Above the Title: A Colin Farrell Podcast

Now this one, this is the big one. It's Brooklyn, the 2015 immigrant drama that saw Saoirse Ronan earn her second Oscar nomination and lay out the template for her movie star career. It's also a movie your hosts like very, very, much. We get into why this is such an endearing picture, along with tangents on Oscars new and old, Florence Pugh, Harry Potter, Brie Larson, Actorle, the literary afterlives of the novel, and the ugly side of black metal. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After several years negotiating the shift into adulthood via a series of supporting roles, Saoirse Ronan made her triumphant return to stardom by headlining a serious drama at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival which would assert her status as a respected actor and set the course for the rest of her career. This is... not that movie. This is Stockholm, Pennsylvania, a misguided kidnapping drama which was her other attempt at reintroducing herself as a dramatic lead, that also played that Sundance, but would have a hasty release and be quickly forgotten. It's a weird one gang! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we're back to talking Colin with the second of his two starring roles of 2025. This time, he's playing a gambler at the end of his rope in Edward Berger's Ballad of a Small Player, a potential Oscar play for Netflix that received a chilly reception on the festival circuit and, at time of recording, appears to have been quietly dumped, much to the consternation of both your hosts (this movie's good!). Listen in for a lot of James Bond talk, a lot of Tilda Swinton talk, an awards season check-in, a debate over this film's use of Macau as a setting, and an attempt to figure out why they bend the cards in baccarat (spoilers: it's way dumber than you could ever imagine). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the great Sean Fahey returns to help us struggle through technical difficulties as we discuss Ryan Gosling's first and only directorial effort, Lost River! Ten years on, with a movie seemingly only the three of us like, where do we stand on this one off? We answer that strangely complicated question, and along the way we complain about the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, debate the aesthetics of homage, salute Ben Mendelsohn, reveal which directors are liars, and try to remember what happens in Hancock. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2011, James Bobin and Nicholas Stoller successfully reintroduced The Muppets to a new generation, delivering a box office, Oscar winning hit. In 2014 they followed that up with Muppets Most Wanted, a movie that stinks so bad it basically killed any potential for the Muppets to appear again on the big screen. This week, we dissect the latter to figure out just what went wrong, and you know if we're covering a misbegotten franchise entry we had to bring back the great Colin Hamingson and the great Saneesh Feisal. Saoirse Ronan is technically in this movie. She kind of has a line and everything. Sorry for the poor audio this week, we promise we're working on it! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the great Genevieve Jacobson returns along with first time (and equally great) guest Langston Young to discuss The Grand Budapest Hotel. Arguments are had and technical issues abound as we discuss the broader career of Wes Anderson, the film's Oscar run and notorious Ralph Fiennes snub, Saoirse's frustratingly small role and its oddly fruitful afterlife, and, of course, 28 Years Later. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we complete our brief return to the work of Colin Farrell with A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, his reunion with After Yang director Kogonada and his first feature film following a three year hiatus after his Oscar nomination. We're not mad, we're just disappointed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our brief retrospective through the lost Colin episodes ends with 2021's After Yang, a movie that long time listeners know contains (spoilers) one of our all-time favorite Colin Farrell performance. Listen in as we talk Cannes section placement, theorize on this movie's half-assed released, sing the praises of Kogonada, make some incredibly inaccurate Oscar predictions, and generally get bored to tears. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're taking a look at Voyagers, the movie where arguably the entire class of sexy young movie stars in training gets on a spaceship and descends into horny chaos while Colin tries to keep the peace. Honestly we mostly just talk about Gran Turismo in this one vroom vroom. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In round 2 of the lost Colin Farrell episodes, we discuss Ava, the Jessica Chastain thriller that was one of the surprise hits of the pandemic. Join us as we talk the long lineage of assassins onscreen, Chastain the auteur, this film's contentious relationship with the Me Too movement, new developments in the Colin/Ewan symbiosis, the Fear Street movies, late style Geena Davis, the streaming attention economy in the era of Covid, and John Malkovich's entire career. