Best Film Ever

“As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in.”

Join Ian, Liam & Megs for our 346th episode as we head into the bleak, terrifyingly plausible Britain of 2027 for Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006). Humanity hasn’t produced a child in eighteen years, society is collapsing, Britain has become an authoritarian state, and Clive Owen would really just like everyone to leave him alone. Kev isn’t with us this week — he attempted to enter the country without the correct paperwork and is currently enjoying the hospitality of the British government's immigration system.

And stick around for the Endgame, where we're joined by BFF of the BFE Synthia to help decide whether Children of Men deserves a place among the Best Films Ever.

This week we discuss:

How many screenwriters does it take to make Children of Men? Five credited writers had a hand in adapting P.D. James' novel. Does the finished film feel like the product of that many voices, or is Cuarón's vision strong enough to make it feel completely unified?

Clive Owen as Theo — an excellent actor giving a wonderfully understated performance, but was he a big enough movie star to carry a film this ambitious at the box office?

Michael Caine's Jasper becomes our most debated performance of the week — warm, funny and providing some desperately needed humanity... or playing in a completely different film from everybody around him?

How much world-building should the audience have to do? Children of Men famously refuses to stop and explain its dystopia, instead burying information in news reports, advertisements, background details and production design. Is that masterful "show, don't tell" filmmaking, or does the movie occasionally expect us to construct too much of its world on its behalf?

Ian digs into the screenplay — for a film with an enormous premise, why is the actual story remarkably simple, and does that simplicity allow the themes to become much bigger?

Liam explores hope in a hopeless world — when civilisation has effectively accepted its own extinction, what does the existence of one child actually represent?

Megs examines Kee's place within the story — is she given enough agency of her own, or does her importance as a symbol sometimes overwhelm her importance as a character?

Alfonso Cuarón's direction — those extraordinary long takes aren't simply technical flexes. How does keeping us trapped alongside Theo change the way we experience the violence around him?

The car sequence. We discuss how one seemingly impossible shot transforms from casual conversation to absolute nightmare without giving the audience a moment to escape.

The politics of Children of Men — refugees, nationalism, terrorism, state violence and fear of outsiders. Nearly twenty years after its release, has the film become even more uncomfortable to watch?

The production design — perhaps the film's greatest world-building weapon. From advertisements and graffiti to cages and buses, how much storytelling is happening in the corners of the frame?

The ceasefire — one of the most powerful sequences in the entire film. Does that brief moment of silence earn its enormous emotional impact?

And finally, with BFF of the BFE Synthia joining us for the Endgame, whether Children of Men is the Best Film Ever — or an extraordinary piece of filmmaking whose technical brilliance sometimes asks the audience to fill in more blanks than we'd like.

Become a Patron of this podcast and support the BFE at
https://www.patreon.com/BFE

We are very thankful to the following Patreon backers for their generous support:

Juleen from It Goes Down In The PM

Hermes Auslander

James DeGuzman

Synthia

Shai Bergerfroind

Ariannah Who Loves BFE The Most

Paul Komoroski

Duane Smith (Duane Smith!)

Andy Dickson

Aashrey

Chris Pedersen

Randal Silva

Nate The Great

Rev Bruce

Richard

Ryan Kuketz

Dirk Diggler

Stew from the Stew World Order podcast

NorfolkDomus

John Humphrey's Right Foot

Timmy Tim Tim

Youth Hosteling with Chris Eubank

Buy some BFE merch at https://my-store-b4e4d4.creator-spring.com/.

Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor

Also, massive thanks to Moonlight Social for our age game theme song. You can catch more from them at https://www.moonlightsocialmusic.com/

“This is Africa. We do things differently here.”

Join Ian & Liam for our 345th episode as we head to 1970s Uganda for Kevin Macdonald’s The Last King of Scotland (2006), a film that puts us terrifyingly close to Idi Amin through the eyes of a fictional young Scottish doctor who discovers that getting into the dictator’s inner circle is considerably easier than getting back out. Megs isn’t with us this week — Amin has appointed her Minister of Something He Just Invented and she's sensibly keeping her head down. Kev? He mentioned that he disagreed with the President once and, well... nobody seems entirely sure where Kev is now.

