Podcasts by Return to Form

Eustache - it's the way he tells 'em! from 2023-12-03T16:40:04

Jean Eustache is hard to pin down. A French auteur who combined the brevity of Bresson with the romantic rambling of Rohmer.

Eustache often preferred telling to showing. Yet s...

BFI London film Festival Report #3 from 2023-10-17T09:59:05

LFF may be over, but the takes are not. For their final derive through the halls of contemporary arthouse film, Ralph, Owen, and George take stock of flicks both fair and foul: Jonathan Glazer’s...

BFI London film Festival Report #2 from 2023-10-09T16:25:42

Battered and broken, their eyes barely staying open, Ralph and Owen are joined by Berlin correspondent George MacBeth for a second heaving helping of LFF. The stakes are high, covering the likes of...

BFI London film Festival Report #1 from 2023-10-04T10:30:02

Un-reel city, under the brown fog of winter (well, autumn) dawn – a crowd flowed over Picadilly Circus, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Apologies to T.S. Eliot, but London F...

Why you're watching the wrong Christian Petzold films from 2023-09-05T11:12:37

Plumbing the murky and anodyne depths of German modernity, Christian Petzold – leading light of the Berlin School; protege of artist-filmmaker Harun Farocki – has a bafflingly uneven reputation....

Edward Yang: Family, brutality and modernity from 2023-08-19T08:00

Owen and Ralph discuss Edward Yang - the golden boy of the Taiwanese New Wave. Yang rose to fame with elliptical films like Taipei Story and The Terrorisers - which depicted intimate relationshi...

We went to BFI Film On Film Festival! from 2023-06-14T17:07:30

Last weekend we dreamed in celluloid, in three-strip technicolor and, crucially, on NITRATE. The BFI's new, hopefully regular, festival dedicated to cinema's technical heritage was a tri...

The case FOR Jeanne Dielman being the greatest film of all time from 2023-05-21T11:10:24

The greatest film ever made? Laurels like these come with their own anxiety of influence. Taking pole position in 2022’s decade-awaited Sight & Sound top 100 films list, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Di...

Jerzy Skolimowski's underrated 60s films from 2023-04-24T17:00:41

This week Owen and Ralph discuss the early works of a living legend, the Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski. His recent poly-form donkey parable EO has led to a BFI retrospective and the long overd...

A Brief History of DV filmmaking w/ Daniel Neofetou from 2023-04-17T09:27:32

This week the boys caught the millennium bug, immersing themselves in films made at the turn of a new technological era. In the late nineties & early aughts filmmakers who dared to dance wit...

One Fine Morning - Mia's latest, and possibly greatest from 2023-04-13T11:45:36

Mia Hansen-Love’s latest is a dementia drama with a twist of romance. Always attuned to the intimate she blends naturalistic dialogue with Sirkian melodrama, with affecting performances from Lea...

Kinoteka mini-report from 2023-04-03T17:25:52

This week, the boys went on ‘sabbatical’ to Hammersmith; peering under the hood of contemporary Polish film as part of Kinoteka Film Festival. They were reasonably delighted by Anna Kazejak-Dawi...

Germaine Dulac - avant-garde heroine ahead of her time from 2023-03-15T16:14:18

This week, we’re taking a closer look at the impressionistic and (later) avant garde filmmaking of Germaine Dulac – particularly that which occupied her activities during the 1920s. For her, thi...

Berlinale roundup part 3 of 3 from 2023-02-26T17:24:21

The boys are at the bottom of the Berlinale barrel, and their wallets, and despite a strict diet of doner kebabs they're still struggling to find something meaty in the programme. This time join...

Berlinale dispatch 2: Back on our Berl-sh*t again from 2023-02-21T11:58:19

Festival-fog is taking its toll on the boys, so they sympathise with the angst of many of Berlinale's fraught faces:

Willem Defoe’s trapped thief in Inside had them on the edge of their s...

BERLINALE BUMPER REPORT: Manodrome/Reality/Blackbery/Shadowless Tower/Emily Atef etc from 2023-02-18T17:31:10

As dark clouds empty themselves over Berlin the boys hit a proverbial buffet of international Arthouse cinema - filling their plates with all kinds of quivering delicacies. But not everything goes ...

