That's Not How It Went Down

In many ways, Al Capone feels like the role De Niro was born to play, and one that in today's cinema world, you might expect to earn some acting accolades. But for some reason, it was Connery's Irish-cum-Chicagoan-cum-Scottish turn as the incorruptible old timer Jim Malone that garnered him his only acting Oscar - an accolade that feels like a reward for his entire career rather than this...

Our first ever live episode in front of a cinema audience in partnership with Cineworld and Sony pictures gives us the exciting and challenging prospect of sifting through The Facebook Files to find out what changes were made by the dialogue maestro Aaron Sorkin to tell his latest story from the Facebook universe - or the Metaverse as I'm sure Zuckerberg would prefer. After the honour of an in...

"Forget about it!"... or don't, as this week we're heading back to that fruitful pasture for gangster movies - New York's Five Families, AKA the mafia. With syndicated crime seemingly taking over the Big Apple by the end of the 1970s it was decided a sea change was necessary, leading to the FBI's infiltration of the Bonnano crime family and the mythologisation of one of N...

Returning to the fertile fields of WWII cinema, we explore one of the more unique storylines of this era. The most common form of artistic translation into film today is probably from the good old fashioned book. But wind the clock back nearly a century and many stories for the silver screen were lifted directly from the stage and it's a path less commonly trod in the 21st century. The story o...

The collection of animated movies that are "based on a true story" is perhaps unsurprisingly thin. Having already tackled several of these on our investigative journey through film so far a common theme has occurred: stories with much darker origins finding themselves rewritten and revised to suit the preferences of modern audiences - as well as their offspring. And so it would appear with 1997's...

Having gotten up off the canvas over the strange motives behind A24's most recent ring-set movie, The Smashing Machine, we've mustered the stamina to dive head first into another world of yellow-tinted bleakness, this time exploring the misfortune of the Von Erich dynasty. WWE has had its fair share of unwanted stories surrounding its lack of support for its athletes during and after their time wi...

Bonjour et bienvenue dans That's Not How It Went Down. We will be your maître d's and for your aperitif today we will perusing the 2009 comedy biopic "Julie & Julia". Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with the film before we get to the meat and bones of the episode. You can choose between the menus of renowned television cook - the French Chef herself - Julia Child, or the up and co...

Some actors were born to play certain roles, but perhaps it's a bit of a shame if that role happens to be one of the worst dictators in human history. At least in Forest Whitaker's case, the performance bagged him some serious accolades. Standing opposite Whitaker was the fresh faced James McAvoy, playing a man increasingly out of his depth in Idi Amin's turbulent, bloody reign of Uganda. Based on...

On your marks, get set... TRUTH! In this episode we're passing the baton to perhaps the most iconic British sports film of all. Turning the lives and times of two of Britain's most fabled Olympians into an award-winning movie was always going to be a high bar to clear with plenty of hurdles along the way, but with Chariots of Fire taking the USA by storm it found its way to the top of the podium t...

"YES! Say it a million times. Then say it a million more. And the word you will have said two million times is...?" Saying 'yes' isn't always as easy as it might seem. But for a man who has previously played someone unable to tell a lie you might feel as though answering solely in the affirmative would be bit of a step down. Although the obligation of Fletcher Reede is entirely fictitious, the pre...

After minor roles in Black Hawk Down, Layer Cake and RocknRolla, Tom Hardy made his biggest entrance to audiences when he beefed up for the role of Britain's most violent inmate. It's now hard to imagine anyone else in the role, but even though it launched his now stellar career, it arguably remains his most outlandish performance. But there is surely no other way to play a man who has lived almos...

What's your favourite scary movie? If it happens to be 1996's revival slasher horror, "Scream", then stick around because you just might be scared witless. Small-town America is something many of us film buffs would have grown up imagining and idolising. A paradise of charming neighbourhoods and family-filled streets. But what if the place you perceived to be the safest in the world was suddenly p...

