Grain of Salt: Matt's 25 FOR '25
Matt’s 25 favorite films of the first quarter of the 21st Century.
Read MoreGrain of Salt: Matt's Top 10 Films of 2025
Up until a couple of months ago, I wasn’t certain that I was going to complete a full post like this, as my willingness and capacity to do so has traditionally been commensurate not JUST with how much time I have available during the last week of the year (though that is always a factor) but also with my passion for the year’s films. After all, the top film on this list has occupied that spot and hasn’t budged since I first saw it in April. That being said, the Quicktime catch ups and late inning screenings that I have been occupying myself with since October (number two on this list moved up a spot after each of my three screenings of it in the last week!) necessitated that I commit to making a proper list, as 2025 turned out to be (sneakily?) kind of a banner year. The 25th year of the 21st Century started with Hollywood literally burning and ended with it figuratively burning. But I guess that makes Ryan Coogler, James Cameron, Jafar Panahi, Chloe Zhao, and Josh Safdie the unelected Neros that we need right now. They’re not going down without a fiddle.
Read MoreNOLAN WEEK: Bonus Podcast - 25 Years of Nolan on the Eve of the "Oppenheimer Oscars"
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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NOLAN WEEK: Encore Podcast - Episode 319 - The TENET Talkdown and Final Rankings
It’s TENET-talkdown time, team.
We chat. We disagree. We rank.
Sound good?
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Subscribe: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Stitcher / Overcast / RSS
Donate: Thanks!
Email: wlmpodcast@gmail.com
Sound good?
We chat. We disagree. We rank.
It’s TENET-talkdown time, team.
NOLAN WEEK: Encore Podcast - Episode 313 - Confidence, Misdirection, and Nolan’s Neo-Noir Bona Fides
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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NOLAN WEEK: Encore Podcast - Episode 311 - The DARK KNIGHT Trilogy and the Battle for the Soul of a City
You know them, you’ve seen them, and you certainly have opinions about them.
Join us as we revisit three of the most successful, influential, and subversively political films of the 21st century- courtesy of a man who insisted that he had absolutely no political agenda in mind when he made them.
We’ll [attempt to] get to the bottom of this thematic paradox…
- BATMAN BEGINS (2005)
- THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)
- THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012)
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NOLAN WEEK: Encore Podcast - Episode 310 - A Keynote Introduction to our CHRISTOPHER NOLAN Series
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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320: Our Epic, Spoiler-Filled Discussion about NO TIME TO DIE and All Things 007 (w/Special Guest Jamie Lawrence!)
It’s Bond time again. We’re podcasting about it. Need we say more?
—-THERE WILL BE SPOILERS!—-
317: Present Tense - MANK, Netflix and the State of the Cinematic Union in the Late Hours of 2020
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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314: The Quintessentials: SORCERER (1977) - w/ Special Guest Dan Kelly!
Welcome to the inaugural episode of our new podcast series “The Quintessentials”!
Here we will be identifying and excavating a sub canon of important films that, for whatever reason, have been lost to time or overshadowed by their more popular or successful counterparts in a a chosen filmmaker’s oeuvre. These are the b-sides, the rarities, the deep dive picks… And while they’re almost never the most well known or celebrated selections in a body of work, they might just be–covertly–the filmmaker’s most instructive, stylistically-defining, and quintessential artistic statements.
For our first episode we figured we’d start with a layup- William Friedkin’s genre-defying 1977 masterpiece SORCERER.
Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
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309: AFI #60 - DUCK SOUP (1933)
“Calling all nations. This is Rufus T. Firefly coming to you through the courtesy of the enemy. We're in a mess folks, we're in a mess. Rush to Freedonia! Three men and one woman are trapped in a building! Send help at once! If you can't send help, send two more women!”
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308: Oeuvre - The 3rd Age of JOHN MCTIERNAN - 1999 - 2003
We’re wrapping up our series on the career of one, John McTiernan, with a bang. Even if you haven’t seen or don’t care about the man’s relatively inauspicious, forgotten, “late period” films, consider joining us for an episode in which we reckon with some unexpected revelations and speculate about the potential for McT’s third act…
We’re referring to this third age as the “Spiral into Self-Inflicted Exile”.
-THE 13TH WARRIOR (1999)
-ROLLERBALL (2002)
-BASIC (2003)
(special thanks to Mr. Beau Marks — a true gentleman and longtime friend and collaborator of John McTiernan — for consulting on this series)
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306: Oeuvre - The 2nd Age of JOHN MCTIERNAN - 1992-1999
At long last we return to continue our journey through the career of one, John McTiernan.
We’re referring to this second age as his struggle from the “Jungle to the Upper East Side”.
-MEDICINE MAN (1992)
-LAST ACTION HERO (1993)
-DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE (1995)
-THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (1999)
(special thanks to Mr. Beau Marks — a longtime friend and collaborator of John McTiernan — for consulting on this series)
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305: Retrospectating 1999 - A Year in Review
We’re going back to ‘99 ONE MORE TIME to organize our thoughts about the inaugural “retrospectating” series, the cosmic significance of the year in question, and whether or not decade-cappers consistently produce the best cinematic output.
And now we play the waiting game… Let’s all agree to meet back here in 2029 to take another look at that red letter year on the occasion of its 30th birthday…
Talkin’ 1999 just never gets old.
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304: Oscar and Matt's 2020 Oscar Predictions (and Matt Predictions)
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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Grain of Salt: Matt's Top 10 Films of 2019
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.
303: Oscar & Matt's Top 10s of 2019
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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