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This week on your favorite movie podcast we chat about the Danish film, "Another Round," starring Mads Mikkelsen. Martin played by Mads Mikkelsen is the married father of two boys and also a history teacher. Martin joins three of his friends, also teachers at the same School in a sort of social experiment: Drinking while at work, but more specifically maintaining a constant BAC level of .05 % from the minute they wake up in the morning and into the evening right before they go to bed. It is proposed that maintaining a constant BAC level of .05 % will help boost creativity and confidence.

Personally, my immediate thought is no way is this going to be even remotely true. They are teachers with families AKA others that rely on their every day performance. Just when you think that this every day drinking detail is helping (or hurting) the opposite appears to be true.

This is an interesting movie that gets the viewer thinking about several aspects of life: work life, home life, everyday life and more specifically how one is in their personal life. Not surprisingly, relationships are affected and some tragedy does occur. This movie is both uplifting and sad. I recommend watching it especially if you are looking for something a little bit different from "the usual." Cheers!

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This afternoon, Jay and I are discussing the movie Night Hunter. This is not a movie that was on my radar which is surprising to me, but also not. The casting is excellent. I love all of the names in this film. I'd say some of the subject matter is intense, but movie is gritty, but worth a watch as it comes together (well for the most part) at the end. Another detail to note, is that Night Hunter wasn't out in the theater for very long and it didn't get a lot of "attention." The movie got "bigger" due to streaming.

Henry Cavill, Alexandra Daddario and Stanley Tucci's characters all work for a local police department, one is a detective, Walter Marshall, one is a psychologist, Rachel Chase and the other is a commissioner, Jack Harper. Ben Kingsley (Michael Cooper) and his young ward played by Eliana Jones also round out the cast of Night Hunter.

The movie pulls the viewer in immediately. We see a young girl meeting an older guy at a Diner, the situation not only looks suspicious, but also, maybe dangerous for the young girl ... And the movie goes from there. We don't want to give too much away, but if you are looking for a crime, drama thriller type movie, this is it. The movie is definitely creepy in parts, sad too, but the ending is not something that I saw coming - at all.

Moving on from Night Hunter, Jay also provides us with another honey based recipe: Hot Honey Ranch Sauce. Yum!

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Hello friends. Welcome back to Critique-o-polis. Today, Jay and I discuss the third installment of The Knives Out series: Wake Up, Dead Man.

As with the previous two movies, the location is remote, set aside from the busy city and focuses the viewer on the story AKA the crime at hand. Wake Up, Dead Man is set in a small, fictional village, Chimney Rocks. The movie centers around a local Church with a small congregation, one that is led by Monsignor Wicks (played by Josh Brolin). Monsignor Wicks has a very close group of Church attendees, all with different personalities and different "levels" of faith.

During his Good Friday mass, Monsignor Wicks in murdered, but how and by whom? Did the young, new hire Father Jud - played by Josh O'Connor, commit the crime? He was the closest to the Monsignor when he died ... Or did someone else mysteriously let themselves into the Church, get up behind the altar and commit murder? Hard to say ... Let's call in Benoit Blanc - played by Daniel Craig to help solve the case.

There are many details and layers to this story and to solving the case of the mysterious murder of Monsignor Wicks. The movie is led by an all star cast, including Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, Thomas Haden Church, Jeremy Renner, Jeffrey Wright, and Glenn Close in the role of Martha.

If you are looking for a good mystery and you are not starting it too late in the evening (the movie has a run time of 2:24), then you should check out this entertaining most recent installment in the Knives Out series.

Don't forget to keep listening to this episode for Jay's latest honey recipe.

That is all for now. Thank you for reading and listening to Critique-o-polis!

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After our brief hiatus, Critique-o-Polis is back! Jay says that it is his fault that we were off for a few weeks, and while that might be true (it's not), he has a good "excuse," Jay was working elsewhere. I think that it is very fair that we took some time off to live another part of life. We will always be watching movies and reviewing them for you! It is one of our favorite things to do together - We love watching movies, talking and sharing on Critique-o-Polis.

Today, we discuss the 1976 Italian film, Allegro non Troppo. It's okay if you are like me and you are saying to yourself I've never heard of this film before ... Neither had I/we. We came across the title on an Instagram post. Thank you, Instagram for introducing us to new movie titles.

Allegro non Troppo is said to be a parody of Disney's Fantasia. But upon watching it, I don't think that I would necessarily agree with that. I can see some of the parallels, but I think that there is more to Allegro than Fantanisa and I am only saying that because the last time I saw Fantanisa has to be at least 30 years ago!

There are several differences. Between the 5 to 6 colorful animated sequences (set to classical music as is similar in Fantanisa), there are also black and white, live action "intervals." During these intervals we meet a crazy conductor, the chained up to the wall animator, (he is "let go" when he is needed) and we also meet a group of elderly women who are kept as cattle in a pen until they are needed to play their instruments for the orchestra.

