Episodes

For the third week of our westerns month, we're discussing another early 50s classic, Shane. This movie has it all - family drama, good versus evil (with plenty of gray area to explore), a coming-of-age story, beautiful western scenery, history, and plenty of suspense. We also discuss the unforgettable performances from Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, and Jack Palance among others, the costume design of Edith Head, George Stevens's great attention to detail, Loyal Griggs's award-winning cine...

In this second film of our Westerns month, we talk about another classic film that both defines and subverts the genre, High Noon, starring Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado, and the unknown yet soon-to-be staple western bad guy, Lee Van Cleef. We discuss the masterful use of the clock to build suspense, the many excuses (both good and bad) of the townspeople who refuse to help Will Kane, the juxtaposition of Mrs. Ramirez and Amy--the two women in Will's life, the stark and si...

This week, Martin from Film vs. Film Podcast joins us as we kick off a month of westerns with the movie that totally changed the genre, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford as the title characters. We talk about the perfectly balanced William Goldman screenplay that is equally hilarious and tragic, the exceptional director-cinematographer team-up of George Roy Hill and Conrad Hall, the iconic pairing of Newman and Redford that makes this film as much a budd...

For our fifth and final episode of the School's Out for Summer series, we're taking a long summer vacation with The Karate Kid Part II. Snatched from the certain doom of a summer in Fresno, Daniel accompanies his mentor Mr. Miyagi to Okinawa, where they face off with a new set of enemies, Sato and his sharply dressed nephew Chozen. We talk about our memories of seeing this film (and reading the novelization) as kids, the surprisingly deep meditations on family and loss, the 50s mania of the 80s,...

It's the fourth week of our School's Out for Summer series, and it's time to stop messing around and get a summer job. In this episode, we discuss Adventureland (2009), starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, and the always pitch-perfect Martin Starr as hapless and occasionally hopeless amusement park employees. We talk about our own summer job experiences as unemployable humanities students, writer/director Greg Mottola's excellent script, the film's amazing indie 80s soundtrack, the perils ...

Holy Schnikes! For the third week in our School’s Out series, we’re celebrating dads and grads as we take to the road with the 1995 Chris Farley/David Spade comedy Tommy Boy, the only movie we can think of where you’re actually rooting for a nepo baby. Farley’s Tommy is fresh out of college with a D+ in history, and he teams up with Spade’s Richard to launch the Callahan brake pads division and save Tommy’s family business. We talk favorite SNL alumni, the perfect comedic chemistry between big g...

In this second week of School's Out for Summer month, we're going to summer camp with our guest Etta Goodridge! Directed by David Wain, written by Wain and Michael Showalter, and featuring many other members of MTV's The State sketch comedy series, Wet Hot American Summer has become a cult classic, with a huge cast of actors that have gone on to become major stars, including Bradley Cooper, Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd, Christopher Meloni, and Elizabeth Banks. We discuss our own experiences with camp,...

School's out for summer! That's our theme for this month, and we're kicking it off with the 1993 cult classic Dazed and Confused, traveling back to the last day of school in a Texas town in 1976. We discuss the film's incredible soundtrack, which gives the story its structure and mood and opened us up to a whole lot of new old music when the film came out. We also talk about the stacked cast of mostly unknowns who have since become household names (especially Matthew McConaughey, whose portrayal...

For the final week of our ani-MAY-tion month, we spring into the action with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. We discuss the landmark animation, which combines CGI and hand-drawn animation along with color offset, giving the film a totally unique comic book look. We also talk about the enormous comic contributions of Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and Jack Kirby, the excitement of meeting a Spider-Man (or several) with a completely new backstory, the genre mashup, the always funky and fabulous Nicolas...

For the third week of our aniMAYtion month, we take a look at Wes Anderson's stop-motion adaptation of the Roald Dahl children's book Fantastic Mr. Fox. We discuss Anderson's practical and playful approach to recording dialogue and sound for the film, the script (penned by Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, at Dahl's home!) which creatively expands on Dahl's original story by framing Mr. Fox as another version of a vulpine Robin Hood, the crafty and creative use of puppets and miniatures in stop-mo...

For this second week of our AniMAYtion month, we're taking a look at one of our favorites from Studio Ghibli, Howl's Moving Castle (English dubbed). We talk aesthetics, from steampunk fairy tale to Dark Academia to Steve Martin, Howl as superhero, the freedom of living in disguise, the corrupting power of magic, Hayao Miyazaki's boundlessly creative yet realistically cinematic style, Joe Hisaishi's perfect musical score, and themes of greed, vanity, and the uselessness of war. It's a discussion ...

We're back, and for May we'll be tackling ani-MAY-ted movies (and making that joke many times)! In the first episode of this four-part series, we welcome special guest Stewart Boyles, co-host of the unofficial MCU podcast, Welcome to Level 7, who has named 1973 2D hand-drawn Disney classic Robin Hood as his number one comfort pick. We go on a nostalgia trip together, discussing the ways this film shaped our socio-political views, how it's a perfect precursor to the madcap redneck action comedies...

