With her first feature Wild Goat Surf now playing in Toronto and Vancouver, actor and filmmaker Caitlyn Sponheimer is here to celebrate – and interrogate – Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning 2013 drama The Great Beauty, in which Toni Servillo’s aging Italian scenester finds himself pondering the limits of la dolce vita. Your genial host Norm Wilner just hopes he ages as well.

It’s our 500th episode, and actor Sara Canning – who’s got two films opening in Toronto this month, The Burning Season this Friday, May 10th, and Sweetland on May 17th – is here to plumb the psychological depths of Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, the film that showed us all what Elizabeth Olsen could do, and left us on the edges of our seats. Your genial host Norm Wilner still hasn’t recovered, honestly.

Writer-director Ned Benson – whose new feature The Greatest Hits is now streaming on Hulu in the US and Disney+ everywhere else – is here for a sprint through Martin Scorsese’s 1985 Soho nightmare After Hours. Your genial host Norm Wilner always makes sure he has a spare twenty because of this picture.

Documentary filmmaker Ken Wardrop – whose new feature So This is Christmas makes its North American debut at Hot Docs next Tuesday, April 30th – saw David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago as a boy and has been swooning over it ever since. Your genial host Norm Wilner has tea and lemon at the ready.

Screenwriter Paul Laverty – whose decades-long collaboration with director Ken Loach culminates in The Old Oak, now in theaters across North America – is here to shine a light on Diego Quemada-Diez’ 2013 migrant drama The Golden Dream. Your genial host Norm Wilner is always happy to lend a hand.

Friday bonus episode! Actor and filmmaker Anna Maguire -- who literally gives her heart to Hamza Haq in Kim Albright’s With Love and a Major Organ, opening today in theaters across Canada -- salutes another oddball romance: Hal Ashby’s 1971 cult classic Harold and Maude. Your genial host Norm Wilner has the hearse all gassed up.

With his first feature In Flames opening in theaters across North America this Friday, April 12th, writer-director Zarrar Kahn is here to resurrect BeDevil, Tracey Moffatt's one-of-a-kind anthology of Australian ghost stories ... and the people who fail to learn from them. Your genial host Norm Wilner just survived an eclipse, so he's ready for anything.

Actor Sara Waisglass, who co-stars with Michaela Watkins and Charlie Gillespie in the mid-life comedy Suze -- now available on digital and on demand -- steps up for Emerald Fennell's Oscar-winning hot-button thriller Promising Young Woman. Your genial host Norm Wilner only mansplains a little of it.

He’s on screens across Canada right now in The Queen of My Dreams and he’ll be back April 12th in With Love and a Major Organ, but right now Hamza Haq is here, on this podcast, discussing his all-time favorite film: Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins. Your genial host Norm Wilner has the Tumbler gassed up and ready to roll.

With her creepy new thriller Lovely, Dark, and Deep newly avaialble on digital and on demand, writer-director Teresa Sutherland is here to drag the depths of Joel Anderson's 2008 chiller Lake Mungo, a mockumentary that continues to haunt everyone who's seen it. Your genial host Norm Wilner is ready to dive in.

With his new movie Hey, Viktor! opening across Canada -- and sporting three shiny new Canadian Screen Award nominations! -- writer-director Cody Lightning is here to talk about the bizarre balancing act of sports picture and small-town drama that is Jay Roach's 1999 dramedy Mystery, Alaska. Your genial host Norm Wilner has his skates on.

With his delightful first feature Molli and Max in the Future rolling through U.S. theaters, writer-director Michael Lukk Litwak takes us back to Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg’s glorious 1993 blockbuster about dinosaurs chasing people around an island. You remember it, right? Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum were in it? The dinosaurs looked fantastic? Your genial host Norm Wilner still has the T-shirt.

With her new movie Suze now playing in theaters across Canada, the invaluable Michaela Watkins revisits Martha Coolidge's Valley Girl, the teen movie that paired Deborah Foreman and Nicolas Cage for a very '80s love story. Your genial host Norm Wilner hasn't seen this one in a while either.