Orson Welles: Larger-than-life from 2023-01-23T18:00:44

Orson Welles has secured his place in the filmmaking firmament. But Citizen Kane (1941) – with all its magnate malarky – can roundly overshadow everything he turned his hand to in the decades th...

Aftersun is overrated :/ from 2023-01-23T11:54:40

Paul Mescal and Franky Corio star as a father and daughter on their hols in Turkey in the much-hyped feature debut of Charlotte Wells. Despite wearing Chantal Akerman’s influence on her sleeve W...

Carlos Reygadas + Sight & Sound Top 100 from 2022-12-05T13:10:43

This week the boys are joined by screenwriter James King to discuss one of the most disctinctive voices in world cinema. An audacious arthouse alchemist who wears his influences on his sleeve, a...

Cinema of the 1930s, w/ Eugene Kotlyarenko from 2022-11-08T11:26:53

The arrival of sound opened a proverbial can of worms in the mute halls of cinema. For ten furious years (1930-1940), the ‘talkie’ would make and break itself again and again. The names are in t...

Theo Angelopoulos from 2022-10-21T13:29:01

'The slightest movement sends reverberations through the viewer' said Scorsese of Greece's old master auteur. The boys locked in for punishing schedule of yearning and distance in snowy and mist...

Mark Jenkin's Enys Men from 2022-08-11T10:16:53

This week, the boys complete their New Horizons derive; casting a wide net over the work of Cornish filmmaker Mark Jenkin. Between the devil and the deep blue sea, they set sail for Enys Men (hi...

New Horizons Report 2: Crimes of the Future, Broker, Sundown from 2022-07-27T11:25:46

In their 2nd despatch from Wroclaw, Owen, Ralph and George cover James Benning’s new structural state of the nation United States of America, Claire Denis’ dodgy lockdown drama Both Sides of the...

New Horizons Report 1: Triangle of Sadness, EO, Rimini, Close from 2022-07-23T22:27:52

The boys are back in town, and the town is Wroclaw, Poland - a sweaty Mecca for cineastes across Europe. Joined by frequent guest George MacBeth, Ralph and Owen dissect Ruben Östlund’s new caust...

Godard Special: The Essayist w/ Daniel Neofetou from 2022-04-17T21:19:59

All good things must come to an end. The first of those is our four-episode season on Jean-Luc Godard, coming to a climatic halt with this hour-long chat with a jetlagged Daniel Neofetou. We did...

How to talk about Bruno Dumont? from 2022-01-10T09:53:13

Between the brooding, overcast skies of LA VIE DE JESUS (1997) and the molten media-sploitation of FRANCE (2021), French filmmaker Bruno Dumont has worn many (often contradictory) hats. But for ...

Is Raúl Ruiz any good? from 2021-11-08T14:21:14

The promise of a Raúl Ruiz film is almost irresistible, vivid colours, dynamic camera movement, non-linearity, pirates! And yet his unique films are little-seen, not quite canon. Ralph and Owen ...

The Souvenir Part I & II - INSTANT REACTION (w/ Lucy Bull) from 2021-10-18T12:38:56

A cinematic late starter, English filmmaker Joanna Hogg has been known for her clinically cool skewerings of the upper classes and the bourgeoisie. But then, in 2019, she dropped The Souvenir - ...

Celebrating Violent Male Friendship on Film - Mikey and Nicky vs Husbands from 2021-10-08T21:18:42

Elaine May's 'Mikey and Nicky' stars John Cassavetes and Peter Falk as old cronies bickering, and on the run. Cassevetes film 'Husbands' made around the same time, stars Cassavetes himself, Falk...

Marx INSTANT POST-CINEMA REACTION from 2021-09-22T11:22:52

A spectre is haunting central London, the spectre of five ebullient young men podcasting outside a pub on a warm night - the occasion is Olaf Nicolai’s Marx, a 24 hour film shown at the ICA this...

Annette INSTANT POST-CINEMA REACTION from 2021-09-17T08:53:09

Nine years have elapsed since the last salvo sprung from the mind of the layabout Leos Carax (remember, he was the director of 2012’s unkempt Holy Motors). Now, Carax brings us Anette. And it's ...