This week we discuss:

Forest Whitaker’s extraordinary, Oscar-winning Idi Amin — charming, funny, frightening and capable of changing the temperature of a room in seconds. Is this one of the great performances of the 21st century?

James McAvoy’s Nicholas Garrigan — naïve, arrogant, selfish and frequently infuriating. How important is it that the fictional character through whom we experience this story isn't particularly likeable?

Fact versus fiction — Garrigan never existed, but Amin certainly did. Does inserting a fictional white protagonist give audiences an effective route into Ugandan history, or unnecessarily place him at the centre of somebody else's tragedy?

Ian breaks down the film's construction of Amin — how does the film make us understand his charisma without ever asking us to excuse what lies beneath it?

Liam explores the seduction of proximity to power — Garrigan sees the warning signs remarkably early, so why does he keep finding reasons to stay?

How much did we actually know about Idi Amin and Uganda before watching the film? We explore the history behind the story and how closely the broad trajectory of Amin's dictatorship matches what we're shown.

The tonal transformation — the first act occasionally feels like an exciting adventure for a young doctor abroad. How effectively does the film tighten the screws until that same world becomes absolutely terrifying?

Amin the man versus Amin the monster — are the moments of humour, insecurity, paranoia and apparent warmth what make Whitaker's portrayal so frightening?

Garrigan's decisions — there's being naïve, there's making mistakes, and then there's Nicholas Garrigan. At what point did we stop sympathising with him and start shouting at the screen?

The women in Garrigan's story — does the film recognise the consequences of his behaviour toward them, or are they too often used to propel his journey?

The violence — much of the film holds back before suddenly refusing to do so. Does that restraint make the moments when Macdonald finally shows us the horror even more effective?

The final act — The Last King of Scotland eventually becomes almost unbearably tense. Does turning historical atrocity into thriller mechanics enhance the film's impact or risk trivialising the reality behind it?

And finally, whether The Last King of Scotland is the Best Film Ever — or a deeply uncomfortable historical drama elevated by one absolutely towering central performance.

Become a Patron of this podcast and support the BFE at
https://www.patreon.com/BFE

We are very thankful to the following Patreon backers for their generous support:

Juleen from It Goes Down In The PM

Hermes Auslander

James DeGuzman

Synthia

Shai Bergerfroind

Ariannah Who Loves BFE The Most

Paul Komoroski

Duane Smith (Duane Smith!)

Andy Dickson

Aashrey

Chris Pedersen

Randal Silva

Nate The Great

Rev Bruce

Richard

Ryan Kuketz

Dirk Diggler

Stew from the Stew World Order podcast

NorfolkDomus

John Humphrey's Right Foot

Timmy Tim Tim

Youth Hosteling with Chris Eubank

Buy some BFE merch at https://my-store-b4e4d4.creator-spring.com/.

Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor

Also, massive thanks to Moonlight Social for our age game theme song. You can catch more from them at https://www.moonlightsocialmusic.com/

Angels & Demons or Thor? Interview with the Vampire or The Rock? What happens when some of our favourite films fall just short of the standards required to qualify for a regular Best Film Ever review? To be eligible for the BFE, a film needs to score either 85% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes OR 8.0 or higher on IMDb — which leaves an awful lot of beloved, ridiculous, divisive and occasionally brilliant movies stranded on the outside looking in.

So this week, we're giving the rejects their moment.

Joined by some of our Friends of the Podcast — Synthia, Paul Komoroski, Ariannah, Shai Bergerfroind and Hermes Auslander — we've assembled a field of the best films officially ineligible for review by the BFE and thrown them into a winner-takes-all knockout tournament. Expect films we can't believe aren't eligible, films whose scores suddenly make perfect sense, brutal head-to-head choices, questionable taste, furious campaigning and at least one result that will have somebody demanding an immediate change to the BFE constitution.

