Welcome back to the Learn English podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
My name is Dr. C and I'm a Tussle certified English teacher.
I teach English online to students who are learning it as a second language.
If you have been following along with this podcast, you know, I'm a big proponent of input.
Input is when you spend time watching something in your target language, you are listening, you are reading, and you are getting exposure to that language.
Input is directly tied to your skills in that foreign language.
So the more time that you spend watching American TV shows or movies, the more time you spend listening to a native speaker, the more time you spend reading English, the better you're going to be with your English abilities.
Because of that, on today's episode, I want to give you a list of five movies that you can watch to increase the amount of input you're getting in English.
These films are going to be films where the lead actress won the Academy Award for Best Actress.
The reason I am doing that is because the Academy Awards are coming out.
It is March. Academy Awards season is always in March.
And I wanted to discuss these films.
So all of these films will have won the Best Actress Academy Award.
And they're all films that are considered to be really good films.
Really interesting stories that you can watch.
You can get exposure to English, learn about American culture, learn some new words and phrases, and overall help with your fluency and listening comprehension.
With that, let's begin and discuss these five films.
Before we start with our list, I wanted to point out two links that I'm going to leave in the description below.
The first one is for justwatch .com.
That is the website that I use when I'm looking up a film or TV show in the United States, and I'm trying to determine what streaming platform it's available on.
I will also leave a second link for you that is called Watch Any Dot Stream.
And if you put in the name of these films, it will tell you which country and what streaming platform these are available on.
Hopefully you can find them wherever you are, or if you have a VPN, you can access them that way.
I have nothing to do with these websites.
Like I said, they're just what I use to try to figure out where I can watch films or TV shows when I'm interested in watching them.
For our list of films, we're going to go in chronological order.
We're going to start with the oldest film on our list, and then the last film will be the newest one that I recommend.
We're going to start with the oldest one being from 1953, and it is Roman Holiday.
I have to tell you, I have a soft spot for this film.
I watched it as a child, and it is just one of those romantic, magical films.
A really easy watch, but just a really magical storyline to it.
The film itself stars Audrey Hepburn as a princess and Gregory Peck as a reporter.
Audrey Hepburn's character is a princess from some unknown country in Europe.
They never actually say which one, but she's having a hard time.
She has a lot of royal obligations.
She's dealing with the stress of royal life, and she just wants to get away.
She wants to sneak away and just live as a normal person and experience the world as a normal person, and that's what she does.
She sneaks out. The royals don't know where she is, and it's a little bit of a scan, a little bit of a worrisome situation because they don't know where she is.
She sneaks out while she's in Rome, and during that time she meets Gregory Peck's character.
At first, he doesn't recognize who she is, but he eventually does, and that becomes part of the storyline.
Does he take pictures of her?
Does he try to do an exclusive interview with her?
Does he try to use the situation that they're in to advance his career as a reporter, or does he just enjoy his time with her?
That really is the internal debate that he's having.
The film shows the day that they spend together in Rome, so that's why it's called Roman Holiday.
It shows really the most beautiful parts of Rome.
You get the Trevi Fountain, you get the Spanish Steps, and with that as the background, you just get this magical quality to this film.
Like I said, with everyone on this list, the female character won Best Actress, so Audrey Hepburn won Best Actress.
If you don't know who she was, she was one of the biggest stars of Hollywood's Golden Age.
The American Film Institute actually ranked her as the third greatest film legend, or female film legend, here in the United States.
She is really well known, of course, for this film, but for other ones that she's done.
Gregory Peck as well was one of the biggest stars during Hollywood's Golden Age, during his time that he was an active actor.
The film has these two big stars in it, and that's probably why it got such critical acclaim, why it got so much notice when it first came out.
The film, besides winning Best Actress, also won for Best Story and for Best Costume Design.
It had multiple Academy Award wins and is considered to be at one of those classic films.
Again, like I said, romantic film, easy watch, if you're interested in watching it.
We're going to fast forward to 1987 and discuss the film Moonstruck.
Moonstruck is another romantic comedy, and it stars Cher in the lead role.
Yes, Cher, the musician, actually won the Academy Award for Best Actress for this film.
The film is set in New York City, specifically in an Italian -American neighborhood.
Cher plays an Italian -American woman, she's a bookkeeper, she's a widow, and she's dating this man named Johnny.
Johnny proposes to her and then leaves to Sicily, and what happens is she ends up meeting his younger brother, who is played by Nicolas Cage, and they eventually end up falling in love with each other.
