Month: June 2025

348 – BPM

We close out Pride Month with one of our favorite queer films from the past decade, 2017’s BPM. From French director Robin Campillo, BPM follow a group of ACT UP activists during the height of the AIDS epidemic. With Campillo’s emotional and intuitive style of observation, the film shows the labors of political organization in all the warts of in-fighting and disagreement, but also the beauty of human connection amidst dire circumstances. The film was France’s International Feature submission, but didn’t even make the shortlist despite its high acclaim.

This episode, we discuss what makes the film all the moving and valuable in our current moment. We also talk about Nahuel Perez Biscayart’s moving lead performance, France’s current dry spell of winning the International Feature Oscar, and the Cannes Film Festival where BPM won the Grand Prix.

Topics also include The Orchard, gay people not being a monolith, and other 2017 queer movies. 

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347 – Take This Waltz

After a career as an actress, Sarah Polley made her directorial debut with Away From Her, landing Oscar nominations for both her screenplay and Julie Christie’s performance. Her follow-up would be a slight gear shift: the intimate character study of infidelity, Take This Waltz. The film stars Michelle Williams as a writer who begins to feel a divide between her and her husband (Seth Rogen), exacerbated by her lust for her rickshaw-operating neighbor (Luke Kirby). 

This episode, we talk about our love for Polley and the film’s inquisitive (if a bit divisive) portrait of marital malaise. We also discuss Sarah Silverman’s well-regarded supporting performance, Rogen’s very booked-and-busy first years of stardom, and the film’s expert use of “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

Topics also include Toronto geography, Dying for Sex, and Williams joins our Six Timers Club.

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346 – Madame Sousatzka (w/ Taylor Cole!)

Our friend and theme music composer Taylor Cole returns to us this week to talk about one of our most beloved stars on This Had Oscar Buzz, Shirley MacLaine. After finally winning her Oscar for Terms of Endearment, MacLaine took a few well-earned years off. Her return was this tale of a hardened piano teacher and the young Indian student, Manek (Navin Chowdhry), that she takes on. But even with a showcase for MacLaine at the head of an ensemble that also included Dame Peggy Ashcroft, this chamber drama didn’t garner enough attention to land in the Academy’s graces.

This week, we talk about director John Schlesinger and MacLaine’s late 1980s run of iconic roles. We also discuss music teacher philosophies, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala working outside of Merchant/Ivory, and the 1988 Best Actress race including the famous three-way tie at the Golden Globes.

Topics also include Twiggy, MacLaine sparring with Letterman, and other awards show ties.

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345 – Great Expectations

After his A Little Princess adaptation earned a duo of Oscar nominations, Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón followed that up with another literary adaptation, a modernization of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. With hot young stars Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow as the central lovers and Oscar winners Anne Bancroft and Robert De Niro in support, the film transplanted Dickens’ social climbing classic to America’s southern coast and the New York City art scene. With some behind-the-scenes struggle and middling results, the film was pushed from its planned Christmas 1997 release into January, still eclipsed by Titanic.

This episode, we talk about the film’s modernized mixed bag and Cuarón before Y Tu Mamá También. We also discuss the Christmas 1997 trend of drawing a naked lady, the Best Actress race when Bancroft won for The Miracle Worker, and Paltrow in the leadup to her Oscar win.

Topics also include Tori Amos, voiceover narration, and late 90s Donna Karan.

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344 – Things We Lost in the Fire

At the beginning of the aughts, both Halle Berry and Benicia Del Toro were riding high on Oscar wins. In 2007, they both paired up for Things We Lost in the Fire, a melodrama from Danish director Susanne Bier. From a script by Collateral Beauty scribe Allan Loeb, the film cast Berry as a grieving wife who invites her dead husband’s addict best friend (played by Del Toro) to live in their home. Reviews were respectable and the film was widely predicted at the start of the season, but after bombing at the box office, it quickly evaporated from voters’ memories.

This episode, we discuss the film as emblematic of a dying breed of melodrama and its narrative proximity to the film both actors won their Oscars for. We also talk about Bier’s multiple films in the International Feature race, Del Toro’s few film roles between Oscar and this, and the critical drubbing Berry faced for Catwoman.

Topics also include poster fonts, The Velvet Underground needle drops, and Agnès Varda and Toni Morrison watching Sin City.

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