Hal has chosen Alfred Hitchcock's ‘Spellbound’ for his next film, the mesmerising romance and psychological thriller. Bergman plays a psychiatrist who is determined to protect the identity of an amnesia patient (Peck) accused of murder, while also attempting to recover his memory. Come and listen to our thoughts on one of the most iconic dream sequences committed to film, designed by the famous surrealist artist, Salvador Dali.  Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Izzy is back for this episode with a very popular Hollywood epic The Green Mile (1999) starring Tom Hanks as a death row prison guard during the Great Depression who witnesses supernatural events following the arrival of an enigmatic convict (Michael Clarke Duncan) at the facility.  Director: Frank Darabont

It's Hal's choice today and that, of course, means we are back on the Hitchcock train... Director: Alfred Hitchcock Margaret Lockwood plays young English tourist Iris, travelling by train across mid-1930’s continental Europe, who discovers that her elderly travelling companion (played by Dame May Whitty) seems to have disappeared from not only her carriage, but the entire train. A compelling thriller that turned out to be Hitchcock’s final British production before his big move to Hollywood and is regarded as one of the greatest train movies from the genre’s golden era.

For our second podcast, we review Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971). Director: Mel Stuart The story of a poor child named Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum) who, upon finding a Golden Ticket in a chocolate bar, wins the chance to visit Willy Wonka's chocolate factory along with four other children from around the world. Follow Hal and Izzy on our official Instagram page @couple_indemnity or on X @coupleindemnity To contact us, you can email us on coupleindemnity@gmail.com We would love to hear from you!

For our first official podcast, we review The 39 Steps (1935). Director: Alfred Hitchcock An exemplary wrong-man thriller adapted from the John Buchan novella by the Master of Suspense, featuring Robert Donat as Richard Hannay as he stumbles upon an international conspiracy that thrusts him into a hectic chase across the Scottish Highlands and an unintentional romance with female bystander (Madeline Carroll). Follow Hal and Izzy on our official Instagram page @couple_indemnity or on X @coupleindemnity To contact us, you can email us on coupleindemnity@gmail.com We would love to hear from you!

An introduction to Couple Indemnity: a podcast by two very devoted fans of cinema history. 

Hal is switching up his podcast choice this week in taking a break from the Hitchcock marathon to select the Agnes Jaoui-directed French romantic comedy Le Goût des autres (English title: The Taste of Others) about six characters over the age of 35 in the French town of Rouen and their unique relationships. Will Izzy like this one with her being a romantic comedy "Purist"? Listen to find out.

Izzy returns with an Oscar-sweeping choice as Jack Nicholson plays a criminal who is accused of faking insanity to serve his sentence in a mental institute rather than prison. Soon he finds himself as a leader to the other patients and up against the nurse in charge of the ward. Director: Milos Forman

It's Hal's choice which of course means he is back on the Hitchcock bandwagon and this week he has chosen Lifeboat (1944) starring Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak and Walter Slezak as eight survivors of a WWII Nazi torpedo ship attack, who find themselves in the same boat with a man who sunk the ship.  Director: Alfred Hitchcock

It's Izzy's choice this week and she has made a surprise choice by picking out a disaster film of the 1970's in The Poseidon Adventure as a group of passengers must embark on a harrowing struggle for survival after a rogue wave capsizes their cruise ship at sea.  Director: Ronald Neame

For Hal's choice, we are continuing the Hitchcock marathon and we have reached his arrival into Hollywood. His first American project under his seven-year contract to David O. Selznick was adapted from the Daphne du Maurier novel released the year previously.

A profoundly gothic tale, “Rebecca” was a critical and commercial success and a production that helped accelerate the early career of Joan Fontaine, who plays a naive young woman who marries a widower (Lawrence Olivier), whose former wife she becomes haunted by the spectral presence of.

It's Izzy's choice and she has chosen the 2006 tragicomedy road movie starring Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Abigail Breslin and Alan Arkin, all of whom play dysfunctional family members taking the youngest (Breslin) across the United States to a beauty pageant. Directed by: Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris 

It's Hal's choice this time and he's changing it up by selecting one of his all-time TV Drama episodes; Prime Suspect: Keeper of Souls (1993). Director: David Drury In Soho, Inspector Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) investigates the death of a teen male prostitute that leads to a paedophile ring, possibly involving the police themselves ...

We are back with our first dive into Hong Kong cinema for Izzy's choice.. In the Mood for Love (2000)  Director: Wong Kar-wai Chow (Tony Leung) and Su (Maggie Cheung) are neighbours who discover that their spouses have been having an affair with each other. As they cope with the betrayal the two begin to fall in love.

