The Film Exchange

For Valentine's Day we discuss Priceless. It is a 2006 French romantic comedy film directed Pierre Salvadori, starring Audrey Tautou and Gad Elmaleh. The film follows Jean, a shy waiter who works at a high-end hotel in the south of France who falls for the beautiful and intriguing fortune hunter Irene. One night he is mistaken as a potential client by Irene and spends the night with her. The next...

SPECIAL GUEST: Bryan Berrios. Magic Magic is a 2013 psychological thriller written and directed by Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Silva and starring Juno Temple, Emily Browning, Michael Cera, and Catalina Sandino Moreno. The film follows Alicia (Juno Temple), who arrives in Chile to visit her cousin, Sarah (Emily Browning). Unexpectedly Sarah is called away and Alicia is then stuck on a remote island...

This week we discuss Matt's pick An American Werewolf in London-- a 1981 horror comedy film directed by John Landis. The film follows two American college students, David and Jack, who are attacked by a werewolf while backpacking in England. Jack is killed and David is left with a bite wound. He struggles to come to terms with his new condition and the death of his friend, while also trying to pre...

We discuss Branson's pick Nights of Cabiria (1957), an Italian drama co-written and directed by the great auteur Federico Fellini. It stars Guilietta Masina as Cabiria, a prostitute living in Rome.  The film is based on a story by Fellini. Gulietta Mansion won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival and the film won Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. Cabiria has gone on to be...

We discuss the Quebecois filmmaker Xavier Dolan’s epic romance film Laurence Anyways (2012), which charts ten years in a transgender woman's relationship with her lover. It stars Melvin Poupaud, Suzanne Clément, and Emmanuel Shwartz.

We discuss a noir classic: The Hitch-Hiker is a 1953 American film co written and directed by Ida Lupino starring Edmond O’Brien, William Talman and Frank Lovejoy. It follows two friends taken hostage by a hitchhiker during an automobile trip to Mexico. It was the first American mainstream film noir directed by a woman and was selected in 1998 for preservation in the United States National Film Re...

Join us for our first episode of the new year as we discuss Elaine May's rom-com classic A New Leaf   (1971) starring Walter Matthau, Elaine May, Jack Weston, and James Coco. Henry Graham (Walter Matthau)  lives the life of a playboy. When his lawyer tells him one day that his lifestyle has consumed all his funds, he needs an idea to avoid climbing down the social ladder. So he intends t...

Join us as we each share our top films of 2022. What are your favorite films of 2022? Let us know on instagram and twitter @filmexchangepod ! This episode was recorded in person at River North Media in Denver, CO.

Join us on our Pinocchio-extravaganza as we revisit Disney’s 1940 film and how it compares to the many Pinocchios that that have followed, including Guillermo Del Toro’s new stop motion feature. A living puppet, with the help of a cricket as his conscience, must prove himself worthy to become a real boy. This episode was recorded in person at River North Media in Denver, CO.

Matt and Branson go head-to-toe over the Christmas film Love Actually (2003) written and directed by Richard Curtis. With a star-studded mostly British cast, The film follows the lives of eight very different couples in dealing with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales all set during the frantic month before Christmas in London, England. This film is Branson’s pick.

We discuss Ingmar Bergman’s swan song Fanny and Alexander (1982) and whether or not it can be considered a Christmas classic. Two young Swedish children in the 1900s experience the many comedies and tragedies of their lively and affectionate theatrical family, the Ekdahls. This film is Matt’s pick.

To kick off the holiday season we start with the feel-good romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail (1998) directed by Nora Ephron. It is inspired by the 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie by Miklós László which had earlier been adapted in 1940 as The Shop Around the Corner directed by Ernst Lubitsch, and in 1949 as In the Good Old Summertime directed by Robert Z Leonard and Buster Keaton. It marks the third p...

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s last film together is the Merchant Ivory classic Mr. & Mrs Bridge (1990) directed by James Ivory. We explore what makes this film timeless and still relevant today. Walter and India Bridge are a middle-aged married couple living in Kansas City during the 1930s. They labor to keep their upper-middle class family together amongst the conservative nature of the p...

