274: Present Tense - Nominating Our Favorite Baseball Movies, Overthinking US, and Legitimizing THE BEACH BUM

 
 

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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273: Retrospectating 1999 - THE MATRIX

 
 

Twenty years ago this week a film came along that not only changed the way that we looked at science fiction, visual effects, and Keanu Reeve’s capacity for star power. It also legitimatized the fetishization of mirrored sunglasses, duster jackets, and leather pants. So pop your red pill, crank up the Rammstein, and dog-ear your copy of “Simulacra and Simulation.” We’re heading down the rabbit hole and back to March of 1999 for our definitive reevaluation of The Matrix. Never forget, there is no spoon!

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272: Present Tense - TRIPLE FRONTIER and the Utter Inevitability of Netflix Ubiquity

 
 

Here at We Like Movies we’ve been extremely vocal about our love for filmmaker J.C. Chandor and have always self-identified as loud and proud “Chandorks.” But our dedication to the man’s body of work experienced some strain this past week on the occasion of his newest film premiering on Netflix.
Let’s just say that we have complicated feelings about Triple Frontier that we attempt to work out in a SPOILER heavy breakdown of the film, which develops—as these conversations often do—into a lot of hand-wringing and kvetching about the big red streaming giant that you’re probably watching out of the corner of your eye as you read this.
Zip up your windbreaker, bump the Metallica, and set fire to a stack of Benjamins. We’re heading to South America with J.C. Chandor and Ben Affleck and there may be some casualties along the way…

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270: Our Annual Oscar Postmortem (2019 Edition)

 
 

The Oscars came out of the gates with a bang and ended with a whimper. The night’s big winner was vexing but there were some legitimate highlights that we’ll likely be talking about for years to come.
Oscars. We watched ‘em. We’re talkin’ about ‘em. So there.

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269: Retrospectating 1999 - OFFICE SPACE

 
 

20 years ago today, a 10 million dollar workplace comedy directed by the 37 year old creator of Beavis and Butthead was released by a major Hollywood studio and audiences ignored it EN MASSE. Today it occupies rarefied air as one of the most beloved cult texts of the 1990s. On the occasion of Office Space‘s 20th anniversary we travel back to 1999 to talk Liquid Television, Cornholio, Generation X, and the enduring legacy of Gary Cole’s matching tie and suspender set. If you don’t listen to this episode expect a strongly-worded memo about TPS reports to land on your desk first thing tomorrow morning.

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268: Retrospectating 1999 - VARSITY BLUES / SHE'S ALL THAT

 
 

In honor of the 20th anniversary of one of the all time great movie years, we’re debuting a new feature in which we deep-dive into the most important films of the last year of the 20th century: “Retrospectating 1999!”
Join us for our inaugural episode in which we excavate the “year of the teenager” phenomenon when films like Varsity Blues and She’s All That inadvertently emerged as flagship texts for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it paradigmatic shift.
For a moment in 1999, everyone wanted to be 16. Luckily, your devoted podcast hosts actually were that age at the time. Finally it pays off!

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265: Oeuvre - The 6th Age of STEVEN SPIELBERG - 2008 - 2012

 
 

This installment is affectionately titled "The Struggle for Artistic Identity” (AKA “Who Am I?”) and spans 2008-2012:

-Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
-The Adventures of Tintin (2011)
-War Horse (2011)
-Lincoln (2012)

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Grain of Salt: Our OFFICIAL Oscar Predictions!

With 12 hours to go before the nominations are announced, we figured we better put our official predictions in print! After all, there’s legitimate folding money on the line here. We decided to focus on the 10 categories that we deemed “most important.” No offense meant to the craft and shorts categories. We’ll get deeper into them over the next month as the ceremony approaches. See you bright and early tomorrow morning!

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264: Oscar Predictions by Oscar (and Matt)

 
 

On a rare episode in which we actually recorded under the same roof (on the same microphone, no less!), we get down to business with Academy Awards talk. We pontificate and prognosticate as we reveal our individual predictions in all of the “major” categories and take the time to curate our “fantasy” scenarios of who we’d personally love to see nominated.

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Grain of Salt: Matt's Top 10 Films of 2018

What defined the cinema of 2018? Can it be encapsulated into a single concept, a defining moment, a phenomenon, a quote, a buzz word? Years from now, what will trigger the Proustian response that brings the last 12 months of movies flooding back into our collective memory like some kind of polyphonic reminiscence? Netflix, Black Panther, Moviepass, Roma, “Shallow,” Thanos, “Numnum Cookie,” Spider-Ham, the Oasis, the Shimmer, Bird Box, “Trip a Little Light Fantastic,” “I just wanna take another look at you,” BlacKkKlansman, “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” Henry Cavill’s mustache, Cynthia Erivo’s sprint, Ted Sarandos’ leer, the Cheddar Goblin..? Maybe it will just be Milly Shapiro’s guttural clicking noise from Hereditary... One thing’s for sure- 10 years from now when we’ve allowed the tumultuous state of the world in 2018 to fade from memory we will still look back fondly at this last year as being one that not only privileged us with an embarrassment of cinematic riches but also one in which movies proudly proclaimed: “Netflix or not, here I come! I am the cinema and regardless of the venue in which you care to meet me, I have something to show you that you’ve never seen before. My wonders never cease. I’ll learn to play by the new rules. But I’m not going anywhere.”

I watched 366 films in 2018 and 99 of those were in theaters. These are the 10 that represent the quality that stood out from the quantity:

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262: Oscar & Matt's Top 10s of 2018

 
 

Dearest WLM family, it’s time for our favorite podcast of the year and, at the risk of being self-congratulatory, we think it’s one of our best episodes ever! It’s epic without being long-winded. There’s list overlap without complete crossover. There’s disagreement without dissent. There’s even a brief detour into our own personal lists of 2018 missed-movie-shame. It’s a good one.
Happy New Year, everybody. We’ve got big plans for 2019 and couldn’t be more excited to have you with us!

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260: Our 8th Anniversary and Last Podcast of 2018 Featuring THE FAVOURITE, SHOPLIFTERS, and ROMA!

 
 

On the occasion of the 8th anniversary of We Like Movies as well as our final “contemporary” podcast of 2018, we respectively submit a conversation about three of the most acclaimed films of the year, featuring a preamble with some hot-nom-talk.
It’s awards season, WLM fam. Catch the fever!

The episode breaks down, as follows:

THE FAVOURITE - 00:19:15
SHOPLIFTERS - 00:31:33
ROMA - 00:41:25