Izzy has selected one of her all-time childhood favourites today as she has picked out the Doris Day Musical Western classic Calamity Jane (1953) that tells a tale of Calamity Jane, her saloon, and her romance with Wild Bill Hickok (Howard Keel). Director: David Butler. 

Hal has picked one of his favourite TV murder mystery episodes for his selection this week as he has picked out Midsomer Murders: Judgement Day (2000) from the archives as another case for Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby (John Nettles) and his sidekick Sergeant Troy (Daniel Casey). The residents of Midsomer Mallow are eagerly making preparations for the Perfect Village Competition and many are quietly confident that they might win. However, a spanner is thrown into the works when the rogue Peter Drinkwater turns up with a pitchfork in his chest. Many had reasons to dispose of Drinkwater, but who was it that actually did the job? Director: Jeremy Silberston

Izzy is back with a real treat this week as she has chosen the 2005 Stop-Motion animation comedy film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit as Wallace and his loyal dog, Gromit, set out to discover the mystery behind the garden sabotage that plagues their village and threatens the annual giant vegetable growing contest. Featuring Peter Sallis, Ralph Fiennes & Helena Bonham Carter in voice roles.  Directors: Nick Park & Steve Box   

Izzy's first official selection for Spook-tober is the Oscar-sweeping The Silence of the Lambs (1991) featuring Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee who is hunting a serial killer named "Buffalo" Bill, who skins his female victims. To catch him, she seeks the advice of the imprisoned Hannibal Lector (memorably played by Anthony Hopkins), a former psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer.  Director: Jonathan Demme

We are back for the first episode of Spooktober (Spooky Season oooohh) and Hal has gone straight in and selected one of his all-time favourite Horror movies with the anthology Ealing classic Dead of Night (1945) starring Mervyn Johns, Michael Redgrave and Googie Withers as guests invited to a weekend in the country share their supernatural stories, beginning with Walter Craig (Johns), who sense impending doom as his half-remembered recurring dream turns into reality.  Directors: Charles Crichton, Alberto Cavalcanti, Robert Hamer & Basil Dearden

Hal's gone a bit left-field again for his next Spooktober choice, and he's picked out a classic BBC adaptation of an equally classic ghost story about a skeptical professor on vacation in Norfolk who finds a cursed whistle, starring Michael Hordern.  Director: Jonathan Miller "Do you believe in Ghosts Professor?"

Izzy has selected a film full of childhood nostalgia for her with Casper (1995) which follows the title character who peacefully haunts a mansion called Whipstaff Manor, meeting and befriending a teenage girl named Kat Harvey (Christina Ricci), the daughter of Dr. James Harvey (Bill Pullman), a paranormal therapist who is hired to move into Whipstaff in order to rid the mansion of its spectral inhabitants. Director: Brad Silberling 

Izzy has gone big this week and selected a true war epic in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998), portraying a squad of U.S. Army soldiers on a perilous assignment behind enemy lines. The mission: to risk their lives to save the life of one man, paratrooper James Ryan. Ryan is the last survivor of a family of four brothers, the rest of whom have been killed in action.  Director: Steven Spielberg 

Hal has selected Steven Spielberg's feature film debut this week Duel (1971), a road-action thriller centred on a travelling salesman David Mann (played by Dennis Weaver) driving his car through rural California to meet a client. However, he finds himself chased and terrorized by the mostly unseen driver of a pursuing truck. 

For a special cinema interactive viewing, we took a trip to the Prince Charles Cinema to watch the highly influential silent horror German film Nosferatu, that tell the story of the mysterious Count Orlok (Max Schreck) who summons Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) to his remote Transylvanian castle in the mountains. The eerie Orlok seeks to buy a house near Hutter and his wife, Ellen. After Orlok reveals his vampire nature, Hutter struggles to escape the castle, knowing that Ellen is in grave danger. Meanwhile Orlok's servant, Knock (Alexander Granach), prepares for his master to arrive at his new home. Director: F.W. Murnau

Hal has returned to his Hitchcock marathon for his next selection by choosing Rope (1948), the classic psychological crime thriller portraying two men who try to convince themselves they've committed the perfect murder by hosting a dinner party after strangling a former classmate to death. Director: Alfred Hitchcock 

It's the beginning of our festive film season and for Izzy's first Christmas choice she has gone for award-winning The Holdovers (2023), a 70's tale of a curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school remains on campus during Christmas break to babysit a handful of students with nowhere to go. He soon forms an unlikely bond with a brainy but damaged troublemaker (Dominic Sessa), and with the school's head cook (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), a woman who just lost a son in the Vietnam War.

