Hello and welcome to Who Watches the Watchlist? The quick answer to that is we do. My name is Dave Giannini. I am your host. I'm here with my co-host, Will Bjarnar. So you may be wondering, okay, this is a show about a watchlist about great movies. Why should we listen to these 2 guys? And that is a great question. And depending on the day, I might tell you you shouldn't. But today I'm going to tell you you should. So I'm Dave. I am a writer and an editor. I am certified by Rotten Tomatoes as a reviewer. I have watched God knows how many movies, and this is a great opportunity to watch even more and talk about it. And I think a great opportunity for you out there to watch along with us. You can watch the watchlist as well. Will, what about you? Who are you? Why should we listen to you?

I'm a, I'm a writer, critic, film reviewer, film watcher. I've been published in Next Best Picture, In Session Film, Geek Vibes Nation, smattering of other places. Rotten Tomatoes has not reached out or has not responded to my request for comment on my lack of certification, but we're working on it. And I am somebody who I kind of take pride in my disease of watching about a film a day. I'm not in it for the numbers. I'm just in it for the love of the game. And I'm very, very excited to be taking on this project, which I think many, many people back in 2022 were like, I'm going to do this.

That's right.

And then never did or watched a couple and rewatched the ones that they knew of but were like, do I really need to watch Ordet, the Dreyer film from 1955? You do. And I'm excited to finally be checking off these blind spots. And that's where we, you know, came up with the name of Who Watches the Watchlist. Like, this is one long watchlist for many, many people out there. And I'm excited that we're going to finally be taking on this beast ourselves.

Yes. And that beast that Will is speaking of is the Sight and Sound Top 250 list. And direct from their website says, in 1952, the Sight and Sound team had the novel idea of asking critics to name the greatest films of all time. The tradition became decennial, which is every 10 years, increasing in size and prestige as the decades passed. The Sight and Sound poll is now a major bellwether of critical opinion on cinema, and this year's edition— back in, uh, back a few years ago, which was its 8th— is the largest ever, with 1,639 participating critics, programmers, curators, archivists, and academics each submitting their top 10 ballots. So that is the, that is the list that we're going to be going off if this show does well enough and we want to continue. We'll pick a different list after that. But essentially what we're going to do is we're going to cover 2 movies per episode. So that'll be 125 episodes covering 250 movies. Each episode should be about an hour. We're not going to keep you here for 3 or 4 hours like other podcasts I could name. I don't have time for that, if we're being honest.

Yeah.

So 30 minutes per movie. So before we kind of wrap up our little trailer here, Will, what do you think you are looking forward to most? This could be a movie. This could be just a general vibe. Like, what are you looking forward to in completing the watch list that few people seem to be able to.

I think that that honestly is what I'm looking forward to most. Like, I really, you know, we say this a lot. We have wanted to watch these movies for a long time. And what's keeping us from doing that? Nothing really other than time. And just like, I don't know, I guess the urge or the push that we should give ourselves to do it. We have really crappy 2026 movies that we need to watch instead. So I think that it's just what I'm looking forward to most is actually putting in the effort. Cinephiles and non-cinephiles will do when they want to watch a movie is put on something that they don't need to really think about just because they want to say, oh yeah, I saw a movie today.

Right.

This for me, I'm looking forward to approaching differently than that. You know, I'm not, I'm not immune to, okay, yeah, I'm working. Let me put on Minions and Monsters just because I don't think I really need think about this, you know, educationally or philosophically, depending on who you ask.

Yes.

But for stuff like this, I really want to make a point as to sit down, take notes, take in everything that these thousands of voters took into account as they ranked these movies. Frankly, an impossible task, but they did the best job that they could. And there are many, many movies on this list that I have not seen.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so I'm also looking forward to that, to discovering things that maybe I've heard of in passing but never got the chance, or never gave myself the chance to sit down and enjoy, and to discover something that maybe I haven't heard of. Um, I'm again diseased to the point where that's not often the case, but it's certainly, certainly going to happen.