Tarred and weathered from 2021-08-18T19:33:16

Owen takes a long, hard look at Sátántangó - the seven hour magnum opus of Hungarian montage-hater Béla Tarr.

Muriel, or the Time of a Return to the pod from 2021-08-16T23:19:41

Ralph shares some immediate, close-mic reflections on Alain Resnais’s 1963 film Muriel, or the Time of a Return - a whirlwind of desire and deception, full of deft cuts and lost love.

Alexander Kluge w/ George MacBeth from 2021-08-13T11:52:20

German cinema would be much impoverished without the unique filmmaker and cultural wrangler Alexander Kluge. The boys are joined by George MacBeth to revel in Kluge's most ambitious works, those...

Knight of Cups iS gOoD AcTuaLLY from 2021-08-10T22:11

Ralph defends Terence Malick's star-studded late career odyssey of luxury and ennui with a spirited late-night monologue.

Owen on Godzilla from 2021-06-11T23:04:02

Owen keeps the show on the road, reflecting on two recent cinema outings, Godzilla and First Cow.

Autumn Sonata from 2021-06-03T11:50:33

This week, the boys take their first podcast plunge into Bergman’s extensive oeuvre. The subject? Autumn Sonata of 1978. An explosively charged chamber piece that does open heart surgery on a tr...

Owen apologises for dissing Tokyo Story from 2021-05-27T15:05:47

It's actually pretty good. Ralph is on strike. 

The Wishing Tree from 2021-05-21T13:10:02

Georgian filmmaker Tengiz Abuladze is the subject of this week’s episode. His folk pastoral The Wishing Tree, with its blend of slapstick and sacrifice, enchants the boys in unequal measure, but...

Maurice Pialat w/ Paige Murphy from 2021-05-12T13:14:49

Who's the daddy? Between the young, flighty romance of À Nos Amours and the earnest soul-searching of Under the Sun of Satan Maurice Pialat carved out a brusque editing style - balanced by tende...

Godard Special: The Sublime/Sexy Era from 2021-05-06T11:10:31

“Beauty is only the start of bearable terror”. These lines are uttered, by Jean-Luc Godard himself, in 1983’s Prenom Carmen. Wild of hair, cigar to his lips. A Delphic oracle treading a tightrop...

Robert Altman from 2021-04-29T00:49:35

Insider? Outsider? Shakeitallaboutsider? Robert Altman’s career was prolific and paradoxical, but what makes his films so memorable? Perhaps it’s the cat food in The Long Goodbye, or the all-yellow...

Robert Altman w/ Blu Hunt from 2021-04-28T20:49:35

Insider? Outsider? Shakeitallaboutsider? Robert Altman’s career was prolific and paradoxical, but what makes his films so memorable? Perhaps it’s the cat food in The Long Goodbye, or the all-yel...

Michael Snow from 2021-04-23T15:31:03

Who’s afraid of structural film? Not special guests Igor Toronyi-Lalic and Daniel Neofeteou, who join the boys this week to discuss the adventurous career of Canadian experimental filmmaker Michael...

Michael Snow w/ Igor Toronyi-Lalic and Daniel Neofetou from 2021-04-23T11:31:03

Who’s afraid of structural film? Not special guests Igor Toronyi-Lalic and Daniel Neofetou, who join the boys this week to discuss the adventurous career of Canadian experimental filmmaker Micha...

Godard Special: The Marxist Era from 2021-04-15T11:15:45

Out of the ashes of Mai '68 rises a very irritating phoenix, the didactic docu-diatribes of Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin and their comrades at the Dziga Vertov Group, who take the collecti...

Early Pedro Almodovar from 2021-04-08T21:47:33

Since his debut in 1980, Pedro Almodovar has become Spain's most cherished auteur. Trashy and transgressive in his trademark Technicolor, Almodovar's cinema of darkly comedic and twisted telenovela...

Early Pedro Almodovar w/ Lucy Bull and Matt Copson from 2021-04-08T17:47:33

Since his debut in 1980, Pedro Almodovar has become Spain's most cherished auteur. Trashy and transgressive in his trademark Technicolor, Almodovar's cinema of darkly comedic and twisted telenov...