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Surprise! The lost Colin Farrell episodes have been recovered! Listen back to April 2024 when the great Colin Hamingson joined us to discuss the long in development children's fantasy adventure picture Artemis Fowl, an extremely normal Covid era catastrophe that Colin Farrell definitely wasn't added to at the last second. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the great Jeff Sweeney joins us for the return of everyone's favorite podcast within a podcast: that's right, it's time for another episode of Oops! All Rushmores! Listen in to increasingly deranged and contentious deep dives into the careers of six - count em, six! - of the finest character actors Europe has to offer. Also we discuss the 2013 Spanish animated film Justin and the Knights of Valour for the legally required minimum and not a second more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How I Live Now is ostensibly a 2013 film in which Saoirse Ronan plays a teenage girl trying to survive a war torn England. What How I Live now actually is is a movie with a relatively minor plot point so insane we find it completely impossible to talk about anything else and gradually descend into madness. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the great Andrew Jagielski returns to the show to discuss the last of Saoirse's attempts towards traditional stardom, Andrew Niccol's The Host. An adaptation of the only non-Twilight novel Stephenie Meyer ever wrote, the film stars Saoirse as a young woman possessed by an alien parasite dueling for control over her body, and get this - they both like different boys. Listen in as we debate the metrics by which one determines what is the worst, eulogize the Saw franchise, consider the long term benefits of being in a flop, and go long on Saoirse's career in comparison to other actresses of her generation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're checking back in with our old friend Neil Jordan for 2012's Byzantium, in which Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan play mother and daughter vampires eking out a living in an English coastal town. Listen as we ponder such questions as: are vampires played out as a narrative concept? Does this movie function as an earnest feminist counter to its sex-centered marketing? Is this movie an attempt to better execute the core ideas behind Jordan's previous film Ondine? Is Caleb Landy Jones Good in this? What's going on with Caleb Landry Jones' Wikipedia page? What's going on with this movie's Wikipedia page? What going on with Chris Columbus' Wikipedia page? The answers to these questions, and more, can be found within. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the great Justin Stillmaker returns to the show to discuss Violet & Daisy, the... other movie from 2011 where Saoirse Ronan plays a teen girl assassin. Co-starring Alexis Bledel, the film was the directorial debut and swan song of Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Precious Geoffrey S. Fletcher, and as we try to wrap our heads around this befuddling movie and his incredibly brief career, we also defend Spike Lee's honor, continue to litigate the long cultural tail of Quentin Tarantino, somehow keep mentioning Seijun Suzuki, and contemplate alternate casting possibilities both real (this was almost a Saoirse/Carey Mulligan vehicle!) and imagined. But we devote most of the episode towards eulogizing the legendary James Gandolfini, in one of his last performances before his untimely death. Check out the trailer for Justin's upcoming movie The Rider: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFLAZvZOFUy/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

sorry about this one gang Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, it's a first for Above the Title - we're doubling back to a movie we've already covered. That's right, it's a return look at the first role Saoirse booked after her Oscar nomination and her one collaboration with Colin Farrell, Peter Weir's swan song The Way Back. Our original episode was one of our most contentious, and we've had two years to let our thoughts percolate on this divisive film. Kind of a postscript episode this week, but a fun one, even if we mostly talk about the Russo brothers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the great Morgan Garrity joins us to discuss Peter Jackson's boondoggle adaptation of Alice Sebold's best selling novel The Lovely Bones, starring Soairse as the ghost of a girl murdered in the 1970s. We talk the film's lengthy production and the complicated history behind the novel, get into our thoughts on Jackson and this adaptation, but really we're all here to sort one thing out: is Academy Award nominee Stanley Tucci good in this movie? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the great Charlie Schumann returns to chat about 9-1-1, the late career of Jennifer Lopez, and the relationship between the Mission: Impossible films and the tv show. Oh, and when we remember we also discuss Saoirse's first lead role City of Ember, a failed YA dystopian franchise starter about an underground city that definitely makes sense and definitely isn't boring. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.