Sophie Watches Movies

Building up to Superman 2025, here is the first of our four part Hot Girl Summer of Superman Special.

In our final episode of season one, we watched Spielberg's E.T. and Masaki Kobayashi's Harakiri to round out our first set of Bracket Movies. Trigger warning: Harakiri is a film centered around a ceremonial suicide, and this topic is discussed.

Last week, we pitted a killer robot film against the creators of operas; this week, we looked at a killer robot movie against the makers of film.

This week, we bring back two films from our old bracket: Paul Verhoven's Robocop and Milos Foreman's Amadeus for an 80s spectacular to replace the older movies from last week.

This week, we went back in time once again to some more film beginnings, but this time, we hopped the pond over to France to look at two of their classics in Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game and Carl Theodore Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. These two early works of cinema are both films that have come to inspire countless works subsequently, and we have gone back to determine if th...

This week, we finally took at legendary filmmaker Akira Kurasawa and the horror genre staple, Silence of the Lambs. These are two films that pull viewers into their twisted and dark worlds full of less than honest characters.

This week, we dial m back to the late 40s and early 50s to look at two films that radically shifted the potential of stories told in film. The Red Shoes recounts a haunting fairy tale transcribed onto a ballerina depicting a more traditional version of the fairy tale, and Rear Window sees Alfred Hitchcock seep deeper into the depths of his particularly voyeuristic storytelling style.

Have you been avoiding us because the movies we discuss are old and not cool? Well then start here cause this week we actually talked about new movies.

This week we looked at Martin Scorsese's The Departed and Terry Gilliam's Brazil, two movies about incompetent government workers. One portrayal is very much grounded in Boston and the other is a farcical send-up of George Orwell's 1984. While both may be casual in depicting violence, only one film can walk away into our eventual second round.

Deciding what is better between Kubrick's The Shining and Hitchcock's Psycho is like choosing between butter and toast: why can't we just choose both? In the grand scheme of cinema and horror history, these might just be the two highest peaks achieved by two of the greatest directors ever to live. After much discussion, however, we reached a somewhat conclusive decision.

This week we looked at the two most recent movies we have looked at so far and discussed two auteurs who feel like they are still pushing the medium forward in new directions. A huge part of what makes these two younger (relatively) filmmakers special for us, is how fresh and original their stories feel. Through a lot of older movies we watched we witnessed the birth of many tropes in film, but he...

This week we watched two cool movies from two wildly different time periods. Both films's "coolness" derives from their characters and settings interestingly and importantly. Both films have arguably cooler women chasing after their lead men. But which film is just cool enough to make it out of our first round of movies?

This week we analyzed two films from two directors with varied careers. We have seen major blockbusters from both whether it be Pacific Rim or Jaws, and we have also seen intimate character studies such as Pan's Labyrinth or Shindler's List. Both these directors are masters of their craft, able to appeal to wide audiences. But how far does that take one when looking for the greatest movie of all t...

This week we looked at Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, both comedy classics. While both have hysterical moments, these two films approach their jokes very differently. One came from the cuff and one from hours of planning, yet both work.

This week we looked at two older films which both exemplify the times in which they were made. Watching these two films back to back we saw just how much Hollywood had shifted in just under a decade and debated if capturing an era is all a movie needs to stand out as truly great.

In this episode, we toned it down from two movies to one to take a look at the Muppet's Christmas Carol for our first-ever Christmas special. We hope you enjoy some laughs and regain the breath you need to endure family politics this season.

This week we leap back in time to watch one of America's first true epics of film and the movie that capstoned the silent era of cinema. D.W. Griffith's 'Intolerance' was not his first grand-scale movie experiment. However, over a century later, it stood as far and above his most ambitious work, giving Hollywood an example to sprint for in its early days. And then two decades later, the silent era...

This week, we examine John Carpenter's Halloween and City of God, two films that could not feel more distant but might, against all odds, have some shared themes. In one film, extravagant horror monsters take a back seat in favor of some scares that feel far more down to earth, and the other features an all-time great villain, Michael Meyers. Trigger Warning: City of God is at times an intense fil...

In our second bracket pairing, we come off the highs of week one for two more drama-centric tales. While these movies felt greatly disconnected on the surface, we discover that the strings that bind these two internet favorites are more tightly woven than we could have known. Trigger Warning: Midnight Cowboy is a film that depicts sexual violence and those depictions are briefly discussed in this...

In our first episode, the bracket has given us two of the all-time greatest action films ever made. But of these two which delivers more thrills and chills of stuntwork pizazz to bolster it into the eventual second round of our tournament?