We’ve come to the end of Nolan Week, folks.
The Academy Awards are nigh and we’re here to offer the last word on the soon-to-be-Oscar-annointed OPPENHEIMER.
Join Matt and SPECIAL GUEST BRIAN BOARINI (!) for a three-hour tour of a quarter-century filmography.
It’s time, folks. It’s Nolan time.
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It’s TENET-talkdown time, team.
We chat. We disagree. We rank.
Sound good?
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Donate: Thanks!
Email: wlmpodcast@gmail.com
Sound good?
We chat. We disagree. We rank.
It’s TENET-talkdown time, team.
With Nolan’s vision of Gotham City in our rearview, we’re now flashing back to the beginning of the auteur’s cinematic journey.
We’ll scrutinize his dexterity with the daylight noir, his interest in self-victimizing sleuths, and his fascination with prestidigitation.
- FOLLOWING (1998)
- MEMENTO (2000)
- INSOMNIA (2002)
- THE PRESTIGE (2006)
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As we traverse the last few miles in the marathon that will end at the 96th Academy Awards, it has become clear that “foregone conclusion” is the proper term to describe this year’s Best Director race. We here at WE LIKE MOVIES could not be happier with this inevitability as we look forward to no longer living in a world in which Christopher Nolan has zero Oscars.
In honor of the occasion, we have decided to revisit our recent Oeuvre series about Mr. Nolan. For the next few days, leading up to Sunday’s Oscar Ceremony, we will be posting “encore presentations” of all episodes of the Nolan series, culminating in a brand new BONUS EPISODE celebrating the only film not covered in our original countdown: Best Picture frontrunner OPPENHEIMER.
We begin with the rare “solo pod,” in which Matt inaugurates the series with a narratology lecture about Nolan’s unique storytelling acumen.
Follow us this week for podcasts about all twelve of the director’s films, spanning his quarter-century career.
View the complete version of Matt’s Nolan video essay HERE
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It’s Bond time again. We’re podcasting about it. Need we say more?
—-THERE WILL BE SPOILERS!—-
Greetings, WLM faithful!
We return to you now, after an extended, fall hiatus, with a State-of-the-Cinematic-Union-style discussion pod, followed by a thorough review of David Fincher’s decades-in-the-making, pseudo-historical biopic Mank.
We’re excited to be back, have a backlog of hot takes, and promise to never stay away so long again.
If you’re playing the WLM drinking game, today’s buzzword is EVOCATIVE!
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We’re back from the winter hiatus just in time to submit our official Oscar predictions and lock in the choices that will determine the winner of our yearly WLM wager.
Join us as we break down all 24 categories, get foolishly optimistic about PARASITE’s chance to make history on Oscar night, and even outline a few additions and subtractions we’d love to see implemented with respect to the future slate of categories.
We’re mere hours away from Hollywood’s biggest night! Whether the big prize goes to 1917 or PARASITE, it’s just important to remember that MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL has more Oscar nominations than UNCUT GEMS. Stew on that, get comfortable with the fact that you’re going to die someday, and just give in to the annual, bizarre, intoxicating power of Oscar weekend… Just let it happen.
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One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2019 was to to embrace a new discipline of brevity in my writing- to tighten up my emails, my blog posts, and my essays. So, in the spirit of excising the fluff, the flab, and the streamofconsciousness drivel, I submit to you my ever-so-slightly-slimmer-best-of-the-year-list for 2019.
As usual, the quality films were frustratingly-backloaded into a fraught year that could have used some artistic catharsis earlier on. Regardless, the cinema of 2019 effectively landed an emotional rollercoaster of a decade with grace, sophistication, and the promise of what we could expect in the 2020s.
It’s our annual ode to opinions.
We do it every year. We love it. What more do you need to know?
Listen in and leave comments. We value YOUR opinion. We treasure your friendship!
2019, we hardly knew ye….
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What a long, strange trip it’s been.
It took us nearly a decade to get there but we’re extremely excited to announce that we’ve officially made it to 300 episodes on the We Like Movies Podcast feed!
In honor of the occasion we’ve invited back the ten beautiful individuals who have guested on the podcast over the years to share their thoughts on the greatest films of the last decade. Since we started this journey in October of 2010 (reviewing The Social Network, no less) and hit 300 episodes just shy of 2020, we decided it made sense to spend this week creating the definitive “WLM Best of the 2010s List”.
So, between our two lists and our ten guests’ lists there are 120 individual film picks in play. We’ve assigned a point system that works in contrary order to the ranking number. In other words, ranking ten on a list gets a film one point, ranking nine is worth two points, and so on. But a film has to have been mentioned on at least two lists in order to qualify for points. Using this highly sophisticated balloting system we will seek to create a MASTER LIST.
But first, join us as we scrutinize the individual lists, wax affectionate about our wonderfully-opinionated contributors, and take a walk down memory lane to reminisce about how this whole podcasting journey got started.
We are We Like Movies and we’re SO elated and grateful to still be liking movies (and each other) after 300 glorious episodes!
Thanks to YOU, WLM family. Here’s to 300 more.
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We keep our recent streak of passionate but level-headed disagreement rolling with a spirited discussion about Todd Phillips’s JOKER- a film that is either a dangerous and controversial call to violent action or merely a dark and disposable comic book novelty.
Or maybe it’s both.
Or maybe it’s neither!
Give it some thought, give us a listen, and don’t forget to sound off in the comments section.
Viva la discourse!
(And don’t forget, WLM is a podcast for people who have seen the films. We spoil early. We spoil often. Fair warns.)
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———Editor’s Note: Apologies for the tardiness of this episode. It was supposed to be out earlier this week but technical issues led to the late posting. But it sounds great now and we’re really proud of the conversation. Thanks for listening!———
We’re talkin’ Ad Astra, we’re talkin’ box office, we’re talkin’ festival reactions, and we’re talkin’ awards predictions.
