Ramblin: An Amblin Podcast

Jellicle songs for Jellicle Cats. But what the hell are Jellicle Cats? Why do we have to meet so many of them? Why did Andrew Lloyd Webber decide that a collection of T.S. Eliot poems for children was a solid basis for a musical? Why was everyone so adamant that it had to be adapted into a movie? Why was Tom Hooper deemed the man to do it? Why has he yet to answer for his crimes? Why did we land o...

We’re back in black… again! But in the place of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, in the place of Barry Sonnenfeld is F. Gary Gray and in the place of those New York-based besuited agents is MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL. Joining us to discuss the 2019 would-be franchise-rebooter is host and co-founder of Girls on Film podcast Anna Smith, and together we navigate...

We were very lucky to be granted time with Bonnie Judd, the ace animal trainer and coordinator who oversaw all of the good boys and girls on A DOG’S JOURNEY. She talked to us about what brought her to this line of work, the ethos in her approach and the many emotional memories from the set of the film. Thank you for joining us, Bonnie! Follow the podcast on Twitter, Bluesky and Instagram and be su...

It’s time to bid adieu once and for all to that wretched Josh Gad dog spirit as we close out our canine duology with the final Amblin W. Bruce Cameron adaptation to date (please god let that remain the case), 2019’s A DOG’S JOURNEY. Glutton-for-punishment Harley Mumford re-joins us to once again dig into the exploits of Bailey, who this time is tasked with ensuring each reincarnation tracks down C...

Now we all know that clocks reside either on walls or beside them. It’s a simple matter of fact. But what if, this movie supposes, there was a house with a clock in its walls? A radical notion, to be sure, and one that was first broached in 1973 by author John Bellairs and again in 2018 when director Eli Roth adapted his novel into the film we all know as THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS. Joini...

As the poster for a certain big lizard movie from 1998 said, size matters. We’re joined by the delightful Tom Jurassic (host of The Jurassic Park Podcast and Jurassic Collectables, and creator of Tales from a Jurassic World) for a BIG episode on a BIG movie: the 2018 follow-up to a smash-hit legacy sequel, JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM. Together we try to untangle the questionable motivations tha...

It’s a film made up entirely of pop culture Easter eggs, centred around a literal Easter egg hunt and released on Easter weekend eight years ago, so we thought it would be fitting to give you a little Easter 2026 treat and release our episode on READY PLAYER ONE a week early. But we’re not heading into the Oasis alone: we’re joined by Em, the fab host of Verbal Diorama, to wade (Watts) through the...

It’s time for us to blow the whistle on THE POST, Spielberg’s 2017 ode to a free press, squeezed in during postproduction on another very different movie (more on that next episode). We’re very lucky to be joined in our discussion by BBC Radio 2’s resident movie critic, top gentleman and (most importantly) fellow Warwick grad James King, who shares tales of his various dalliances with Spielberg ov...

Things are about to get rough for the Ramblin boys as Lasse Hallstrom’s 2017 adaptation of A DOG’S PURPOSE fetches us its lead and demands to be taken for a walk. Joining us as we unpack the tenets of doggie cinema, weigh up the value of Josh Gad’s voiceover and stare the film’s emotional manipulations in the face is Fandomentals’ Harley Mumford, longtime dog-haver and self-professed easy-mark for...

Bobswinkles, it’s a fizz whizzer! Yes, you heard that right, the time has come for us to climb into a giant bag and be transported to Giant Country, where we’ll sample the finest snozzcumbers and frobscottle (though you’ll forgive us if there’s a whizzpopper or two). We’re joined by the BFI Southbank’s Head of Cinema Programme, Justin Johnson, for this wide-ranging discussion of Steven Spielberg’s...

We’re back! Again! This time for good! We mark our return – which in turn marks our five year anniversary, if you can believe that – by covering two films that were added retroactively to Wikipedia’s Amblin filmography list (which, of course, is our gospel): the cursed 1983 production of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE and the other ‘comet hurtling towards earth’ picture from 1998, DEEP IMPACT. It’s a lo...

Wrap up warm and fight off a cold with our episode on Stvene Spielberg’s Cold War drama BRIDGE OF SPIES, released in 2015 with a script by Matt Charman and the Coen Brothers. The film charts the extraordinary true story of insurance lawyer James Donavan (played by Tom Hanks), who is charged with defending a captured Soviet spy (Mark Rylance), which leads to him become a key figure in the negotiati...