What I am looking forward to, you kind of mentioned like these gaps in your film knowledge and the ones like, quote unquote, the list of shame. So that's one of the things I'm looking forward to, seeing movies like Nashville and The Battle of Algiers, like these movies that are really well thought of and I feel like I should have seen by now, but I haven't. And the other thing I'm looking forward to is kind of seeing how the world of cinema has changed over time. Because, you know, there are movies on here from the 1910s and 1920s, and there are movies in here from like 2019. So we're gonna see a broad range. So it'll be interesting to see if I can still connect with movies that were made, you know, 60 years, 70 years before I was born, just as well as I can the newer movies. But Will, what about the other side of it? Like, this is— this list is a big deal for many reasons.

Yes.

And there are going— for me, there's going to be movies on here that it's like, oh boy, this is homework, or I don't know if I'm gonna get into this. And it can feel a bit like a marathon. So what is the thing maybe you're intimidated by or not looking forward to or kind of struggling with?

I don't even know if I can say that there's something that I'm intimidated by. I mean, other than the fact that it's a massive list and that there's a lot of— some of the greatest examples of international and national cinema are on display here. And maybe the most— maybe the thing I would say I'm intimidated by is like the idea of sounding stupid talking about one of these movies. Sure. That I'll just be honest, like, I fear that a lot, but I try my best to put that way off to the side, especially considering that this is what I want to do for a living. And of course, there are going to be times where I sound stupid and there are going to be times where I don't. I hope that the latter outweighs the former. That's always the goal. But I think the thing that I'm not looking forward to the most is— I mean, I don't— I haven't seen all the movies, so I can't say that there are not successful films on this list or films that aren't necessarily good, quote unquote. But You and I hosted a podcast together for quite some time, Pop Culture Case Study. And I just happened to scroll up on the list and found Possession.

Mm-hmm.

Now, that's an incredible film. But I just watched it like a couple months ago. And then so in preparation for that episode, I'm gonna have to watch Possession again. And there are worse things that I could do. But Possession is not necessarily a pleasure watch. And maybe that is one of the things that we're going to notice on this list.

It's going to be a lot of those.

A lot of great movies are also really, really tough watches and the sort of stuff that you might watch a couple of times maximum. Yes. So that doesn't make me any less excited. It's just a stray thought. Like when that episode comes, I'm not going to be like, oh yes, Possession again. You know, I know you're sick in the head and you've seen it many more times than I have. have. So you're, you're already pumped. For me, I'm a little more reserved about it. But I just can't wait to dig into the entire list.

Yeah, absolutely. So for me, there's, there's a couple things. One, one of, to me, no surprise here, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time is on this list, who is Tarkovsky. I love Tarkovsky's films. They're really hard to talk about. They're really hard to like efficiently in 30 minutes, like tell me what Stalker is about. Like, I don't— good Lord, that's going to be a real challenge. So kind of like you were talking about, like feeling foolish talking about it, kind of stumbling around and figuring out how to talk about, you know, Stalker or Mirror or any of the other myriad of deep, deep arthouse films. So, and the other piece is there's a lot of problematic folks on this list. There's, there's a lot of people who have done some stuff that I don't like in their personal lives. So it's going to be— That can't be right. It's gonna be a real exercise in separating the art from the artist and being able to talk about that piece of it without denigrating the film that was made because a lot of other people were involved in this craft. So it's gonna be a little bit of a balancing act, but I'm, you know, I'm intimidated by that, but I'm also kind of looking forward to that 'cause I think context is really important and it's nice that we'll be able to provide 2026 context without being overly judgmental of the film itself. So those are the things that I am looking forward to. So, That is it for our little trailer. Hopefully that kind of whet your appetite for the Sight and Sound list. So as we move forward, every couple weeks we will talk about a couple movies, and we urge you to go to the BFI's website. It's just bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/greatestfilmsofalltime. Just look up Sight and Sound list, it'll pop right up, and follow along with us. So we'll start with number 250 and number 249 in our very first episode. So Not only will we watch the watchlist, but you will too.