Junk Filter

Washington Post political reporter Dave Weigel returns to the show for a look at the new conservative political satire My Son Hunter, directed by the actor Robert Davi, his first directorial feature in 15 years.  The story of the chaotic lifestyle of Hunter Biden, his business dealings and the salacious details of the contents of his recovered laptop has frustrated the right ever since it fai...

Access the entire 109 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102-blood-with-71701563 In the latest in a recurring series on the albums of Elvis Costello, Scott Bunn, the author of the wonderful Recliner Notes blog, joins me from Asheville, North Carolina for an in-depth discussion of EC’s final album for Columbia Records be...

Access the entire 79 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/posts/100-michael-mann-70847596 For the 100th episode of Junk Filter, public health worker and trivia host James Majure joins us from Athens, GA to discuss Michael Mann’s first feature film as a director, 1981’s Thief starring James Caan and Tuesday Weld. Thief is a fund...

The author Jacob Bacharach returns for a show about the new film about the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr. Michael Morbius. The failure of Morbius , both critically and commercially, is interesting to ponder: why did this particular Marvel movie bomb? Why did this film inspire so many viral memes that Sony Pictures decided to re-release it in cinemas to cash in on Morb Fever? And is the ironic o...

Manhattan-based actor and writer Mike Mekus returns to the show for a discussion of one of Spike Lee’s most underrated films, 1998’s basketball drama He Got Game starring Denzel Washington and NBA player Ray Allen. Denzel is Jake Shuttlesworth, a convict secretly released from Attica by order of the warden to try to get his son Jesus, a future NBA star, to sign a letter of intent to play college b...

Access the entire 84 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/69724035 The very funny actor and comedian Chris Calogero joins me from Los Angeles for a discussion on one of the great L.A. films, Michael Mann’s Heat ! Michael Mann is back in action lately, with Ferrari in production, the impending release of his first novel He...

The writer, actor and musician Patrick Marlborough, a regular contributor to Vice, Gawker and The Guardian, joins me from Perth in Western Australia for a show about the groundbreaking 1995 miniseries Blue Murder , starring Richard Roxburgh. Blue Murder tells the true story of corruption in the New South Wales police department and the friendship between the hot-headed detective Roger Rogerson and...

The hosts of the Hit Factory podcast, Aaron Casias and Carlee Gomes, return to the show from San Francisco to defend John Woo’s Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) , generally considered the weakest film in the series . Woo’s underappreciated sequel is best enjoyed as his attempt to fuse modern American blockbuster filmmaking with the delirious style of Hong Kong action cinema and the spirit of Hitchcock...

Access the entire 84 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/68615908 Alex Shephard, senior writer for The New Republic and co-host of the Mr. Difficult podcast, returns to Junk Filter for a discussion of Baz Luhrmann’s maximalist jukebox musical biopic Elvis , starring Austin Butler in a star-making role as The King and the...

Writer Adam Jackson (Vice, Noisey) returns to the podcast for a discussion of the new Disney/Pixar animated feature Lightyear . Why did Lightyear fail at the box office? Was it the convoluted premise (this isn’t a movie about the toy Buzz Lightyear or even a Toy Story film, this is the movie about the actual Buzz Lightyear that young Andy loved so much in 1995 that he bought the toy)? Was it the “...

Toronto-based writer and content strategist Karen Geier returns to the show for a discussion of John Waters and his 1994 “true crime” comedy Serial Mom , starring Kathleen Turner as a suburban Baltimore housewife who is eventually discovered to be a serial killer and becomes a tabloid sensation during her criminal trial. The remarkable thing about this film is it was released mere weeks before the...

Access the entire 90 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/67675544 The hosts of the 30 Years Later podcast, Ricky Camilleri and Chris Chafin, join me from New York City to discuss Larry Clark’s 2001 true-crime drama Bully . Possibly the ultimate Florida movie, Bully is a tale of crime and punishment that contrasts a stron...