Godard Special: The New Wave Era from 2021-04-01T12:42:24

Part 1 of 3: Owen and Ralph delve deep into Jean-Luc Godard’s energetic first decade, a treasure trove or cinephilia, aesthetic innovation and frustrated romance. From the frisson of Breathless ...

Stan Brakhage from 2021-03-26T15:55:26

Birth, sex, marriage, death. The movement of the stars and the planets, the chopping down of a tree. For Stan Brakhage, the prolific high priest of American experimental cinema, the entirety of exi...

Stan Brakhage w/ Daniel Neofetou from 2021-03-26T12:55:26

Birth, sex, marriage, death. The movement of the stars and the planets, the chopping down of a tree. For Stan Brakhage, the prolific high priest of American experimental cinema, the entirety of ...

Marlen Khutsiev from 2021-03-17T17:44:57

The swinging sixties clashes with Soviet strictness under the auspices of Marlen Khutsiev, a lesser known Russian auteur, a one-man Russian new wave. We review Ilych’s Gate (1965), its more popu...

Catherine Breillat from 2021-03-11T12:04

“Eros and Thanatos, sitting in a tree”, fumbling, groping, and pulling away. This is the psycho-sexual world offered to us by French auteur Catherine Breillat; a controversial figure in European...

L'Avventura from 2021-03-05T11:57:11

Hello, hello, hello, what's all this then? A disappearance, on an Italian island, and the waves that this disappearance makes - and does not make - among a very loosely knit group of bourgeois '...

Can't Get Adam Curtis Out of My Head from 2021-02-25T15:55:21

Adam Curtis is back with ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ perhaps his most ambitious documentary series, an emotional history of the modern world, a rich tapestry of complex protagonists and a lot...

Ben Rivers from 2021-02-18T12:55:38

This week, the boys wade through the slow anthropological cinema of Ben Rivers - a man obsessed with society and those who live at its edges. A hunchback, a musician, a salty old sailor - a hipp...

Ulrich Seidl from 2021-02-11T17:18:55

All the lonely people, where do they all come from? ‘Austria’ you might say, especially if, like Owen and Ralph you’ve spent the past week watching the films of Ulrich Seidl. Whether it’s the ma...

Lux Aeterna from 2021-02-04T16:11:21

In Lux Aeterna, art-house ingénue Gaspar Noé tackles the dynamics, egos, and erotics of cinema itself; turning the lens on his own (literally) pulsating practice. In a tight 50 minutes, the Fren...

Come and See/The Painted Bird from 2021-01-28T17:28:49

A lone boy is jolted into manhood by the tribulations and traumas of WW2 in Eastern Europe. This is the premise of both Come and See (1985) and The Painted Bird (2019). The boys dig into this de...

Ham on Rye from 2021-01-23T09:53:43

This week, the boys are joined by the pod’s weird-suburbia correspondent Daniel Neofetou to discuss Ham on Rye, an unsettling meal comprised of adolescent yearning, unspoken ritual, and a side o...

The Hourglass Sanatorium from 2021-01-15T15:43:18

Ralph introduces Owen to one of his favourite films, The Hourglass Sanatorium by Wojciech Has, an exuberant but mournful dream journey, transcending linear time and reconciling personal relation...

Orson Welles from 2021-01-08T17:24:14

This week, Owen and Ralph take to the stand in defence of The Trial, Orson Welles' horny and hectic adaptation of Kafka's eponymous novel. But they also take a sip from the bottle of Welles' wid...

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters from 2021-01-03T14:19:52

Obsessive, sexually-frustrated and determined to restore honour to a decadent society. But enough about Owen and Ralph, this week they wipe the white splashes off Paul Schrader's ornate biopic o...

It's a Wonderful Life from 2020-12-24T11:55:33

Live from Pottersville, NY, the boys are joined by Daniel Neofetou for a festive foray into Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. But is it, actually? And why is this paean to the American Dream ...

Meek's Cutoff from 2020-12-19T17:29:05

A desperate, misguided venture, driven by vanity and doomed to failure - but enough about Owen and Ralph’s podcasting ambitions, this week they’re joined by Lara Alonso Corona to discuss Kelly Reic...