With her award-winning first feature Seagrass opening across North America this Friday, writer-director Meredith Hama-Brown puts on her ballet flats to discuss The Red Shoes, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1948 masterwork about art, life, death, commitment, fear, rage and passion. Your genial host Norm Wilner apologizes for his bad ankles.

With his first feature Marmalade now available on digital and on demand, actor-turned-filmmaker Keir O'Donnell offers his heart to Tony Scott's 1993 pulp-fiction knockout True Romance ... just in time for Valentine's Day. Your genial host Norm Wilner didn't even buy flowers.

With her new film Sometimes I Think About Dying now playing in the US and opening across Canada on Friday, director Rachel Lambert brings up another study of an alienated person making an unlikely connection: John Schlesinger's Oscar-winning Midnight Cowboy, a film unique in American cinema for all sorts of reasons. Your genial host Norm Wilner is walking here.

The Canadian theatrical release of Tótem gives writer-director Lila Avilés the chance to bend the format a little and talk about how her voracious, lifelong love of cinema -- from Disney to Cassavetes -- helped her find her own aesthetic as an artist. Your genial host Norm Wilner apologizes for his voice, which he blew out doing Canada's Top Ten events over the weekend.

Charles-Olivier Michaud,  whose adaptation of Kim Thuy's award-winning novel Ru opens across Canada this Friday, January 26th, is here to ride along with Sebastian Schipper's 2015 single-take thriller Victoria, starring Laia Costa as a Spanish pianist who meets the wrong group of dudes in a Berlin nightclub and has a hell of a night as a result. Your genial host Norm Wilner wouldn't even be up at 4 am these days, you know?

With the new restoration of her rediscovered film Household Saints opening at Toronto's Revue Cinema this Friday, writer-director Nancy Savoca shares her love of another long-lost movie: Euzhan Palcy's 1983 debut Sugar Cane Alley, which has been even harder to find in recent years. Your genial host Norm Wilner still regrets not buying the DVD when he had the chance.

With his new movie Who's Yer Father? now on digital and the third season of Run the Burbs premiering tonight on CBC and CBC Gem, actor and stand-up Chris Locke is here to celebrate The Wrong Guy, the deadpan 1997 farce where Dave Foley tries to be a fugitive even though no one is chasing him. Your genial host Norm Wilner has some history with this one.

Happy new year! Writer-director Orson Oblowitz -- whose retro-cinema charmer Showdown At the Grand just arrived on disc and digital -- is here to celebrate the earth-shaking impact of Katsuhiro Otomo's 1988 anime breakthrough Akira. Your genial host Norm Wilner is always happy to nerd out for a bit.

With his extremely '80s thriller Going In now available on digital, actor and filmmaker Evan Rissi is here to celebrate one of the films that inspired it: Road House, the 1989 action drama starring Patrick Swayze as the world's greatest bouncer and Ben Gazzara as the world's pettiest crimelord. Your genial host Norm Wilner would never leave you without an episode over the holidays.

Actors, writers and real-life pals Rosa Labordé and Anna Hardwick – whose new streaming series Nesting premieres on Crave in Canada this Friday, December 22nd -- make some noise for Joan Micklin Silver’s Crossing Delancey, the unassuming 1988 dramedy where Amy Irving plays a New York bookseller torn between a flashy European author and a nice pickle man. Your genial host Norm Wilner does enjoy an old dill.

With her latest feature Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret gaining momentum on the awards circuit, writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig takes a moment to celebrate the decade-spanning accomplishments of Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater in Before Sunrise and Before Sunset ... and that third one, too. Your genial host Norm Wilner apologizes for mixing up "seven" and "nine" early in the conversation.

With her debut feature My Animal in theaters across Canada (and available on digital in the US), director Jacqueline Castel shares her love for the landmark 1942 thriller Cat People -- the one where Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur kept the real horrors offscreen. Your genial host Norm Wilner swears he's never been afraid of shadows .