It's that time of year again, when all eyes turn to Hollywood as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents its awards for artistic and technical merit in film, and all ears turn to the our special episode celebrating the most thought-provoking movies of the past year—the Dionysus Awards.

This year, Josh and regular guest co-host Jeremy Sabol considered nominations from two return guests: Francey Russell from Columbia University, who proposed Pedro Almodóvar's The Room Next Door and Mike Leigh's Hard Truths for Most Moving Meditation on Fierce Female Friendship, and Troy Jollimore from CSU Chico, who offered Jesse Eisenberg's A Real Pain and Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two for Best Film in Which Character Change Is Not All It's Cracked Up To Be. They also took a nomination from a caller in San Francisco, and debated between themselves a pair of films vying for Best Movie About Religious People Who Aren't Entirely What They Seem.

For this year's episode we decided to forgo a Roving Philosophical Report so as to avoid short-changing that opening conversation. Given that the RPR is usually the most immersive (and lately the most visual) segment of the show, I thought it might be fun to add clips and images to the whole of the first segment. I don't think I'll be making a hait of such things, since our typical episode doesn't lend itself to having quite this much of a visual element, but I hope you enjoy this one.