Pc Movie Club

Ever since my mother first mentioned her interest in Jack Arnold’s The Incredible Shrinking Man we have been looking into movies that deal with shrinking. For this grand episode we bring together all we have learned about downscaling. Keeping Jack Arnold’s amazing sci-fi adventure as the center focus, we go through its story beats and analyse the deeper themes in its core while drifting off and examining links to other sci-fi movies dealing with shrinkage. Spoilers: We talk about the whole plot of the movie, so if you are sensitive, then go and see the movie first.

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.

I had the unfortunate experience of going to see I, Daniel Blake in a bad mood. Despite agreeing a lot with what the movie wanted to say, I could not handle the preaching tone. So I came out of it conflicted. Nevertheless I have been ever since recommending everybody to go and see it. My mother on the other hand found deep connection with the story straight away. Next to being in general interested in the subject of poverty, she found the movie showing the audience the struggle that she goes through in her daily life. Just like Dave Johns in the movie, she belongs to the older generation who is less than ready to take in the complex digital transition of our social systems. Spoilers: We don't go into the plot details so it is safe to listen our episode even if you have not seen the movie.

Continuing themes explored in our previous episode, Memories of Murder and La Isla Minima, about series of murders set against a political turmoil in the 80's, we discuss Pablo Trapero's Argentinian 2015 drama movie El Clan. Based on the real story about the Puccio family that kidnapped and murdered people in Buenos Aires, the movie gave us such a strong impression that we ended up talking most of our episode about the psychology behind these characters. Spoilers: We talk openly about the whole plot, so if you are sensitive to spoilers you might want to first watch the movie.

Continuing our Oscar special from last year, me and my mother sit down next day after the Oscar ceremony without knowing the winners and discuss the people and films while reveling the category winners. This time we tried picking a handful of categories that interest us and for which we have time to dwell on. We start easy and move on to the bigger categories towards the end. So, you are welcome to discover the winners with us (if you have not discovered them already for some reason) or to just join in on our discussion about the movies nominated and awarded. As said, we recorded our episode without seeing anything about the ceremony and relating only to the winners in our talk, so we did not know anything about the events that took place during the ceremony. This is why we don't mention any of this in our podcast. Then again, knowing afterwards what really happened makes our reaction to the winners even more emotional.

Just in time before the 2017 Academy Awards we sit down and talk about Barry Jenkins's instant classic, Moonlight. It is an incredibly intimate portrait of one mans life searching for his identity that is able to tell a very specific story of race and sexuality being in the same time as universal as you can get. We mainly just go over the details that make this such a great film. For example how the opening scene itself sets up perfectly the upcoming life journey. But we also go over our thoughts on the upcoming Oscar gala. Spoilers: We don't talk about the story in details so it is safe to hear even if you have not seen the movie.

My mother described Stéphane Brizé's The Measure of a Man as the best movie of 2015. So naturally I got more and more interested about it. And sure enough it was nothing less than that. A minimal but truthful narration through the casual life of an unemployed man trying to find the means for himself and his family in France. It is a grand work speaking very quiet but saying so much. We sat down to talk get to the bottom of the movie; Vincent Lindon, neorealism, the heavy subject matter, genius use of set pieces, morality, and the extremely important argument about if Thierry's car and bungalow were meant to be portrayed as poor or not. My voice quality changes by the end, because our internet connection was lost suddenly and we had to try pick up the discussion when we got back online. I didn't notice that my mic settings got rebooted so my voice is not the best. Sorry for that. Spoilers: We talk about the story until the second half, but it is in overall very vague so you should be fine.

My mother has a natural interest in going back to the original versions of stories. After she has discovered that they might have been remakes or at least inspired from a previous source, she dives deep into the connections to see the whole evolution of the concepts. Some time ago she discovered that Martin Scorsese adapted his Boston crime thriller The Departed from a 2002 Hong Kong movie Infernal Affairs and naturally she could not let it go until we had a podcast about these two movies. Spoilers: We don't give away any of the plot twists, so it is safe to listen even if you have not seen the movies.

Swiss Army Man is the debut feature film by two friends called Daniels about a man and a corpse on a magical surrealist adventure. Many also knows it as the movie in which Harry Potter's corpse farts endlessly. We didn't really know what to expect from it. But in the end it turned out to be one of the best movies of 2016. Honest. Despite the juvenile humor and bizarre concept (and probably because of these) it incorporates some the most earnest and emotional film making in a long while. All the while separating itself from the majority of films with its originality. We explore our thoughts, experiences and interpretations about the absurd journey and how it stand out in the long history of cinema. Liisa has a definite compartment with F.W. Murnau and I have theory of how the film reflects every individual viewer in the audience and their personal position in society. Spoilers: We don't talk about the story in any way other than describe the premise, so don't worry if you have not seen it.

By the time The Walking Dead started playing I got bored of zombies in pop culture. Then again my brother got a real kick for them along with The Walking Dead. And then there is our mother who has never seen a zombie in her life. So it was quite exciting when we found each other being really enthusiastic to go and see Yeon Sang-ho's first live action movie Train to Busan. It's yet again another zombie movie, this time on a train across South Korea with an ensemble of colorful characters. But it promised something much more than what we had in the west these past years. Join in to hear what we thought. Olli gives an explanation why zombie movies are like Finnish saunas and we get to hear how the zombie genre met the expectations of our mother, including her review of The Walking Dead pilot. Spoilers: We don't go into crucial parts of the story, so you can listen to the episode even if you have not seen the movie.

