Month: October 2025

364 – Bones and All

With Halloween this week and Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt now in theatres, what better time to discuss the BONES! The 2022 fall festival season felt like the first real movie moment post-COVID and anticipation was high for Guadagnino reuniting with his Call Me By Your Name star, Timothee Chalamet. Bones and All was a tale of young love and primal urges, an emotional cannibalism story set in the midwest that placed Chalamet opposite the emergent Taylor Russell. Despite the film earning some devoted fans (spoiler: including us!), this gory Badlands riff was probably never going to please the Academy.

This episode, we talk about the divisive reactions that have met some of Guadagnino’s work, including this and After the Hunt. We also talk about Chalamet’s ascent towards Marty Supreme, Russell’s breakout in Waves, and our favorite Luca movies. And surprise: Chloe Sevigny Six Timers quiz!

Topics also include Mark Rylance doing his best Mr. Herbert, the film’s allegorical interpretations, and the 2022 Venice Film Festival.

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363 – Super 8

In the 2011 summer movie season overcrowded with sequels and IP, J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 stood out as an original event film. Arriving with a mysterious marketing campaign that was the Abrams signature, the film follows a group of kids in the late 1970s who capture footage of an alien while shooting a monster movie in their hometown. The film earned early critical praise and was loaded with homage to Steven Spielberg. However, it proved more divisive as consensus begun to settle, with many finding the film to not be all that original or all that satisfying.

This episode, we talk about Abrams’ position as a director both then and now, and we unpack the degree to which the film is successful as a Spielberg retread. We also talk about the film’s mystery box marketing push, the film’s creature design, and co-star Elle Fanning joins our Six Timers Club.

Topics also include the 2011 Visual Effects race, lens flares, and Fanning’s Oscar chances this year.

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362 – Used People

We love talking forgotten awardsy films here on This Had Oscar Buzz and this week’s episode is a doozy. In 1992, Todd Graff’s off-Broadway play The Grandma Plays was adapted into the film Used People with both a high Oscar and theatre pedigree. The Beeban Kidron film starred Shirley MacLaine as a new widow finding love (in Oscar nominee Marcello Mastroianni, no less) and repairing her strained relationship with her daughters. With brief turns from the Jessica Tandy and Sylvia Sidney, the film didn’t get much further than stray nominations for MacLaine and Mastroianni.

This episode, we make up for our forgotten Shirley MacLaine six Timers quiz. We also talk about why it might be our Most Best Actress movie ever, Marcia Gay Harden dressed up in Barbra Streisand’s Oscar win, and how mean movies are to Kathy Bates.

Topics also include the 1992 Golden Globes, “Queen of the Night,” and Camp.

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361 – Ocean’s Eleven

One of the defining stories of the 2000 Oscar year was the one-two punch of Steven Soderbergh delivering both Traffic and Erin Brockovich, making good on the past decade’s worth of promise kicked off by Sex Lies and Videotape. In 2001, the victory lap was Ocean’s Eleven, a Vegas heist remake that cast some of the biggest names in movies. The film was a box office smash, but ultimately considered just a fun blockbuster romp. It remains a classic but Soderbergh has yet to return to the Oscar club since.

This episode, we talk about the decade leading up to Soderbergh’s Oscar homecoming and the film’s surprising omission from the Globes Comedy races. We also have a quiz heavy episode, with George Clooney and Brad Pitt sharing a double Six Timers Quiz and Julia Roberts enters our Ten Timers Club.

Topics also include the MTV Movie Awards, Don Cheadle’s cockney accent, and the city of Las Vegas.

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