Filmspotting

The new Netflix comedy Best of the Best introduced Matt and Jordan to the world of collegiate competitive Bollywood dance, and they left converts: to the dancing, to stars Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia, and to director Lena Khan’s winning movie (which has a joke-filled script written by comedian Hassan Minhaj and writing partner Prashanth Venkataramanujam). In the Best of the Best-inspired Rec Seg, they recommend an entry-level Bollywood classic and an obscure NYC-set dance movie. Then it’s a pair of single-setting (“bottle”) movies for listener Steven, and Producer Sam hosts a “Let’s Dance!” round of trivia.  Intro (00:00:00–00:02:28) Best of the Best (00:02:29–00:20:55) Rec Seg! (00:20:56–00:36:45) Listener Req Seg! “Bottle Movies” (00:36:46–00:52:14) Game: Let’s Dance! (00:52:15–01:08:55) New to Streaming / Credits (01:08:56–01:26:39) Show Notes For what film should Alison Willmore make her trium

Film critic and author Alonso Duralde joins Michael Phillips to explore a piece of filmmaking wisdom from Vincente Minnelli: that a picture which stays with an audience is built from “a hundred or more hidden things.”Drawing on films ranging from Meet Me in St. Louis, Some Came Running, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, they consider how production design, performance, music, camera movement, and seemingly minor visual choices accumulate into something lasting. Notes: "I Wake Up Screening: What To Do Once You've Made That Movie" by John Anderson and Laura Kim https://www.amazon.com/dp/0823088987?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback Books by Alonso DuraldeHollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/alonso-duralde/hollywood-pride/9780762485895/?lens=running-press I'll Be Home For Christmas https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brandon-gray/ill-be-home-for-christmas-mov

PV & FRANNY A girl with a glockenspiel. A boy with a guitar. A high school full of weirdos, mascots who may or may not be unhinged, and a mystery that isn’t what anyone thinks it is. A dead-serious love story… that refuses to behave like one. One flier turns into a band. One band turns into obsession. And before they ever play a real set, everything is already ridiculous. ACT TWO If Act One is about starting a band, Act Two is about what happens when everything immediately gets in the way. Franny does what any rational person would do. He writes a love song. Which would be fine… except for the rule. No romance. Ever. And PV means it. What follows is a series of perfectly logical decisions that somehow make everything worse. A love song that says too much. A date that shouldn’t exist. A plan to fix things that only complicates them further. Because if PV won’t date a bandmate, there’s only one solution: Make the competition part of the band. Which works. Until it doesn

As David Lynch's Blue Velvet turns 40, Adam and Josh revisit the film that shocked audiences and helped define modern American cinema. Is it Lynch's masterpiece? Plus: Massacre Theatre and Josh’s thoughts on Practical Magic 2 and Paul Greengrass's The Uprising.  This episode is presented by⁠ Regal Unlimited⁠⁠, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. Use code FILMSPOT26 to take 15% off. (Timecodes will not be precise with ads.) Intro (00:00:00-00:03:09) Pantheon Project: Blue Velvet (00:03:10-01:16:00) Filmspotting Family (01:16:01-01:19:03) Practical Magic 2, The Uprising (01:19:04-01:27:11) Massacre Theatre (01:27:12-1:33:05) Credits / New Releases (1:33:06-1:37:01) Notes:  - Feedback: -Email us at [email protected]⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠-⁠Ask Us Anything⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and we might answer your question in bonus content. Support: -Join the Filmspotting Family for bonus shows, archive access, and more. http://filmspottingfamily.com -Filmspotting Shop for T-shirts a

Blue Velvet turns 40 this month—Adam and Josh have a Sacred Cow review coming later this week—so we're going back to 2014 for our Top 5 David Lynch Scenes.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 and death no longer hold any meaning. Whether it’s a film about despair, about the afterlife, about the human condition, or all of the above, is up for discussion this week, as well as how It Ends fits into this current moment in independent horror cinema. After that, we bring Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris back in for Connections to discuss these two films’ respective existential journeys, the baggage their characters are bringing with them, and how each movie uses its genre premise to explore a big central metaphor. Then for Your Next Picture Show, we take a quick look at how Steven Soderbergh’s 2002 version of Solaris compares to Tarkovsky’s. Please share your thoughts about Solaris, It Ends, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leav

For a few days in the summer of 2024, the world’s attention was focused on Dr. Rachel Gunn — and not for anything good. Gunn, aka “Raygun”, was representing Australia at the Paris Olympics in the inaugural breakdancing competition, when her infamous performance became the subject of mockery, outrage, and even conspiracy theories. That’s the subject of the new Netflix documentary Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly. Matt and Jordan have a review, and use the film as an opportunity to recommend a film from the dawn of on-screen breakdancing and a sports doc about a ‘90s-era rivalry. Plus, streaming recommendations for a listener looking for movies with adrenaline-rush-inducing twists.   Intro (00:00:00–00:07:20) Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly (00:07:21–00:23:38) Rec Seg! (00:23:39–00:40:27) Listener Req Seg: Movies With Twists (00:40:28–00:52:47) New to Streaming / Credits (00:52:48–01:00:16) Show Notes For what film should Alison Willmore mak