We talk, you listen, you comment, we read… It’s the podcasting circle of life!
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(Originally published 12/1/17)
Every aspiring filmmaker has a fantasy of how they would like their career to progress. Even those who wouldn’t admit it to their colleagues or family members have still spent hours daydreaming about directing an elaborate crane movement across a sea of costumed extras, delivering an inspired creative note that unlocks the potential for a brilliant performance, accepting a prize at Sundance or Cannes or on the glittering Oscar stage, fame, wealth, legacy, immortality... Wannabe filmmakers (even those with fiercely independent aspirations) who claim to have never visualized their own successes are, at best, lying to themselves. And while his name has become synonymous with a certain kind of mainstream, studio fare it would be hard to argue that Christopher Nolan’s career path has been anything but the Platonic Ideal of a creative and commercial Hollywood success story.
Nolan rose to prominence at the turn of the 21st century- “breaking through” with the kind of low budget fare that exemplified the spirit of the grassroots independent film movement of the 1990s. His perfectly-executed hopscotch from obscurity to golden boy anointment might be the most elegant example of the transition ever performed. He cut his teeth on the black and white, Super 16, DIY, shoestring, genre lark, Following when he was in his mid 20s. Following led to Slamdance, Slamdance led to industry attention, industry attention led to financing, financing led to Memento, Memento led to Sundance, Sundance led to studios, studios led to Insomnia, Insomnia led to movie stars and budgets, movie stars and budgets led to Batman Begins and so on... In less than seven years Nolan went from spending his weekends single-taking 16mm short ends to rebooting a superhero franchise with Oscar winners in the ancillary roles. And while the legend of Nolan’s rise to prominence is inspiring in its trajectory, it wasn’t necessarily uncommon at the time. Few careers have been as consistent or distinct as Nolan’s but there are scores of filmmakers from Linklater to Bigelow who dutifully climbed the ladder from indie ghetto to mainstream success to awards recognition to the holy grail of artistic autonomy.
Roughly three or four times a decade we declare a national cinematic holiday in honor of the man who’s been reinventing the rules of mainstream cinema for the last quarter century. Regardless of how you feel about Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, it’s hard to argue with the fact that Quentin Tarantino’s “9th” (mmm, “10th”?) feature film as writer/director is one of the most hotly-anticipated and hotly-debated films of the year—nay, the 2010s!
Join us as we do a deep-dive into the career of the provocateur, demarcate the three[ish] phases of his career, and take a long, spoilerrific look at his newest period epic.
Whether you’re floating in your Hollywood Hills pool, drinking a whiskey sour from a beer stein, or hanging out in your trailer, eating macaroni and cheese in the lowlands of Panorama City, this episode has a little something for everybody…
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On our triumphant return to the present tense we sound off about the wild, weird, and existentially-conflicted fourth installment in one of the most beloved and critically acclaimed film franchises of all time.
We then turn our attention to another subject that weighs heavily on our minds and is also experiencing a bit of an existential crisis of late- the summertime box office.
The mercury’s rising and the box office numbers are dropping. What does is all mean..!?
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It’s been a long time since we’ve dipped our cinematically-inclined toes into the television pool. But what better reason to do so than the conclusion of the most cinematic show ever to grace the small screen?
Join us for a break-down, wrap-up, and maybe even a defense of the wildly divisive final season of HBO’s beloved and reviled 73 episode experiment in long form storytelling.
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Dear Mr. Fantasy play us a tune
Something to make us all happy
Do anything, take us out of this gloom
Sing a song, play guitar, make it snappy
You are the one who can make us all laugh
But doing that you break out in tears
Please don't be sad if it was a straight mind you had
We wouldn't have known you all these years
Something remarkable happened last weekend. Something that is unprecedented in the history of popular culture. Something that may never happen again. Something that quite likely signposts the end of an epoch or more likely signals the beginning of another. The confluence of events occurring between Wednesday, April 24th, 2019 when Avengers: Endgame opened in most countries around the world (interestingly enough, the United States was one of the last countries to open the film–two days later–perhaps inadvertently acting as reminder that it’s no longer the dominant global box office force) and Sunday, April 28th, 2019 when HBO aired the Game of Thrones episode “The Long Night” (in which the much-heralded Battle of Winterfell finally played out over the course of an epic 82-minute “telefeature”), may someday be remembered by historians as the last time that a true “monocultural” media event took place. And one in which the two dominant forms of mass entertainment–cinema and television–reached the maximum number of viewers and achieved the apex of their own cultural relevance in the same watershed weekend. Movies and TV may never again be this individually impactful–co-existing simultaneously and autonomously–as they were over the five day stretch in question.
Marvel superfans and friends of the podcast, Anders Dahl and Ryan Julio join us this week as we lightning-round the 21 previous installments in the MCU’s Infinity Saga before digging deep into the franchise’s victory lap- the three hour emotional rollercoaster known as AVENGERS: ENGAME. A lot of personal growth, unexpected revelations, and soul-searching goes on in this episode so be forewarned- there will be SPOILERS not just about the film in question but also about your hosts. We could do this all day…
Skål Beer Hall (Anders’ Norwegian gastropub)
The Greyhound Bar and Grill (Ryan’s sports bar)
ETA (Ryan’s cocktail bar)
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We’re catching it up and breaking it down this week with a veritable smorgasbord of scintillating topics:
-Celebrating the beginning of the season with our favorite baseball movies (00:03:00)
-A SPOILER HEAVY litigation of the various interpretations of Jordan Peele’s US (00:14:20)
-A preemptive defense of Harmony Korine’s latest ode to hedonism, THE BEACH BUM (00:26:56)
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