Ford Focus

A high-concept rom-com mostly set on a desert island, this 1998 film teams Harrison Ford with Anne Heche (and, to a lesser extent, David Schwimmer) for an unlikely love story. Heche plays a big-city magazine editor. Ford plays an easygoing tropical pilot. The two have nothing in common, but when Ford's plane crashes in the middle of nowhere, is it possible they might fall in love. (Answer: yes.)ScreenCrush editor Matt Singer, author of Opposable Thumbs, a terrific dual biography of Siskel and Ebert, and the brand new (as of October 6), Funny Business: The Old-School Wedding Crashers and Knocked-Up Virgins Who Changed Comedy Forever joins us for a discussion of an Ivan Reitman comedy that did pretty well when it played theaters but undoubtedly reached an even bigger audience because it came free when you bought a DVD player in the late 1990s. Also discussed: the film career of David Schwimmer, which Ivan Reitman movies are actually good, and the film's poster, which doesn't exactly scream "here's a fun comedy."Also, if you want to help this podcast be sure to:a) Tell your friendsb) Rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcastsc) Subscribe to us on YouTube, which will help a lot. Here's the link.

TV critic Alan Sepinwall—writer of the What's Alan Watching? newsletter and the upcoming Serling: A Journey into the Twilight Zone with TV's First Visionary—joins us to discuss his favorite Indiana Jones movie: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.Released in 1989, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade found Harrison Ford dawning his famous fedora for what seemed like it might be the last time for a globetrotting adventure in search of the Holy Grail. Along for the ride: Sean Connery as Indy's distant, eccentric dad.Join us as we talk about Ford's attempt at a Scottish accent, whether or not Indy and his dad are immortal and, inevitably, which cast members also appeared in James Bond movies.

Harrison Ford has made a lot of great movies. Hollywood Homicide is … maybe not one of them? It must have sounded great on paper, though. Drawing from the experiences of a real-life Hollywood cop, writer/director Ron Shelton made a buddy comedy set on the fringes of the entertainment industry.Screen Drafts' Clay Keller joins us to talk over this 2003 entry, with its bizarre cast to its numerous plots. Also discussed: Whether or not this would be better with Owen Wilson and why Josh Hartnett became a star.

Writer, podcaster, and content strategist Wynter Mitchell joins us to discuss Harrison Ford's first big post-Star Wars movie: Force 10 from Navarone. A sequel to The Guns of Navarone, Force 10 features none of the original cast, but it does have a star of Jaws (Robert Shaw), a star of Rocky (Carl Weathers), a Bond villain (Richard Kiel), a Bond girl (Barbara Bach) and a Django (Franco Nero). Critics thought it played like a film out of time in 1978. How does it play now? Join us to find out, and to hear our official opinion on Nazis. (Spoiler: They're bad, bad, bad.)

Michael H. Weber, co-writer of 500 Days of Summer, The Spectacular Now, and The Disaster Artist (for which he earned an Oscar nomination with his partner Scott Neustadter, joins us to discuss Apocalypse Now, in which Harrison Ford plays a nervous colonel who sends Martin Sheen's Captain Willard on his way. We discuss Ford's small but important role but also what happens when you see a great movie under the wrong conditions, the curious case of Apocalypse Now's (seemingly) multiple endings, whether it's possible to make an anti-war film (with a tap of the cap to Francois Truffaut), G.I, Joe, Megalopolis, The Rainmaker, The Doors, and much more. (It's, as usual, a pretty digressive conversation).

Writer and producer Eric Haywood (Empire, Law and Order: Organized Crime) joins us to discuss Patriot Games, the first of Harrison Ford's two Jack Ryan films. Does this contain the best finger-pointing work of Ford's career? Maybe, but there's more than one such moment in the competition here. Also discussed: Night Ride Down, the film Ford was supposed to make instead of Patriot Games, satellite warfare, and the film's weird cliffhanger. Like the film, it's kind of a wild ride.

Veteran entertainment journalist Anthony Breznican joins us to talk about the film that earned Harrison Ford his only Oscar nomination to date, Witness. Directed by Peter Weir, the 1985 film begins as an intense, stylish police thriller before transitioning to an unexpected romance between a man and a woman from extremely different cultures. Kelly McGillis co-stars as the Amish woman who falls for Ford's straight-arrow cop. We talk about why this might be Ford's only nomination, Patti LuPone's memorable haircut, and the Die Hard bad guy who plays a good guy farmer here. We also talk about Breznican's encounter's with Ford and his upcoming book Star Wars Icons: Vader and Harrison Ford's high energy voiceover heard on the Empire Strike Back trailer, which you can enjoy here.

In this comedy western, Harrison Ford plays Tommy Lillard, a fairly gentle and polite Old West outlaw whose life takes an unexpected turn when he meets Avram Belinski (Gene Wilder), a rabbi making his way from Poland to San Francisco where a new congregation and a new bride await him. But getting there won't be easy. Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen) directs a film that didn't do all that well at the box office in 1979 but found appreciative fans in later years. Among them, writer and podcaster Jordan Hoffman, who grew up in a house where a VHS copy of the film was a treasured possession. Jordan joins us to talk about the film's representation of Judaism, '70s depictions of Native Americans, and more.Looking for more Jordan Hoffman? You can hear him on Starlog's podcast Lodestar and on Filmspotting SVU, which he co-hosts with friend of the show Matt Singer.