Episode # 330 Pom Poko with George Wood and Charlotte Sometimes

Explicit content warning

01/24/24 • 38 min

Flixwatcher: A Netflix Film Review Podcast

George Wood and Charlotte Sometimes (freelance film writers) return to Flixwatcher to review Georges’s choice Pom Poko.

Pom Poko (1994) is a Studio Ghibli animation written and directed by Isao (Grave of the Fireflies) Takahata. Pom Poko is the story of tanuki, which in Japanese folk lore are magical shape shifting creatures, also referred to as Japanese raccoon dogs which has led to the incorrect translation of ‘raccoons’ to the English version.

The film opens in late 1960s Japan, a group of tanuki (raccoon dogs) find their natural habitat threatened by rampant suburban development. Fast forward to the 1990s and the tanuki are facing reduced resources and space and resorting to fighting with each other for survival. A group of elders come up with a strategy to take back their land that involves killing of humans and learning the art of shapeshifting.

Testicles are also a prominent feature in tanuki traditions and they feature frequently in Pom Poko, if referred to incorrectly as ‘pouches’ in the English dub. Your enjoyment of Pom Poko rests largely on your tolerance of testicles or your interest in their versatility in battling against environment destruction.

Mixed recommendability and low repeat viewing scores, at nearly two hours it is a long animation, give Pom Poko an overall rating of 3.48.

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Episode #330 Crew Links

Thanks to the Episode #330 Crew of George Wood (@g_woody) and Charlotte Sometimes (@sometimesmovies)

You can find their website here https://filmtalkwithme.substack.com/

and at https://t.co/eyhWf8CFqh

Please make sure you give them some love

More about Pom Poko

For more info on Pom Poko can visit Pom Poko IMDB page here or Pom Poko Rotten Tomatoes page here.

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George Wood and Charlotte Sometimes (freelance film writers) return to Flixwatcher to review Georges’s choice Pom Poko.

Mixed recommendability and low repeat viewing scores, at nearly two hours it is a long animation, give Pom Poko an overall rating of 3.48.

[supsystic-tables id=342]

Episode #330 Crew Links

Thanks to the Episode #330 Crew of George Wood (@g_woody) and Charlotte Sometimes (@sometimesmovies)

You can find their website here https://filmtalkwithme.substack.com/

and at https://t.co/eyhWf8CFqh

Please make sure you give them some love

More about Pom Poko

For more info on Pom Poko can visit Pom Poko IMDB page here or Pom Poko Rotten Tomatoes page here.

Final Plug! Subscribe, Share and Review us on iTunes

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Previous Episode

Episode # 329 Crazy Stupid Love with Neel Bhatt and Lizzie Swindells

Neel Bhatt (Empire Podcast) and Lizzie Swindells return to Flixwatcher to review Neel’s choice Crazy Stupid Love.

Crazy Stupid Love (2011) is a romantic comedy drama written by Dan (This is Us) Fogelman and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. It stars Steve Carell as Cal Weaver. A middle-aged man who suddenly finds himself single after his wife Emily, played by Julianne Moore, says she has had an affair (with Kevin Bacon’s David Lindhagen) and wants a divorce. On one of his nights out he meets serial womaniser Jacob, played by Ryan Gosling in photoshopped perfection. Jacob teaches Cal how to dress and speak to women to up his romantic game. Law school graduate Hannah, (the effervescent Emma Stone) is having her own romantic troubles with her wet drip boyfriend.

Crazy Stupid Love succeeds where so many romantic comedies fall in being both romantic and genuinely funny, in this case actually laugh out loud. It also gave us the ‘laughing Ryan Gosling’ GIF.

Riffing on popular culture and referencing both Dirty Dancing and The Karate Kid and with a sweetness at its heart recommendability for Crazy Stupid Love was very high. Equally high was repeat viewing and small screen which gives an overall rating of 4.79. This means there is a new top film on the Flixwatcher leaderboard! Congratulations Crazy Stupid Love!

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Episode #329 Crew Links

Thanks to the Episode #329 Crew of Neel Bhatt (@_Neelsreeldeel) and Lizzie Swindells (@lizzie1708)

You can find their website here https://t.co/LMb3WDsDHt

Please make sure you give them some love

More about Crazy Stupid Love

For more info on Crazy Stupid Love can visit Crazy Stupid Love IMDB page here or Crazy Stupid Love Rotten Tomatoes page here.

Final Plug! Subscribe, Share and Review us on iTunes

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Next Episode

Episode # 331 Cam with Becky Darke and Joshua Tonks

Becky Darke (The Evolution of Horror, Don’t Point That Horror At Me and Return to Eerie, Indiana podcasts) and Joshua Tonks (actor and screenwriter, The Latent Image (2022)) join Flixwatcher to review Becky’s choice Cam.

Cam (2018) is a psychological horror thriller directed by Daniel (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) Goldhaber. It stars Madeline Brewer as Alice, AKA Lola, a cam girl with ambitions of being the number one ranked girl on the website FreeGirlsLive.

One day Alice finds herself locked out of her account and discovers a doppelgänger Lola active and performing on livestreams. Unable to access her account, Alice determined to get it back blurs the lines between Alice and Lola to find out who or what is has taken her identity.

Cam might start as a standard slasher film but it doesn’t go down the usual route. While the set up doesn’t quite match the ending it is still an interesting and chilling film that looks at identity, isolation and the role technology has on our lives.

Recommendability scores for Cam were high and with a runtime of 93 minutes, engagement and repeat viewing scores were also strong to give an overall rating of 3.74.

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