A Serious Man (2009) may seem much different from the Coens’ adaptation of No Country for Old Men, which they released two years earlier. But they both concern a likable man who finds himself posing questions that the universe–or any of its weisest men–cannot answer. And even if there are glimpses of answers to the question “What does Hashem, or God, want,” neither late-thirties Larry or late-sixties Sheriff Bell can read the writing on the wall (or, in the case of A Serious Man, the writing...

Actors win awards and gain our admiration when they convince us that they have “become” someone else–it’s what we mean when we say that so-and-so “inhabits” a role. But that’s not the only benchmark: a good actor is also someone whose statements are interesting to hear and whose voice engages the listener, whether or not we “believe” that he’s really Charles Foster Kane or Norman Bates. That’s how Mike approaches James Woods in True Believer (1989). He and Dan also talk about the title and...

Political noise is as American as baseball and apple pie and in this election season it’s impossible to tune it out completely: it’s on our televisions, radios, phones, and computers. Brian DePalma’s Blow Out (1981) follows a man who is able to hear something underneath all the noise: a perfect character to think about this election season. The real debate for Mike and Dan is whether or not the film makes a statement about the United States and each takes a different side. But they do agree...

There’s a moment in The Fly (1986) in which Seth Brundle–well into his transformation into Brundlefly–explains that he must vomit on a donut before eating it. The camera cuts away to show Geena Davis’s reaction, which is the same reaction David Cronenberg evokes in his viewers throughout the film. Grotesque yet surprisingly moving, The Fly is more than disturbing, wonderful makeup: it’s a look at a brilliant man who cannot understand the limits of his own vision, like his colleagues Drs....

You can’t judge a book by its cover or a movie by its poster. When Mike suggested Manchester by the Sea (2016) for the pod, Dan hooted and derided his co-host as a lover of Hallmark Holiday Classics. But after he watched Kenneth Lonergan’s brutal and sobering examination of unquenchable grief, he admitted his mistake. Join us for a conversation about a film that was mismarketed as a Man Who Learns Life Lessons matinee but which offers some of the best and most restrained performances either...

The second-best movie based on an Elmore Leonard novel, Out of Sight (1998) does what Netflix and other platforms try to do all the time: throw a bunch of stars together in an effort to increase the quality of the “content.” But those half-assed efforts never come close to Out of Sight, which has a roster of A-list actors, a terrific screenplay based on quality source material, a great score, and a director who makes us feel as cool as his characters. Like Mozart, Steven Soderbergh makes...

Robert Benton’s 1979 interior drama turned out to be one of the biggest films of the 70s. While we might appreciate Dustn Hoffman now more often than we watch his movies, this marked another example of him owning the decade. It’s his movie, despite the attempt to give balance to the two Kramers fighting for the legal and moral right to raise their son. If you haven’t seen this since it played in theaters for months and then became a cable-TV staple, it’s worth rewatching; if you’ve never seen...

For years, Dan avoided this movie, fearing it was like a Hallmark Holiday Classic or Very Special Episode of Mad About You. But after our episode on Broadcast News, Mike insisted Dan give it a watch. Join us as we talk about the ways in which the film surfs just above the sharks of sentimentality that threaten it at every plot point and offers a great combination of characters, problems, and new problems once original ones are solved. Patrick McGilligan’s Jack’s Life: A Biography of Jack...

Strangers on a Train (1951) may not be an “obvious Hitchcock” like Vertigo, Rear Window, or North by Northwest, but it’s fascinating, rewatchable, and has everything we love in the Hitchcock canon. When Guy Haines (Farley Granger) meets Bruno Antony (Robert Walker), he learns that he might not know himself as well as he thought he did. The whole film is like a ride on the carousel at the end and we’re like the screaming kids, afraid and loving it. Hop on! Strangers on a Train is based upon...

Has your day today been worth narating? If it were retold in the pages of a novel, would anyone read it? Are you worthy of narration? Most of us would say that we weren’t, but that’s not the case for Jack Manfred, the title character of Croupier, Mike Hodges’ 1998 film about authorship and narcissism. Jack thinks that one must be a gambler or a croupier: one can either try to bend the universe to do what he wants it to do–or know that that’s impossible and revel in watching the losers. But is...

If L. A. Confidential (1997) were two degrees campier, it would seem like Dick Tracy–but Curtis Hanson made sure to capture the spirit of James Ellroy’s novel while making its labyrinth plot understandable to viewers. Join us for a conversation about how the film examines the need for heroes yet seems to only offer them in a way to which the movies have made us accustomed. Sunlight may be the best disinfectant, but how much sunlight do we really want illuminating the institutions that hold...

A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) are collectively known as “The Man with No Name” trilogy and are often thought of as one long movie about the hero’s adventures, much like we think of the original three installments of Indiana Jones. Quentin Tarantino has called the third film the most well-directed film ever made, but Mike contends that For a Few Dollars More is superior to the other two. Join us for a conversation about...