Film noir expert Rachel Walther joins Michael Phillips to test a quote commonly attributed to Jean-Luc Godard. But whether it belongs to Godard, Howard Hawks, or someone else entirely, it points to a persistent question about what audiences really want from movies. From Gun Crazy and Double Indemnity to Jackie Brown, No Country for Old Men, and the James Bond franchise, they consider the enduring appeal of sex and danger and whether the famous formula still holds up more than a century after it was first proposed. Join the conversation by emailing [email protected] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

PV & FRANNY A girl with a glockenspiel. A boy with a guitar. A high school full of weirdos, mascots who may or may not be unhinged, and a mystery that isn’t what anyone thinks it is. A dead-serious love story… that refuses to behave like one. One flier turns into a band. One band turns into obsession. And before they ever play a real set, everything is already ridiculous.   ACT ONE Overton High is chaos in a controlled environment. The mascot smokes. The journalist thinks she’s breaking Watergate. The nicest bully in school politely refuses lunch money. And then there’s PV. Brilliant. Intense. Completely uncompromising. She doesn’t want to start a band. She wants to build something real. Franny Blevins just wants to be part of it. What begins as an awkward coffee shop encounter quickly turns into a partnership built on music, rules, and one very firm boundary: No romance. Ever. Which becomes a problem almost immediately. As Franny gets pulled deeper into PV’s worl

When Coyote vs. Acme was shelved in 2023 for a corporate tax write-off, the response from film fans was as swift as a roadrunner and as explosive as a pile of TNT. When it was picked up by another distributor (Ketchup Entertainment), the outrage turned to anticipation – justifiably so, say Adam and Josh. Plus, they honor the late Tim Curry with a review of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and listeners weigh in with their favorite ‘90s movie villains, and more. This episode is presented by⁠ Regal Unlimited⁠⁠, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. Use code FILMSPOT26 to take 15% off. (Timecodes will not be precise with ads.) Intro (00:00:00-00:02:36) Coyote vs. Acme (00:02:37-00:33:49) Filmspotting Family (00:33:50-00:39:12) The Rocky Horror Picture Show (00:39:13-01:11:45) Notes / Polls (01:11:46-01:30:30) Credits / New Releases (01:30:31-1:34:25) Notes:  Filmspotting’s Top 5 Needle Drops -Spotify -Spotify (52 Track Version) -Appl

With the new Oasis doc Don't Look Back in Anger coming soon to theaters—and inspiring this month's ⁠Movie Death Match⁠ (The Last Waltz vs. Stop Making Sense)—we're sharing Adam and Josh's Top 5 Music Docs from 2023.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From the writer/directors of Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Apple TV’s Cold War comedy Mayday was a promising title on the 2026 streaming movie calendar. Unfortunately, Matt and Jordan agree that the film isn’t the equal to those earlier films (no thanks to a phoned-in performance from Ryan Reynolds), despite a clever premise and the presence of Kenneth Branagh, who is having the time of his life. Matt digs into Branagh’s strange career in the Rec Seg, suggesting an early Branagh effort (as both director and star) as an alternative, and Jordan answers with a film that finds Christian Bale as a fighter pilot caught behind enemy lines. Plus, Bran-agh Flakes!, a Jordan-hosted game. (Timecodes will not be precise with ads.) Intro (00:00:00–00:05:43) Mayday (00:05:44–00:26:32) Rec Seg! (00:26:33–00:44:40) Game: Bran-agh Flakes (00:44:41–01:02:24) New to Streaming / Credits (01:02:25–01:11:29) Show Notes Now Streaming on Bazooga - A Filmsp

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 description could be applied to Solaris, though Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 science-fiction classic takes nearly twice as long to ponder the nature of life in a situation where death has no meaning anymore. So this week we’re discussing whether Solaris’ deliberate pace and opaque symbolism work toward or against its emotional core, its relative accessibility compared to Tarkovsky’s other work, and what about the film invites its reputation as the “anti-2001.” Then in Feedback, a listener brings an alternative reading to our recent discussion of War of the Worlds as a response to 9/11. Please share your thoughts about Solaris, It Ends, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773

Chris Klimek convenes a battle of the bands between two of the most acclaimed concert films ever made: Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense and Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz. One is a lean, propulsive document of Talking Heads at the height of their powers, transforming a live performance into something theatrical and strangely transcendent. The other is a star-studded farewell to The Band that expands beyond a single concert into a sweeping elegy for an era of rock and roll itself. Arguing for The Last Waltz is Steven Hyden (Is This It: The Never-Ending Rise and Fall of The Strokes and Rock and Roll), who contends that Scorsese's film is more than a concert movie: it's the definitive cinematic statement on rock music and its mythology. Representing Stop Making Sense is Elizabeth Cantwell (Bright Wall/Dark Room), who makes the case that Demme's film remains the more immersive, inventive, and enduring work of cinema. Is the greatest concert film about a band, or about rock and roll itself? Which movie be