Hal has gone very left-field for his first festive film choice as he has selected the much-maligned Home Alone 3, and why it is a sequel that should carry a far superior reputation than it does.  In the third installment in the film franchise, with an all-new cast of actors, Alex Pruitt, an 8-year-old boy living in Chicago, must fend off four international criminals who are seeking a top-secret microchip in his toy car.  Director: Raja Gosnell

Izzy has selected one of Hal's all-time favourite films in the festive classic It's a Wonderful Life where an angel (Henry Travers) is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman (James Stewart) by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed.  Director: Frank Capra

Hal has chosen an iconic Hollywood Classic comedy film Some Like it Hot about two musicians (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) during the prohibition era who disguise themselves as women to escape Chicago mobsters they witnessed commit murder.  Director: Billy Wilder "And where did you get that phoney accent? Nobody talks loike that!"

Izzy has gone big for her next choice with Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 epic period drama starring Daniel Day Lewis as Daniel Plainview, a silver miner turned oilman as he embarks on a ruthless quest for wealth during the Californian oil boom during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Hal has selected another of his British comedy favourites from the 1950's with Too Many Crooks, a highly amusing spoof on crime films, portraying four would-be criminals who manage to botch every job they plan. When they try to rob wealthy Billy Gordon (Terry-Thomas) they fail again. But the gang decides to kidnap his daughter. What can go wrong? Director: Mario Zampi

For Izzy's choice this week, she's selected the brand-new release of the Gothic Horror remake Nosferatu, a story we are very familiar with having recently watched the silent 1920's Classic in the cinema and recorded for our Halloween episode. The film stars Bill Skarsgard as the vampire Nosferatu and Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp as the married Hutter couple, with Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney and Willem Dafoe in supporting roles.  Director: Robert Eggers

Hal has selected an absolute corker for this week's episode by choosing Boogie Nights (1997) a crazy Hollywood drama set in 1970's San Fernando Valley and focus on a young nightclub dishwasher (Mark Wahlberg) who becomes a popular star of pornographic films, chronicling his rise in the Golden Age of Porn in the latter part of the decade into the wild excesses of the 1980's.  Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Izzy is kicking off the New Year of 2025 with one of her favourites from recent years that is the latest adaptation of Little Women, the classic story set in the years after the Civil War: Jo March (Saoirse Ronan) lives in New York and makes her living as a writer, while her sister Amy (Florence Pugh) studies painting in Paris. Amy has a chance encounter with Theodore, a childhood crush who proposed to Jo but was ultimately rejected. Their oldest sibling, Meg (Emma Watson), is married to a schoolteacher, while shy sister Beth (Eliza Scanlen) develops a devastating illness that brings the family back together. Director: Greta Gerwig

For the final podcast of the year, Hal has selected one of his British comedy favourites of the 1950's The Green Man, starring Alastair Sim playing a professional contract killer who, with his assistant, plan the murder of a prominent businessman (Raymond Huntley). The murder is scheduled to take place during the businessman's stay at a seaside hotel. However a salesman (George Cole) and his new female partner ((Jill Adams) have learned of the devious plans, and they are actively trying to prevent the murder. Director: Robert Day

Izzy's next choice is yet another Paul Thomas Anderson film with Phantom Thread (2017), a extraordinary portrait of renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) are at the center of British fashion in 1950s London -- dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites and debutantes. Women come and go in Woodcock's life, providing the confirmed bachelor with inspiration and companionship. His carefully tailored existence soon gets disrupted by Alma (Vicky Krieps), a young and strong-willed woman who becomes his muse and lover. Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Izzy has selected the 1984 Best Picture Academy Award Winner Amadeus as her selection this week, the depiction of the life, success and troubles of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce), as told by Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), the contemporaneous composer who was deeply jealous of Mozart's talent and claimed to have murdered him. Director: Milos Forman

