Capturing the tense hours leading to a pivotal moment in live TV history, the new SATURDAY NIGHT is defined by a looming deadline that reminded us of another New York-based all-nighter captured on film: D.A. Pennebaker’s 1970 TV pilot turned documentary film ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM: COMPANY. Despite being less than an hour long, the fly-on-the-wall document of Stephen Sondheim and company recording the definitive version of their Broadway hit in a single night provides no shortage of nuance to...

The new Dreamworks animated feature THE WILD ROBOT is partially about the struggles of parenthood, partially about the joys of community, and the larger idea bridging those two parts — that of being more than you were “programmed” to be — is also what links it most directly to Brad Bird’s THE IRON GIANT. But there’s a lot more going on in THE WILD ROBOT besides that, arguably too much, which forms the central debate of the first half of this week’s discussion. Then we bring THE IRON GIANT...

It’s understandable that new Dreamworks feature THE WILD ROBOT pulls some of its source code from THE IRON GIANT, considering the latter’s towering reputation as one of the greatest animated films ever, robot protagonist or otherwise. But the enduring legacy of Brad Bird’s debut feature was far from assured when it blipped through theaters back in 1999, so this week we’re examining what’s behind the film’s upgrade from box-office flop to stone-cold classic, one known for its ability to reduce...

Azazel Jacobs’ HIS THREE DAUGHTERS is, like Tamara Jenkins’ THE SAVAGES, a film about the heartbreaking experience of caring for an aging parent, but even more so it is, also like the other film in the pairing, about adult siblings reuniting and renegotiating their relationships under those fraught conditions. We’re decidedly more mixed on Jacobs’ film, however, which often plays like a stage adaptation — at times that works, at others it doesn’t, and we talk through both in the first half of...

Caring for an elderly or infirm parent is a common experience that is less commonly depicted on screen, particularly with a comedic bent, which is why Azazal Jacobs’ new HIS THREE DAUGHTERS inspired us to revisit the 2007 dramedy THE SAVAGES, which writer-director Tamara Jenkins drew from her own experiences dealing with a father with dementia. Much of the film’s success lies with the performances of Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as siblings whose estranged father’s deteriorating...

Jeremy Saulnier’s REBEL RIDGE puts a distinctly 2020s spin on the one-man army formula established in the era-defining ‘80s action hit FIRST BLOOD, resulting in a film with more nuance, less firepower, and equal amounts of ass-kicking. We parse that equation a bit more in-depth in our spoiler-light discussion of REBEL RIDGE, before bringing back FIRST BLOOD to see how the decades between the two films shape their respective ideas about escalation of force, small-town policing, and genre...

Genre specialist Jeremy Saulnier’s latest banger, REBEL RIDGE, owes an obvious debt to the film that kicked off Sylvester Stallone’s second long-running franchise, 1982’s FIRST BLOOD, but the two films are of very different eras with very different core concerns about policing in America. So this week we’re focusing on the shadow of Vietnam that falls over the Pacific Northwest in the form of John Rambo, digging into the deeper themes that lie beneath the proverbial pissing contest between...

Fede Álvarez’s ALIEN: ROMULUS is at its core an act of homage to the larger franchise, but is that a feature, a bug, or both? That’s a question we attempt to reconcile in our discussion of Álvarez’s acid-blood-soaked film, before comparing how this late-stage sequel compares with the franchise’s original sequel, James Cameron’s ALIENS, in iterating on the corporate meddling of Weyland-Yutani, the evolving nature of artificial humans, and comedy as characterization. And for Your Next Picture...

Fede Álverez’s ALIEN: ROMULUS is so reference-packed that an argument could be made for pairing it with just about any ALIEN film, but since we’ve already discussed the 1979 original, and because the Next Picture Show bylaws state that if an opportunity to discuss ALIENS arises we must take it, we’re digging into the first of the many sequels this franchise has spawned. Thanks to writer-director James Cameron’s economy of storytelling, there are so many iconic moments, characters, and lines...

Is it a bit unfair to compare M. Night Shyamalan’s new grip-it-and-rip-it thriller TRAP to Fritz Lang’s 1931 cinematic landmark M? Sure, but that’s the name of the game here on The Next Picture Show, and for all of TRAP’s faults — which we try not to take too much glee in enumerating in this discussion — it does work, however awkwardly, as an extrapolation of the ideas and narrative techniques first established in Lang’s film. From its interest in exploring the mind of a serial killer to its...

The new TRAP, like so many M. Night Shyamalan movies, openly courts comparisons to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, but its focus on the large-scale manhunt for a serial killer combined with its psychological interest in said killer has roots even further back in film history. So this week we reach all the way back to Fritz Lang’s first talkie, 1931’s M, to see how it frames the search for a compulsive child murderer decades before the term “serial killer” existed, and sort through the film’s...

