Have You Ever Seen

Wait, hang on, another movie about a giant rabbit? Only this time the rabbit doesn't drink booze and pal around with Jimmy Stewart, but leads a teenager with mental problems down the path of scientific discovery and time travel? Well, yeah! Donnie Darko has been analyzed half to death and that's impressive considering how indifferently the picture was received 20 years ago. Richard Kelly was only...

We began our talk about A.I. at the ending of the movie because the last 15 or 20 minutes have always been controversial. Didn't it already have the most poetic ending possible before wishes started coming true? We debate that hot topic. Merging the visions of Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick was always going to be an odd mix, but you might be surprised to learn which of them brought the negat...

Be Sci-Fi Month, be very Sci-Fi Month. The 395th Ellises' Analysis is the first of 4 flicks we'll discuss in June that identify with that creative genre. When you talk about David Cronenberg's 3 or 4 best pictures, The Fly has got to be a part of that shortlist. Sure, there's his trademark body horror and some jump scares and plenty of creepiness throughout, but it's also got more heart than almos...

It's only been about a month since this year's weird Oscars, but this was a good time for the 394th Ellises' Analysis to spend a solid hour unraveling the beauty of the heartfelt winner of Best Picture. As she so often is, Frances McDormand is quiet, stern and so real. She lets her fellow performers and Chloe Zhao's story come to her. Fern/Fran accomplishes more with a simple gesture than most peo...

Bonus episode! Taking a page from our COVID-19 specials last year, we each made 2 movie recommendations in this episode, using the caveat that we had to sell the flicks to you using only 19 words. Each of us also tossed around some trivia questions. And we opened up the emailbag! Gender identification at the Oscars came up. Unlikeable directors came up. Desert island movies came up. The Golden Glo...

You'll get 2 reviews for the price of one in the 393rd Ellises' Analysis because the sequel came up a lot in this chat about Dreamworks' groundbreaking Shrek. The snarky and often meta sense of humour that was so fresh at the time is still pretty gut-busting 2 decades later. Getting comedy superstars like Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy to provide the voices for the two iconic main roles was not as co...

Asghar Farhadi's fair and balanced examination of a crumbling marriage (two crumbling marriages, really) is a tremendous accomplishment. Farhadi deals in ethics, morality, sexism, secrets and a lot of lies. He's certainly got the cast to pull all of that off. His Oscar-winner shows empathy for all his middle-class and working-class Iranian characters and finds fascinating peel-back-the-layers ways...

Charlize Theron might very well have outdone her remarkable performance in Monster with her take on a narcissistic ghost writer of Young Adult books in this pitch-black comedy. Director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody reteamed 4 years after the Oscar-winning Juno to give us one of the great navel-gazers in modern film history. Their flick didn't find much of an audience 10 years ago, perhaps...

Bonus episode! We had many, many thoughts about the uber-weird 2020 (and somewhat 2021) Academy Awards. Then again, who didn't...if you even watched the show. Not many people did. Most of the movies up for the gold naked guys ranged from good to great, so if you didn't see the strangest awards program this group has ever put on, then you missed out on excellent work being rewarded. Still, though,...

We haven't yapped about a Wes Anderson movie in over 4 years, so the 390th Ellises' Analysis was crying out to end that twee drought. Actually, forget that "twee" stuff. Why be so reductive of such a talented filmmaker? Anderson is quirky and precise, plus he loves his eye-popping colours (especially pink), he loves his ensemble casts and he loves making tragicomedies. This film is a bit more cold...

For the 6th year in a row, we present our Oscars Preview. This strange year featured a slew of wonderful movies, almost none of which we were able to see on the big screen. Stupid airborne germs! Nevertheless, the candidates for Best Picture are a strong crop. Most of them are diverse, socially aware and about timely topics. Even though Mank is The Irishman of this year's bunch (so many nomination...

In the 388th Ellises' Analysis, we're back on the Martin Scorsese mob-movie train. The Depahted is a high-energy remake that finally won Marty an Oscar, even though it's something of a greatest hits flick, especially for this living legend and his frequent collaborators. While it's entertaining and the cast is an impressive collection of talent, the film doesn't have the depth or staying power tha...

Should you listen to the pragmatic 387th Ellises' Analysis? Well, if you're the ego-driven Sir Thomas More, then the response to that question would be to fold your arms, stick out your bottom lip and say "NO!" This is a frustrating movie. It's well-made and most of the actors are authentic, but far too many of them are also quite dull or they're seriously overdoing it. Plus, any film that's about...

