Far From Ideal

For Christmas we put our money where our mouths are and design the perfect Christmas film. Complete with: Muppets, time travel, at least three different flavours of Santa and so much more. Yule love it.

With the reboot on the horizon we revisit Malcolm in the Middle , the sitcom that quietly reinvented TV. Single-camera, progressive storytelling and characters that struggled against a real world with real problems.

After thousands of hours of campaigns, adaptations, video games and more Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves finally cracked it as a mainstream film offering that didn’t play like Jeremy Irons trapped in a nightmare about a PS2 generated dragon. Michael Silver joins us to delve into everything D&D in a tight half an hour where we still have time to detour into discussing: The Truman Show...

This week we talk: horror, comedy, horror comedy and comedy horror. Which films get the balance right? How are the two genres actually very similar? And why are nice comedians like Jordan Peele, Zach Cregger and Kyle Mooney trying to scare us in the first place?

.This week, we talk about all things Tim Burton: the art, the movies, and the man behind the macabre. From Beetlejuice to Big Fish, we dig into how Burton built an entire universe out of being an oddball and why his “weird” still hits decades later. Plus, Hannah’s thoughts on the Design Museum exhibit and whether his magic has faded or just evolved. #timburton #FilmAnalysis #MovieTalk #BurtonExhib...

.This week on Far From Ideal , we dive into the art of the movie trailer: the ones that tell us the entire plot, the ones that completely lie to us and the ones that are actually amazing. From Scrooged to Tropic Thunder , Oppenheimer to The Fall Guy , we unpack how editing, marketing, and Hollywood hype can either elevate or ruin a film. We debate spoilers, mystery, and why every trailer must last...

.This week we welcome writer, director, and creative producer Ali Clifton for a deep dive into the future of James Bond . With Denis Villeneuve confirmed as the next director, what does that mean for the tone of 007? Is Villeneuve prepared to do away with his entire identity asa filmmaker and return to the camp roots of Bond? Is a period piece an option? Or will Amazon decide that more dollars can...

.Adam Sandler: comedy icon, dramatic actor, inexplicable cinematic sadist. This week we get into the highs and lows of a career that defies explanation from Happy Gilmore and Big Daddy to Uncut Gems and his questionable Netflix era. We talk about first exposures, the Happy Madison gang, his “grunge” style of acting, and why Sandler is more Nicolas Cage than anyone else. Plus we introduce the Gilmo...

.We are very lucky to be joined by Emily Manthei, the writer/director of Berlin Loop, an independent film set in Berlin that sees a young woman take on Berlin’s bike thief mafia using a time loop. Getting into her influences and inspirations for the film we range through all the time loop classics, from Groundhog Day to Primer, Palm Springs, Looper and more. Emily’s extensive research even pushes...

.This week on Far From Ideal, we delve into Jean-Claude Van Damme’s mind boggling 1996 directorial debut The Quest. This film has it all: pirates, Muay Thai training, Roger Moore selling Van Damme into slavery, and kicking people in the face as a legitimate means of conflict resolution. We also explore Van Damme’s career alongside action legends like Schwarzenegger and Dolph Lundgren, his multiple...

This week we’re asking big questions about the world of documentaries: what is the relationship between observer and subject? what is truth? What’s up with Love is Blind? Yes our in depth conversation about documentaries and the streaming era gets sidetracked extensively into talking about reality TV. In a wide ranging conversation we go from Making a Murderer to Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, Love is Bli...

Heretic is a film with a deep basement that you’d rather not go into, so join us as we root around down there. Filled with psychological tension, half baked symbolism and Hugh Grant as an actually pretty spellbinding villain, we explore why Heretic’s promising first half collapses under its own ambition. Expect spoilers, discussion of horror versus thriller and tangents that include 1985’s Clue an...

This week, we dive headfirst into the world of film and TV openings - not just the flashy first scenes, but the often-skipped opening titles that set the tone, build the world, and occasionally warn you that things are about to get weird. From the full credit crawls of 1940s Hollywood to the sleek, skippable sequences of prestige TV, we break down how intros have evolved, what makes a great one un...