No show this week, but NPS co-host Genevieve Koski announces the next pairing, inspired by M. Night Shyamalan's "Trap." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Osgood Perkins’ new LONGLEGS shares some clear narrative and thematic DNA with THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, but it’s much more bizarre and divisive in its approach to horror-adjacent serial killer storytelling than Jonathan Demme’s crowd-pleasing, Oscar-sweeping hit. We’re joined again this week by critic and author Charles Bramesco to talk through the varying degrees to which we vibed with Perkins’ style and Nicolas Cage’s central performance, before bringing LONGLEGS’ predecessor back into the...

There’s no doubt that director Osgood Perkins had Jonathan Demme’s THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS in mind when he made the new LONGLEGS, but there are as many fascinating contrasts as there are comparisons between these two films about inexperienced female FBI agents and seasoned serial killers. But before getting into those next episode, this week we’re joined by critic and author Charles Bramesco for an in-depth revisitation of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS that digs into how the “Demme Touch” elevated a...

Pulitzer-winning playwright Annie Baker’s filmmaking debut JANET PLANET is sort of a dual coming-of-age story, centering a young girl’s fascination with her single mother who is still figuring out her own place in the world. But it also resists broad statements and neat conclusions, giving us space to unpack our own interpretations of the emotional depths that lie beneath the film’s quiet exterior. Then we bring Lukas Moodysson’s TOGETHER back into the discussion to compare its non-judgmental...

The new JANET PLANET follows a young girl who comes to see the world differently thanks to a succession of people her hippyish single mother brings into their lives, and more specifically into the home they share. Its sense of the fraught sense of intimacy that accompanies cohabitation by family members and lovers brought to mind Lukas Moodysson’s TOGETHER, another film that’s interested in how its characters’ progressive politics overlap and even interfere with their family dynamics. This...

When thinking of a film to pair with INSIDE OUT 2, we purposefully avoided the new Pixar sequel’s 2015 original because the two are so of a piece, delving into the contrasts between them seemed too much like nitpicking. Still, we attempt to make fruitful discussion out of those nitpicks in this week’s conversation about the new film, and perhaps even change one panelist’s opinion of it in the process. Then we bring in the film we actually chose for this pairing, 2012’s BRAVE, which we all...

INSIDE OUT 2 is quite literally built around the emotional experience of being a young girl, but it wasn’t too long ago that this was uncharted territory for Pixar. That’s why rather than comparing the animation studio’s latest sequel to the original, we’re reaching a little further back in the filmography to revisit its first attempt to tell a story about a teenager trying to define her own identity: 2012's BRAVE. Representing some big firsts for Pixar, BRAVE had a fair amount of baggage and...

The new FURIOSA functions as both a prequel and a sequel within the larger mythology of the MAD MAX franchise, and we’re looking at it from both of those angles this week. First, we talk over why George Miller’s latest might have flopped at the box office (prequel fatigue) and why it feels poised to overcome that reputation in due time (it is the rare good prequel). Then we zoom out to bring 1979’s original MAX MAX back into the picture and consider this franchise’s ongoing interest in themes...

There’s a lot of narrative road between 1979’s MAD MAX and the new FURIOSA, but in pursuing George Miller’s decades-spanning franchise back to its starting line, we uncover a lot about what fuels this saga beyond the big, loud cars. For example, there are also big, loud motorcycles. But more importantly, there’s a healthy skepticism toward revenge as motivation, an interest in messianic leaders and hyper-verbal antagonists, and an efficient approach to world-building that prizes the visceral...

Jane Schoenburn’s I SAW THE TV GLOW is a film whose cultural reference points tend to take the form of vibes more than direct nods. But the writer-director's stated inspiration point in DONNIE DARKO can be seen on both the surface — the  recent-past suburban setting, the teenage outcasts struggling to relate to the world around them — and on a deeper level in the protagonists’ slippery grips on reality and their own identity. In the case of I SAW THE TV GLOW, that takes the shape of a trans...

The horror-inflected suburban setting of the new I SAW THE TV GLOW — not to mention writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s own comments on their inspiration — put us in mind of Richard Kelly’s 2001 cult classic DONNIE DARKO, which also follows a teen protagonist struggling to maintain their grip on reality. We’re joined once again by writer, critic, and friend of the show Emily St. James to discuss how our relationships to both that teen protagonist and the movie named for him have shifted over...

Like the first film in this pairing, Richard Rush’s 1980 oddity THE STUNT MAN, David Leitch’s new THE FALL GUY utilizes the chaos of a film set as the cover for a crime, not to mention the inspiration for both romance and comedy. THE FALL GUY is a bit more straightforward in its crowd-pleasing intentions, though, to both its benefit and detriment, which we talk through in sharing our reactions to the new film. Then we bring THE STUNT MAN back in to compare its overlapping but distinct ideas...

While there are countless movies featuring the work of stunt performers, movies that center the experiences of those performers are much more rare, which is part of what motivated former stunt performer David Leitch to make the new THE FALL GUY. One of the standouts on that short list is Richard Rush’s 1980 genre oddity THE STUNT MAN, which uses the experience of its accidental-stuntie protagonist to blur the lines between post-Vietnam reality and moviemaking fantasy in fascinating, sometimes...