A podcast about watching film. Each episode, hosts Benjamin and Liam choose two movies loosely connected by theme, genre, director, decade, or anything else, and take a deep dive into both.
Folks! Need I say it? We're so back. Join us for a one movie discussion, all about Paul Schrader's wild ride: Master Gardener. Narvel!
We're back after another hiatus! Hear us talk to classic PI movies and a recap of the 2024 Oscars. Love y'all xoxo
Our love letter to the best movies of 2023. More to come this year! Our best of list on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/flandangle/list/scene-unseens-best-of-2023/
After a longer than usual hiatus, Ben and Liam return to talk numbers and accidentally picked one of the more depressing doubleheaders on record! Ben's pick Lilya 4 Ever is dark and painful, while Liam's pick, Anne at 13,000 Feet is sad and painful. Watch at your own discretion, but listen for free right now! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Thank you all for two beautiful years
Happy Halloween Scene Unseeners! Folk Horror, one of our lord's greatest genres. Liam and Ben investigate a spooky doubleheader in Messiah of Evil, a somewhat unfinished Gialloish Beach flick, and Enys Men, a somewhat impenetrable island movie, with absolutely no beaches. Thank you for listening, as always. Sweet spooks.
Despite what you may have heard, we at Scene Unseen are not on strike! Thanks for sticking with us while our lives are busy, we're excited to be back with two movies both centred around unions, both the bad/fictional and good/real. Liam chose all-timer On The Waterfront while Ben selected should-be-all-timer Matewan. Support your local unions. Join one if you can. Love y'all! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
For this episode of Scene Unseen, Liam and Ben truly embodied the theme by Disappearing for a week. We're back now, chatting movies relating to Ben's theme of DISAPPEAR. Liam selected 1972's Sleuth, a twisty disappearance mystery/comedy/compilation of racisms against the Italians. Ben selected The Vanishing, which you should watch without learning anything about. Then come back and listen to this :) Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Ben and Liam investigate a genre they know nothing about; musicals! By choosing two kinda musicals! Please enjoy our Liza Minelli and Ireland slander
Healthcare, who cares? We do! Two very different healthcare films were watched this week by the Scene Unseen team, the Polish smorgasbord of dreamlike visions,The Hourglass Sanitarium, and the prophetic Soderbergh joint, Contagion. We hope you enjoy, and please, get sick responsibly.
As the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off in just a few days, Liam and Ben wanted to visit some TIFF People's Choice Awards Winners of old, before the true glitz and glamour and gooeyness of today's event. Ben selected Roeg's 1980 sex pest memorandum Bad Timing and Liam selected Gilliam's 1991 holy grail adventure without Monty Python The Fisher King. Odd movies, odd festival, worthwhile listen! Please invite us to come for free TIFF. Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Get Kafkaesque with Liam and Ben! Orson Welles and Michael Haneke help us dive into the worlds of paperwork and sexual freaks on this lovely episode of Scene Unseen. Thank you for joining us!
Howdy folks! Ben and Liam are back with an in-person episode recorded at Scene Unseen Studios on the films of Mike Nichols. After this deep dive into two offbeat films from the director of The Graduate, Ben and Liam take a second (or an hour) to share their thoughts on the summer's second-hottest crave, it's Oppy Time folks. Hear us blather on about Oppenheimer, dolphins, military capitalism, and more! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Ben and Liam get Creedpilled watching two different legacy sequels centering around former athletes mentoring the next generation to compete one-on-one against the best of the best!