In this week’s report from the frontlines of cinema, we recap Hannah’s trip to this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Glitz, glamour, Cuba Gooding Jr and surprisingly few opportunities to watch films, Cannes has it all. And if you’re thinking “there’s no way in such a jam packed episode that Max can take a long detour to outline the plot of the new season of The Rehearsal” then think again. This being...

Equal parts Brideshead Revisited, The Talented Mr Ripley and Kind Hearts and Coronets - a dash of 2000s public school aesthetic - two oversaturated white boys - the joy of Rosamund Pike and Richard E Grant - 1 cup filthy bathwater. This week’s episode features a deconstructed Saltburn served on a bed of disappointment and with a sharp finish of new Harry Potter casting news. #saltburn #barrykeogha...

This week we’re joined by musician and producer James Berkeley to dive deep into the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Not the James Cameron blue people Avatar, though we do immediately get into a heated discussion of whether that was any good. From the original series to the ill-fated M. Night Shyamalan bomb to the recent Netflix series, there’s a lot of ground to cover. You might think there’...

Making a film entirely in one shot is surely one of the most masochistic exercises a filmmaker can undertake. And yet they persist! We cover everything from Hitchock’s classic Rope that mimics a single shot, the experimental and painfully boring foray into digital of Russian Arc, all the way through to the mainstream blockbusters of Birdman and 1917. Eventually we get to the work of Philip Baranti...

With Kirstie Alley, John Travolta and Bruce Willis as the voice of a baby, Look Who’s Talking was the surprise smash hit of 1989. But does it hold up as a masterpiece of cinema, or is its legacy tarnished by a series of increasingly bizarre and poorly thought-through sequels? To potentially find out some of the answers, listen to this week’s episode, safe in the knowledge that we also spend a good...

Damien Chazelle makes films about three things: music, filmmaking and toxic people single mindedly achieving their dreams while the rest of their lives crumble around them. Whether it’s an abusive jazz mentorship, a quest for a spot on the walk of fame or whatever the hell was going on in Babylon, there’s more than enough here to fulfill the Far From Ideal quota. Featuring a special guest appearan...

Tarantino’s most recent film takes him fully into his dude-bro podcast guy era. Featuring: cool cars, movie stars, movie stars driving cool cars and a bizarre revisionist history of the Manson murders in which Sharon Tate is at best a featured extra. We touch on Jackie Brown, Four Rooms, Inglorious Basterds and The Hateful Eight and wonder with so many memorable characters why Once Upon a Time… In...

Fresh off this year’s Berlinale, Hannah takes us behind the scenes of Berlin’s premier film festival. We dive into all the hard hitting topics: the joys and existential horrors of networking, the mystery of “market screenings” (sadly not a cinema supermarket hybrid) and Berlin’s bleak February weather. In spite of that description, the podcast is still slightly more fun to listen to than Tolstoy....

In 2024, M. Night Shyamalan lured moviegoers in with the slick and exciting trailer for his latest directorial misfire, Trap. Featuring the pop sensation that is Saleka Shyamalan, Kid Cudi cosplaying as Lucius Malfoy, and Josh Hartnett swinging for the rafters as a serial killer who seems to embody every Myers-Briggs personality type at once. Perhaps the real trap isn’t just the one set inside the...

The rip roaring ride that was the 97th Academy Awards has come and Hannah is hearing about it all for the first time! The sweep for Sean Baker and Anora, the history-making moments for Flow (first Latvian winner), Paul Tazewell (first black man to win Best Costume Design) and Emilia Perez (worst speech ever). We absolutely don’t cover it all this time because another two hour episode would be egre...

In this week’s very special episode we look ahead to the 97th Academy Awards. The highs, the lows, the nominees, the snubs and we answer the two very important questions: who will probably win and who should actually win. In one of the weirdest awards seasons in recent times we show remarkable restraint in how little we continue our criticisms of Emilia Perez from last week and astonishing commitm...

What happens when a celebrated French director makes a Spanish language opera about a Mexican cartel leader’s gender transition journey? You get the cinematic… film that is Emilia Perez, a movie that has garnered the second most Oscar nominations of all time while also being one of the most masochistic viewing experiences imaginable. Join us this week as we attempt to make some sort of sense of Em...