AwardsWatch Podcast #217: Oscar Talk, Reviewing ‘Argylle,’ and Our Favorite Spy Movies Ever

On episode 217 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, AwardsWatch Editor-In-Chief Erik Anderson stands in for AW Executive Editor Ryan McQuade and welcomes AW Associate Editor Sophia Ciminello and AwardsWatch contributor Josh Parham to talk a bit about the Oscars, review Argylle and dive into our favorite films of the spy and espionage genre.

Early February is a quiet time for Oscar predicting; there are very few critics groups to still chime in and all guilds and industry nominations have landed. It’s voting time for several, including SAG, DGA and PGA and idle hands are the devil’s playground. In our opening, Erik, Sophia and Josh root around the lead acting and screenplay categories which seem more open and elusive than usual and we take an early stab at what could shake things up and why.

Then it’s Argylle, Apple Films’ colossal box office, critical and audience flop that opened this weekend and Josh is tasked with stewarding that sinking ship as the only person on the pod who saw it. With its $16M opening, mid-40s Rotten Tomatoes score and C+ Cinemascore, the film is not long for theaters and Josh will tell you why.

Then we get to the meat of the podcast and that’s talking about spy and espionage films that do work for us and those that we count among our favorites. With the Mission: Impossible and Bond franchises looming so large over this genre – we give them space and due – we talk about some formative film in the genre for us like Goldfinger and the spy spoof Condorman and then into the films that we love the best like The Manchurian Candidate (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Conversation (1974), No Way Out (1987) and Spy (2015). Plus, what list would be complete without Hitchcock?

But we return to Bond and give out some of our choices to replace the iconic figure now that Daniel Craig is officially retired from the role. Hit us up in the comments with who you want to see play the dashing, rogue agent.

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This podcast runs 1h36m. On our next episode, we will be talking about our favorite rom-coms just in time for Valentine’s Day and our predictions for the BAFTA winners. Till then, let’s get into it.