SUBURBAKNIGHT: Act Three Walter Knope has spent most of his life avoiding confrontation. That is about to become difficult. Walter, Samantha and Bobby Joe cross the street armed with a sword, a crossbow, a mace, a revolver and one deeply impractical suit of medieval armor. Richard is waiting. So is the rest of the neighborhood. Inside Richard's house they discover the party has evolved into something considerably less HOA-approved. Music. Neon. Blood. An orgy full of succubi. Richard sitting above it all like Satan's sexiest homeowners association president. Samantha asks where her daughter is. Then shoots Richard through the eye with a crossbow. It barely slows him down. Written by Nick Bannister, SUBURBAKNIGHT reaches its gloriously unhinged conclusion as Walter's fight to save his family becomes a full-scale supernatural war over everything he thought he had already lost. Richard separates them. Walter gets beaten nearly unconscious. Samantha is pulled into a seductive nightmare built from everything she t

With The Dog Stars in theaters, Adam and Josh invited Vulture’s Roxana Hadadi to the show for a Ridley Scott Draft. Picks one and two are easy: Alien or Blade Runner. But what about the third pick? And will divisive Scott films like Prometheus and Kingdom of Heaven get any love? Plus, a Golden Brick nomination for the new Filipiñana, thoughts on the passing of Dolly Parton and Tim Curry, and Massacre Theatre. This episode is presented by⁠ Regal Unlimited⁠⁠, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. Use code FILMSPOT26 to take 15% off. (Timecodes will not be precise with ads.) Intro (00:00:00-00:02:08) Ridley Scott Draft, Pt. 1 (00:02:09-01:05:14) Filmspotting Family (01:05:15-01:11:14) Ridley Scott Draft, Pt. 2 (01:11:15-01:42:50) Brickspotting: Filipiñana (01:42:51-01:46:50) RIP Dolly Parton, Tim Curry (01:46:51-01:53:04) Massacre Theatre (01:53:05-01:59:42) Credits / Releases (01:59:43-1:48:48) Notes:  -

With Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars in theaters and our own Ridley Scott Draft (with Vulture's Roxana  Hadadi) coming Friday, we're sharing this 2017 Sacred Cow review of Scott's sci-fi classic. Michael Phillips joined Adam and Josh. Unlock the full archive, Filmspotting Discord, ad‑free + bonus episodes, and more when you ⁠join the Filmspotting Family⁠. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the story of a movie’s financing and troubled post-production are more compelling than the movie itself, you’ve got problems. And in this case, you’ve got Desert Warrior, a 7th-century, Saudi Arabia-set — and financed — epic starring Anthony Mackie along with Sir Ben Kingsley and Sharlto Copley. Matt and Jordan review the Rupert Wyatt-directed curiosity, and use the film to recommend an American desert-set indie from the early 2000s and another (undeservedly) unloved Rupert Wyatt film. Plus, a listener request for “sad man” movies on the Criterion Channel, and a game that has Matt and Jordan remembering — or trying to remember — summer movies from the year 2012.   Intro (00:00:00–00:04:10) Desert Warrior (00:04:11–00:31:57) Rec Seg! (00:31:58–00:48:14) Listener Request Seg! (00:48:15–01:08:01) Game: Mark My Words! (01:08:02–01:32:32) New to Streaming / Credits (01:32:33–01:42:15) Show Notes Now Streaming o

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 End of Oak Street isn’t nearly as concerned with explaining that premise or exploring its characters as it is with facilitating dino mayhem and nostalgia for the films of writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s youth. That can be to the film’s benefit and detriment, both of which we cover in this week’s discussion, before bringing Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds back in to see how these two family survival narratives compare in their respective ideas about flawed parents, imperiled children, and the universal human desire to not get eaten. Then in Your Next Picture Show we consider a couple of possible alternate pairing for Oak Street, one featuring aliens, one featuring dinosaurs, and both underrated. Please share your thoughts about War of the Worlds, The End of Oak Street

Film critic Robert Daniels (⁠RogerEbert.com⁠, The New York Times) joins Michael Phillips to test one of Hollywood's most enduring bits of studio wisdom, attributed to producer Samuel Goldwyn: "Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union." From I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, High Noon, and The Best Years of Our Lives to Origin, Don't Look Up, and Triangle of Sadness, Michael and Robert discuss why some films are elevated by their ideas while others collapse under them, and whether the most effective message movies are the ones that never look like message movies at all. Join the conversation by emailing ⁠[email protected]⁠.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.