There are many movies about trains. We discussed two this week. Thanks for choosing to board with us this week! Train Simulator Rap Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
We are very happy to be belatedly celebrating National Indigenous History Month by watching two films from incredible Indigenous women in Canada! Liam selected the maddening documentary Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, directed by Alanis Obomsawin, while Ben selected the debut feature film from Nyla Innuksuk, Slash/Back. Tune in to celebrate and lose your minds with us, as we do in the heat. Watch Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance for free on NFB: https://www.nfb.ca/film/kanehsatake_270_years_of_resistance/ Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
How do we handle having children? Or better yet, how do we handle having parents? This week, Liam and Ben take a look back at the melodramatic masterpiece Ordinary People and the modern meat stick Cha Cha Real Smooth. Two films with sappiness and heart galore. Thanks for tuning in! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Join us on a journey to the small nations and states of our world, as Ben suggested our theme of films from countries with less than 100,000 residents. Liam went basic, selecting the how-to-los/win-it-all gambling guide Bay of Angels, set and produced in Monaco. Ben went deep, selecting a short film from the small island of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic, the pleasantly devastating 37°4 S. We HIGHLY recommend watching 37°4 S, which you can rent on Vimeo for essentially $1 with the link below. Thanks for joining us again in isolation. See you soon! Rent or Buy 37°4 S here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/374s/88459132 Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
We are back on schedule folks! With the year's most important month, Pride Month, upon us, we again wanted to celebrate some 2SLGBTQIA+ directors. Ben brought us the work of Todd Stephens and the Udo Kier-starring melancholic meditation on the history of gay rights through the pov of the Liberace of Sandusky. It's Swan Song! Liam brought us the work of Jane Schoenbrun, and a truly universal experience of internet solitude mixed into a potential allegory for shifts in gender identity. It's We're All Going to the World's Fair! As always folks, thanks for listening. You mean the most to us. Happy Pride!
Sci-fi? It's a genre we know and love. Ben and Liam watched two films with the common theme of SPACE, 1984's classic fable The Brother From Another Planet and 2021's techno musical Neptune Frost.
This week, we invite you to join Benjamin as he dives into the early world of David Cronenberg's early, and hidden, work. We discuss Transfer (1966), From the Drain (1967), Stereo (1969), Crimes of the Future (1970), Secret Weapons (1972), and The Italian Machine (1976), linking these six foundational shorts, television episodes, and early features to the greater filmography of Canada's finest filmmaker, still focusing on the same themes almost 60 years later. Enjoy! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Folks, I can contain my excitement for this episode. Ben and Liam are back to talk about a MODERN movie, if you can believe this. 2023 has been the year of the brand movie, from AIR to Tetris to Mario. We took a deep dive into the best and most Canadian of the bunch, Blackberry, along with 2009's Coco Before Chanel, which is about Coco before.. uh.. Chanel. Thanks for listening everybody :) Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Folks, first, we are so sorry we have not been in your ears for so long. Second, we are so back. Ben and Liam are back to your podcast platform for a quick episode outside our normal themed episodes to shake off the rust. We chat about some pieces we've seen recently. Liam talks Babylon, The Big Sleep, and All The President's Men, while Ben fills us in on Hour of the Wolf, the films of Derek Jarman, and Ghibli Fest! We also spend some time rambling on other foolish topics. Thanks for tuning back in :)
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Order in the podcourt! Ben e Liam tackled a genre they are both quite unfamiliar with this week: the Courtroom Drama. Enjoy our chat about The Archers visually-inspired A Matter of Life & Death and the unfortunately ever-topical Sacco e Vanzetti.
We're excited today to celebrate the Oscar-winning star of Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, Michelle Yeoh! Diving back through her filmography, Liam and Ben selected two martial arts thrillrides, 1985's cops, robbers, and Pharmacy Boys mess-around Yes, Madam! and 1993's babys-galore fantasy The Heroic Trio. We're so lucky to have Michelle Yeoh grace our screens year after year, and going back in time with her was a treat. Thank you for listening! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam P.S. This one is not an April Fool's joke :)
We are here early this weekend folks, diving into springtime. The changes of the season gives us a perfect excuse to bring forward to completely unreal films; the 1960s Romanian anti-capitalist slowburn The King's Fee & the Canadian tax fraud action flick Runoff. If you're looking to waste some time with us today, we would be more than happy to make a joke with you this April. Happy changing of the seasons! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam We're sorry :)
Back to the Future! Looper! Primer! There's so many famous time travel movies, but Ben and Liam chose two that are far less famous and honestly, maybe better than all of those. The Spanish Hitchclockian Timecrimes and the Japanese joyous micro-budget Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes are both so much fun and make so much sense, you'll be glad to learn about them. See you in the past and future folks, thanks for listening!
