Weekend At Crombie's

It's 1990, and Stephen Frears directs this neo-noir thriller with Anjelica Huston, Annette Bening and John Cusack. And if you must drink a glass of water during your listen, please consider using a plastic sippy-cup.

It's everyone's favourite episode, where James crunches the numbers without mercy. There's some thrills and shocks in the data that has been dredged from the films of this past season. Enjoy!

I just like to smile, smiling's my favorite.

Oh, this is more fun than choking chickens.

I'm Santa Claus, Teddy, not Yoda.

I never thought it was such a bad little tree.

How can all those canals and bridges and cobbled streets and those churches, all that beautiful fairytale stuff, how can that not be somebody's thing? 

Why is there always someone who brings eggs and tomatoes to a speech?

The real Santa was totally different. The Coca-Cola Santa is just a hoax. 

I'm old enough to know when life is coming at me with its pants down. 

Show me the 'Elf Face'.

I wished for a purple elephant, but now I want a pink elephant! 

Just when you think it can't get any worse, you run out of cigarettes. 

It'll take me at least a week to dig up all my dolls in the cemetery.

It's 1986, and the way you can tell is because it produced this college comedy about a white law student who pretends to be black in order to qualify for a scholarship. Starring C. Thomas Howell and Rae Dawn Chong, who appeared to crash their careers on this one, but at least met each other and got married.

It's 1993 and Steven Zaillian directs the tale of a young prodigy in a brave attempt to make chess cinematic. With a line-up that includes Ben Kingsley, Laurence Fishburne, Joan Allen, Joe Mantegna, Robert Stephens, William H. Macy, Dan Hedaya, Laura Linney and Tony Shalhoub, this cast goes deeper than a Sicilian Defense.

It's 1977, and Larisa Shepitko directs her final film about two partisans struggling for both life and soul in World War II Belarus. Naturally, hilarity ensues. A profoundly moving and beautiful film, it would nonetheless take a stronger spirit than either of our hosts possess to watch it more than once.

It's 1983, and this rotoscoped animation unites director Ralph Bakshi with legendary sword n' sorcery artist Frank Frazetta. The 80s were a prime time for low budget dark fantasy, and this reads like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Although, in this case, none of the protagonists ever chose to wear more clothes.

We close the series with the tale of another futuristic city in the form of Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis. The city of New Rome is torn between feuding oligarchs, and only one visionary can save us all. Coppola self-financed this film when the studios turned it down. So there's that. The Legend of Crombie‘s Gold examines a series of thematically-linked films - this time, we've chosen films that looked to the days ahead: the Future Is Now!

Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 near-future dystopia tells of societal collapse and widespread intolerance following population crash. Breathtakingly shot and performed, just try not to think on how prescient it's become. The Legend of Crombie‘s Gold examines a series of thematically-linked films - this time, we've chosen films that looked to the days ahead: the Future Is Now!