Above the Title: A Saoirse Ronan Podcast

This week, the great Jeff Sweeney (of the Travolting podcast) joins us to look at failed Oscar contender Saving Mr. Banks, the deeply Disneyfied (and maybe evil?) biopic of Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers and her feuds with Walt over the famous 1963 film version. We grapple with our complicated feelings about the legacy of the Disney corporation, have an oddly contentious debate over Paul Giamatt...

This week, we're shrinking ourselves down to insect size to explore a world of wonder (and mostly get distracted by tangents), as we take a look at Epic. A misbegotten franchise starter from now defunct studio Blue Sky (best known for the Ice Age franchise), the film stars Amanda Seyfried as an ordinary woman who discovers a microscopic adventure occurring in the forest by her house and Colin as a...

This week, we continue our journey into the doldrums of Colin's middle period with a look at Dead Man Down, a muddled attempt by original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo director Niels Arden Oplev to inject European art film flair into the DTV crime thriller mold. We discuss the film's incoherent plotting and tone, once again tackle the question of Colin Farrell in action hero mode, and break down co-...

This week on the podcast it's the Oops! All Rushmores special! The great Sean Fahey joins us, and he wanted to spend the episode playing everyone's favorite game. So join us as we delve into a multitude of careers, from luminaries like Christopher Walken all the way to beloved character actors like Kevin Corrigan. Also we briefly find time to discuss Seven Psychopaths, Martin McDonagh's 2012 follo...

This week, we are very grouchy because we have to talk about the 2012 remake of Total Recall. Join us as we ruminate on Len Wiseman's weirdly short career, rant about the fetishization of fidelity, and remember we have free license to talk about the Paul Verhoeven original. Spoiler alert: we mostly just talk about that one. That movie rocks. How could you not? Cole has a take so spicy he had to cu...

This week on the podcast, we're ostensibly talking about Fright Night, the 2011 vampire action thriller remake starring Colin Farrell and directed by Craig Gillespie. But here's the thing: that movie very bad and we don't want to talk about it. You know what movie is good actually? Fright Night, the 1985 vampire horror movie starring Chris Sarandon and directed by Tom Holland. That's the one we wa...

This week, the great Dan Moore joins us to begin our descent into the real nadir of Colin's professional career with Horrible Bosses. A hit ensemble comedy from 2011, we dig into who among the cast is bad (most of them), who among the cast is good (contentious), and just how much worse the cultural landscape was twelve years ago. Plus, long-awaited Rushmores for Donald Sutherland and Jamie Foxx, a...

This week, we're diving into London Boulevard, the directorial debut of The Departed Screenwriter William Monahan. Despite being familiar territory, the film, in which he plays a reformed gangster who falls for a movie star (Keira Knightley), mostly just vanishes the second it's released, and we dig into why, talking the baffling lack of chemistry between the leads, the generic nature of everythin...

This week, Mark Tilley returns to the pod to help us discuss Peter Weir's final film, The Way Back, the ostensibly true story of an escape from a Siberian gulag and the long march to freedom. We can't agree if this movie is any good or not, but we can agree that flash in the pan star Jim Sturgess has nothing on Colin's scene stealing Russian gangster. Along the way, we're talking Ed Harris, we're...

This week, we're taking a look at the beloved, Oscar-winning drama about an aging, alcoholic country singer finding salvation through the love of a single mother - it's Tender Mercies Crazy Heart! The debut film from Scott Cooper, this was sold and received as a powerhouse comeback for Jeff Bridges and, accordingly, that's who we're mostly talking about this week, delving into the ups and downs of...

We're back! The SAG-AFTRA strike is over, and the boys have returned from hiatus to bring you the light hearted look into Colin Farrell's career that you've come to love. This week, we're taking a look at Colin's forgotten 2009 collaboration with acclaimed Bosnian filmmaker Danis Tanović Triage, a... dour and miserabilist mediation on the traumas of war and the 1988 Anfal genocide. Well, not every...

The show will be going on hiatus for the duration of the SAG-AFTRA strike. Solidarity forever. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're shuffling the release order a little bit to talk about 2009's Ondine. Directed by acclaimed Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan, the film stars Colin Farrell as a reclusive fisherman who rescues a mysterious and possibly magical woman from the sea. We talk about the film's origins as a Writer's Strike project, Colin's real life romance with co-star Alicja Bachleda-Curuś, the legacy of mer...

