Like Mother, Like Son, Like Movies

This is the second part of our discussion about films featured at Oscars 2022. We will first go through the rest of the films in Best Picture category and then talk about some of the few other ones worth mentioning. At the very end we reveal our favourite film from the awards ceremony.

I had never had that much interest in the Bourne movies, so when I got inspiration to check out some movie franchises I was positively surprised and felt stupid to have never seen them before. My mother has enjoyed them already before so this gave us a chance to talk about them. So we will go through every Bourne movie starting with The Bourne Identity (2002) and ending with Jason Bourne (2016).

We open up our episode with deeper discussion of Thomas Vinteberg's Another Round (2020). After this we indulge ourselves with several topics, including the interesting production behind the series In Treatment, my mother's experience with the first Star Wars (1977), my own experience with Sodebergh's Ocean's movies. At the end my mother gives a comment on Paolo Sorrentino's The Hand of God (2021) and her struggle with currently ongoing tv shows.

In this casual discussion we are going to go over several topics from our recent viewings. We start off with Emerald Fennell's award winning comedy thriller Promising Young Woman (2020). After that my mother gives her review of the "Soprano story" The Many Saints of Newark (2021) and I mention something about Netflix's hit series Squid Game that I have not seen much talked about. We close things off by talking about Gaspar Noé and share our thoughts on two of his recent movies: Lux Æterna (2019) and Climax (2018).

On our second part exploring our favourite movies of 2020 we concentrate on my mothers list. There are some natural overlap with my list, but I'm definite that she will surprise you with some of the titles she mentions. And if you stick at the very end she will reveal which movie became her new favourite movie of all time.

Denis Villeneuve's cinematic adaptation of Dune has been winning over critics as well as the box office. Considering the troubled history of adapting the book, releasing a satisfying singular vision is an achievement by itself. Next to this monumental release, the opinions of some son and mother can't help to feel little bit insignificant. All we can really do in the end is talk about our experience that - like my mother points out - has been years in the making. In the discussion we explore the perspectives of someone who didn't know anything about Dune beforehand and someone who is familiar with the book and it's previous adaptations.

With Small Axe (2020) British filmmaker Steve McQueen contributes to the ongoing evolution of merging the line between cinema and television even more. The series of films (presented as a mini-series) tell five distinct stories set in West Indian community in London from 1969 to 1982. We explore our experiences watching them in a discussion that gets also little bit emotional.

This time instead of talking about a specific movie, we are going to talk about watching movies  during the quarantine in 2020. Liisa describes her troubles with the library and how certain series helped her survive. Aharon shares his evolution towards streaming services and how big changes in his life pushed him to become more open about how we watch movies.

During most of 2020 we took a quiet break from podcasting. When we finally felt like recording again it was difficult to get back on it. But thankfully we have the annual Academy Awards to cheer everybody up and get the discussions flowing. We do our traditional predictions and reactions while giving bits of opinions on the topics at hand.

Despite of its interesting premise, Alexander Payne's 2017 sci-fi satire Downsizing failed to impress both critics and the audience. It was criticized for it's poor plot, uninteresting use of the genre, dull protagonist and the portrayal of an Vietnamese refugee character. For us the level of hatred this film got was baffling, to say the least. My mother, for example, honored it as one of the best movies of the year. So we are definitely seeing something different than everyone else...

Terry Gilliam's 1995 time travel epic 12 Monkeys is in many ways very relevant topic to discuss these days. While being simply an awesome movie and must see, we concentrate in our talk mainly on the philosophical aspects of the story and how it compares to other movies as Mad Max, Vertigo and of course Chris Marker's original La Jetée (1962).

In this epic episode we discuss three adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express starring his most famous character, Hercule Poirot. We talk about our history with Agatha Christie’s stories, Belgium, how the adaptations portray Poirot and which one of them truly captures the full potential of this particular crime story. Because of Poirot’s famous country of origin, we thought a great chance to invite our friend Vincent Gebruers and give his local perspective on these adaptations.

Me and my mother have had an interesting history in following Denis Villeneuve's career so far. We had our first debate on his merits all the way back on our first episode and we settled some thoughts after seeing Sicario. And our stakes for him . as a filmmaker would just get higher for his first science fiction film. So finally our episode on Arrival is ready. We recorded this way back in January, but took a long break from our podcast and it stood on the shelf so to speak. This is good to keep in mind, because the time period is relevant to some of our topics. My mother is notably not a real sci-fi lover, so we go into how did this movie did the science fiction genre right for her. We talk about the original short story by Ted Chiang, dwell in the themes of the story and in general explore the masterful cinematic filmmaking. Spoilers: I would highly recommend seeing Arrival without knowing anything about it. So do watch it first before listening.