You can see how the plot gets a little bit messy.
She's engaged to one brother, she falls in love with the other, and that's really the plot of the story, the romantic relationship that develops between Cher and Nicolas Cage.
Nicolas Cage is definitely young in this film, but he is still Nicolas Cage, so you get a very dramatic performance, you get a very emotional performance from Nicolas Cage in this film.
He plays this young, hothead, younger brother, and he brings all the passion to his role that you would expect from Nicolas Cage.
The film was a box office and critical success.
It made a lot of money when it was out in theaters, and critics enjoyed it.
Cher and Nicolas Cage both gave really great performances that you could feel the chemistry, the passion between them, and that's what made this film so popular.
The third film on our list is from 1996, and it is Fargo.
Fargo is a black comedy crime drama.
Black comedy is dark humor, so humor that's about things that you normally wouldn't make jokes about, such as death, and it also has this criminal aspect to it.
The film is by the Coen brothers.
The Coen brothers are known for making these quirky, weird, dark comedy -type films, and that's what you get with this film as well.
The film centers around two characters played by William H.
Macy and Frances McDurmon.
William H. Macy's character is a car salesman in Minnesota who is in some money problems.
He has some financial troubles, and he comes up with this idea to kidnap his wife, to contact her family to try to get ransom money, and then use that money to pay off his debts.
He hires hitmen to do that, or he hires some criminals to kidnap her, and things go wrong, and his wife ends up dead.
Frances McDurmon plays a police detective who is seven months pregnant who begins the investigation and tries to determine what happened.
The story itself, like I said, has some dark humor in it.
You wouldn't normally make jokes around death, but that's what this film does.
It also is set in the backdrop of Minnesota, so you see this snowy landscape.
You hear the accents of how people talk in that part of the country, which is different from my accent.
You will definitely hear that when you listen to the characters in this film.
The film really centers on the themes of greed, morality, and the unexpected consequences when someone makes the wrong choice.
Now, Frances McDurmon has actually won the Academy Award multiple times for Best Actress, but this was her first win, and like I said, it is considered to be one of the Coen Brothers best films.
That's why I included it on this list.
Fargo actually was turned into a television show, so if you like this movie, you can actually watch multiple seasons of the television show Fargo.
The first season is similar to the film, but later seasons have a different storyline.
It follows still members of the community and of this area where this, of Fargo, Minnesota, where this story is set, but it follows different storylines.
It all still has that dark humor aspect, that suspense aspect, and overall, the TV show has been well received.
Again, like the movie, it has had critical acclaim.
There's multiple seasons of it, so if you enjoy the tone, if you enjoy this film, check out the television series because it's very similar, still following along those lines of dark humor, suspense, crime, morality, all of those same themes in the television show version.
The fourth film on our list is from 2001 and is called Monsters Ball.
I have to give a warning about this one.
It is very different from the first three films on our list.
The first two were romantic comedies.
The third one was a dark comedy, so even though it dealt with death, it did so in a comedy type way.
This is not that. This film is a full drama.
It is a difficult movie to watch.
It deals with very heavy issues, and it's kind of depressing, I'll be honest.
It's not one of those films where you watch it and you feel better.
You watch it and you feel like you've been punched in the stomach.
We would call that a gut punch ending where you feel like you got punched in the stomach.
It's not a good feeling at the end of the movie.
That being said, it is considered to be one of the best films of 2001.
It got huge critical acclaim when it came out, and part of that has to do with the lead actors of the film.
The film stars Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton.
Halle Berry plays a woman who is married to a man who is on death row.
Death row means that he is in prison, that his crime was very serious, and that he will be put to death because of his crime.
Her husband is someone who got convicted of killing a police officer, and because of that, he is going to be executed.
It's ambiguous in the film, as we would say.
It's not sure if he actually did that.
There's some hints in the film that he was actually innocent, but it never really gets told whether he did it or whether he didn't.
In the film, he is being executed, and Billy Bob Thornton plays one of the prison guards who is taking part in the execution.
The title of the film comes from the tradition of a person on death row having their final night before their execution.
That was called The Monster's Ball.
In the film, it also refers to the gathering of the prison guards before the execution, and that's where the title comes from.
After her husband is executed, Halle Berry's character is left alone with her son, and she has a very abusive relationship, a very hard relationship to watch and unfold on screen.
She is dealing with loss.
She's dealing with loneliness, with grief, with poverty, and really just struggling to get by.