This week, the great Rebecca Sweeney joins us for a trip into the mind as we discuss 2009's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. An attempted return to form for Terry Gilliam after a rough decade, this film's production would be halted when Heath Ledger died halfway through filming, with Colin Farrell being one of several actors bought in to replace the star. We talk about the film's difficult pro...

This week, we take a look at Pride and Glory, Colin's follow-up to the smash success of In Bruges. A New York City crime thriller about a family of cops tested when one of their own turns out to be corrupt, the film comes from journeyman legend Gavin O'Connor, in between his two sports classics Miracle and Warrior. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't live up to the heights promised by the premise and...

This week, the great Maya Dawit joins us for a freewheeling discussion of the defining film of Colin Farrell's career, In Bruges! A small, talky crime comedy from a first time director, the film would come out of nowhere and deliver Colin the best reviews of his career and major awards buzz, including a Golden Globe. We have a lot of praise to heap on his revelatory performance and why we think th...

In early 2008, after a stint in rehab and a year and a half off screens, Colin Farrell would return by pairing up with another titanic actor for a fatalistic, offbeat European crime film. But this isn't that one, this the other one, the one that fully doesn't exist - it's Cassandra's Dream! The third in Woody Allen's trilogy of London-set thrillers, this movie, about two brothers asked to commit a...

This week on Above the Title, it's the big one, it's the 2006 Michael Mann film Miami Vice. Frankly, we're both nervous to tackle it and probably don't have enough time in three hours to get out all our thoughts. But this is the hand we've been dealt at 11:47 o'clock on a Friday morning, so we're just gonna have to take it to the limit one more time. Cole wonders if he can pull of Crockett's look....

This week, we take a look at the 2006 drama Ask the Dust, a film we at varying points compare to Moulin Rouge, Calvin & Hobbes, and Sophie's Choice. The final directorial effort of acclaimed screenwriter Robert Towne, the film stars Colin as Arturo Bandini, a struggling writer in 1930s Los Angeles who has a tempestuous relationship with a Mexican waitress (Salma Hayek). We debate the successes...

This week, the great Andrew Kinsella joins us to talk about Colin's return after a year long break from movies and Terrence Malick's return from an eight year break from movies, 2005's The New World! A dreamlike and mystical retelling of the Pocahontas story, the film finds Colin in full elemental force as a conflicted John Smith. Two of the people on this podcast adore this movie, the third is mo...

This week, the great Jeff Sweeney joins us to take a trip to Sacred Heart Hospital and discuss Colin's one-off appearance on Scrubs! The only real guest appearance in his career, Colin's role as the brother of a patient is primarily an excuse for warmed over Irish jokes, but we're mostly interested in the way it interrogates his tabloid bad-boy image in a way none of his movies ever did. Along the...

This week, we make tenuous forays into covering television with the one and only episode of Saturday Night Live Colin ever hosted, fresh off the disaster that was Alexander and folks, it's a stinker. We delve into Colin's strengths and weaknesses as a sketch comedy performer, the running on fumes nature of the 2004 cast, the rampant sexism of the era, and run through each sketch to try to figure o...

It was supposed to be the culmination of the first few years of Colin Farrell's career: playing one of the most famous people of all time in a sweeping epic directed by one of the most acclaimed directors of the era. Yet rather than a smash hit that catapulted Colin towards Oscar glory, we are left with a six-time Razzie nominated disaster that almost completely killed his career as a leading man....

This week, we're starting our look into Colin's 2004 and his turn towards prestige dramas and spoiler alert: it's not gonna turn out well - it's A Home at the End of the World! The film debut of acclaimed Broadway director Michael Mayer and Michael Cunningham's follow-up to the major awards success The Hours, this film follows an ill-fated bisexual throuple over the course of several years in the...

This week, the boys take another trip to Dublin to close out Colin's stacked 2003 (or maybe inaugurate his disastrous 2004) - it's Intermission! The debut of John Crowley (director of Above the Titled endorsed masterpiece Brooklyn), this very of the moment crime comedy of interlocking narratives features an insanely stacked cast and great a Colin Farrell supporting turn, yet seems to have been for...