This time around Bob and Mark lean right into the pretentiousness and discuss the French cinema they enjoy. (For the title we decided to go for the middle choice of "films;" seems midway between "cinema" and "movies.") We do less spoiling than usual, but you should still beware. The dreaded SPOILER may rear its head at any moment in our podcast.

00:10 Intro

03:45 Le Samourai

07:01 Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai

11:26 Disorder (Maryland)

18:39 Au Revoir, Les Enfants

24:28 My Dinner With Andre

26:59 Three Colors: White

33:41 L'Argent

39:04 Wasabi

43:15 Le Cercle Rouge

46:50 Army of Shadows

51:43 Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot

55:21 Odds and Ends

The Count of Monte Cristo (2002), The Count of Monte Cristo (2024), Gankutsuou, The Count of Monte Cristo (Depardieu), Amélie, The Red Turtle, A Prophet

1:02:12 Wrapping up

This episode we catch up to 1985 and evaluate the 5 films from 1984 nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. It's been a while since the last episode, but to make up for it, it's a bit longer than usual? Anyway, this will be the last decade in series that we look at for now since we've already done an episode on the Best Picture nominees from 1995, 2005, and 2015. As always, beware of the fearsome spoiler that lurks throughout, and enjoy!

00:10 Introduction

04:27 A Soldier's Story

18:25 Places in the Heart

27:40 A Passage to India

45:39 The Killing Fields

54:26 Interlude about ranking nominees by vote totals (Bob was right in his gut reaction: voting results are not made publicly available)

55:51 Amadeus

01:09:45 Films from this year featured in other episodes of our podcast: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Star Trek III, The Terminator, Dune, Blood Simple

01:14:40 Random odds and ends to conclude

Intro and Outro music excerpted without alteration other than length and volume from AcidJazz by Kevin McLeod under a Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0) license: ⁠https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode

So...there were some challenges with this one. We do apologize for the slow release pace, but in this case the audio required a lot of work to tune up. We're talking Best Picture for the 47th Academy Awards (films from 1974). SPOILERS abound, as always.

00:10 Intro

00:57 A good year?

03:21 The Conversation

12:25 Gene Hackman interlude

13:35 (Yes, yes; we were thinking of A Few Good Men)

18:14 The Godfather Part II

34:53 Chinatown

48:53 Lenny

55:07 The Towering Inferno

1:02:34 Digression about film rights and availability of old films

1:08:00 Quick review of other notable films from 1974

1:12:40 Our picks for Best Picture

1:14:13 (We are moving ahead a decade)