The Best Of The Rest Of Film: 2021

Has it only been a year? The Academy Awards were held on April 25 last year, reducing the eligibility window for 2021 movies to ten months. Many people stayed away from theaters for long stretches of 2021 — I didn’t make it back to cinemas until July — but that didn’t stop a barrage of […]

“Reality Is Very Disappointing” (#102)

Kids don’t always have the greatest taste in entertainment. Some of what we gravitate toward as children ends up aging gracefully and becoming a classic. Take Back To The Future or Beauty And The Beast or E.T., for example. But for every E.T., there are a dozen not-so-classic titles we watched and rewatched with equal […]

Not-Oscars 2021

It’s been another unusually long awards season, though not quite as long as last year’s. The window for Academy Awards eligibility extended out of 2020 into the first couple months of 2021, meaning that some notable 2021 releases, like the Best Picture-nominated Judas And The Black Messiah, have already had their day in the sun, […]

“Would You Please Check My Head For Signs Of Spoiling?” (#101)

As we discussed in our 100th episode, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz delighted generation after generation of children, and MGM’s 1939 musical adaptation became one of the most popular and cherished motion pictures of all time. So it’s only natural that in the 80s, Disney decided to pay tribute to these Oz […]

“Bang On My Chest If You Think I’m Perfect” (#100)

Surrender, Dorothy! For the 100th episode of When We Were Young, Seth, Becky, and Chris have clicked their heels together three times and summoned a twister to whisk them all the way back to 1939, when the ultimate Hollywood classic landed on the big screen in glorious Technicolor. Watching The Wizard Of Oz has been […]

The Tens: Best Of Film 2021

I’m worried. I’m sure you are, too. It’s been a rollercoaster couple of years to be a film fan (along with everything else). 2019 was a stronger-than-average year at the movies, with sprawling, hearty, career-capping epics from major auteurs like Scorsese (The Irishman) and Tarantino (Once Upon A Time In Hollywood), ambitious, adult-oriented big screen […]

Oh So Pretty: Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’

There’s a new Steven Spielberg movie in theaters. It’s about Sharks, but it isn’t another Jaws. It’s about Jets, but it isn’t a sequel to Catch Me If You Can. This is something we’ve never seen from Spielberg before — a movie musical. Spielberg’s name is synonymous with cinema in a way that no other living […]

“Help Me Help You” (#99)

By the time I was pop culturally aware, Tom Cruise was already taken for granted as a movie star. He was always there, grinning and waving on red carpets, on the cover of all the tabloids and more legitimate magazines, every movie he was in an Event (and a hit that warranted the event status). […]

“Take Me To Bed Or Lose Me Forever” (#98)

Do you feel the need? The need to speed back to the 80s and bro out with Iceman, Viper, Wolfman, Slider, Goose, and Maverick all over again? We’ve got you covered in the first part of our cruise through the career of the galaxy’s biggest superstar (don’t tell Xenu), starting with the 1986 blockbuster that […]

Maradona & Child: ‘The Hand Of God’

Paolo Sorrentino won 2013’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for the appropriately titled La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty), a dazzling drama about a writer and socialite in Rome entering the final act of his privileged life. He’s in a strong position to claim the award a second time for this year’s The Hand Of […]

Strong & Silent: ‘The Power Of The Dog’

The stoic cowboy is, perhaps, the most stalwart hero trope we’ve ever had in the movies. Detectives have always been hard-boiled, soldiers are often racked with guilt and trauma, cops frequently cross over to the wrong side of the law, but the cowboy protagonist has rarely been less than noble. Even revisionist Westerns like Unforgiven […]

He Said, He Said (& What She Tried To Say): ‘The Last Duel’

What we know of history has been written almost exclusively by men, especially when you go as far back as the Middle Ages. Every man who ever made a record of the past had his biases, and if you multiply that by the thousands of men who’ve had their say over time, you have to […]