Classic Movies Live!

This week on Classic Movies Live! we've got yet another Best Picture nominee, and Jeff's favourite film of the year: The Brutalist ! An astonishingly big movie made on an astonishingly small budget, Brady Corbet's third feature is a towering film about the immigrant experience in turbulent post-WWII America. Following Laszlo Toth from the early 50s to the mid-70s, The Brutalist examines the nature...

This week on Classic Movies Live! we're talking about more music! This time, a story about a real musician: Bob Dylan! In A Complete Unknown , James Mangold directs Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan in the lead up to the folk singer-songwriter doing the unthinkable: going electric. Also starring Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Unknown shows the effect Dylan has on the pe...

This week on Classic Movies Live , we're next in line to talk about the buzziest film of this Oscar season! From director Jacques Audiard, Emilia Perez is an epic crime-thriller narco-musical about a transgender druglord coming face to face with the crimes of her past. From the day it premiered at Cannes, Emilia Perez has stunned and polarized audiences and critics alike. It took home Best Actress...

It's our first episode post-Oscar nominations, and we're starting off by talking about one of the biggest movies up for awards. The cinematic event of 2024, a movie nearly 30 years in the making, Wicked ! Directed by John M. Chu, Wicked adapts the first act of the smash hit Broadway musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz ! Long before the arrival of Dorothy, a young, green-skinned woman named Elphaba...

This week on Classic Movies Live , we're talking about another big winner from 2024's Cannes Film Festival! From director Coralie Fargeat, The Substance tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging Hollywood star who, after being dismissed from a popular exercise show, begins taking a black market experimental drug called the Substance in a desperate bid to regain her former glory. Intoxicated b...

Welcome back to the sixth season of Classic Movies Live! We're starting 2025 off strong by talking about the Palme d'Or winner from Cannes 2024! Sean Baker's Anora follows the titular sex worker played by Mikey Madison as she's swept up in a whirlwind romance with Vanya Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn). But what at first seems a modern Cinderella story quickly becomes something much more frustrating wh...

Another New Year, another new Year In Review on Classic Movies Live! In 2024, we've talked about everything from indies to blockbusters, sequels we thought would never get made to timeless classics that have been remade again and again. We talked about Oscar winners, Oscar hopefuls, and movies that got passed over entirely. And over the year, we've seen some absolutely fantastic contributions to f...

If you're listening on the day this episode releases, Merry Christmas ! On this year's very special Christmas Day episode of Classic Movies Live , our hosts discuss the most important Christmas classic movie of all time: It's A Wonderful Life . Starring James Stewart and directed by Frank Capra, It's A Wonderful Life tells the entire history of George Bailey, a banker from Bedford Falls who repeat...

Merry Christmas yet again, dear listeners! This week on Classic Movies Live! , it's our second Christmas episode of 2024! In this episode, Pierre and Jeff discuss A Christmas Carol , but not just any version: The 1992 adaptation by Brian Henson featuring Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge! The first Muppets film produced after the death of the visionary Jim Henson, The Muppet Christmas Carol puts a...

Classic Movies Live! is a Canadian podcast, so sometimes we talk about Canadian movies! In today's episode, our hosts discuss the sophomore feature from Ontario-based writer/director Megan Park, My Old Ass ! In the last week of her summer vacation before she moves to Toronto to attend U of T, Elliot (Maisy Stella) takes mushrooms with her friends and meets her future self (Aubrey Plaza). But the k...

Merry Christmas! This week on Classic Movies Live! , Pierre and Jeff usher in the Holiday Season with a new Christmas classic from one Mr. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. In Red One , Santa Claus (J. K. Simmons) has been kidnapped. With the fate of the holiday on the line -- since no one can do what Santa does, and no one's ever been able to do what Santa does -- the big man's head of security Callum D...

This week on Classic Movies Live! our hosts conduct their yearly Ridley Scott check-in! 24 years after the original, Scott returns to Rome for Gladiator II ! In this iteration, Denzel Washington joins Pedro Pascal and Paul Mescal in a bread-and-circuses plott that threatens to unravel the city of Rome itself! Could Mescal in this film go toe-to-toe with Russel Crowe in Gladiator ? How evil are the...

It's time for episode six of Director Showdown! In this series, we pit 64 of the biggest directors to debut since 1998 against each other in an elimination bracket to determine who will walk away the greatest director of the last 26 years! In the last episode , we looked at forbidden summer love, and the impact that a whirlwind romance can have on a person. By way of Todd Field's In the Bedroom an...

