Junk Filter

Access this entire 89 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus shows every month) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/157-five-corners-96799903 The music and film writer and editor Kieran Grant joins us to discuss the 1987 comedy/drama Five Corners , a cult film we love that has been hard to see...

Arizona-based writer and playwright Ashley Naftule returns to the podcast for a look at the Czechoslovak New Wave of the 1960s, focusing on the recently rediscovered 1963 film The Cassandra Cat , and its director Vojtěch Jasný. In the strange fairy tale The Cassandra Cat , a village is disrupted when a travelling circus comes to town featuring a magical cat wearing sunglasses who can reveal the tr...

Access this entire 107 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus shows every month) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/155-o-j-made-in-95579279 In the second part of our salute to Ezra Edelman’s 2016 documentary O.J.: Made in America , Karen Geier and I discuss the back half of the film; from the...

The writer and content strategist Karen Geier returns for a deep dive into Ezra Edelman’s Oscar-winning documentary from 2016, O.J.: Made in America, made for ESPN’s film unit ’30 for 30’ but released in theatres (the Academy changed the rules for the Documentary category after this 5 part docuseries won). This episode covers the first half of this fantastic 467 minute documentary, from O.J.’s ori...

Access this entire 93 minute episode and additional monthly bonus episodes by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/153-godzilla-one-95000376 The cartoonist and co-creator of Justice Warriors , Ben Clarkson, joins the pod from Montreal to talk about Godzilla Minus One, the 33rd film in Toho Studios' v...

The author Jacob Bacharach returns for a show about Ridley Scott’s latest, the 200 million dollar epic Napoleon, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby. History nerds, YouTube film cranks and the Roman statue bluechecks on Twitter are up in arms about the latest from the Riddler, for straying too far from the real history and most egregiously for hiring their beloved Joker to portray their bel...

The writer Jessica Ritchey returns to the pod for a show about the continuing collapse of the superhero movie as the dominant American film genre with the latest MCU entry, Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels , which cost $270 million dollars and after 4 release date changes finally opened last week and bombed as hard as a Marvel movie has ever bombed, especially considering it’s the sequel to a movie that...

For the 150th episode of the podcast, returning guest Meg Shields joins me from Vancouver for a show about William Friedkin’s legendary horror film The Exorcist , which turns 50 years old this December. I had always been TOO SCARED to watch the original Exorcist (even though I had seen the first two sequels) so for this podcast, as a farewell tribute to Hurricane Billy who passed away this August,...

Access this entire 83 minute episode and additional monthly bonus episodes by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/149-terence-with-91945894 To mark the passing of the great British filmmaker Terence Davies, I’m joined for this episode by two returning guests from the UK who are both big Davies heads, th...

The writer Brian Abrams, author of the new book " You Talkin' to Me?”: The Definitive Guide to Iconic Movie Quotes, joins me from New York City to discuss Sam Peckinpah and his underrated 1972 rodeo drama Junior Bonner starring Steve McQueen and Joe Don Baker. Right after Peckinpah wrapped on his controversial Straw Dogs in England, he jumped into production on Junior Bonner , a small-sta...

Access this entire 80 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes, including the entire Miami Vice sidebar series) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/147-miami-vice-88727844 For the eighth episode in our Miami Vice series, Twitchstreamer and friend of the show Toph returns from Kuala Lumpu...

Access this entire 90 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes, including the entire Miami Vice sidebar series) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/146-miami-vice-88370980⁠ Success breeds imitators, and on this seventh instalment of the pod’s Miami Vice series, the writer Jessica Ritchey...

The writer James Slaymaker, author of Time is Luck: The Cinema of Michael Mann , returns to the pod from Southampton for a discussion of selected works from the veteran British filmmaker Ken Loach, who at age 87 is about to release what is said to be his final feature, The Old Oak . Ken Loach’s 1969 feature Kes is a staple of the British school curriculum to this day and his 2016 film I, Daniel Bl...

The writer and content strategist Karen Geier returns to the pod to say farewell to Paul Reubens and his iconic Pee-wee Herman character. Reubens created the Pee-wee character in the mid 1970s as part of the LA improv troupe The Groundlings, in a cohort that included Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks. A failed attempt to join the cast of SNL in 1980 doubled his resolve to be successful; he took his Pee-w...

Access this entire 90 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes, including the entire  Miami Vice  sidebar series) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/143-miami-vice-87557729 Friend of the show and Miami Vice head Matthew Kinkaid joins us from San Antonio, Texas for the sixth episode in o...

Aaron and Carlee from the Hit Factory podcast return from San Francisco for a deep dive into the underrated 1983 American remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s landmark film Breathless, directed by Jim McBride. Assailed at the time of release for being a shallow exercise in style, to watch Breathless 40 years later is to see a work arguably as influential on the next generation of American filmmakers as God...

On the fifth episode of this podcast’s summer sidebar series on NBC’s crime drama Miami Vice , the writer and podcaster Jeb Lund joins me from Tampa, Florida for a look at the two-season story arc that pitted Bob Balaban against G. Gordon Liddy. Balaban’s Ira Stone, an Army reporter who served with Sonny Crockett in Vietnam, shows up in Miami 10 years later tracking down his sworn enemy, the myste...

Access this entire 87 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes, including the entire Miami Vice sidebar series) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/140-miami-vice-86864671 The Miami Vice sidebar series continues with returning guest Sean Armstrong, a Toronto-based veteran boom operator f...

Access this entire 115 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/139-oppenheimer-86689014 The film writer Corey Atad returns to the show for a deep dive into Christopher Nolan’s historical epic Oppenheimer. Beyond a discussion of the film itself we rev...

The writer and filmmaker Scout Tafoya, author of the new book But God Made Him a Poet: Watching John Ford in the 21st Century , joins the show to discuss one of Ford’s greatest films, the 1962 western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance , starring John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Lee Marvin. Made in the twilight of Ford’s career, the downbeat Liberty Valance is an example of what we would now call a fil...

The writer and critic Jessica Ritchey returns to the show for a look at the strange body of work William Shatner put together in the 1970s, the wilderness years in between the end of the Star Trek TV series and the start of the Star Trek film series.  We focus on four of his films, all currently available to watch on YouTube: The Horror At 37,000 Feet (1973), a TV movie that combines The Exorcist...

Access this entire 102 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/136-miami-vice-85397729 Our Miami Vice series continues with Sarah Kurchak, a Toronto-based writer whose work has appeared in Time and Hazlitt, to discuss one of the greatest tv character...

Returning guest Adam Jackson joined me to bear witness to the box office failure The Flash , on track to lose Warner Bros 200 million dollars after opening with a dismal box office take that was less than half of what was originally projected.  The Flash was caught up in several nightmares, including the public meltdown of its star Ezra Miller and three regime changes at WB/DC that led to several...

Access this entire 90 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show.  https://www.patreon.com/posts/134-miami-vice-84809752 To continue our summer sidebar on NBC’s Miami Vice , we’re joined from Seattle by the author and pop-culture expert Morgan Richter, creator and host of Miami Vice...

The pod’s sidebar series on NBC’s revolutionary TV crime drama Miami Vice (1984-1989) begins with returning guest and friend of the show James Majure joining us from Athens, GA. There is so much to discuss in terms of the influence of Vice on contemporary culture but we’re starting at the beginning, with the origins of the idea of Miami Vice , a glimpse into the real world conditions in the city o...