The Library of Congress estimates that only 14% of silent era films remain, with the vast majority being Lost Media; pieces of content observed and lost to time. Today, Ben and Liam decided to enjoy some Lost Media that eventually resurfaced: The incomplete Soviet scifi action flick The Death Ray and the Oscar-winning propogandastic Wings. Both lost for decades before being found and restored, to a degree, and both exciting relics of a silent era in film that is too easy to forget. The Death Ray on YouTube (English subtitles available in close captioning) Wings on YouTube (with a huge thank you to our sponsor, girlboss videos) Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Folks, we're finally doing Drugs! As a theme for the show, of course. Liam forced Ben to see the meme movie du jour, Cocaine Bear. After stopping by the theatre to get high on that, we both watched The Acid House, three short films combined based on the work of Irvine Welsh. You can probably skip that one. The baby in it is so terrifying. Love you all, thank you! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
We are celebrating and recognizing Black History this February by checking out some touchstones we've missed: Charles Burnett's American masterpiece To Sleep With Anger and Jean Luc Herbulot's Senegalese western horror myth Saloum. Both bangers, in very different ways, dealing in mythology, superstition, and generational trauma and healing. Thanks for listening!
Hello Scene Unseeners! It is time once again to do something special, something to welcome back old viewers and welcome new viewers into the Scene Unseen family. This is officially the second ever Scene Unseenies, a spoiler-free retrospective on the more than 50 movies we've watched on the podcast since our last retrospective. We award our Best Picture, Best Actor/Actress, Best Scene, Best Music, Best Scene, Worst Performance, and more to movies from Suspiria (1977) to The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976). So please, join us for this spoiler-free recap on some of our favourite movies covered on the podcast from the last year and take away from recommendations for movies and episodes. See you next time for a normal episode! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Ben and Liam launch a new chapter of the podcast in fantastical fashion by discussing this year's Academy Award nominees. Specifically, we took deep dives into German potentially-anti-war epic All Quiet on the Western Front and class drama "beauty as currency" allegory Triangle of Sadness, both nominated for Best Picture. While these may not win, it was worth taking a peek at some of the year's heralded films, even if we're still banned because of the Titane Incident. Thanks for listening! Full list of Oscar nominees: https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2023 Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Dear listeners, If you've been following along with our podcast, you've heard of a little movie from 1976 entitled The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. From director/writer/icon John Cassavetes, the patron saint of our podcast, this movie has defined our show. For our 50th episode, we have recorded the DEFINITIVE episode on this important piece of American indie cinema. A gangster classic in a wholly unique way, for good and for bad, this movie is more important to Ben and Liam than you may know. Join us to celebrate 50 episodes of Scene Unseen, we're so thankful you've joined us for this journey. Can't wait to see you in season 2! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Episode 49! That is so many episodes! We loved watching two directorial efforts from people well-known for their acting: Steve Buscemi's Animal Factory and Drew Barrymore's Whip It. Join us for a spell!
To break us out of the winter bleakness, we decided to watch some visually insane movies, which turned out to be quite bleak themselves. Two movies with very different stories, but very amazing experiences both. Follow us on Twitter. Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam. Check out the list we used here: https://boxd.it/jq61y
New episode!
We at Scene Unseen pride ourselves on Watching Film, but sometimes we need to take a second and catch up on the most recent hit movies. That is just what we did this week, catching up on the films we missed in 2022: Diego Ongaro's gangster rap reminiscence Down with the King and Park Chan-Wook's romance procedural Decision to Leave. Ben and Liam also shout-out their favourite 2022 releases AKA the definitive best movies of the year (no arguments plz). Thank you all for listening in 2022! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Grab your library cards, because Benjamin talks about the eight films that were made of Richard Stark's _Parker_ series of novels. Follow us on Twitter. Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Merry Christmas folks, don't forget to pick up your Turbo Mans before Christmas Eve!
