott this week, though this episode was recorded… before the news of his Honorary Oscar. Nope, there is also a new riff on a Robin Hood this week, so we’re talking his ongoing collaboration with Russell Crowe and their 2010 take on the fable. Arriving at … Continue reading "392 – Robin Hood (2010)"

With Steven Spielberg returning to theatres with this week’s Disclosure Day, we’re taking the rare opportunity to discuss one of his films! Kyle Amato returns to talk about Spielberg’s take on Roald Dahl’s classic children’s fable The BFG. The film was a reuniting of Spielberg with his recent Oscar winning actor Mark Rylance in the role, all … Continue reading "391 – The BFG (with Kyle Amato!)"

We’re back after our May Miniseries and it’s Tonys week! Rather than a musical, we’re talking about a movie that disappointed in part because it wasn’t a big screen version of the Broadway smash… In 1998, director Bille August brought a condensed version of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables to the screen. With Liam Neeson headlining … Continue reading "390 – Les Miserables (1998)"

CATEGORY IS… comes to a close this week and we’re ending this May Miniseries by looking to the future. Next year’s 100th Academy Awards will bring the Academy’s first award to Stunts! This episode, we go into the decades-long effort to make the category happen, how we want to see the category presented on the … Continue reading "CATEGORY IS… – Stunts"

The May miniseries CATEGORY IS… chugs along this week with Choreography! You know we love talking about dance on film, so this was a category we couldn’t pass up discussing. We’re talking about the three (early) years that Oscar once awarded Dance Direction, when the lines might blur between choreography and fight choreography, iconic musical … Continue reading "CATEGORY IS… – Choreography"

Our 2026 May Miniseries CATEGORY IS… continues this week with a discussion about a dreamed-for category that stirred a lot of conversation, particularly in the 2000s. We’re talking about Voice Acting! This episode, we dive into a Disney-centric history of celebrated Disney performances and which of them might have been Oscar frontrunners, from Robin Williams … Continue reading "CATEGORY IS… – Voic...

It’s May Miniseries time!! Presenting CATEGORY IS…! We’re in a moment of the Academy Awards introducing new categories for the first time in many years, and we’ll be spending the whole month discussing the categories already announced and a few we think should be! First up: Best Casting! This episode, we discuss the Oscar’s newest … Continue reading "CATEGORY IS… – Casting"

If you make a remake to a cinema classic (and Oscar nominee), chances are the buzz starts there. But in revamping The Manchurian Candidate to the post-9/11 culture, Oscar winning director also added the pedigree of recent winner Denzel Washington and then-recent nomination record breaker Meryl Streep, the buzz multiplied. But this version of a … Continue reading "389 – The Manchurian Candidate"