Meek's Cutoff w/ Lara Alonso Corona from 2020-12-19T15:29:05

A desperate, misguided venture, driven by vanity and doomed to failure - but enough about Owen and Ralph’s podcasting ambitions, this week they’re joined by Lara Alonso Corona to discuss Kelly R...

Alejandro Jodorowsky from 2020-12-10T10:31:25

Beef’s back on the menu this week as the boys disagree over Alejandro Jodorowsky’s late-career output, The Dance of Reality (2013) and Endless Poetry (2016). Ravishing, restorative poetry or cri...

Philippe Garrel from 2020-12-04T12:39:55

The gentrification of a filmmaker. Owen and Ralph compare the avant-garde excitement of Philippe Garrel's classics Le Lit de la Vierge and Le Revelateur (made around May '68) with his more conve...

Mani Kaul from 2020-11-27T11:44:43

This week, the boys immerse themselves in the sensual worlds of Indian director Mani Kaul, specifically Uski Roti, Duvidha and Nazar. Underrated, underappreciated, a king among filmmakers. Sort ...

Meshes of the Afternoon from 2020-11-19T10:28:11

The boys dive in for a short, sharp dip in this cool 14-minute classic of the American avant-garde by Maya Deren and her husband Alexander Hamid. 

I Am Cuba from 2020-11-13T10:18:59

We’re Havana a nice time over here. This week, the boys take a look at Mikhail Kalatazov’s sadly sidelined masterpiece, Soy Cuba (1964). It’s propaganda, but not as we know it.

Malina from 2020-11-07T17:48:14

Isabelle Huppert stars in this fiery adaptation of Ingeborg Bachmann's classic novel about a writer torn between two unavailable men. Three more unavailable men, Owen, Ralph and their guest Matthew...

Malina w/ Matthew Turner from 2020-11-07T15:48:14

Isabelle Huppert stars in this fiery adaptation of Ingeborg Bachmann's classic novel about a writer torn between two unavailable men. Three more unavailable men, Owen, Ralph and their guest Matt...

Cure + the best of the pod so far from 2020-10-30T19:14:42

Happy Halloween, you delightful ghouls, and happy twenty-five episodes! This week, the boys fall under the hypnotic spell of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘j-horror’ masterpiece, Cure (Kyua). They also ran...

Rohmer's Comedies and Proverbs from 2020-10-23T16:35:32

Owen and Ralph are joined by Igor Toronyi-Lalic to discuss Éric Rohmer’s charming yet incisive cycle of ‘Comedies and Proverbs’, specifically The Aviator's Wife, Pauline at the Beach and My Girlfri...

Rohmer's Comedies and Proverbs w/ Igor Toronyi-Lalic from 2020-10-23T12:35:32

Owen and Ralph are joined by Igor Toronyi-Lalic to discuss Éric Rohmer’s charming yet incisive cycle of ‘Comedies and Proverbs’, specifically The Aviator's Wife, Pauline at the Beach and My Girl...

Time of the Wolf from 2020-10-16T10:55:41

Mad, ‘bad’ and uncomfortable to watch, Michael Haneke’s films have often plumbed the very depths of what it means to be human in a time of crisis. In 2003’s minimalist apocalyptic chamber piece ...

Short films on MUBI from 2020-10-09T15:37:55

Does length matter? This week Owen and Ralph go for film tapas, sampling the smaller dishes currently warm on the MUBI buffet, including some very recent works made during the Covid-19 lockdown....

Salon Kitty from 2020-10-02T20:02:23

Sexy, deranged, and a little bit, er, romantic. This week, the boys go eyeballs deep into Tinto Brass’s 1976 Nazispolitation soft core extravaganza, Salon Kitty. Does something serious stir bene...

India Song from 2020-09-25T10:35:09

Welcome to Calcutta, or is it Versailles? The boys wade into Marguerite Duras’ woozy chamber play - oozing with promiscuity and desperation - and ask that crucial existential question, are we ne...

Apocalypse Now from 2020-09-18T12:46:49

Colonel Kurtz, I presume? This week, the boys deploy to Vietnam for Francis Ford Coppola’s psychedelic exegesis on violence, horror and despair. Is it more myth than movie - and how does war mak...