"Is this the new one? Why it looks so old?" My mother waited for the dvd of Star Wars: Force Awakens for half a year. When I saw it on top of her pile I knew it was a podcast discussion not to miss. So we saw it and talked about right after! I could not wait to hear her opinions about the imaginary adventure action for the new generation. The last time she saw Star Wars when she went with my brother to see the last two of the originals in the theaters. Amazingly our talk expands from just about Star Wars to the magic of cinema in general. We share thoughts about generations of movie goers and open up about our very first memories of going to the movies. Spoilers: We talk openly spoilers, but by now it would have been probably hard for you to avoid them anyway.

László Nemes's holocaust drama Son of Saul has been on our absolute must see watch list ever since it came out and some time ago we finally had the opportunity to see it. Naturally we could not wait to sit down and pour our thoughts out of it. The strange thing about it however was that I happened to be visiting in Israel at the moment when we did our Skype talk, which brought the effect of the film to another emotional level. Our discussion drifted apart from the movie to topics about faith, humanity and generational aftermath and trauma. Spoilers: We don't spoil anything about the plot.

Even if we wanted to, it seems that we cannot get out of South Korea. As long as we still have a fresh interest in it we take our opportunity to talk about a hugely entertaining movie, Bong Joon-ho's 2003 dramatization of South Koreans first murder case labeled as serial killing, Memories of Murder. Next to that we bring in a more recent Spanish murder thriller from 2014 called La Isla Minima (English title: Marshland) by Alberto Rodríguez. As both take place in the 80's and involves heavily influenced political background, we wanted to explore the similarities with the Asian true crime story and the Spanish southern murder case. Spoilers: We do not reveal any crucial info about the plots,so you don't have to worry if you have not seen the movies.

The next movie we decided to talk during our face to face discussion in Finland happens to have the youngest target audience so far. We watched Shaun the Sheep Movie by Aardman Animations and true to our nature we could not help but create some unconventional opinions out of it. After some Aardman centered chit chat my mother presents a deep analysis on the animal warden antagonist, Trumper, creating bridges from Les Misérables to Hannah Arendt to paint the picture of what this character truly is underneath the overlapping story line. So you will be dramatically mistaken if you thought this episode is going to be just about a sheep wanting to have a holiday. Spoilers: As with many children movies, it is safe to say that good prevails. Otherwise we will not go into the story that much actually.

With me and my mother living in different countries it is not so often that we get to meet face to face and when we do we really try savor it. And of course these days one of our favorite thing is to do a podcast. While staying together in Finland we watched all kind of movies of which we took a couple as our subjects for the two next episodes. The first one is Spike Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are, which I have always held as an example on how to really do a good adaptation. We are joined by my long time partner Merel Gebruers to discuss the psychoanalytical nature of the source material and how they deepened the concepts for the movie. We also talk about the mixed reaction of the general audience upon release and how does it work as a children movie. Spoilers: We explain in the beginning the basic story structure of the book, which is basically 12 sentences, so we do spoil the story if you are concerned about that.

With our third episode about a South Korean movie, the country seems to get a common status in our podcast. At the end of our talk of Thirst I gave some movie recommendations which I thought my mother would like. And the one movie that shined out specifically was Kim Jee-woon's I Saw the Devil. Focusing on a bloody revenge story with a serial killer it is safe to say that this is so far our most darkest and violent movie we have talked about in our podcast. But it gives us also weirdly the catalyst to dive into the subject of cultural examination through film making. Next to interpreting the South Korean culture through the visualization of the cruel events we also get to go deeper discussion about Asian actors in Hollywood and the meaning of satisfaction in revenge. Spoilers: We don't really go into the story aside from the premise, so it is very safe to listen to the discussion even if you have not seen the movie.

By the end of our earlier podcast about Park Chan-wook's Thirst, we went off topic and talked about South Korean movies and one major filmmaker that came up was Bong Joon-ho. I recommended my mother to check all of his movies and particularly his first English speaking production Snowpiercer. In general my mother does not watch Sci-Fi action, but in relation to South Korea it might be an interesting watch, and most importantly I wanted to know if she liked it. Because the fact is that I didn't. When I saw it in the theater it was more and more mediocre experience for me towards the end. But then I started to hear all the praises underlining it as a masterpiece. Ever since that I have been struggling with my view on the film. Should I just get over the overly simplistic thematic structure, obvious ending, praise the action and cinematography and just go with the universally agreed opinion? How to deal with being the one swimming upstream? I hoped my mother could give me some advice on this, so we brought it

This week Steven Spielberg offers a refreshingly historical story about spies in the mix of the Cold War, which for some reason went under the radar for me when it came out. My mother in the other hand caught up with it immediately and came up with an interesting realization about what kind of effect Mark Rylance's performance had on the rest of the movie. Without a doubt it sounded like something we should save for our next discussion. Join us as we dive into the merits of Steven Spielberg's craftwork as well as the sentimental side of his storytelling. Later Liisa will also make an suprising comparisment with the 2010 movie Fair Game. As for spoilers, we believe the movie is fairly so simple that we cannot spoil it by talking about the plot in overall. But we do make a big effort not to reveal any emotional twists in the ending.

On the fourth episode on the topic of vampires we step little bit backwards and look at an older movie that made it into my mothers top four vampire movies. Next to being the oldest and most traditional in its lore, it happens to be also the only comedy. Filled with the master filmmakers personal interests, such as fun winter activities and sports, and careless humor supported by fake makeup it is a fascinating production that perfectly completes our vampire topic. Even though this time me and my mother may not be on the same ground on all of the details...

The very physical work of Chan-wook Park, to whom most of the audience is famous from Oldboy, has won over my mothers admiration over and over again. But it really culminated with the mix of vampirism and family/household drama Thirst. Our series on vampires takes an interesting turn from the previous quiet and more slow paced vampire dramas as we discuss a movie which at first hand feels all over the place, but manages to feel natural enough in its chaos to discuss multiple levels of topics. And on top of that do a satisfying vampire flick.