This week on Classic Movies Live! our hosts discuss the election... of a new Pope! Based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris, Conclave is a political thriller centred around the selection of the Bishop of Rome. After the death of the pope, Thomas Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) organizes a conclave to determine his successor. While a few popular candidates for the position emerge right away, it's...

This week on Classic Movies Live! , our hosts give you one last dance before you hit the ground! The epic conclusion to Sony's superhero trilogy starring Tom Hardy is out, and our hosts are spending an hour checking in with our good friend Venom ! Writer of the previous films Kelly Marcel emerges to pull double-duty on The Last Dance , making her directorial debut to close out the stories of Venom...

This week on Classic Movies Live! our hosts discuss the sequel to one of Pierre's Top movies of 2022 , Smile ! Smile 2 stars Naomi Scott as Skye Riley, a popstar preparing for her comeback tour a year after a horrific car crash takes the life of her boyfriend Paul Hudson (Ray Nicholson). Only days before the first show, Riley witnesses the suicide of Lewis Frigoli (Lukas Gage), who bludgeons himse...

This week on Classic Movies Live! , our hosts are excited to break down the latest from visionary animator Chris Sanders. Probably best known for Lilo & Stitch (one of Jeff's favourite movies), and How to Train Your Dragon (widely regarded as one of Dreamworks' best films), Chris Sanders returns to Dreamworks in 2024 for his fifth directorial effort: The Wild Robot ! Based on the children's bo...

Way back in our first season, we covered the original Todd Phillips DC villain origin story, Joker . In 2024, Lady Gaga's Lee Quinzel joins Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur Fleck in the sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux ! The second Joker movie is anything but more of the first. Where the first was a straightforward riff on Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy , the sequel is part musical, part courtroom drama, p...

This week on Classic Movies Live! , it's the return of a classic director! Saying Francis Ford Coppola is best known for The Godfather isn't wrong, but it neglects his absurd run of some of the best films ever made. Apocalypse Now , The Conversation , One From the Heart , and of course the other two Godfather films. Not to mention he's the first of many amazing filmmakers to carry the last name Co...

This week on Classic Movies Live! , trailer-sensation Speak No Evil ! Based on the 2022 Danish film of the same name, Speak No Evil follows an American family as they visit a British family they met at a resort. But the British family -- featuring James McAvoy, Aisling Franciosi, and Dan Hough as a boy without a tongue -- becomes increasingly pushy and uncomfortable to be around. At what point wil...

With #TIFF24 now behind us, our hosts are back to talk about the 49th Toronto International Film Festival! On today's episode of Classic Movies Live! Pierre interviews Jeff about his experience at the first TIFF sponsored by Rogers. In particular, our hosts focus in on the movies Dullsvillle and the Doodleverse , It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This , Presence , Saturday Night , Friendship , and Pi...

You're listening to episode five of Director Showdown! In this series, we pit 64 of the biggest directors to debut since 1998 against each other in an elimination bracket to determine who will walk away the greatest director of the last 26 years! In the last episode we examined two relationships in flux, and what they can tell us about our wider world at large. In the battle between Darren Aronofs...

This week on Classic Movies Live , we're talking about a movie that was at the Toronto International Film Festival! As TIFF 2024 rages, we look back to TIFF 2023 to discuss Richard Linklater's Hit Man , starring everyone's favourite actor Glenn Powell. In Hit Man , Powell plays Gary Johnson, a psychology professor who moonlights as a fake hitman in police sting operations. When one of the stings g...

This week on Classic Movies Live , the directorial debut of Zoë Kravitz! Originally titled Pussy Island , Blink Twice satirizes the Epstein Island scandal and tech billionaires in an unflichingly dark, but witty thriller. When tech-mogul Slater King (Channing Tatum) invites Frida and Jess (Naomi Ackie and Alia Shawkat) to a getaway on his private island, the two enthusiastically agree. An all-expe...

This week on Classic Movies Live , we return to Ridley Scott's Alien franchise for the latest entry directed by Fede Alvarez! Set between Alien and Aliens , Alien: Romulus follows a new cast of characters as they board an abandoned space station in search of cryopods, and get more than they bargained for when it turns out the space station is filled with Xenomorphs. Romulus is billed as a return t...