A Couch in New York from 2020-09-12T20:15:57

Ever get the feeling you're in the wrong city, or maybe just the wrong genre? A bubbly Parisian dancer (Juliette Binoche) swaps apartments with an uptight Manhattan shrink (William Hurt) while a...

Lolita from 2020-09-04T10:37:50

'How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?' So goes the famous tagline to Kubrick's 1962 adaptation of Nabokov's wildly controversial novel of 1955. This week, the boys met IRL to ask why Adrian...

Talk To Her from 2020-08-28T12:05:26

What's love got to do with it? Pedro Almodovar's chilling drama about two comatose women and the men who watch over them gets Owen and Ralph animated about desire, trauma and yes, repressed hete...

The Commune from 2020-08-21T13:17:27

If ‘hell is other people’, then what is a commune exactly? Thomas Vinterberg — divorcee, director, dogmatist — sets his sights on a radical moment in 1970s Denmark, asking how far we’ll go to gi...

The Jester from 2020-08-14T13:50:57

Two moments in Portuguese history, 850 years apart, form the elusive backdrop to this dreamlike tale. The Jester by José Álvaro Morais navigates breakups, blackmail and a battle for independence...

Showgirls from 2020-08-08T12:12:15

It’s loved. It’s loathed. It’s rarely clothed. This week, the boys get hot under the collar discussing Paul Verhoeven’s salacious ‘masterpiece’, Showgirls.

House from 2020-08-02T00:59:46

Owen and Ralph are joined by special guest Daniel Neofetou to discuss Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House, a comic horror bursting with visual effects and the hungry ghosts of war. They discuss the film’s fo...

House w/ Daniel Neofetou from 2020-08-01T20:59:46

Owen and Ralph are joined by special guest Daniel Neofetou to discuss Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House, a comic horror bursting with visual effects and the hungry ghosts of war. They discuss the film’s...

Humanité from 2020-07-24T09:31:56

This week, there’s ennui on the menui as the boys take on Humanité - Bruno Dumont’s intensely bleak police procedural from 1999. But did video kill the Eurostar? Tune in to find out.

The Bigamist from 2020-07-18T11:40:08

Ida Lupino’s concise parable on marital deception was a source of unexpected empathy for the boys. Well worth your divided attention.

8 1/2 from 2020-07-11T13:29:12

This week, Owen and Ralph enter the exuberant dreamworld of Fellini’s 8 1/2 - a belly-busting feast for the senses. But did the boys overindulge?

Mulholland Drive from 2020-07-04T09:41:19

Dim the lights as Owen and Ralph take a trip down David Lynch's turn-of-the-century mystery noir. Re-assessing their adolescent Lynch obsessions they find a new compassion behind the confusion. ...

Olla from 2020-07-03T13:40:09

As a little extra Owen and Ralph peer into the pink and gold interiors of Ariane Labed’s 2019 short Olla. A dose of dark comedy, female empowerment, and deep feelings.

The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger from 2020-06-24T22:20:03

This week, Owen and Ralph share some extremely constructive thoughts on a well-intentioned yet gruellingly shallow portrait of late art critic John Berger.

The Structure of Crystal from 2020-06-19T11:46:55

Male bonding, professional rivalry, a clash of ideas - but enough about Owen and Ralph, this week they discuss Krzysztof Zanussi’s subtle character study on the friendship between two scientists...

Love from 2020-06-11T21:39:05

This week, Owen and Ralph get down and dirty with Gaspar Noé's 2015 erotic psychodrama, Love. A film with balls, and heart, and a lot, lot more.

The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 & LA Rebellion from 2020-06-05T22:30:56

In response to unfolding events in America, Owen and Ralph watch a historical documentary about the civil rights movement, including a layman's intro to the films of the LA Rebellion movement. W...

Bacurau from 2020-05-28T22:28:43

Owen and Ralph give a sort of semi-enthusiastic yee-haw for Bacurau, the ‘weird western’ from Brazilian directors Kleber Filho and Juliano Dornelles. A town under siege. A bloody standoff. An op...

High Life from 2020-05-24T18:49:28

In this first episode, Owen and Ralph take one small step for nobody in particular, and penetrate the pulsating red walls of High Life. Sometimes referred to as 'daddy Issues in Space', other ti...