Film Utopia

About Film Utopia

In-depth movie talk hosted by three fellas with a passion for film. Detailed retrospective movie reviews and filmography discussions of directors, actors, composers, and more!

Publisher

Film Utopia

Category

tv & film

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

30 Jan 2020

Latest episode

24 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

130 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   24 Sept 2026

   128. Movie Posters: Vol. 1 – Selling Cinema

   A video version of this episode is available on Youtube, here. Before the trailer, before the teaser, before the algorithm started throwing clips at you on social media, there was the film poster: one image, a handful of words and the enormous challenge of making you want to spend your hard-earned money on a film you've never seen. In this first volume of what will become an occasional Film Utopia series, Steven and Sean each bring 12 favourite movie posters from across the decades, celebrating the designs that have stopped them in their tracks, sold them a film, or simply looked bloody fantastic on a wall. We dig into what makes a great poster work, whether it's clever marketing, striking graphic design, a perfectly chosen image or simply an irresistible piece of visual cool. We also look at the changing role of the poster itself: from the elaborate painted artwork and giant cinema displays of the past to today's increasingly digital, social-media-driven world, where a poster has to compete with trailers, clips, thumbnails and an endless stream of imagery. There's plenty of common ground. Our shared love of Art Deco leads us to the magnificent Heinz Schulz-Neudamm three-sheet for Metropolis (1927) and John Mattos' superb one-sheet for The Rocketeer (1991), while the bold propaganda-inspired design of V for Vendetta gets another unanimous thumbs-up. But our personal tastes take us in rather different directions. Steven embraces the glorious simplicity of the single-character poster, making a case for RoboCop, Captain America and Army of Darkness, while Sean gravitates towards posters that somehow distil an entire film into one deceptively simple image, with Dawn of the Dead, Jaws and A Clockwork Orange among his choices. And because a picture is worth a thousand words, we've also recorded a video version of the episode featuring all the posters we discuss, available here. So grab your imaginary cinema wall, dust off your pinboard and join Steven and Sean for Volume 1 of our celebration of the art of the movie poster.

2. 

   27 Aug 2026

   127. Dario Argento Part 5: Three Mothers, One Dracula & a Pair of Dark Glasses.

   The Dario Argento retrospective reaches its final chapter, and after five decades of black gloves, elaborate murders, supernatural nightmares and increasingly questionable career decisions, Steven and Sean arrive at the 2010s and beyond to discover whether the maestro still has anything left in the tank. This time around, we tackle The Mother of Tears (2007), Giallo (2009), Dracula 3D (2012) and Dark Glasses (2022). And while neither of us is about to pretend we've stumbled across another Suspiria, there are some genuine surprises along the way. The Mother of Tears proves far more enjoyable than either of us expected. It has its flaws, but there's enough imagination, atmosphere and sheer Argento thrills to make the final chapter of the Three Mothers trilogy a surprisingly welcome return to form. Then comes Giallo, which manages the seemingly impossible: a film about a serial killer that is mind-numbingly boring. Its characters are so relentlessly uninteresting that even the murders struggle to wake us up. Dracula 3D fares little better, although Sean is willing to concede that there is a certain so-bad-it's-good charm lurking beneath the digital cobwebs. Steven remains entirely unconvinced, refusing to grant the film even the dubious honour of being entertainingly terrible. Thankfully, Dark Glasses provides a modest but welcome upturn. It's not vintage Argento, but its pacey story, straightforward plotting and refreshing willingness to simply get on with the bloody thing make it an encouraging late-career effort. And then, finally, we rank them all. In a lengthy reverse-order countdown, Steven and Sean reveal their personal rankings of Argento's entire filmography and, at the very top, we finally discover the answer to the question we've been building towards for five episodes: What is Sean's favourite Argento film? And what is Steven's? Five decades. Five episodes. One retrospective. One director. Countless black gloves. Join us for the final bloody curtain call for Dario Argento.

3. 

   13 Aug 2026

   126. Dario Argento Part 4: Sleepless, Shitcock & Serial Killer Dwarfs.

   Our Dario Argento retrospective enters the 2000s, and, frankly, things have not improved. In the fourth instalment of our five-part journey through Argento's theatrical and TV filmography, Steven and Sean tackle Sleepless (2001), The Card Player (2004) and Do You Like Hitchcock? (2005), before turning to Argento's two contributions to Mick Garris' Masters of Horror: Jennifer (2005) and Pelts (2006). By this stage, the golden era is very much behind him, and neither Steven nor Sean find much here to get excited about. Sleepless arrives armed with Argento's familiar bag of tricks; elaborate murders, red herrings and a killer hiding in plain sight, but undermines itself with moronic characters, staggeringly poor performances and a red herring involving a dwarf serial-killer that has to be seen to be believed. Then there's The Card Player, which looks suspiciously like it was shot on a broadcast television camera and appears to have been constructed around a simple filmmaking principle: if in doubt, show someone looking at a computer screen. Repeatedly. Do You Like Hitchcock? fares little better, or, as Sean christens it, “Do You Like Shitcock?” With an utterly unlikeable protagonist, laughable Hitchcock references, Argento's increasingly distracting self-inserts and one of the most bafflingly stupid escape sequences we've ever encountered, there's plenty for us to sink our teeth into. Thankfully, the Masters of Horror episodes Jennifer and Pelts provide a modest recovery. Neither represents a return to Argento's glory days, but both deliver what we're here for: nasty little horror stories, inventive premises, memorable gore and enough gruesome imagery to remind us that the old bastard still knows his way around a splatter set-piece. So, come for the Argento retrospective, stay for the increasingly savage lambasting. The gloves are still black. The plots are increasingly questionable. And somewhere, somehow, someone is probably still looking at a computer screen.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

4.4 / 5

7 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 41 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

58

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

60

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