In the spirit of Thanksgiving we revisit Prisoners (2013), which begins on a rainy Thanksgiving afternoon in Pennsylvania. It is thriller directed by the Quebecois filmmaker Denis Villeneuve from an original screenplay by Aaron Guzikowski. The film has a star studded ensemble cast including Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo, and Paul Dano. Keller...

SPECIAL GUEST: Junting Zhou. Edward Yang's magnum opus Yi Yi (2000) is often considered one of the best films of the 2000s, if not of all time. The film follows each member of a middle-class family in Taipei as they seek to reconcile past and present relationships within their daily lives. We discuss our guest’s selection. Our guest Junting Zhou is a cinematographer, filmmaker, and noodle soup lov...

Join us for a blast from the past as we revisit a film directed by the Australian auteur George Miller. Babe: Pig in the City—a box office flop that received a perfect rating from Roger Ebert and has gone on to be listed among the best film of the 1990s. Babe, fresh from his victory in the sheepherding contest, returns to Farmer Hoggett's farm, but after Farmer Hoggett is injured and unable to wor...

We discuss Branson’s pick — David Lean’s film Summertime from the year 1955 starring Katherine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi. It is a romance film that follows a lonely middle-aged American and her experiences touring Venice alone for the first time, during which she falls in love with a Venetian shopkeeper. Filmed on location, it earned both David Lean and Katherine Hepburn Oscar nominations and has...

SPECIAL GUEST: Jimmy Giannopoulus. It’s the last week of October and to celebrate Halloween we’re discussing our guest Jimmy’s pick The New York Ripper (1982) directed by Lucio Fulci. A highly controversial filmed banned in many countries—it’s about a burned out New York police detective who teams up with a psychoanalyst to track down a vicious serial killer randomly stalking and killing young wom...

SPECIAL GUEST: Kelsey Bollig. Our topic is Kelsey’s pick 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) a sci-fi thriller / horror directed by Dan Trachtenberg in his directorial debut, written by Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken, and Damien Chazelle and starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman. It is the second film in the Cloverfield franchise which also includes Cloverfield (2008) and The Cloverfield Parad...

SPECIAL GUEST: Bryan Berrios. We discuss House of Wax (2005),  a seminal horror film of 2000s, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra starring Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, and Paris Hilton. It is loosely based on the story “The Wax Works” by Charles S. Belden from 1933 and this is its third film adaptation. A group of teens are unwittingly stranded near a strange wax museum and soon must fight to...

SPECIAL GUEST: Junting Zhou. For the month of October we have a guest each week and discuss a horror film of their choice. We love the horror genre and hope this gets you in the Halloween spirit! This week we discuss the Japanese horror auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure (1997) starring Kôji Yakusho and Masato Hagiwara. A frustrated detective deals with the case of several gruesome murders committed b...

We revisit 1970's The Phantom Tollbooth directed by Abe Levitow, Chuck Jones, and Dave Monahan-- a live-action/animated fantasy film based on Norton Juster's 1961 classic children's book of the same name. This is Branson's pick. We discuss how the film holds up today and what makes it special. Milo, a bored boy who lives in a San Francisco apartment block, is surprised by a large, gift-wrapped pac...

We enter the Demy-verse and watch Jacques Demy's debut Lola (1961) starring Marc Michel and Anouk Aimée. Described by Demy as "a musical without music" this French New Wave film is a tribute to Max Orphüls. A bored young man meets with his former girlfriend, now a cabaret dancer and single mother, and soon finds himself falling back in love with her.

This week we discuss Matt’s pick— the underrated Archer Films classic A Matter of Life and Death directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger starring David Niven, Kim Hunter, and Roger Livesey. The film follows a British wartime aviator who cheats death and must argue for his life before a celestial court, hoping to prolong his romance with an American girl.

SPECIAL GUEST! Please welcome our first guest to the podcast — Marcel Saleta! Marcel is an amazingly talented filmmaker, animator, and YouTuber based in Santo Domingo. On this week’s episode we discuss Marcel’s pick The Lion King (1994) and Disney’s infamous remake.