On the heels of our conversation with Chaz Ebert discussing Life Itself, we are sharing this episode from our friends at Filmspotting. As we learned from Chaz, even Roger himself once admitted to getting one review wrong! In this episode, critic and author Matt Singer joins Filmspotting co-hosts Adam Kempenaar and Josh Larsen to consider the enduring impact of Ebert and his longtime partner Gene Siskel, and to dissect five other reviews they may have gotten wrong. Originally dropped in...

The Film That Blew My Mind is nominated for Best Indie Podcast Webby Awards. Please show your support and cast your vote for the People’s Voice Award at the link below. Thank you! https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2024/podcasts/features/best-indie-podcast ____ For our final episode of season one, we took our show on the road to record an episode before a live audience at the Sonoma International Film Festival. John Cameron Mitchell, the ultimate multi-hyphenate and creator of Hedwig...

It is hard to pinpoint when Chaz Ebert first experienced Life Itself, Steve James’s documentary about her late husband and legendary film critic, Roger Ebert. Initially conceived as a multi-year project to capture Roger’s vibrant life and career, the film also documented what would become the final weeks of Roger’s life. Film icons like Werner Herzog, Ava Duvernay, and Martin Scorsese illustrate the ways in which Roger’s work inspired them individually and impacted culture on a broad scale....

  As an NYFD firefighter working the overnight shift at Engine Company 55, Steve Buscemi popped a VHS tape into the station’s player and experienced John Huston’s Fat City for the first time. Based on the acclaimed novel of the same name and adapted for the screen by its author Leonard Gardner, the film centers around boxing and life in the hard-scrabble central California town of Stockton. Former champ Tully (Stacy Keach) sets his sights on returning to the ring when he meets Ernie (Jeff...

From El Capitan in Yosemite to Tham Luang Nang Non cave in northern Thailand and Meru Peak in the Indian Himalayas, Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (her partner in filmmaking and in life) have captured the imagination of audiences worldwide with intimate, non-fiction portrayals of outdoor athletes pushing themselves to extremes. Free Solo, their 2018 film, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Their first scripted project, Nyad, boasts Oscar-nominated performances from Annette...

As an 18-year-old on the verge of breakout success, Ethan Hawke encountered Reds for the first time. The epic love story and historical drama brings us writer/activist Jack Reed and journalist Louise Bryant in the midst of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the birth of the socialist party in the U.S. Directed by, co-written by, and starring Warren Beatty, Reds is famous for extraordinary performances from Beatty, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Maureen Stapleton, and Edward Hermann. The...

Veteran independent filmmaker Ira Sachs is known for a body of work marked by beauty, nuance, and intimate portrayals of people and their emotional lives. He is driven, he says, by a deep curiosity about freedom and its limits - both in his characters and in filmmaking itself. This is part of the reason why Taxi Zum Klo (Taxi to the Toilet), a radical portrait of personal and sexual freedom, blew his mind. The semi-autobiographical story of writer/director/star Frank Ripploh takes us into his...

Cabaret icon, RuPaul’s Drag Race Superstar, acclaimed actress and vocalist, the “internationally tolerated” Jinkx Monsoon joins Cooper and Tabitha to explore the many layers of Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1950 backstage theater drama All About Eve. Starring Bette Davis in the role that came to define her career, and Ann Baxter, the multiple Oscars-winning film is iconic for its witty dialogue and its scathing take on the ruthless nature of show business. Jinkx shares how Davis’s performance inspires...

Twenty years ago, one of the most indelible movie characters of recent decades was born when Napoleon Dynamite premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. From Vote for Pedro T-shirts to the pet llama Tina (aka: “Fat Lard”) and a seriously iconic dance number, Napoleon Dynamite has earned a top slot in the pop culture canon of the 21st century. This week, Cooper and Tabitha speak with Jared Hess who, together with his co-writer and wife Jerusha Hess, is the force behind Napoleon...

Willem Dafoe joins Tabitha and Cooper to share Onibaba, the 1964 film by the prolific and pioneering Japanese filmmaker Kaneto Shindô. Literally translated as “Demon Hag”, Onibaba is a tale of a mother and daughter-in-law’s murderous quest for survival in the midst of Japan’s medieval civil war. When a man returning from war enters the picture and latent primal urges emerge, all hell breaks loose. The striking black-and-white imagery and percussive soundtrack make for a wildly kinetic ride...

Director and legendary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson is known for nonfiction work that is inventive, artful, expressive, and maximal. The same can be said of the film that blew her mind -- Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz. The semi-autobiographical film brings us Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), a peripatetic creative force working simultaneously to mount a major Broadway production and complete post-production on a feature film, all while maintaining a lifestyle fueled by cigarettes, pills, one-night...