They may never qualify for a proper episode — but one of them is about to be crowned The Best Film Ineligible for Review by the BFE.

“Call me Snake.”

Join Ian, Liam & Kev for our 344th episode as we cross the wall, try not to get killed by the locals, and discover that in the distant dystopian future of 1997, the entire island of Manhattan has become America's maximum-security prison. It's John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981), where Kurt Russell has one eye, Donald Pleasence is somehow the President of the United States, and absolutely nobody seems particularly concerned that they've sent one bloke in to rescue him.

Megs isn't with us this week — she landed on Manhattan while attempting to evacuate Air Force One and has informed us that she'd actually rather take her chances with the inmates than record with us.

This week we discuss:

Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken — one of cinema's coolest antiheroes, but how much of Snake is actually a character and how much is simply Kurt Russell walking around being impossibly cool?

John Carpenter's vision of 1997 — crime has exploded, America has become a police state, and Manhattan is a prison. It didn't quite work out that way... but how much of Carpenter's dystopia still feels surprisingly relevant?

The extraordinary world-building — Carpenter gives us remarkably little information about how any of this works. Is that restraint part of the film's brilliance, or are there questions we'd really quite like answered?

Ian gets into the film's narrative construction — because Escape from New York might have one of the cleanest movie premises imaginable. You've got a man, you've got a mission, you've got a ticking clock. What more do you actually need?

Snake Plissken's reputation precedes him everywhere — everybody has heard of him, everybody thought he was dead, and we're left wondering exactly what this man did before the opening credits to become such a legend.

Lee Van Cleef's Hauk — pragmatic authority figure or complete bastard? And is putting explosives inside the neck of the only man capable of completing your mission really the motivational strategy you'd go with?

Donald Pleasence as the President — accent notwithstanding, does the film deliberately make the most powerful man in America one of its least impressive?

Isaac Hayes as the Duke of New York — he's A-Number-One, but does the Duke live up to the incredible introduction the film gives him?

The supporting cast is ridiculous — Ernest Borgnine, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau and more. Who makes the most of surprisingly limited screen time?

The film looks considerably bigger than it actually was — miniatures, matte paintings, abandoned locations and some ingenious low-budget filmmaking. How does Carpenter create an entire ruined Manhattan without actually having one?

The pacing — at barely 100 minutes, Escape from New York gets in, establishes its world, completes its mission and gets out. Have modern action films forgotten how to do this?

That ending. Snake has one final opportunity to do something heroic for the United States of America... and makes perhaps the most Snake Plissken decision imaginable instead.

And finally, whether Escape from New York is the Best Film Ever — or simply one of the coolest B-movies ever elevated into cult-classic immortality.

Become a Patron of this podcast and support the BFE at
https://www.patreon.com/BFE

We are very thankful to the following Patreon backers for their generous support:

Juleen from It Goes Down In The PM

Hermes Auslander

James DeGuzman

Synthia

Shai Bergerfroind

Ariannah Who Loves BFE The Most

Paul Komoroski

Duane Smith (Duane Smith!)

Andy Dickson

Aashrey

Chris Pedersen

Randal Silva

Nate The Great

Rev Bruce

Richard

Ryan Kuketz

Dirk Diggler

Stew from the Stew World Order podcast

NorfolkDomus

John Humphrey's Right Foot

Timmy Tim Tim

Youth Hosteling with Chris Eubank

Buy some BFE merch at https://my-store-b4e4d4.creator-spring.com/.

Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor

Also, massive thanks to Moonlight Social for our age game theme song. You can catch more from them at https://www.moonlightsocialmusic.com/

“I’m not a one-man woman.”