Overall, this movie is both interesting and fun to watch. The animations are colorful, entertaining and evoke emotional highs and lows. There is a lot happening, giving the viewer a lot to think about.

Definitely give Allegro non Troppo a watch for something different than what you might be used too.

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Happy New Year! Welcome back to another wonderful episode of Critique-o-polis. Today, we review the French-Italian film "Cinema Paradiso." Let me just start off by saying, if you haven't seen or heard of this movie, (ever), watch the trailer and decide for yourself if you want to watch it. Just watching the trailer makes me cry. Also, there are three different versions of this movie, so you don't necessarily have to watch the almost 3 hour version, although, that is the one that we watched.

The central plot in Cinema Paradiso revolves around Salvatore, nicknamed Toto, and his friend and mentor Alfredo. When the movie opens, we see an adult Salvatore living his fancy adult life in Rome when he receives a phone call from his mother telling him that Alfredo has died.

While Salvatore is starting to think about Alfredo and how he helped to shape Salvatore's life, the movie goes back into the past and we meet a young Salvatore in his tiny hometown in Italy. Salvatore is a frequent attendee at the local Cinema, but his real dream is to learn how to be a movie projectionist. This he has to beg to learn from Alfredo, who gives in, in return for a favor that Toto did for Alfredo.

The movies' string and wind heavy score was written by Ennio Morricone and his son, Andrea. The Love Theme in this movie is beautiful. The whole score is beautiful. It really helps carry the movie along.

Jay has also included a new honey based recipe in this episode. Please enjoy. I think it is one that we will try soon! Again, Happy New Year and Happy Listening.

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Guess what? Jay finally remembered to include a honey based recipe. He felt so bad about not remembering to deliver a recipe the last several episodes that he put this one at the front of the episode. Try not to be too hard on him, he's getting rather elderly and forgetting things.

This week we watched the Japanese animated "Tokyo Godfathers." Although, this movie is set on Christmas Eve, you hardly remember "or know" that it is actually Christmas Eve.

The plotline centers around 3 main characters: Gin, Hana and Miyuki. All are voluntary homeless. Their personal choices in their past lives have led them to where they are now. One of the characters, for example, Gin, regales the story that his family died a long time ago and he has been left alone in the world without them and is overcome with loneliness. And then we find out later that the truth is much different and this is the arc for all of the characters. The story that they tell themselves are fictions they create and during the course of the story, they must reconcile with the truth.

There are many plot points in this movie: One being that these three friends are "given" the unexpected gift of a newborn baby that they are "asked" to take care of while trying to find the baby's birth parents. Another member of this makeshift family, Hana, is elated as she has always wanted to be a mother.

Tokyo Godfathers is the 2003 endeavor by renowned animator, screenwriter and manga artist, Satoshi Kon. At this point, this was Kon's most ambitious and expensive project tipping the scales at 300 million yen in production costs. Themes of homelessness and abandonment interweaved with comedy are it's core tenants.

The screenplay for this movie was written by Keiko Nobumoto. Kon's movie also marked the transition from celluloid animation to digital animation.

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We watched the 2011 French Film, the Intouchables, but before we get into that, Jay goes on an absolute, untethered tirade about a run in with a person at market who tried to steal a parking spot from a vendor. You should listen just for that. Jay becomes completely unglued. P.S. He forgot the recipe again (turn in next week, he finally remembered).

The Intouchables is a French buddy comedy drama that explores a transformative relationship from two men from two different socioeconomic backgrounds. Phillippe, a quadriplegic billionaire who struggles with everyday tasks and Driss, a poor immigrant from the wrong side of the tracks who stumbles into the role of Phillippe's caretaker.

What starts off as a contentious relationship soon morphs into a symbiosis that neither man expected, but both men needed. It didn't make me want to be quadriplegic, but it did make me want to be rich.

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This is the week after Thanksgiving, not necessarily coincidentally we are reviewing a holiday movie: Home for the Holidays. This movie has an all star cast, featuring Holly Hunter, Claire Danes (briefly), Robert Downey Jr., Dylan McDermott and Ann Bancroft to name a few! Holly Hunter plays Claudia, a single Mom traveling without her daughter from Chicago (her home) to Baltimore (her childhood home) for Thanksgiving. We don't want to say too much more here because we don't want to give too many fun details away, but Claudia's family is not the perfect cookie cutter image family that her older sister, Joanne, played by Cynthia Stevenson, hopes it would be. As several publications have mentioned, this is a dysfunctional family for many reasons. Albeit very similar to what happens in most families especially during the Thanksgiving and/or the Christmas holidays.

If you enjoy watching other families dysfunction to take your mind off of your own family: watch Home for the Holidays. Although, it didn't do very well when it was released, it has now become somewhat of a cult-classic enjoyed by many for it's comedy, romance and drama all wrapped into one movie.

I had never seen it before and I started to watch it again, almost immediately after I watched it for the first time. Enjoy!