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This week we are reviewing Here, the 2024 drama directed by Robert Zemeckis — the man behind Forrest Gump, Back to the Future and Cast Away — starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, reuniting thirty years after Forrest Gump.
The camera never moves. Not once. For the entire 104 minutes, we watch a single corner of a room in New Jersey across thousands of years of human history — dinosaurs, Ice Age, Benjamin Franklin, a 1960s African American family, and a couple whose entire shared life plays out in that one fixed space.
It is one of the boldest formal experiments in mainstream cinema in years. The Aussie thinks it is the worst film ever put on this podcast. Worse than Duel. That is where we begin.
The episode opens with dad jokes. The Scotsman has a list. He works through them methodically. The one about the librarian is not suitable for children or mothers-in-law. The Aussie counters with his one joke — the same one he has been using in sales presentations for twenty years. It lands. Barely. The Scotsman snickers. We move on.
Then Here. The Aussie is furious before the discussion even properly starts. "I've never been so bored." "I would watch Duel before this again." "Zemeckis, Robin Wright and Tom Hanks should be embarrassed." Zero out of five. The first zero in the podcast's history.
The Scotsman enjoyed it — or at least found something real in it — and spends a significant portion of the episode trying to explain what the film is actually about while the Aussie systematically dismantles every argument.
The question the Scotsman poses is genuinely moving. What happens to all the moments nobody filmed, nobody clapped for, nobody remembered — the quiet ordinary ones — if nobody is left to remember them?
The Aussie's answer: you write a diary. That is not a film. The Scotsman's counter: this film is the diary. The room is the diary.
They go deep. The Scotsman asks the Aussie about the main room of the house he grew up in — the tiger couch, Carlton replays on a Friday night, his dad, his mum, his brother and sister, the whole architecture of a childhood. "Magnificent memories," the Aussie says.
And the Scotsman quietly says: that room is what this movie is about. The Aussie pauses. Then finds another hole in it. He is not wrong about the holes.
Tom Hanks gets a fairly rough ride from the Scotsman, which nobody saw coming. "Acting arrogance" is the phrase used.
The AI de-ageing technology gets genuine credit — the most convincing yet achieved in mainstream cinema, developed specifically for this film, operating in real time on set rather than in post-production. The comparison to The Irishman is not flattering for Scorsese.
The box office numbers land like a verdict. Fifty million spent. Sixteen million made. One of the biggest disappointments of 2024. The Aussie has never been more satisfied by a piece of trivia.
Rohan Reminisces covers 2024 — Oppenheimer, Emma Stone, Ray Gun at the Paris Olympics, the Brisbane Lions, JLo and Ben, and a mahjong subplot involving the Aussie's wife that the Scotsman refuses to let go of. It spirals in directions nobody planned.
Ratings: 0 out of 5 from the Aussie. 2.7 from the Scotsman. The gap tells you everything.
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