Couple Indemnity

We are back with another episode this week with our good friend Scott, who joined us to review Hal's choice, the screwball romantic comedy classic You Can't Take It With You (1938).  Alice (played by Jean Arthur), the only relatively normal member of the eccentric Sycamore family, falls in love with Tony Kirby (James Stewart), but his wealthy banker father (Edward Arnold) and snobbish mother (Mary...

For Izzy's latest choice for Spooktober, we are officially covering our oldest movie for the podcast with the renowned German Silent Horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), that tells the story of a hypnotist (Werner Krauss) who uses a Somnabulist Cesare (Conrad Veidt) to commit murders.  Director: Robert Wiene

For Hal's next big choice for Spooktober, we are reviewing the 1965 British psychological horror film Repulsion, starring Catherine Deneuve, who plays Carol, a withdrawn, disturbed young woman who, when left alone in the apartment she shares with her sister, is subject to a number of nightmarish experiences. Director: Roman Polanski

For Izzy's first Spooktober choice this year, she has chosen the popular zombie comedy film Shaun of the Dead (2004) written by and starring Simon Pegg as Shaun, a downtrodden London salesman who is caught alongside his loved ones and friend Ed (played by Nick Frost) in a zombie apocalypse. Director: Edgar Wright

In our first episode for this year's Spooktober season, Hal has gone with the famous British Folk Horror cult classic The Wicker Man, a first-time watch for us both! The film's plot centres on the visit of a police officer, Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward), to the fictional, isolated Scottish island of Summerisle in search of a missing girl. What will he discover there? Director: Robin Hardy

For Izzy's latest selection she has selected the historical romantic drama The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018), based on the 2008 novel of the same name.  After the Second World War, Juliet Ashton (Lily James), a writer, decides to write a book about the residents of Guernsey. However, Juliet's life changes completely after she visits the island. Director: Mike Newell  

For Hal's latest selection, we have watched the highly rated 1957 Ingmar Bergman road movie Wild Strawberries, starring Victor Sjostrom as Dr Borg, an elderly emotionally-distant professor, who travels to Lund University with his daughter-in-law (Ingrid Thulin) to receive an honorary degree. The trip forces him to re-examine past choices and his future. Director: Ingmar Bergman

Izzy has selected the latest Hollywood blockbuster that the whole world has been talking about all summer, The Odyssey (2026), starring Matt Damon as Odysseus the Greek king of Ithaca, who undergoes a long and perilous journey home after the Trojan War and encounters mythical beings as he attempts to reunite with his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway). Director: Christopher Nolan

We have something rather left-field this week with Hal's choice that is the TV Pilot movie that launched the iconic police crime drama Kojak in the 1970's.  Prior to the official launch of the series in 1973, Universal Television released a 2-hour TV movie special: The Marcus Nelson Murders, that was based on a real-life New York case in 1963.  Lieutenant Theo Kojak (Telly Savalas) leads an invest...

For Izzy's latest choice, we have treated ourselves to the popular 1987 American Romantic Comedy starring Cher as a widowed Italian American woman who falls in love with her fiance's hot-tempered, estranged younger brother, played by Nicolas Cage. Director: Norman Jewison

Hal has selected the next major Hitchcock movie this week with North by Northwest (1959), the iconic spy thriller starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint.  A New York City advertising executive (Grant) goes on the run after being mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies. Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Izzy has this week selected the 1991 remake of the romantic comedy Father of the Bride, written by Nancy Meyers. Steve Martin portrays George Banks, a businessman who becomes flustered while he and his family prepare for his daughter's marriage. Director: Charles Shyer

For our latest episode, Hal has chosen the 2011 American crime comedy film Horrible Bosses, that follows three friends, played by Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudeikis, who decide to murder their respective overbearing, abusive bosses, portrayed by Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, and Colin Farrell. Director: Seth Gordon

Izzy has gone highbrow this week and has selected the much-acclaimed 1959 French New Wave Romantic Drama Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) talks to her lover (Eiji Okada), a Japanese architect, about their past and shares her perspectives on the Hiroshima bombing before separating from him. Director: Alain Resnais

We are back with another episode covering the Jeremy Brett Granada TV Sherlock Holmes series, this time discussing the fourth episode of the series, first aired in May 1984: The Solitary Cyclist. The plot follows a mysterious man on a bicycle who repeatedly trails a young music teacher as she cycles along a lonely country road in Surrey. Director: Paul Annett

Today, we are joined again by Scott to review the wonderful British classic A Matter of Life Death (1945) set in England during WWII, where a British pilot (David Niven) who had cheated death must argue for his life before a celestial court, hoping to prolong his fledgling romance with an American girl (Kim Hunter). Director: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger  

Izzy's latest choice is the 2007 highly acclaimed Neo Western Crime Thriller No Country for Old Men, that follows three main characters: Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a Vietnam war veteran and welder who stumbles upon a large sum of money in the desert, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a hitman who is sent to recover the money, and Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a Sheriff investigating the crime.  Di...

For Hal's selection this week, we are covering our first Charlie Chaplin movie for the podcast, with The Gold Rush (1925), that we were fortunate enough to view at a London cinema screening in the presence of Paul Merton and Spencer Chaplin. A prospector goes to the Klondike during the 1890s gold rush in hopes of making his fortune, and is smitten with a girl (Georgia Hale) he sees in a dance hall...

Izzy has returned to the musical genre this week and has selected the 2018 musical drama Wild Rose starring Jessie Buckley and Julie Walters. Amidst several difficulties, a single mother of two (Buckley) and a former convict from Scotland, Rose-Lynn, tries to pursue her dream of becoming a country singer. Director: Tom Harper

Hal has gone big this week and has selected what he deems his favourite film of all-time, with the next movie from our Hitchcock marathon, the haunting and intensely psychological Vertigo (1958). A former San Francisco police detective (James Stewart) juggles wrestling with his personal demons and becoming obsessed with the hauntingly beautiful woman (Kim Novak) he has been hired to trail, who may...

Izzy has selected another classic this week with Sophie's Choice, the 1982 psychological drama based on the novel of the same name by William Styron. Meryl Streep stars as Zofia "Sophie" Zawistowska, a Polish immigrant who moves to America with a dark secret from her past, who shares a boarding house in Brooklyn with her tempestuous lover Nathan (Kevin Kline in his feature-film debut), and young w...

Hal has gone for another hugely important film classic for this episode with David Lean's romantic period masterpiece Brief Encounter (1945), adapted from the Noel Coward 1936 play Still Life. Brief Encounter tells the story of two married strangers (Celia Johnson & Trevor Howard) living in pre-World War II England, whose chance meeting at a railway station leads to a brief yet intense emotion...

Izzy's latest choice is the iconic 1961 romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany's which saw Audrey Hepburn deliver a career-defining performance as the eccentric and unpredictable socialite Holly Golightly, who is determined to make it big and marry a wealthy husband. But when young writer Paul Varjak (George Peppard) moves into her apartment building, her past threatens to get in their way. Director...

Hal has gone back to one of his standout TV dramas from the archives and has selected one of the early episodes from the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes Granada TV series that was broadcast on ITV from 1984-1994. In this episode, titled "The Dancing Men", a gentleman is baffled when the childish drawings of dancing men terrify his American wife. Sherlock Holmes is drawn to the case and soon discovers...

Izzy's next choice is the highly rated Merchant Ivory production The Remains of the Day (1993), based on the Booker Prize-winning novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, about the story of the unexpressed affection between Mr Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) - head butler at an English stately home shortly before World War II - and housekeeper Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson). Director: James Ivory