The park is open. After a long 14 years since the release of Jurassic Park 3, the Jurassic franchise burst back into life in 2025 with JURASSIC WORLD, from the mind of unknown filmmaker Colin Trevorrow, and it made a quite significant roar at the box office. To take a tour inside the park and see what works - and what doesn't - about this long-awaited fourth entry in the franchise, we’re thril...

Allow Maison Ramblin to cook you up a delectable aural dish with our episode on Lasse Hallström’s 2014 foodie comedy-drama THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY, based on Richard C. Morais’ book and starring film legends Helen Mirren and Om Puri. This cosy tale of an Indian family trying to make a new life for themselves in the French countryside by opening a restaurant directly across the street from a Michel...

Four score and seven years ago (or thereabouts), our Papa Spielberg brought forth on this filmography a new biopic, conceived in collaboration with Tony Kushner, and dedicated to the proposition that Daniel Day-Lewis was the best man to embody Honest Abe in his pledge to ratify the idea that ‘all men are created equal’. Now we are engaged in a discussion of the result, 2012’s LINCOLN, testing whet...

The Men in Black are back… in time!? It’s time for some Amblin time-travel hijinks not involving a DeLorean as we check back in with the protectors of Earth agent J (Will Smith) and Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) as the very fabric of reality is threatened when an evil alien named Boris the Animal (Jermaine Clement) - actually it’s just Boris - rewrites history, forcing J to travel back to 1969 and tea...

It’s time to journey from the beautiful green landscapes of Devon to war-torn Europe - then back to a now very orange Devon - in Steven Spielberg’s World War One drama WAR HORSE. Based on Michael Morpurgo’s children's book as well as it’s hugely successful stage adaptation, we welcome friend and history-buff - and star of Zombey - Ben Weldon to join us on the journey of innocence lost and the stru...

Blistering barnacles - it’s time to open the book (or comic album) on Tintin and tackle the crab with the golden claws, discover the secret of the unicorn and find Red Rackham’s treasure. Barry Levitt re-joins the pod after a brief break from Amblin animation and together we piece together the whole story: the complicated history of Tintin creator Hergé (and how to properly pronounce his name), th...

Get ready for an episode full of production value as we get nostalgic with JJ Abrams and SUPER 8 - the 70s set sci-fi drama following a group of kids making their own movie in their backyard, and happen to stumble on a government conspiracy involving an escaped extra-terrestrial being. We welcome back returning guests Daniel Kelly and Michael Perry, re-assembling the team that once made up our stu...

We kick off a fresh new decade for Amblin with our last - at least for now - Clint Eastwood movie, the 2010 supernatural drama HEREAFTER. Our Clint journey began with something of a surprising gem with The Bridges of Madison County,and to bookend our experience with Mr. Eastwood we also get a film full of surprises; a meditative, pragmatic  look at belief, grief and questions of life and death. We...

After six years and 14 movies, the 00s of the Amblin’s comes to a quick end, which can only mean one thing: who’s going to win the Waxflatter Award for best visual effects shot of the decade? Yes, it’s time for one of our review bonanzas covering the best moments and performances of the decade that has just been, as well as reveal both our and the listener’s top five movies of the decade that have...

Clint Eastwood’s two-picture project looking the Battle of Iwo Jima reaches its conclusion (as does the 00s for Amblin) with LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, this time following the perspective of the Japanese soldiers on the island, who employed a unique strategy that took both the Americans and their own country by surprise. To examine these letters, we invite host of All 90s Action All the Time Scott Mur...

The right picture can win or lose a war, and they don’t come more iconic than the image of US Marines raising the American flag atop a mountain in Iwo Jima. But the story behind an image isn't always so red, white and blue, as shown in Clint Eastwood’s sombre World War Two drama FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS. There is plenty to dive into and explore in both the film itself and the real history of the men w...

We’re back to our usual programming over at Ramblin: An Amblin Podcast, and this time we’re taking a precarious walk over old Nebbercracker's front lawn to cautiously enter MONSTER HOUSE, Gil Kenan’s 2006 feature film debut and the second of the Robert Zemeckis-produced motion capture animations. Because we’re a-scared, though, we can’t do it alone, so we’ve enlisted the help of all-time great sis...

We return with an episode on the final film of 2005, and the second from Mr. Steven Spielberg himself, with his historical drama MUNICH. Charting an account of Mossad assassinations following the massacre at the 1972 Olympic games, it is one of Spielberg’s most polarising and daring works to date, with the decades long Israel-Palestine conflict front and centre as it - and we - explore the moral c...