Writer and podcaster Gus Lanzetta returns to the podcast from São Paulo, Brazil for a show about Mads Mikkelsen and his 2020 Danish action comedy Riders of Justice . Along the way we discuss Mikkelsen’s two careers in domestic and international cinema, the history of Danish cinema that dates back to the beginning of the medium, and how Riders of Justice balances action, violence and comedy and put...

Access the entire 72 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/67140452 From Montreal, Rob Rousseau returns to the podcast for a discussion of the decline of comedian Ricky Gervais, with the release of his new Netflix special Super Nature . We’re a long way from the heights of The Office now. Why does Gervais seem more determi...

Writer and former NFB senior producer Gerry Flahive joins the podcast to discuss moviegoing in Toronto in the 1970s, at the dawn of the multiplex age. Gerry worked as a teenage usher at the new Imperial Six cinema, under the precise command of cinema manager Phil Traynor, the inspiration for Gerry’s alternate Twitter persona Bert Xanadu, who tweets from the year 1973 where he is both the reigning...

Access the entire 88 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/66652078 Will Sloan returns to the podcast for an in-depth discussion of the strange career path of comedian and impressionist Joe Piscopo: from his origins on Saturday Night Live and stardom as their second banana to superstar Eddie Murphy, his short-lived movie c...

Access the entire 88 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/65467969 Writer Brian Buster joins me from Los Angeles to discuss David Robert Mitchell’s 2018 mystery Under the Silver Lake , Mitchell’s blank check film after the success of It Follows . Silver Lake played in competition at Cannes but for some reason its distribu...

Access the entire 82 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/64822370 Screenwriter and filmmaker Brenden Gallagher joins the program from Los Angeles to discuss two westerns about Toxic Masculinity: Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog (2021), for which she won Best Director at this year’s Academy Awards, and John Ford’s The...

Asawin Suebsaeng, senior reporter for The Daily Beast and co-host of the Fever Dreams podcast, joins the show from Cincinnati to discuss Walter Hill’s underrated 1988 Cold War cop thriller Red Heat , starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a KGB cop on the hunt for a Soviet gangster on the loose in the United States, forced to cooperate on the case with Chicago cop Jim Belushi. Arnold mentioned filming...

Access the entire 58 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/63901173 Part two of our Bat Panel on the Gotham Cinematic Universe focuses on Joker (Phillips, 2019) starring Joaquin Phoenix in his Oscar-winning performance as the Clown Prince of Crime, and how both it and The Batman lean heavily on signifiers from other charac...

Returning Junk Filter guests Corey Atad and Ben Nash join forces for a special Bat Panel, a two part episode on the latest films in the Gotham Cinematic Universe. Part one takes a deep dive into Matt Reeves’ The Batman (2022): what we liked about it, our issues with the film, a discussion of the film’s politics, and how DC and Warner Bros. continues to evoke the cinematic style of other filmmakers...

One of the great American character actors, Harry Dean Stanton had over 200 acting credits but only played the leading role in two films, and my guest Justin Schneider (a patron of the podcast) pitched his way onto the show to discuss them: 1984’s arthouse classic Paris, Texas and the underseen 2017 comedy-drama Lucky (Stanton’s final film to be released before his death). Along the way we discuss...

Access the entire 92 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/62861889 The hosts of the Hit Factory podcast return to Junk Filter for a discussion of the 2003 drama Shattered Glass , the directorial debut of screenwriter Billy Ray, starring Hayden Christensen and Peter Sarsgaard. It’s a great adaptation of the rise and fall o...

Access the entire 89 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/62244513 Ben Nash, a PhD student at Kings College London and a writer whose work has appeared at Mubi and Splice Today, joins the show from Colchester, England to discuss two recent films about “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, each grappling in their own way wit...

Actor and writer Mike Mekus joins the show from Manhattan for a discussion of Steven Soderbergh and his 2009 “comedy thriller” The Informant! Based on the best-selling non-fiction book of the same name (sans exclamation point) by Kurt Eichenwald, it’s the story of Mark Whitacre, an Archer Daniels Midland Company executive turned corporate whistleblower on price-fixing collusion in agri-industry, w...