Hal is back with the next in the series of his favourite Hitchcock films starring Jane Wyman & Marlene Dietrich. Jonathan Cooper (Richard Todd) is wanted by the police who suspect him of killing his lover's husband. His friend Eve Gill (Jane Wyman) offers to hide him and Jonathan explains to her that his lover, actress Charlotte Inwood (Marlene Dietrich) is the real murderer. Eve decides to investigate for herself, but when she meets the detective in charge of the case, she starts to fall in love. Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Hal is returning to one of his old favourite murder mystery shows set in the rural murderous world of Midsomer with the 2001 episode of Tainted Fruit with another case for  Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby (John Nettles) and Sergeant Troy (Daniel Casey). Melissa Townsend (Lucy Punch), the daughter of the manor, has been accused of causing the death of a local poacher and has received a number of disturbing death threats. When she is later found dead, with a syringe in her stomach, Barnaby and Troy proceed to investigate. Director: Peter Smith

Izzy has picked out one of her childhood and early teen Rom Com favourites in Legally Blonde, the story of fashionable sorority queen Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) who follows her ex-boyfriend to law school, where she discovers that there is more to her than just looks. Will Hal be just as enamoured and as unrestrained in his praise for this early 2000's female classic movie as Izzy? Listen to find out. Director: Robert Luketic

We are back with another cracker in the Alfred Hitchcock marathon and this week Hal has selected Strangers on a Train (1951), the film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel. 

Tennis player Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is enraged by his wife's refusal to finalise their divorce so he can wed senator's daughter Anne (Ruth Roman). He strikes up a conversation with a stranger, Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker), and unwittingly sets in motion a deadly chain of events. Psychopathic Bruno kills Guy's wife, then urges Guy to reciprocate by killing Bruno's father. Meanwhile, Guy is murder suspect number one.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Izzy has gone all Arthouse this week and selected the highly acclaimed French historical romance ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’.

On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.

Director: Celine Sciamma

Hal has come back with another of his heavy-hitters this week by selecting the powerful romantic drama starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick, depicting the downward spiral of two average Americans who succumb to alcoholism and their repeated attempts to deal with their problems. 

Director: Blake Edwards

Izzy has practically transported us in a time-machine to her childhood by selecting the 1999 made-for-television adaptation of the popular Broadway musical Annie, the young girl (Alicia Morton) living a “hard-knock life” in an orphanage. Fed up with the dastardly Miss Hannigan (Kathy Bates), Annie escapes the run-down orphanage determined to find her mom and dad. It’s an adventure that takes her from the cold, mean streets of New York to the warm, comforting arms of bighearted billionaire Oliver Warbucks (Victor Garber) - with plenty of mischief and music in between.

Director: Rob Marshall

For a special one-off episode, we have taken a trip to the cinema to see yet another Paul Thomas Anderson highly-acclaimed film The Master (2012), telling the story of Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a WWII Navy Veteran struggling to adjust to a post-war society, who meets Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the leader of a cult known as The Cause. Dodd sees something in Quell and accepts him into the movement. Freddie takes a liking to The Cause and begins traveling with Dodd's family to spread his teachings. Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Hal has returned to his love for Frank Capra this week and has chosen one of the most important political dramas from Hollywood history with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), about a naive, newly appointed and idealistic United States senator (James Stewart) who fights against government corruption.  Director: Frank Capra

Izzy has really stepped up her podcast selection game this week by choosing Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Indy (Harrison Ford) and his feisty ex-flame Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) dodge booby-traps, fight enemies and stare down snakes in their incredible worldwide quest for the mystical Ark of the Covenant. Experience one exciting cliff-hanger after another when you discover adventure with the one and only Indiana Jones.

Director: Steven Spielberg

Hal has selected the classic legal mystery drama Witness for the Prosecution this week, directed by one of our favourites in Billy Wilder.

The plot centres around an ailing famous barrister (Charles Laughton) who agrees to defend a man (Tyrone Power) in a sensational murder trial where his self-possessed wife’s unconvincing testimony confuses him.

Director: Billy Wilder

Izzy has gone big on the romance scale with her selection this week and has chosen The Bridges of Madison County, a moving love story about a photographer (Clint Eastwood) on assignment to shoot the historic bridges of Madison County. He meets a housewife (Meryl Streep), whose husband and children are away on a trip, and the film traces a brief affair that is never sordid but instead one of two soul mates who have met later in life.

Director: Clint Eastwood

 

This week Hal has selected the BBC three-part period drama Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, a story of unrequited love set in the 1930's, against the backdrop of grimy streets and public houses.  Revolving around The Midnight Bell, a public house off the Euston Road, it follows the painful pursuit of love from three different perspectives. Barman Bob (Bryan Dick), who yearns for penniless street-walker Jenny (Zoe Tapper). Bob's colleague Ella (Sally Hawkins), who is torn between the attentions of an older, wealthier man and her secret desire for her barman workmate. Director: Simon Curtis