Robin and Carolina discuss the best samurai film of all time, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954). The bandits are mean, our heroes are heroic, and the farmers are just trying to survive.

Politics include: how Jaws and Star Wars blatantly copied this film, the making of a seven-person army, and a village trying to stay safe in an uncertain world that is basically, literally all of us at the moment.

Hungry for more? Good stuff on Seven Samurai

• The Cine-Files talk about the film for 4+ hours
• Why Kurosawa's films are the best edited in film history
• Foreign Policy magazine dig into the film in connection to war

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Carolina and Robin discuss two of Wallace & Gromit's fabulous films: The Wrong Trousers (1993) and Vengeance Most Fowl (2024), two films that confirm that dogs really are better than human beings.

Politics include: a murderous penguin that uses technology for evil, a robot that is terrifyingly pliant until it's not, the turbulent Yorkshire-Lancashire border, and the literal fundamentals of AI ethics.

See here the complete Sight & Sound critics' list of the 100 best films of all time. Yes, Jeanne Dielman is at the top. Somehow.

If you like what you hear, please rate and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening, it will help others find the pod.

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Carolina and Robin discuss The Shining, the terrifying (but always beautiful) tale of a family falling apart in a remote Colorado hotel in the 1970s.

Politics include: the hotel owner who looks like a young Trump, the grim reality of the film being about domestic abuse more than it is about ghosts, and how Jack Torrance represents the broken dreams of the white American working class.

If you like what you hear, please rate and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening, it will help others find the pod.

You can now follow us on:

• Instagram @ministryoffilmpod
• Bluesky @ministryoffilmpod.bskyb.social