The Next Picture Show

Trial By Media, Pt. 2 — Primetime

Primetime is a far-from-straightforward take on a true story, using the mid-aughts TV phenomenon To Catch a Predator and especially its host, Chris Hansen, for a darkly c

Trial By Media, Pt. 1 — Sweet Smell of Success

Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime paints problematic TV phenomenon To Catch a Predator — and especially its host, Chris Hansen — as an enterprise fueled by ambition, amorality,

Hazard Pay, Pt. 2 — The Weight

There’s a lot to enjoy about The Weight: the tactile 1930s Oregon setting, strong performances from Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe, a premise that allows for multiple susp

Hazard Pay, Pt. 1 — Sorcerer

Padraic McKinley’s The Weight isn’t a remake ofThe Wages of Fear, though it feels deeply indebted to the H.G. Clouzot classic in its thrilling depiction of a group of out

Existential Zones, Pt. 2 — It Ends

Alexander Ullom's It Ends is a daring little piece of microbudget drama about four friends at transition points in their lives, who find themselves in a place where life

#539: Existential Zones, Pt. 1 — Solaris (1972)

Alexander Ullom’s feature debut, It Ends, has been billed as a horror movie, but it’s more of an existential exercise wrapped inside a genre premise. That same descriptio

The Family That’s Prey Together, Pt. 2 — The End of Oak Street

The Platt family is barely surviving, and that’s before their neighborhood is inexplicably dropped millions of years into the past and overrun by hungry dinosaurs. The En

The Family That's Prey Together, Pt. 1 — War of the Worlds (2005)

David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street drops an ordinary family into extraordinary circumstances, forcing them to focus all their energy on surviving— and maybe, j

Anyone Can Cook, Pt. 2 — Tony

Matt Johnson’s new biopic Tony sidesteps the infamous Walk Hard trap by narrowing its scope to a single summer that would end up shaping the rest of Anthony Bourdain’s li

#535: Anyone Can Cook, Pt. 1 — Ratatouille

Anthony Bourdain, whose early experience working in a restaurant kitchen is chronicled in the new biopic Tony, once singled out Ratatouille as Hollywood’s best depiction

Home Sweet Homer, Pt. 2 — The Odyssey

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey approaches Homer’s epic from a much more literal vantage point than O Brother Where Art Thou, but that doesn’t mean it’s a dutiful, beat-b

Home Sweet Homer, Pt. 1 — O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Considering The Odyssey is one of the most famous and influential stories of all time, there had been relatively few attempts to directly translate Homer’s epic poem to t

Lady Justice, Pt. 2 — Supergirl

A good chunk of Supergirl’s DNA can be traced back to True Grit by way of the comics miniseries the film is adapting, which is why we paired it with Joel and Ethan Coen’s

Lady Justice, Pt. 1 — True Grit (2010)

The new Supergirl isn’t an outright adaptation of the comic-book miniseries Woman of Tomorrow, but it retains enough of its shape that it evokes that comic’s own source o

Our Aliens, Ourselves Pt. 2 — Disclosure Day

Forty-four years after his science-fiction classic about the deep connection between a 10-year-old human boy and an alien visitor stranded on earth, Steven Spielberg is o

Our Aliens, Ourselves Pt. 1 — E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Disclosure Day is not Steven Spielberg’s first film about the confirmation of alien life, nor is it the first such Spielberg film we’ve discussed on this podcast — that w

Negative Spaces, Pt. 2 — Backrooms

Backrooms’ journey to the big screen — from anonymous 4chan post to viral creepypasta to mega-popular YouTube series to A24-backed box-office smash — is as unique and une

Negative Spaces, Pt. 1 — Phantasm

20-year-old Kane Parsons is now the youngest director to ever hit No. 1 at the box office thanks to his A24-backed horror film Backrooms, which made back its budget sever

Baby on Board, Pt. 2 — The Mandalorian and Grogu

The Mandalorian and Grogu plays like a few stitched-together episodes of The Mandalorian, which makes it a particularly apt pairing with the 1980 Lone Wolf and Cub assemb

Baby on Board, Pt. 1 — Shogun Assassin (1980)

The Mandalorian and Grogu gives the feature-film treatment to a streaming series whose premise — an outcast warrior lives by a code of honor while traveling in the compan