Archaeology is the search for fact, as is the goal of this podcast. But facts can be hard to come by when dealing with something as genuinely legendary as the Holy Grail. The true magic of the best Indiana Jones moments, lies in the historical half-truths that resonate with us, whether we are believers or not in the faith they are attributed to. After unearthing some fascinating parallels in stori...

This week we're dribbling at the prospect of another sports movie slam dunk. Basketball may be a relatively unknown sport where we come from, but across the pond its presence is undeniable with 170 million fans tuning in to follow their team. And that journey to the NBA begins at high school with around 50,000 students offered scholarships to attend university for their excellence on court. But in...

The history of space exploration is often dominated by men. Movies like "Apollo 13" and "First Man" - while captivating - seem to only show the perseverance of the male members of NASA, crucially omitting the thousands of hours of dedication from female mathematicians and engineers. But in 2015, a relatively unknown woman was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, highlighting an extrao...

When it comes to the miners' strike of 1984/85, there isn't much positivity to be found. Families in communities solely reliant upon the income generated from the coal-mining industry were effectively starved into desperation as Margaret Thatcher's brutal tactics attempted to break the Unions. But as those standing up to the crisis had to find new ways to generate funds for their union members, a...

This week we're embodying the inimitable sense of British wartime spirit with a look at many people's all-time favourite war movie. Despite experiencing the harrowing conditions of near starvation inside POW camp Stalag Luft III, the unbreakable resilience of 600 men led to perhaps the most infamous prison escape in cinematic history. But with the events depicted undeniably embellished by Hollywoo...

We've said before that the story of how a legacy was created doesn't necessarily guarantee compelling viewing. But in this dramatised making of, we are partially spared the knowing winks and nods to the audience when dealing with the most famous elements. Partially... Where this movie soars is when it's telling the story of conflict between the stubborn, grouchy author who wants to keep her vision...

Not many movies can claim to have restarted an actor's career with more success than 2013's biographical drama, "Dallas Buyers Club". With Matthew McConaughey formerly known as a romantic comedy lead it was something of a punt casting a heartthrob in the role of Ron Woodroof, a terminally ill electrician who begins his own quest to provide life-extending drugs to those who share his fate. Having d...

There are many films known for a single scene, but as the limits of what can be achieved on camera continue to be pushed into new territories, it's surely becoming harder and harder to use this as a marketing tool. But the "new DiCaprio film where he gets mauled by a bear" generated serious buzz before its release, and its reputation - much like Hugh Glass himself - has endured. But many may not k...

This time out we're inviting contestants into the hot seat and switching off the air conditioning as we attempt to uncover the mysteries behind the infamous 1950s quiz show scandal. With a brand new genre of TV entertainment came a shocking lack of regulation, allowing viewers to be swept up in the rags to riches stories of their favourite contestants, all the while unaware that what they were wat...

The temptation to parody the speech we all know from this film as a blurb was tempting but would have been too obvious. What perhaps isn't as obvious, is quite how may historical figures made it into this absolute classic. Ancient Rome is an arena that rarely needs augmenting or embellishing, but it was done for this story by taking some archetypal characters and weaving them into a timeless reven...

After being recommended this film from many quarters, the time felt right to tackle one of the darkest subject matters when it comes to true stories - serial killings. But this being one of the first films of the visionary behind Parasite, it was always bound to have a certain amount of black comedy, though not as much as one would come to expect from more recent Bong Joon Ho films. As we approach...

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, players are ready... to analyse 2017's sport/comedy/drama/docu movie of the now infamous "Battle of the Sexes". Although today finds tennis as one of the world's only major sports offering equal prize money between its male and female competitors, that doesn't mean that the journey to reaching parity was an easy one. And netting two of Hollywood's biggest stars to s...

We return to the ocean this week and tackle our first true disaster movie. The oil spill from this tragedy still causes damage to this day, and even though we can probably all draw a basic picture of what an oil rig looks like, how much do we really know about how they work and what they do? Fortunately, that's not officially our job - but it was the job of many aboard this rig in the Gulf of Mexi...