Movies For Decades

We're back, to talk Everything Everywhere All at Once, not only the best picture winner but undoubtedly the defining movie of 2022. Our pal Christien Sulliven joins us to unpack this big hearted zany multiverse adventure, and do a little litigation of its qualities and faults, and some retrospective of the discourse surrounding it.

Epic fights! Ultral violence! A true short king! Redemption, or lack therof! On this season's Cottingham special, we disect one of the ultimate and most influential action movies of the century, what makes it awesome and what makes it, not for everyone

Here we dicuss another of our favorites, Adaptaion, a mind bending movie that makes us ask deep sounding questions about the creative process, how stories represent real life and vice versa and whether or not we're done with fish.

Making a quick detour to the present we've got an Oscar Special! Helen and Colin make both Oscar predictions and work out their own picks for who should collect statues at this year's Academy Awards, and discuss the movies from this year and where Cinema is in the year 2022.

Digging back into our childhoods with one of Helen's favorite movies (and one her brothers love as well) we talk A League of Their Own, Dottie Hinson as a heroic ideal, a little Hanks and maybe just a lil BASEBALL

Here we discuss Blade Runner, an essential science fiction film and also a fairly essential Albea family film. Unpacking what that might say about us, we examine the tortured history of this film's many versions, strengths and weaknesses of those changes, how we feel about Deckard as a replicant, Harrison Ford's unique star power and how to sell this movie as a fairy tale to little girls

Entering the 70's via a highly influential historical epic set in the 1500's, we dig into the fraught stories of behind the scenes difficulties, similarities between conquistadors and filmmakers, all while Helen and Colin try their best Werner Herzog impressions

This episode we along with guest Chase Tinnon ask the titular question, what ever did happen to Baby Jane? 

Returning to Japan we pay our first visit to the legendary filmography of Akira Kurosawa, with his melancholy but gently comedic drama, Ikiru. As usual, we spend some time discussing details we might be missing, be it things lost in translation, lost in time, and whether or not we can even speak English, let alone pronounce Japanese words

Diving into Casablanca, arguably the ultimate classic Hollywood movie, we explore its magnetic cinematic power, the intensity of the wartime context in which it was made, and make sure to spend time on the saucy romance at its heart

Back in the early sound era, we discuss the one of a kind classic, Freaks, along with the life and career of director Tod Browning, what made the movie controversial at the time and how we should feel about it today (besides the fact that we love).

We're back! And we're back in time to the 1920's for Nosferatu, the seminal horror film from director F. W. Murnau. We also talk some Dracula, including Bram Stoker's original novel, the crazy way the Stoker estate reacted to this movie, along with other Dracula and vampire interpretations, from Bela Lugosi, Klaus Kinski and George Hamilton.

We conclude our first season with the 2021 film, Pig, starring Nicholas Cage

For 2011 we discuss Contagion. The movie, not the global pandemic, although we talk a little bit about that too

Entering the 21st century and the glorious city of Hong Kong, we discuss the gloriously exuberant kung fu soccer comedy, Shaolin Soccer and are joined this week by special guest, Eric Cottingham 

Entering the 90's and staying with comedy, we ask What About Bob? with our friend Carson Elmore. In addition to musing on Bob's various ailments, we digress on New England manners or lack thereof and how we're not still bitter at all about grades we got in college

We enter the 80's with a classic horror comedy romp from director John Landis, and are joined this week by our friend Christien Sullivan 

Entering the 70's and returning to America, we discuss a highly 70's and hyper American crime movie, Dirty Harry, starring Clint Eastwood. But does this movie bear some culpability for police misconduct, past and present? Or is that putting too much on what may be a fairly cheesy action flick? This episode we are joined by filmmaker and friend, Chase Tinnon

We enter the 60's and leave America for a detour to Japan, where we discuss the social commentary infused crime drama, Pigs and Battleships and are joined by a friend and fellow cinema aficionado, Karson Goodman Along the way we talk bigger context of changing cinematic styles around the world as well as the the historical context surrounding the American occupation of Japan, what Japanese Hollywood operated and make no pig puns whatsoever  

We enter the 1950's by discussing the seminal science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still and are joined by our first guest and first official friend of the pod, Ethan Taylor