Aussie and the Scotsman - Unfiltered Movie Podcast

This week we are reviewing The Castle, the 1997 Australian comedy directed by Rob Sitch and starring Michael Caton as Daryl Kerrigan — a loveable, utterly ordinary Australian bloke who lives with his family in a weatherboard house next to Melbourne airport and thinks it is the greatest home on earth.
When the government issues a compulsory acquisition notice and offers him $70,000 to leave, Daryl says no. Not about the money. It is his castle.
What follows is one of the most beloved David and Goliath stories in Australian cinema history.
This one has been a long time coming. The Aussie has wanted to do this episode for the better part of two hundred podcasts, and when it finally arrives he is practically vibrating. The Scotsman rewatched it without much enthusiasm and ends up enjoying it far more than he expected — which, if you know him, tells you a great deal.
The pre-film chat this week finds the Scotsman at a networking event he hated every second of. Walking in alone, holding a coffee, trying to break into conversations, standing like a weirdo while exactly one person came over to him. The Aussie, who loves networking and has no shame whatsoever, finds this baffling. It is a funnier exchange than it has any right to be.
Then they get into the film — and this is where the episode really takes off. The Aussie runs through the lines that have embedded themselves into the Australian language. "Tell him he's dreaming." "How's the serenity." "This is going straight to the pool room."
Lines that Australians use without even thinking about where they came from.
The Scotsman, twenty years into living here, admits he probably says them without remembering they came from this film.
There is a lovely moment where they sit in that together.
But the standout moment of the episode comes when the Scotsman explains the Mabo connection — the 1992 High Court ruling that recognised native title and overturned terra nullius. The argument Dennis Denuto cannot make and Lawrence Hamill can. The idea that connection to land, built through living and loving and belonging, is real and cannot simply be overridden by government or commercial interest. Daryl Kerrigan making the same argument about his weatherboard house that Eddie Mabo made about Murray Island. It reframes the entire film — and the Aussie goes quiet in a way he rarely does.
They work through the performances, the comedy, the warmth of the Kerrigan family dinner table, the fake chimney that adds a bit of charm, the gates still attached to the car when the police arrive, the speed camera that just paid for itself, and the moment a man digging a hole is celebrated like he has cured cancer.
The Scotsman notes that you are laughing with this family, never at them — despite everything. 
Rohan Reminisces covers 1997 — and the Aussie turns up to his own segment without the music link he has been waiting all week to play.
What happens next is a lesson in chaos management. They cover the films, the Oscar winners, Princess Diana, Google starting as a corner store, South Park, and a story from the Scotsman involving tens of thousands of people on Hogmanay in Edinburgh that has absolutely no business being as funny as it is.
Trivia includes the $750,000 budget, what the film actually made, the eleven-day shoot, the three-week script, what happened to the real house at 33 Dagonet Street, Eric Bana's film debut, and a final fact about the pool room that is more perfect than it has any right to be.
Aussie: 4.2 out of 5. Scotsman: 3 out of 5. Both of them land the final line. You will know it when you hear it.
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This week the podcast revisits Warrior — the 2011 MMA family drama directed by Gavin O'Connor, starring Tom Hardy as Tommy Riordan, a former US Marine carrying unimaginable grief and a secret that could detonate everything, Joel Edgerton as Brendan Conlon, his estranged older brother and part-time physics teacher fighting desperately to save his daughter's life, and Nick Nolte as Paddy Conlon — their father, 14 months sober, trying to earn back the love of two sons he failed in every way that matters.
The Sparta tournament. 16 fighters. $5 million. Winner takes all. And two brothers on a collision course neither of them can stop.
Before the film discussion gets going, the Scotsman arrives with a story. A proper one. It involves his two boys playing footy, a dirty match, a fence that probably should have stayed between him and the pitch, a club president who had something to say about it, and a two-week ban that the Scotsman accepts with absolutely no regrets whatsoever. We'll say no more. Just listen.
On the film itself, the two land in rare and slightly painful agreement. The ingredients for something genuinely great are all here — fractured family, guilt, grief, addiction, and the impossible question of whether a father can ever truly earn forgiveness from the people he hurt most.