The 386th Ellises' Analysis has us gabbing about a popular 2001 rom-com, although whether or not this is even a rom-com was up for debate. There's no argument that Reese Witherspoon charms and glows in Legally Blonde. This isn't the best performance of Reese's career, but it's probably her signature role and the movie would likely stink if she wasn't playing such a likable Elle. We had some disagr...

It's way past time we talked about a Robert Altman classic and his pokey-paced anti-western is a tremendous choice for our 385th episode. McCabe & Mrs. Miller has the beautiful duo of Warren Beatty and Julie Christie doing an excellent job of heading up an eclectic cast. Beatty is the drunk, muttering, vulnerable beta (who's got poetry in him) while Christie is the stern, Cockney-spewing alpha (an...

Jimmy Cagney etched his place in cinema history in one of his first films as he plays vicious beer baron Tom Powers in this hugely influential gangster flick. Apart from Jean Harlow, most of his co-stars and even his director (William Wellman) have been forgotten, even though the performances are quite naturalistic for a flick that was made 90 years ago. And, yes, The Public Enemy is the picture w...

Are we really covering consecutive, black-and-white flicks about murder that also have an abundance of homosexual subtext? Sure, why not! The Lighthouse was last week. Now we've got Strangers On A Train as a companion piece (of sorts). Alfred Hitchcock was always fascinated by murder, but here he is—just like Robert Walker's excellent villain—obsessed with the perfect murder. Walker also represent...

The last few months of Ellises' Analysis podcasts have been about straightforward movies, so we were overdue to get into surreal territory in our 382nd episode. To borrow a scream from Timon in The Lion King, "WHAT'S GOIN' ON HERE?!" Well, we have theories, Timon. Robert Eggers is 2 for 2 on the weirdness scale and (just like in The Witch) he loves to play with us about what's real and what isn't....

Olivia Wilde's acclaimed directorial debut provides a juicy topic for the 381st Ellises' Analysis. Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever are a fresh and funny team, but Billie Lourd steals the show with her delightful take on a free-spirited party animal. For a low-budget comedy, this movie is ambitious and it's very technically accomplished, but the characters are inconsistent and the picture has mo...

Whether it's because of Stockholm Syndrome or just because the movie earned it by being good, people love Beauty And The Beast. It's not our favourite cartoon of all time, but we certainly found plenty to appreciate in it, especially the (mostly) old-fashioned hand-drawn animation. We answered the question about whether or not the story has aged badly and we dug pretty deeply into the unfair ramif...

A racism movie that's masquerading as a math movie isn't a well-worn genre, but Hidden Figures would be an excellent template if such a genre ever took off. Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae are a terrific team playing 3 brilliant black women at NASA in this true story. Theodore Melfi's finest film handles race relations in far less clumsy ways than other recent cracks at the com...

The 378th Ellises' Analysis asks if you're an Enid or a Rebecca. Not that we actually care which of them you are. We're too cool to be particularly interested in you. Okay, WE'RE not too cool, but Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson sure are in Ghost World. Bev's final choice in the Month O' Bev has her discussing her own evolution from a mean girl to the delightfully nerdy adult she has become. We...

If you dig beauty pageants, the 377th Ellises' Analysis probably won't be your jam. We weren't kind to such ridiculous nonsense in this episode. We  did love the performances of these actors though and the Dayton/Faris/Arndt directing & writing team set this chemistry-filled cast up with some good material. And the laughs! Funny movie. There are problems though. The surprise ending that bonds the...

Hedwig And The An-guh-ry Inch is a unique movie. It's a rip-rockin' musical with some great songs, but the story is remarkably tragic and also, somehow, upbeat. And what an ending! The last act is surreal and complicated, but it's also beautiful. John Cameron Mitchell is the auteur of this project (along with Stephen Trask) and Mitchell is also excellent as the headlining title character. Hedwig i...

We kick off 2021 and we also begin the 6th Annual Month O' Bev with an extensive discussion about the funny-lady flick Bridesmaids. Hold on. Women can be funny?! Well, we crapped all over that tired old chestnut, but we also, conversely, admired the serious angles this movie often takes. The ending might seem upbeat, but the future might not be so rosy for these "friends". We debated if this is a...