Join Ian & Megs for our 343rd episode as we head to Brooklyn for Spike Lee’s audacious, provocative, micro-budget debut She’s Gotta Have It (1986). It’s sex, independence, competing egos, and three men absolutely convinced they should be the answer to a question Nola Darling never asked. Liam isn’t with us this week — Nola told him she wasn’t interested in exclusivity and he’s been drafting a rebuttal ever since. Kev? He heard Mars Blackmon say “Please, baby, please” and has disappeared to practise his technique.

This week we discuss:

Who exactly are we supposed to like in this film? Nola, Jamie, Greer, Mars — everyone gets their moments, but are there actually any genuinely likeable characters in She’s Gotta Have It?

Tracy Camilla Johns as Nola Darling — independent, sexually confident, complicated and occasionally deeply frustrating. How radical was this protagonist in 1986, and how does she play almost forty years later?

That Thanksgiving dinner. Inviting all three men you're sleeping with to the same Thanksgiving meal is certainly a choice — but is Nola being liberated, honest and refusing to hide, or is she actually being unnecessarily cruel?

The acting is... a moving target. From genuinely effective performances to line readings that wouldn't survive an amateur theatre rehearsal, the quality fluctuates wildly — so why does the film somehow remain completely compelling?

Spike Lee’s extraordinary debut — made with virtually no money and enormous ambition. Does the roughness actually become part of the film's charm rather than something we need to forgive?

Jamie, Greer and Mars — three wildly different approaches to masculinity, yet all three ultimately want Nola to change for them. Does any one of them actually understand her?

Spike Lee as Mars Blackmon — annoying, hilarious, insecure, endlessly quotable and somehow destined to become bigger than the film itself.

Megs explores Nola’s agency — is the film genuinely celebrating a woman refusing to conform to expectations, or can Nola's independence occasionally become an excuse for treating other people badly?

Ian questions the film’s internal logic — particularly that ending. Nola and Jamie's final scene seems constructed exactly like the climax of a romantic comedy: she's lost the guy, walks away, he calls her back and gives her another chance. Everything about the cinematic language tells us this is the outcome we're supposed to want... until the film suddenly tells us it wasn't.

The final confessional — previous confessionals lead into events that we actually witness. So why does the most important one simply tell us that everything went differently without ever showing it?

And what about Nola's vow of celibacy? Is it genuine growth, or such a rejection of her defining characteristic that it feels like the film suddenly lost confidence in its own ending?

Does the finale feel rewritten? There's no smoking gun proving that it was, but Ian makes the case that the internal logic, characterisation and sudden reliance on “tell, don't show” make those final minutes feel suspiciously like a late attempt to change what the audience takes away from the film.

The film’s sexual politics in 2026 — what's still strikingly progressive, what's become considerably more complicated, and how does one deeply troubling sequence change our relationship with Jamie and everything that follows?

The black-and-white photography and that sudden explosion of colour — necessity becoming aesthetic, and the first signs of the extraordinarily confident visual filmmaker Spike Lee would become.

And finally, whether She’s Gotta Have It is the Best Film Ever — or a messy, inconsistent, sometimes infuriating debut that somehow shines brighter than many considerably more polished films.

Become a Patron of this podcast and support the BFE at
https://www.patreon.com/BFE

We are very thankful to the following Patreon backers for their generous support:

Juleen from It Goes Down In The PM

Hermes Auslander

James DeGuzman

Synthia

Shai Bergerfroind

Ariannah Who Loves BFE The Most

Paul Komoroski

Duane Smith (Duane Smith!)

Andy Dickson

Aashrey

Chris Pedersen

Randal Silva

Nate The Great

Rev Bruce

Richard

Ryan Kuketz

Dirk Diggler

Stew from the Stew World Order podcast

NorfolkDomus

John Humphrey's Right Foot

Timmy Tim Tim

Youth Hosteling with Chris Eubank

Buy some BFE merch at https://my-store-b4e4d4.creator-spring.com/.

Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor

Also, massive thanks to Moonlight Social for our age game theme song. You can catch more from them at https://www.moonlightsocialmusic.com/