Three performers at or near the very top of their game. And one single scene — Nick Nolte, alone, drunk, utterly broken — that is as honest and as devastating as anything you will find in modern cinema.
And yet, somewhere between the repetitive fight structure, the undercooked character development, the montage that looks like it was assembled in an afternoon, and a finale that ties things up just a little too neatly for a story this complicated, the film never quite becomes what it so clearly wanted to be.
The Scotsman gives it 2.4. The Aussie gives it 1.5 and is completely unapologetic. It may be the lowest combined score in the history of the show.
Rohan Reminisces: 2011 — Game of Thrones premieres, Osama Bin Laden is killed, Steve Jobs dies, Adele takes over the planet and the Aussie attempts to explain planking to a man who still thinks it's yoga
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This week we are reviewing The Son, the 2022 drama directed by Florian Zeller — the filmmaker behind The Father — and starring Hugh Jackman as Peter, a successful New York lawyer who has rebuilt his life after divorce with a new partner Beth, played by Vanessa Kirby, and a newborn baby.
When his ex wife Kate, played by Oscar winner Laura Dern, arrives with their seventeen year old son Nicholas — who has stopped going to school, is self harming and is in crisis — Nicholas moves in with Peter.
Peter tries to fix it. He cannot fix it.
Sir Anthony Hopkins appears in one scene, written specifically for him, as Peter's own father. With a cast like this you would think this was going to be an absolute belter.
Please note before listening — this episode deals directly with teenage mental health, self harm and suicide.
Beyond Blue: 1300 224 636. Lifeline: 13 11 14. Headspace for young people aged 12 to 25: headspace.org.au. Kids Helpline: 1800 551 800. If someone is in immediate danger, call Triple Zero.
The pre-film chat this week finds the Scotsman at a newly opened wine bar he and the Aussie visited together — and which managed to frustrate him in almost every possible way. Not enough chairs, a layout that could not decide what it wanted to be, a policy on splitting bills that made no sense, and a manager who doubled down on every single one of those decisions rather than just fixing them.
On the film itself the two find common ground in unexpected places. The cast is extraordinary. The subject matter is as important as it gets.
The Scotsman comes prepared in a way that genuinely surprises the Aussie mid-episode — delivering real statistics on teenage mental health in Australia, what depression actually looks like in a teenager versus an adult, why the instinct to fix things is precisely the wrong response, and what parents should actually do when a child discloses they are struggling.
Where they diverge is on the film itself. The Scotsman identifies two significant plot failures that undermine the emotional weight of everything around them — including one so obvious he cannot believe it made the final cut.
The Aussie is more forgiving but does not entirely disagree. Both land on the same conclusion — the subject matter deserves a better film than this, and that is precisely why they are doing the episode.
The Hopkins connection to The Father is explored in detail. The Scotsman's closing thought on what Zeller was actually saying by casting the same actor in both films is, in the Scotsman's own words, very clever indeed.
Aussie: 2.2 out of 5 for the film. 5 out of 5 for the conversation it opens. Scotsman: 3.2 out of 5. No jokes at the end of this one. Both of them mean it.
The podcast is out now on YouTube and also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Hit subscribe or follow — it genuinely helps the show keep growing and we are grateful for every single one. Thanks for listening.