Celebrated for bringing depth and nuance to roles ranging from a drug-addicted art dealer (High Art, Lisa Cholodenko, 1998), to a dying mother meeting her daughter for the first time (Monica, Andrea Pallaoro, 2023), Patricia Clarkson is no stranger to complex emotional terrain. Perhaps that is why she feels somewhat comfortable in the volatile world of A Woman Under the Influence, John Cassavettes’ 1974 masterpiece. The film centers around Mabel Longhetti, brilliantly rendered by Gena...

From his first viewing at the Angelika as a freshman at NYU, Joan Micklin Silver’s 1988 rom-com Crossing Delancey blew Michael Showalter’s mind. In this episode Michael shares how and why the movie made a lasting mark and how it continues to influence his work today. Adapted by Susan Sandler from her play of the same title, this is the story of Izzy Grossman (Amy Irving), a nice Jewish girl with roots in Manhattan’s Lower East Side but now living uptown with literary-adjacent aspirations. Sam...

From her feature film directorial debut Flamin’ Hot, to her career-launching turn as Gabrielle Solis on Desperate Housewives, Eva Longoria has a thing for characters - and people - who get things done. Case in point, Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro), the central character in Martin Scorsese’s Casino (1995) who brings hard-won street smarts and ruthless clarity to his job as casino boss. He is less clear-eyed when it comes to his hustler-addict wife (Sharon Stone) and unhinged mafioso best...

Time traveling hitman, love-struck greeting card writer, notorious whistleblower, and an alien passing as a human boy are just a few of the characters Joseph Gordon-Levitt has brought to life. His extraordinary range as an actor is matched by his taste in films, as evidenced by his choice of Disney’s Encanto as the film that blew his mind. From the way it subverts storytelling traditions to its layered and lyrical songs, Joe shares all the reasons why Encanto is a favorite with his young...

When trailblazing Native media maker Sterlin Harjo first experienced Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye one solitary day during the pandemic, he says it felt as if he was floating through the film. Floaty and dark, Altman’s 1973 film adaptation of the 1953 book by Raymond Chandler delivers a wry, wise-cracking Elliot Gould as detective Philip Marlowe and takes place in a Los Angeles reshaped by the cultural upheaval of the 1960s. Cueing off The Long Goodbye, Sterlin makes a case for treating...

Comedienne, chanteuse, star, co-writer, and executive producer of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, and our favorite Manhattan, Kansas native, Bridget Everett shares the beloved classic, The Sound of Music. From watching the story of the von Trapps as the youngest of six kids, to how she sees it through the lens of her life and work today, Bridget dives deep into the timeless resonance of the movie and its music. We learn of her admiration for the naturalistic musicality of the film, and why Dame...

The cinematic force that is Ryan Coogler brings us deep into Jacques Audiard’s masterful, layered Un Prophéte. When Malik, an Algerian man, arrives to serve his sentence in a French prison, he must rely upon his capacity for observation and learning to navigate the complex dynamics of race, ethnicity, language, and power that define life behind these particular bars. Ryan touches on why this film is often compared to The Godfather, and describes Malik, played by the fiercely intense Tahar...

A guest who needs no introduction, Jon Hamm, dives into the 1988 Italian film, Cinema Paradiso, directed by Guiseppe Tornatore. The film begins when Salvatore di Vita, a superstar filmmaker in Rome, recalls his childhood in a small Sicilian village during the aftermath of World War II. With his father lost at war, young Salvatore forms a deep friendship with Alberto, the projectionist at the local cinema, and falls in love with film. As a teenager growing up in St. Louis, Jon’s moviegoing...

Everyone’s favorite “Superstar”, Molly Shannon, shares why and how Victor Fleming’s 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz has blown her mind. From her first viewing at age four, to her star turn as Dorothy in Cleveland’s Heights Youth Theater production, The Wizard of Oz is a metaphorical reflection of many of Molly’s life experiences. We hear from her about the iconic performances by Judy Garland as Dorothy and Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West, an only-in-Hollywood moment at an L.A....

Iconic filmmaker Gregg Araki brings us into the singular, surreal world of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Universally panned when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1992, the film has since become a cult classic. Starring Sheryl Lee and Kyle McClachlan, with cameos from David Bowie and Harry Dean Stanton, the film is Lynch’s answer to the question posed by his Twin Peaks television series: Who killed Laura Palmer? Gregg makes the case for the movie as an uncompromising...

Filmmakers, actors, and creators of all kinds answer one simple question: What is a film that blew your mind?!  No film is off limits as each episode centers around one guest and one film that has had a profound impact on their life, work, and art. Co-hosts John Cooper and Tabitha Jackson, former directors of the Sundance Film Festival, call upon decades at the forefront of independent film to bring their insider knowledge, lived experiences, and signature chemistry to conversations that dive...