The British Film Institute has revealed their once-in-a-decade Greatest Films of All Time list, and Scene Unseen is on the scene to let you know if they're worthwhile (they are (obviously)). First, Ben and Liam talk about the 7th ranked film, Claire Denis' meditative reflection on male aggression Beau Travail, before diving into the #1 ranked film according to thousands of critics: Chantal Akerman's 1975 slow cinema cult classic Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Both are slow, both are beautiful, one is incredible (and probably both are). Join us! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Ben and I wanted to dive into the inspirations behind some of our favourite directors. Ben chose the "subtly" gay 1965 student film Winter Kept Us Warm while Liam chose 1977's Opening Night from... uh... some guy named John Cassavetes. Who did these movies inspire? Listen in to find out! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Another week another episode, bah boom. We are tackling a genre as old as its medium today: movies about making movies. We looked back into history with Center Stage, a documentary/historical fiction hybrid sharing the tragic tale of 1930s China's most famous actress, and The Player, and blood-soaked black comedy satirizing early 90s Hollywood. Two different looks at how movies are made with one solid conclusion between them: movie execs are trash. Listen in! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Folks, we are back, and we are in Ireland (not literally). Scene Unseen returns to celebrate one of our favorite performers of all-time Brendan Gleeson, catching two of his most celebrated performances in 2011's The Guard and 2022's The Banshees of Inisherin, which you still can and should catch in theatres. These movies were directed each directed by a different McDonagh brother and really show the immense talent that is Mr. Gleeson. They were a joy to chat about. Thanks for listening! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Happy 40th everyone! We're back folks, regularly scheduled and everything. We have two RELATIVELY WELL-KNOWN movies this time, truly unbelievable stuff. And we may be a week late, but we're still getting into something spooky for the Halloween season. Liam's pick, uh, Casper, is light-hearted, about ghosts, and mad horny. Certified Halloween classic. And Rosemary's Baby is an genuinely iconic horror film, a deep dive into paranoia and pathos, with an ending you may know but probably don't. We'd love for you to listen. You folks mean the world to us! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Hi folks! We are back! Liam extends his deepest apologies for missing last week, he was in the hospital with something called [REDACTED] where your muscles [REDACTED] and then [REDACTED]. He's okay now though. So sadly, we will not have a Halloween episode in time for the season, but we do have something fun! Ben and Liam used a country randomizer to choose find a random region in the world before each selecting a movie from there already in their watchlists. Ben landed in Thailand, bringing us 2015's ethereal meditation Cemetery of Splendour, while Liam landed in Algeria, where the hosts found 1969's political past and present, Z. Please enjoy one of our shorter episodes, and if you like it, consider following along and giving us a rating. We'll be glad you did. Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Did you miss us? Ben and Liam are back on the Sunday grind now that Liam has stopped ruining everything by being on vacation. This week the boys watch two modern black & white classics, a bit of new retro. Ben brings us 2013's psychedelic historical horror (?) A Field in England and Liam chose 2015's psychedelic historical drama (?) Embrace of the Serpent. Both are good. Both are psychedelic. Both are shot in black and white. You know the drill. We're back! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Hello fans, here is an episode while Liam is on vacation where he talks about his favourite comedian of 2022: Jerrod Carmichael. The audio quality is not good (he was in the shower) and he also apologizes for not finding the time to connect with Ben. We'll be back to normal soon, we promise! Love you all. Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
Ben and Liam weren't able to connect this week :((( but Ben saw that slack, picked it up, and has hit us with one of our strongest episodes in recent memory. Ben has been on a heater recently while Liam has been rewatching the Twilight series, and he's highlighting three excellent films: Ali Khamraev's 1986 freeform film I Will Remember You, Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 allegorical epic La Haine, and, of course, John Cassavetes' 1974 rosetta stone A Woman Under the Influence. No one can tell you why you should watch a movie quite like Ben, and you should definitely watch these movies. Tune in next time for hopefully more of our scheduled programming. Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
This week we're diving into a world we've been dipping in toes in recently: literary adaptations. This time we're looking at movies we haven't seen based on books we have read: Ben brings an adaptation of Carson McCullers' 1940 Great American Classic The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and Liam brings the definitive adaptation of George Orw*lle's dystopian meme Nineteen Eighty-Four. It's tough to make an adaptation work, a lot gets lost along the way, but these two do things their own way. Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow us on Letterboxd: Ben & Liam
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