Silver Linings Playbook

Get ready for some chronic positivity, as we discuss David O Russell's 2012 Oscar favourite Silver Linings Playbook starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. We chat about why this was such a huge Obama Era hit, Robert De Niro's standout role, J-Law's breakout and Best Actress win, why Bradley Cooper is suddenly making a trio of uber-commercial movies, and David O Russell's awful personality and upcoming release Madden.

It's one of the most disastrous and messy productions in Hollywood history, but we're taking a more sympathetic view of 1996's The Island of Dr. Moreau starring an ageing Marlon Brando and a peak-of-his-career Val Kilmer, alongside secret leading man David Thewlis.

It's the second edition of TwentyTeens, as Lucien and Christina continue discussing the Young Adult craze of the 2010s. This month, we're talking The Hunger Games's big screen debut in 2012, from director Gary Ross and with breakout star Jennifer Lawrence making her first appearance as Katniss Everdeen. How did this movie bridge male and female audiences, is a girl with a bow-and-arrow an instant sell for a movie, and how did Lawrence's Oscar win affect how the sequels were pitched to audiences?

Shane and Lucien discuss the lowest-budget film we've ever covered on the show, Koganada's 2017 Sundance drama Columbus starring John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson. We assess whether these two popular actors quality as movie stars, how Koganada jumped from this to After Yang to last year's ill-fated A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, and the magic of a movie that cares this much about cool buildings.

Critic Alistair Alger-Ryder joins Lucien for a rundown of the biggest and best films at BFI London Film Festival 2026.Films discussed include The Debut, Tender Loving Care, Behemoth!, Wild Horse Nine, Club Kid, La Bola Negra, The Liberation, Julián, Fjord, The Unknown, A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra, Ink, Artificial, Possible Love, Ray Gunn, Paper Tiger, Elsinore, The Man I Love, Chronovisor, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, Josephine and The Idiot(s).Read Alistair's writing on several LFF films on The Film Stage and follow him on Letterboxd

Special guest Brendan joins us from Madrid to discuss another great Spanish city, Woody Allen's Oscar-winning Vicky Cristina Barcelona , and its Spanish stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, plus Scarlett Johansson and the movie's secret lead, Rebecca Hall!

Hey, it's me, it's Boy Party, ask us anything! This week we're discussing Michael Showalter's new thriller Verity, a pretty terrible Colleen Hoover adaptation starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett. We talk about this movie's failures relative to something like The Housemaid or Gone Girl, dig into Dakota Johnson's career from Fifty Shades to Materialists and analyse Josh Hartnett's early 2000s breakout and recent comeback in Oppenheimer and Trap.

Boy Party's Tom Cruise Month comes to a close, as Shane and Lucien discuss the brand new Alejandro González Iñárritu film Digger, which has just had one of the most disastrous openings in box office history and - in our opinion - is significantly flawed. We're also joined via voice message by friend of the pod Dave Hanratty who mounts a solid defence of the film, which is dividing audiences around the world. We round off the episode with a ranking of every Tom Cruise film we've seen, and play the Box Office Game for this past weekend.

Tom Cruise Months continues, taking us into the early 2010s and Cruise's two-hander action comedy(?) with Cameron Diaz, his former Vanilla Sky co-star. This James Mangold-directed caper takes the pair from Wichita to Sevilla, and sets the template for the sort of mediocre streaming blockbuster Diaz is likely to star in today. But, it has a pretty good Black Eyes Peas end credits song! Tune in next week for Digger!

Tom Cruise Month continues as we discuss Rob Reiner and Aaron Sorkin's classic courtroom drama A Few Good Men, pitting Cruise against Jack Nicholson and Demi Moore. We dig into Sorkin's mixed bag filmography, casting Cruise as a tough lawyer, this film's influence on US network TV trends and Demi's long run as a leading woman and recent near-Oscar success.