Couple Indemnity

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

For Hal's selection this week, we ventured to London to see the Oscar-nominated period horror film Sinners (2025) on the big screen for the full movie-going experience. Set in 1932 in the Mississippi Delta, the film stars Michael B. Jordan in dual roles as criminal identical brothers who return to their hometown in the Jim Crow South, where they are encountered by a supernatural evil.  Director: R...

This week we are delighted to be joined again by Scott Phipps (host of the Talking Pictures TV Podcast, as well as his own shows Reel Britannia, The Stinking Pause and Rainbow Valley podcasts) who has selected Hal and Izzy to review Paper Moon (1973), the wonderfully endearing road comedy-drama starring real-life father and daughter Ryan and Tatum O'Neal as protagonists Moze and Addie, who forge a...

Izzy's choice has landed on Valentines Day this week so she has decided to go big and select one of her all-time favourites for the podcast with About Time (2013), the British romantic comedy starring Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy.  At the age of 21, Tim (Gleeson) discovers he can travel in time and change what happens and has happened in his own life. His decision to make his wo...

Hal has chosen the second French movie for the podcast this week with Priceless (2006), a romantic comedy starring Audrey Tatou and Gad Elmaleh.  A shy waiter (Elmaleh) who works at a high-end hotel is mistaken for a young millionaire by the beautiful and intriguing fortune hunter Irene (Tatou).  Director: Pierre Salvadori

For Izzy's choice this week, she has chosen the popular early 90's sports comedy film Cool Runnings, which is a first-time watch for Hal. When a Jamaican sprinter (Leon Robinson) is disqualified from the Olympic Games, he enlists the help of a dishonored coach (John Candy) to start the first Jamaican Bobsled Team. Director: Jon Turteltaub

Hal is back on the Hitchcock marathon next week and has chosen the movie that he labels as the most underrated Hitch film from his canon of work. The Wrong Man is unique for being the only movie by the filmmaker based on a true story, based in 1953, where we see an innocent man named Christopher Emanuel "Manny" Balestrero (Henry Fonda) who is wrongly arrested after being mistaken for an armed robb...

Izzy's next choice is the much-acclaimed Hollywood biographical political thriller about the Watergate Scandal, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, as two reporters whose investigation for The Washington Post sheds light on the controversial scandal that compels the president to resign from his post. Director: Alan J. Pakula

For Hal's first choice of the year, we are going with the much-beloved Scottish coming-of-age romantic comedy Gregory's Girl, starring John Gordon Sinclair as Gregory, a teenage boy, who falls in love with a classmate and tries to win her love. The girl (Dee Hepburn) who he holds affection for bags a place in the school's soccer team. Director: Bill Forsyth

We kick off 2026 in style with a big epic Izzy has been wanting us to cover for a long time, The Sound of Music (1965). Maria (Julie Andrews), an aspiring nun, is sent as a governess to take care of seven motherless children. Soon her jovial and loving nature tames their hearts and the children become fond of her, leading to her eventual marriage with their father Captain Georg von Trapp (Christop...

To round off our first full year of film reviews, we have decided to record a special one-off Oscar awards episode to reflect, debate and celebrate our most respected movies that we have enjoyed watching in 2025. Our nominees in the given categories are as follows: Best Costume/Makeup: Phantom Thread (Mark Bridges) Little Women (Jacqueline Durran) Boogie Nights (Mark Bridges) Barry Lyndon (Milena...

For Hal's Christmas selection this year, he has chosen his favourite and "definitive" screen adaptation of Charles Dickens' festive novel of Scrooge ("A Christmas Carol") with Alastair Sim delivering an unforgettable performance as Ebenezer Scrooge, a spiteful and miserly man, who encounters three spirits on Christmas Eve who show him the folly of his ways. Director: Brian Desmond Hurst

Our first Christmas selection for the podcast this year is one of Izzy's all-time favourite films, The Holiday, the romantic comedy starring Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet as Amanda and Iris, two lovelorn women from opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, who arrange a home exchange to escape heartbreak during the Christmas and holiday season.  Director: Nancy Meyers

Hal's next choice is the 2011 black comedy film directed by Roman Polanski, based on the Tony Award-winning 2006 play by Yasmina Reza.  Two pairs of parents hold a cordial meeting after their sons are involved in a fight, though as their time together progresses, increasingly childish behaviour throws the discussion into chaos. Starring: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, & John C. R...