This week we are reviewing Another Round, the 2020 Danish drama directed by Thomas Vinterberg and starring Mads Mikkelsen. Four middle-aged Copenhagen schoolteachers, each quietly adrift in their own lives, agree to test a theory that humans function better maintaining a constant mild level of intoxication — and discover that the experiment works, until it doesn't. The podcast is out now on YouTube and also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If this one gets you thinking, share it with someone who would argue with you about the ending. That is the whole point. Hit subscribe or follow — it really does help us keep going. Before the film, the Aussie arrives and announces he has a child's palate and calls himself a baboon within the first two minutes — both unprompted — after nearly dying at a corporate lunch when butter chicken turned out to be considerably spicier than expected. The Scotsman went to the dentist and spent ten minutes explaining why someone should invent a high pressure water jet to remove plaque, then lost the thread entirely. The Scotsman had not seen Another Round before bringing it. He had seen the final dance scene on Instagram and decided that was reason enough to watch it with the Aussie. Both agreed it was a slow burn that takes time to earn, and both agreed it earned it. The film discussion is one of the best the show has produced. The Scotsman walks through the film's central lesson scene in full — three anonymous political leaders, their personal habits, and the classroom reveal that undoes every assumption the students made. Leader A was Roosevelt. Leader B was Churchill. Leader C was Hitler. The classroom goes silent and the hosts let it sit. What follows is a proper conversation about alcohol — not as a moral question but as a human one. The Scotsman asks whether he has ever drunk to feel more comfortable in social situations. He answers yes. The Aussie asks back. They go somewhere honest that most podcasts would not, and the film earns its place in the conversation rather than just being discussed from a distance. The debate about the ending is the standout moment. The Aussie is convinced that when Martin reads his wife's text and then dances and dives into the harbour, he is choosing freedom over reconciliation — a new life, not the old one. The Scotsman is equally convinced the dance is pure joy at getting her back, a man finally alive again after years of numbness. Neither fully concedes. ChatGPT is consulted on air. It says the ending is deliberately ambiguous. The Scotsman says it is 90-10 in his favour. The Aussie says 60-40. They invite the audience to weigh in. In Rohan Reminisces, the hosts cover 2021 — the January 6th Capitol attack, Biden's inauguration, the Suez Canal blockage, the Tokyo Olympics, the fall of Kabul, and the deaths of Prince Philip, Betty White, Charlie Watts and Bert Newton. The Aussie also notes that Prince Harry and Meghan had a baby, which he describes as "a little bit." The trivia covers the film's $7 million budget and $21 million return, the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, the Dogma 95 manifesto that shaped Vinterberg's whole approach to filmmaking, the fact that Mads Mikkelsen trained as a competitive dancer before he ever acted and performed the entire final sequence himself without a double — and the story of Ida Vinterberg, Thomas's 19-year-old daughter, killed in a car accident on the fourth day of filming. The film was shot at her school with her classmates. The final dance was made for her. The Oscar speech described the film as born in grief and becoming a celebration of life. One of the more honest and unexpected episodes in the show's run. Go and watch the film first if you can.

This week we are reviewing The Great Escape, the 1963 epic war classic adventure directed by John Sturges and starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasance and James Coburn.
Allied prisoners of war held in a supposedly escape-proof German camp plot an audacious mass breakout, only for the adventure to give way to something much darker, and much more human.
This episode starts in typical fashion — with the Scotsman and the Aussie nearly derailing the show before the review even begins. There’s an argument about whether the iconic theme should have opened the episode, a very funny early wobble over connecting The Great Escape to other films, and then a pre-film chat that goes gloriously off-road.
And it is worth hearing.
There’s a terrific stretch on customer service, a late-night hunger confession involving two emergency sandwiches at 2am, a McDonald’s story that becomes a full monologue, a debate about wasting time, work travel, sales personalities, working from home, and an unexpected detour into whether an eye twitch might be a stroke. It sounds absurd written down. It’s even better in the episode.
Then the film discussion lands — and it lands well.
This is not a dry classic-film review. It’s a lively argument over tone, realism, whether the first half feels too playful for a Nazi prison camp, whether the second half is superior, whether the music is overused, whether Steve McQueen’s motorcycle sequence is remembered correctly, and whether Shawshank Redemption owes a bigger debt to this film than people admit.
There’s strong discussion around the cast, especially McQueen, Bronson, Pleasance and Attenborough, and a really good exchange about why the film works despite juggling so many characters.
The Scotsman makes a sharp case that you become invested in eight different men remarkably quickly. The Aussie pushes back on parts of the tone, but ends up admiring the emotional turn once the escape begins.
There’s a great clash over realism in the camp. There’s a sharp debate over whether the Germans are too lightly drawn early on. There’s a terrific exchange over whether the three tunnels logic really holds. And there’s a very good argument about whether the final motorcycle jump is remembered more powerfully than it actually plays.