Billy Bob Thornton's character is also dealing with grief.
He has a difficult relationship with his son, who is also a prison guard at the prison.
They do not get along.
He does not get along with his father.
What happens is Halle Berry's character and Billy Bob Thornton's character meet each other.
They start dating each other.
They tell them that they're in maybe not being so supportive or the people around them not being so supportive of their relationship.
The film itself deals with those heavy topics.
It deals with grief, with loss, poverty, regret, remorse, abuse, all of those issues coming together in this film.
It is considered to be the best performances that Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton have ever given.
If you know those actors, you know they've both been around for decades.
They've been in numerous films, TV shows.
They've been working for forever.
But this film is considered to be their best performances, most emotional performances by far.
I had to include it on the list because Halle Berry did win the Academy Award for Best Actress and she is actually the only African -American female to ever win the Academy Award for Best Actress.
She's the first, the only one so far to have done it in the decades that the Academy Awards have been around.
I don't want to discourage you from watching it.
I feel like I've said a lot to maybe get you scared of watching it.
I'm definitely not trying to do that.
Like I said, it is considered to be one of the best films of 2001.
Highly critically acclaimed.
Just know that it does deal with these heavy issues and it's not one of those light -hearted films but artistically, cinematically, performance wise, it is considered to be one of the best films of that year and obviously won the Academy Award for a reason.
The last film on our list is going to be the last film that won.
The Academy Award for Best Actress and that is Everything Everywhere All At Once.
This film stars the great Michelle Yeoh.
She's been an actress forever but she really has broken through the last decade, I would say.
She has gotten so popular, has gotten so much more fame in the last couple of years and of course, this being her crowning achievement, being her Academy Award winning film.
The film stars Michelle Yeoh as a woman who is in a stressful situation.
She's married, she has a laundromat and she's dealing with her sick father and her daughter.
Her husband, in her view, is not helping.
They are having difficulty with their business.
They owe a lot of money in taxes.
Her father needs care.
Her daughter has a very strained relationship with her which means they don't really get along and she's in this rut, we would say.
She's in this situation where she feels like she can't get out of it but her life's not going very well and she's clearly unhappy.
By chance, she happens to see a different version of her husband from a different universe so this movie is about a multiverse and she discovers that there's different versions of herself.
She sees her life as she had been a famous actress like Michelle Yeoh in real life.
If she had had different relationships, if she had made different choices, she sees all these different ways her life could have gone, these different versions of herself across the multiverse and she realizes that other people are also different in that.
Those multiverses, her father's different, her husband's different, her daughter's different and the story centers around her having to fix this relationship with her daughter through these multiverses.
The movie was considered a success because it was very popular.
It has this very distinct stylistic flair.
It has a lot of absurd moments, a lot of crazy moments in it that just seem ridiculous while the characters are traveling through the different multiverses and it tells a multiverse story in a very different way from a superhero movie would, from a DC Comics or Marvel Comics way.
This one is much more centered on the family relationships, on her trying to figure out what she wants with her life, what she needs out of her life, what she wants her relationships to look like.
So it's a much more family centered story set against the backdrop of the multiverse.
Because of that, it gets classified as an absurdist comedy drama.
Absurd means illogical, crazy, seems like it shouldn't happen and you get the comedy aspect of her traveling through the multiverse, you get the drama aspect of her dealing with the relationships with her family.
All of that combines into this film.
The movie itself was critically acclaimed.
Of course, Michelle Yeoh's performance, but also that of her husband in the film, Ki Hui Kwon.
He was actually a child actor.
He was in one of the Indiana Jones films as a child.
He didn't act for very long and then came back for this movie and ended up winning the Academy Award.
If you've seen his acceptance speech, it's one of the sweetest moments I think from last year's Academy Awards.
And I think that just adds to the storyline of this film.
I hope you enjoyed our list.
I hope you found something on this list that you want to watch, maybe something that you hadn't seen or hadn't heard before, but that you can check out and watch and get more of that English input.
If you like this episode, if you want me to do more lists like this, please let me know in the comments section.
I have a lot more movies I could recommend, but I won't know to do it unless you leave me a comment.
So let me know if you want more episodes like this.
A reminder, in the description of this episode, you get the links to try to see if you can find these movies on a streaming platform in your country.
And there is also a vocabulary list.
The vocabulary list includes the words and phrases that I used in this episode, along with their definitions, so you can begin to use them in conversation.
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Until then, keep learning English!
