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The swinging sixties clashes with Soviet strictness under the auspices of Marlen Khutsiev, a lesser known Russian auteur, a one-man Russian new wave. We review Ilych’s Gate (1965), its more popular re-cut I Am Twenty (1988), and its flirty follow-up July Rain (1968). Watch out for obnoxious laddish banter, not just from the boys, but from a young Andrei Tarkovsky, whose callous cameo nearly steals...

“Eros and Thanatos, sitting in a tree”, fumbling, groping, and pulling away. This is the psycho-sexual world offered to us by French auteur Catherine Breillat; a controversial figure in European cinema, both celebrated and castigated for her “shock jock and cock-block” sensibility. In a career that has truly spanned the decades, Breillat has cast an unwavering eye at the subjects of sex and desire...

Hello, hello, hello, what's all this then? A disappearance, on an Italian island, and the waves that this disappearance makes - and does not make - among a very loosely knit group of bourgeois 'friends'? Why, it's Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura. A film that divided its critics, and then united them (a bit like Italy itself, really). But is it good, actually? Unsurprisingly, yes - yes it is....

Adam Curtis is back with ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ perhaps his most ambitious documentary series, an emotional history of the modern world, a rich tapestry of complex protagonists and a lot of moody archive and electronic music. Were the boys intellectually energised or did they overdose on the Curtis Kool-Aid?

This week, the boys wade through the slow anthropological cinema of Ben Rivers - a man obsessed with society and those who live at its edges. A hunchback, a musician, a salty old sailor - a hippie with a finger in his arsehole. Expensively shot, intellectually minded, and glacially paced, are Ben's banks bursting, or do these Rivers run dry? The boys review A Spell to Ward off the Darkness, Slow A...

All the lonely people, where do they all come from? ‘Austria’ you might say, especially if, like Owen and Ralph you’ve spent the past week watching the films of Ulrich Seidl. Whether it’s the mail order bride-doom of The Last Real Men, the heavy petting of Animal Love or the subaltern sex tourism of Paradise Love - Seidl dignifies these desperate souls with attention and acceptance.

In Lux Aeterna, art-house ingénue Gaspar Noé tackles the dynamics, egos, and erotics of cinema itself; turning the lens on his own (literally) pulsating practice. In a tight 50 minutes, the French-Argentinian filmmaker dissects a failing film set filled with inflated egos and questionable ethics. But is this aesthetically-charged and critically-toothed survey of cinema just another pretentious pum...

A lone boy is jolted into manhood by the tribulations and traumas of WW2 in Eastern Europe. This is the premise of both Come and See (1985) and The Painted Bird (2019). The boys dig into this deadly double bill with fighting spirit, and find the fine line between epic and exploitation.

This week, the boys are joined by the pod’s weird-suburbia correspondent Daniel Neofetou to discuss Ham on Rye, an unsettling meal comprised of adolescent yearning, unspoken ritual, and a side of small-town ennui. Fancy a bite?

Ralph introduces Owen to one of his favourite films, The Hourglass Sanatorium by Wojciech Has, an exuberant but mournful dream journey, transcending linear time and reconciling personal relationships with collective trauma.

This week, Owen and Ralph take to the stand in defence of The Trial, Orson Welles' horny and hectic adaptation of Kafka's eponymous novel. But they also take a sip from the bottle of Welles' wider life, aided by a sensationalist Netflix documentary and his final, unfinished film, The Other Side of the Wind. Has Welles aged well, like the finest of champagnes, or is he just a load of trapped wind?...

Obsessive, sexually-frustrated and determined to restore honour to a decadent society. But enough about Owen and Ralph, this week they wipe the white splashes off Paul Schrader's ornate biopic of horny militarian Yukio Mishima and ask: is this Hollywood homage edging or hedging?

Live from Pottersville, NY, the boys are joined by Daniel Neofetou for a festive foray into Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. But is it, actually? And why is this paean to the American Dream quite so hard to pin down?

A desperate, misguided venture, driven by vanity and doomed to failure - but enough about Owen and Ralph’s podcasting ambitions, this week they’re joined by Lara Alonso Corona to discuss Kelly Reichardt’s existential western Meek’s Cutoff, a ‘desert poem’ from the dry valleys of the Oregon trail.

Beef’s back on the menu this week as the boys disagree over Alejandro Jodorowsky’s late-career output, The Dance of Reality (2013) and Endless Poetry (2016). Ravishing, restorative poetry or cringey, non-cinematic fluff? And we’re not just talking about Ralph and Owen’s camera rolls. Let the fight begin!

The gentrification of a filmmaker. Owen and Ralph compare the avant-garde excitement of Philippe Garrel's classics Le Lit de la Vierge and Le Revelateur (made around May '68) with his more conventional 2017 romantic drama Lover For a Day and wonder where did it all go so regular?

This week, the boys immerse themselves in the sensual worlds of Indian director Mani Kaul, specifically Uski Roti, Duvidha and Nazar. Underrated, underappreciated, a king among filmmakers. Sort your shit out, Criterion Collection.

The boys dive in for a short, sharp dip in this cool 14-minute classic of the American avant-garde by Maya Deren and her husband Alexander Hamid. 

We’re Havana a nice time over here. This week, the boys take a look at Mikhail Kalatazov’s sadly sidelined masterpiece, Soy Cuba (1964). It’s propaganda, but not as we know it.

Isabelle Huppert stars in this fiery adaptation of Ingeborg Bachmann's classic novel about a writer torn between two unavailable men. Three more unavailable men, Owen, Ralph and their guest Matthew Turner, pick apart this neurotic classic.

Happy Halloween, you delightful ghouls, and happy twenty-five episodes! This week, the boys fall under the hypnotic spell of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘j-horror’ masterpiece, Cure (Kyua). They also rank every single film they’ve reviewed so far, in an act of righteous folly.

Owen and Ralph are joined by Igor Toronyi-Lalic to discuss Éric Rohmer’s charming yet incisive cycle of ‘Comedies and Proverbs’, specifically The Aviator's Wife, Pauline at the Beach and My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend.  Behind these picture postcards lie questions of fate, desire and some serious object-oriented observation.

Mad, ‘bad’ and uncomfortable to watch, Michael Haneke’s films have often plumbed the very depths of what it means to be human in a time of crisis. In 2003’s minimalist apocalyptic chamber piece The Time of the Wolf, the boys find themselves torn: should cinema console us? Or should it lay our souls bare? Timely stuff indeed!

Does length matter? This week Owen and Ralph go for film tapas, sampling the smaller dishes currently warm on the MUBI buffet, including some very recent works made during the Covid-19 lockdown. In this order they discuss:   Wind by Marcell Iványi In My Room by Mati Diop End of Summer by Jóhann Jóhannsson Strasbourg 1518 by Jonathan Glazer Seven Years In May by Affonso Uchoa

Sexy, deranged, and a little bit, er, romantic. This week, the boys go eyeballs deep into Tinto Brass’s 1976 Nazispolitation soft core extravaganza, Salon Kitty. Does something serious stir beneath the covers, or was it just a limp attempt to shock us into submission?