There are also some unexpectedly funny moments in the middle of the review, including the two hosts acting out scenes from the film. That could have gone badly. It doesn’t. It’s one of the funniest sections in the episode.
And then the episode lifts again.
Rohan Reminisces may be the strongest version of the segment yet. It nearly gets forgotten entirely, then comes roaring back with a rapid-fire run of 1963 trivia, some very funny wrong turns, accusations of cheating, and a couple of moments where the Scotsman unexpectedly starts landing answers. But the key point: the segment is teased, not spoiled. The specific answers and reveals are left for the episode.
Without spoiling the film trivia section, stay for the Steve McQueen revelations, the astonishing Charles Bronson story, the Donald Pleasance real-life POW connection, and the detail about a cast member boldly telling another he intended to marry his wife.
Yes, that really happened.
This is one of those conversations that works whether you know the film well or haven’t seen it in years. It makes you want to revisit the movie.
The podcast is out now on YouTube and also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Hit subscribe or follow if you enjoy classic film debates like this — it genuinely helps the show keep growing. Thanks for listening.

This week we are reviewing Here, the 2024 drama directed by Robert Zemeckis — the man behind Forrest Gump, Back to the Future and Cast Away — starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, reuniting thirty years after Forrest Gump.
The camera never moves. Not once. For the entire 104 minutes, we watch a single corner of a room in New Jersey across thousands of years of human history — dinosaurs, Ice Age, Benjamin Franklin, a 1960s African American family, and a couple whose entire shared life plays out in that one fixed space.
It is one of the boldest formal experiments in mainstream cinema in years. The Aussie thinks it is the worst film ever put on this podcast. Worse than Duel. That is where we begin. The episode opens with dad jokes. The Scotsman has a list. He works through them methodically. The one about the librarian is not suitable for children or mothers-in-law. The Aussie counters with his one joke — the same one he has been using in sales presentations for twenty years. It lands. Barely. The Scotsman snickers. We move on. Then Here. The Aussie is furious before the discussion even properly starts. "I've never been so bored." "I would watch Duel before this again." "Zemeckis, Robin Wright and Tom Hanks should be embarrassed." Zero out of five. The first zero in the podcast's history. The Scotsman enjoyed it — or at least found something real in it — and spends a significant portion of the episode trying to explain what the film is actually about while the Aussie systematically dismantles every argument.
The question the Scotsman poses is genuinely moving. What happens to all the moments nobody filmed, nobody clapped for, nobody remembered — the quiet ordinary ones — if nobody is left to remember them?
The Aussie's answer: you write a diary. That is not a film. The Scotsman's counter: this film is the diary. The room is the diary. They go deep. The Scotsman asks the Aussie about the main room of the house he grew up in — the tiger couch, Carlton replays on a Friday night, his dad, his mum, his brother and sister, the whole architecture of a childhood. "Magnificent memories," the Aussie says.
And the Scotsman quietly says: that room is what this movie is about. The Aussie pauses. Then finds another hole in it. He is not wrong about the holes. Tom Hanks gets a fairly rough ride from the Scotsman, which nobody saw coming. "Acting arrogance" is the phrase used.
The AI de-ageing technology gets genuine credit — the most convincing yet achieved in mainstream cinema, developed specifically for this film, operating in real time on set rather than in post-production. The comparison to The Irishman is not flattering for Scorsese. The box office numbers land like a verdict. Fifty million spent. Sixteen million made. One of the biggest disappointments of 2024. The Aussie has never been more satisfied by a piece of trivia. Rohan Reminisces covers 2024 — Oppenheimer, Emma Stone, Ray Gun at the Paris Olympics, the Brisbane Lions, JLo and Ben, and a mahjong subplot involving the Aussie's wife that the Scotsman refuses to let go of. It spirals in directions nobody planned. Ratings: 0 out of 5 from the Aussie. 2.7 from the Scotsman. The gap tells you everything. The podcast is out now on YouTube and also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Hit subscribe or follow — it genuinely helps the show keep growing. Thanks for listening.