For the fifth and final episode in our Comfort Crime month, we continue the Corleone family saga with The Godfather Part II, which manages to be both a prequel and a sequel in one. We talk sibling rivalry, evil clownish buffoon antagonists, Al Pacino's masterful Michael Corleone and his complex game of chess, the tragedy of John Cazale's ignoble yet pathetic Fredo, whether it's possible for a criminal to go legitimate, Lee Strasberg's Hyman Roth and his vicious vengeance, the acceptable criminal...

For the fourth week in our comfort crime series, we go straight to the source with the grandfather of all modern mafia movies, The Godfather. Coincidentally, this is also the 51st anniversary of the release of this landmark film, based on the novel by Mario Puzo and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. We create a new personality test based on the Godfather characters, discuss the anxiety and fear of firing that fueled the production, praise Marlon Brando's acting comeback and the stellar contribut...

For the third week in our Comfort Crime Month, we take a trip back to a sweaty August day in 1970s Brooklyn to ride shotgun with Al Pacino and John Cazale on a bank robbery gone very wrong in Sidney Lumet's Oscar-nominated Dog Day Afternoon. We talk about the real-life 1972 robbery that inspired the film, the Gen X/Millennial interest in true crime (a seed probably planted by Unsolved Mysteries), the improvisational rehearsal process that supported and enhanced screenwriter Frank Pierson’s Oscar...

For the second week of our Comfort Crime month, John and Georgia deep dive into the Los Angeles underworld with Michael Mann's 1995 epic cops and robbers movie, Heat. This movie brings you so far into the symbiotic relationship between law enforcement and crooks that it's difficult to know what side you're on. We discuss the real life story of Chicago detective Chuck Adamson, whose coffee break with career criminal Neil McCauley inspired Mann's film, the iconic first-ever onscreen scene between ...

For the first week of our paradoxical Comfort Films Crime Month, John and Georgia team up with special guest Christopher Witty to make a move against the Lucchese crime family as they discuss the quintessential crime classic, Goodfellas. We discuss Martin Scorsese’s flawless direction, Michael Ballhaus’s stunning cinematography, the late great Ray Liotta's unforgettable and unmatchable portrayal of Henry Hill, Robert DeNiro’s stone cold Jimmy Conway, Joe Pesci’s Oscar-winning turn as Tommy Devit...

This week Georgia and John are joined by their longtime friend and artistic collaborator, Wayne Cardwell, to discuss one of his all-time favorite films, Slumdog Millionaire. We talk about the boundless love which guides Jamal, the insatiable greed which drives Salim, the impeccable story structure that utilizes Jamal’s answers on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? as a jumping off point to explore Jamal’s past, the innovative combination of film and digital cinematography, the knockout performances ...

For the third week of our love month, John and Georgia turn up the heat to take on the 2013 romance/horror film Warm Bodies, starring Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer. We discuss the parallels with William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, sensitive zombies, who have a lit vinyl collection, how friends are just as important as lovers, and what it means to be truly alive. Don't be a zombie - listen to this heartwarming episode that will make you feel human again!

For the second week of our love & romance month, we're taking a nostalgic trip back to the late 90s to revisit 10 Things I Hate About You--one of the standouts among the rash of teen movies that came out around the same time. This adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, which John and Georgia also have a special connection to, features a number of fantastic performances by young actors who have gone on to have strong careers, including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Julia Stiles, and...

To kick off a month of love & romance films, we welcome special guests Kate Duffy and Danny Zeliger to discuss Joe Wright's 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. We talk about the origins of modern day rom-coms, the difficulty of overcoming a bad first impression, the cardinal social sin of awkwardness, romanticizing the past, Tom Hollander's serial killer vibes as Mr. Collins, and which characters we identify with most. Take a turn...

For the last episode of our first sci-fi series, we decided to go straight back to the source and tackle the grandfather of all modern science fiction films, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. We discuss the zeitgeist of the 60s that gave birth to the space race, 2001, and Star Trek, the ways that 2001 changed the way we view sci-fi, the production design that shaped the way we think about humans in space (even more than actual footage of humans in space), the perils of artificial intellig...

For week 3 of our sci-fi series, we're pivoting from Alien to the xenomorph's equally malevolent human-hunting enemy, Predator! We're joined by the phenomenally funny and insightful Martin and Boaz from Film vs Film Podcast, and we discuss subverting toxic masculinity, cartoonish violence, meaningless folksy sayings, gun culture, ultimate frenemies Dutch and Dillon, extraterrestrials taking hunting vacations on earth, and the multiple governorships spawned by this film. You son of a bitch, get t...

It's the second week of our sci-fi series, and we're going back into space, but this time it's scary! Don't scream - no one can hear you anyway. We talk about Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror/thriller Alien, a landmark movie which has spawned a whole lot of sequels and a unique lore around its xenomorph creature. We also explore the links to John Carpenter, through writer Dan O'Bannon and also through the thematic connections to The Thing. Also, why bad guys drink milk, interpreting the charact...