Month: September 2025

360 – The Boxer

We’ve got Daniel Day-Lewis back in theaters this week with Anemone, so we’re looking back at one of his few failed Oscar bids. In 1997, Day-Lewis paired up with director Jim Sheridan for the third time in a decade for The Boxer, the tale of an IRA member and boxer released from prison in the waning days of the The Troubles. With Emily Watson as his former lover and Brian Cox as her high-ranking IRA father, the film arrived into theaters with a modest response as the world was being swept away with Titanic fever.

This episode, we talk about the Day-Lewis/Sheridan partnership and Day-Lewis’ breakout roles in the 80s before his My Left Foot Oscar. We also discuss Watson’s powerful screen presence, Cox with a full head of not-white hair, and Sheridan’s diminishing directorial returns.

Topics also include the 1997 Golden Globes, acting nominations we forget happened, and Bella Mafia.

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359 – The Last Thing He Wanted

Pair the rising star director Dee Rees with a Joan Didion adaptation and the Oscar-winning Anne Hathaway and you have the kind of on-paper buzz we love talking about here on THOB. But The Last Thing He Wanted, following Hathaway as a journalist whose wayward father mires her in South American arms conflict, ended up being anything but a success. Anticipated heavily on the 2019 fall festival circuit, Netflix ultimately quietly premiered the film at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and dumped it shortly after.

This episode, we talk about the film’s narrative issues and how its timely exactly pre-COVID and Netflix’s 2020 lineup allowed the film to be quickly forgotten. We also talk about Hathaway as a steadfast committed performer, Rees’ ascendancy with Mudbound and Pariah, and both Willem Dafoe and Toby Jones enter our Six Timers.

We also discuss The Witches, Ben Affleck era of exiting Batman, and Rosie Perez as Co-Worker On Phone.

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THOB does TIFF-ty

Joe and Chris are back from the Toronto International Film Festival and it’s time to unpack everything we saw. Though we recorded prior to the announcement of this year’s People’s Choice Award winner, we talk at length about this year’s triumphant Hamnet and the word on the ground about the runners up as well. We discuss our favorites of the festival (neither of which world premiered at the festival), our mutual least favorite film Rental Family, and standout performances from the likes of Amanda Seyfried, Sir Ian McKellen, Josh O’Connor, Ethan Hawke, and many more!

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358 – The Light Between Oceans

Listeners who remember our The Place Beyond the Pines episode will remember that this is a highly pro-Derek Cianfrance podcast. As his latest Roofman makes its TIFF world premiere, we’re looking back at his most recent theatrical release, 2016’s literary adaptation The Light Between Oceans. The film starred Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender as a post-WWI couple whose isolated life caring for an Australian lighthouse is upended when a boat washes ashore carrying a dead man and a crying baby. This melodrama about trauma, responsibility, and the ties that bind was once hotly anticipated before becoming a quickly forgotten Labor Day release.

This episode, we talk about how the final days of Dreamworks’ Disney deal led to its underwhelming release and our anticipation for Roofman. We also discuss Vikander’s Oscar win the previous year, Fassbender becoming overexposed as a leading man, and Rachel Weisz’s emotional turn as the mother of the stranded baby.

Topics also include the 2016 Venice Film Festival, Atonement as a comparison to the film, and Touchstone Pictures!

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357 – The Deep End of the Ocean

Michelle Pfeiffer is a favorite to discuss on This Had Oscar Buzz and this week we’re throwing it back to one of her late 1990s melodramas. In The Deep End of the Ocean, Pfeiffer starts as a mother whose young child goes missing. After years of traumatic aftermath, the child reappears in her family’s life, forcing the fractured family to reckon with the dysfunctional coping methods that have kept them afloat. Originally planned as a fall 1998 awards season release, reshoots pushed this one into 1999 and the movie bombed anyway.

This episode, we talk about how the film misfired by repelling the very audience it appealed to and Pfeiffer’s late 1990s output. We also talk about the assumed prestige that followed Oprah’s Book Club adaptations, director Ulu Grosbard, and Jonathan Jackson’s run on General Hospital.

Topics also include YoungStar Awards, high school reunions, and Oprah playing gay.

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