Howard Hawks’s To Have and Have Not (1944) is more Hollywood than Hemingway–something for which we should all be grateful. The film is a wonderful example–perhaps the best–of onscreen chemistry and remains wildly entertaining even aside from the onscreen courtship of Bogart and Bacall. Join us as we talk about banter as a tool of seduction, the ways in which films let us “borrow the nature” of their actors, how To Have and Have Not feels like Casablanca II, and if Howard Hawks has an odd...

Everyone loves a good heist movie that depends on the combination of cold, logical planning and some element going sideways–and Thief is one of the best. Its 1981 release date is seen in every frame and the soundtrack by Tangerine Dream makes for great nostalgic viewing. But the film has real power as a character study of a highly skilled man trying to get something beyond his reach and wants what he cannot steal. James Cann’s performance as Frank is one of his best; he even seems to channel...

Do you need to be a wolf to protect the sheep? That’s the question at the heart of Training Day (2001), in which Ethan Hawke plays the lead and Denzel Washington plays himself–at least for the first hour. What happens in the film once the sun goes down gets Mike and Dan arguing as they haven’t in a while: does the movie become yet another one where people go through a house with pistols drawn and shotgun blasts take out kitchen counters? Or is there a deeper reason why the film must end as it...

Any director other than Christopher Nolan would have done one of two things with this material: made an Oceans Eleven at Los Alamos or a cradle-to-grave biopic. That Nolan resisted these temptations to instead use the life of his subject to explore issues of historical legacy and what happens to those who steal fire from the gods makes Oppenheimer worth all its hype. Dan talks about how Nolan managed to create suspense without action; Mike looks at the challenge of dramatizing intelligence;...

Collateral was made in 2004, ten years after Speed—and while both films have the same story of a good guy trying to stop a killer in real time, Collateral feels decades away from the innocence of Speed. Much of that has to do with the villain, who espouses a set of assumptions about the world that we se all around us on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Shark Tank. On a lighter note, the movie also ends the debate of how Superman could disguise himself with a simple pair of glasses. It’s a movie made...

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to begin our descent into Los Angeles.” So begins The Graduate (1967), which everyone loves but which many of us loved for one reason when we were younger and one when we became a little more seasoned. “Plastics” is a great joke when you’re 20; how does it sound decades later? The movie hasn’t changed, but we have. It’s still terrific: Mike and Dan talk about the intelligence of the actors and the ways in which targets of the film’s satire (such as the cult...

A great movie that is very difficult movie to recommend because of its subject matter, Paul Schrader’s Auto Focus (2002), the story of TV-star Bob Crane, is another of Schrader’s portraits of a man whose self-destruction we watch with admiration for the writing and unease at what we’re seeing. It’s a combination of The Lost Weekend, Reefer Madness, and Sunset Blvd. with Willem Defoe at his creepiest. But it’s much more than perfect recreations of Hogan’s Heroes or Greg Kinnear’s incredible...

Anthony Hopkins has defined the popular conception of Hannibal Lector and, by extension, the erudite serial killer. But before The Silence of the Lambs there was Manhunter (1986), Michael Mann’s thriller featuring the first appearance of Dr. Lecter (or Dr. Lecktor, as his name is spelled in the film). Mike loves it for its shots of men brooding over bodies of water as they make decisions and finds it “the most Michael Manliest” of the director’s output; Dan thinks the setup is great but that...

A dramatized thought experiment like best episodes of Star Trek, Forbidden Planet (1956) is a wonderful reminder of how people in the past envisioned the future. Part prophecy—looking forward—and part analysis of the timeless human condition, the film wraps heavy ideas about the cost of knowledge and the ways we interact with our own creations into melodrama. Yes, it’s a reimagining of The Tempest, but it’s also Faust, Frankenstein, and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from Fantasia. Join us for a...

“Kafkaesque” is the word usually used to describe After Hours, Martin Scorsese’s 1985 comedy—a fair point, since there’s a scene in the film that dramatizes Kafka’s “Before the Law.” But the writer whose imagination this film really taps is Lewis Carroll: as in Alice in Wonderland, a naïve but likable young person chases a white rabbit to a different part of town, is threatened by an angry woman who wants to chop off his head, and learns, “We’re all mad here.” Join us for an appreciation of...

What is the proper—or most effective—response to a barrage of horror and pain? The closest that screenwriter Paul Schrader ever came to a comedy (albeit a very dark one), Bringing Out the Dead (1999) is low on special effects depicting medical emergencies but high on drama. Join us for a conversation about one of Scorsese’s sleepers, a movie about a man who wants to find something like religious faith in a world with no spiritual oasis. It also dramatizes the incredible cost paid a moment of...

An Academy darling that has faded into the background, Broadcast News (1987) still holds up as Network’s little brother. They don’t make ’em like this anymore: light comedy about adults with adult problems. Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about how the film offers something more novel than a love triangle: a talent triangle. They also talk about how the film dramatizes the challenge of people who have friends for too long and therefore can’t becoming romantically involved. When was the...