The Playlist Podcast Network

sdsdsdHow do you turn one of the most beloved fighting games of all time into a movie without losing everything that makes it gloriously ridiculous? On this episode of The Discourse Podcast , director Kitao Sakurai (“The Eric Andre Show,” “Bad Trip”) joins us to discuss his gonzo approach to “Street Fighter,” assembling a cast that includes Jason Momoa , Andrew Koji , Noah Centineo , Callina Liang...

Mackenzie Davis joins The Playlist’s Bingeworthy Podcast to talk about Netflix’s new creature-feature series “Below,” working opposite Josh Hartnett in Newfoundland, and why the show’s mix of horror, family drama, and dark comedy appealed to her. She also looks back at “Terminator: Dark Fate,” which she still thinks got a “bad rap,” recalls the near-religious atmosphere of working with Denis Ville...

Giovanni Ribisi joins The Playlist’s Bingeworthy Podcast to discuss MGM+’s “American Hostage,” the true story of Tony Kiritsis, working opposite Jon Hamm, and his increasingly serious work as a cinematographer. Ribisi explains how he approached playing Kiritsis, the Indianapolis man who held mortgage broker Richard “Dick” Hall hostage for 63 hours with a sawed-off shotgun wired to his neck, and wh...

Andrew Garfield joins The Playlist’s The Discourse Podcast to discuss Paul Greengrass’ “The Uprising,” the historical epic’s contemporary political urgency, and why he sees the film as a “soul cry” for a world where “everything is terribly wrong.” He also breaks down Greengrass’ immersive filmmaking style and reveals the advice Matt Damon gave him before production. Garfield also talks about his s...

There is a superhero shot that never was in Macon Blair ’s “ Idiots ,” but nobody is saving the day. The camera is planted low, looking up at Dave Franco just before a practical diarrhea rig erupts from his shorts and completely browns out the lens. Somewhere between the Cocoa Krispies used to give the mess extra texture and Franco’s dainty bird tattoo singing “who farted,” the movie finds its bea...

Tell Dr. Jack Abbot to find a hobby, and the man joins a SWAT team. That is the version of healing “The Pitt” handed Shawn Hatosy in Season 2, and it gets right to what makes Abbot such a compelling presence. He is calm enough to walk into any medical disaster and damaged enough to mistake more danger for self-care. Hatosy has not been around the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center nearly as much as...

After multiple films and revival seasons, “ The X-Files ” creator  Chris Carter finally got another shot at his often misunderstood film, “ The X-Files: I Want to Believe .” The new R-rated cut restores disturbing imagery, reshapes the music, and even strips away some of the Mulder-Scully relationship material. It also commits what a certain corner of the fanbase may consider the ultimate R-rated...

There was no reason to make another polite, faithful version of “ Cape Fear. ” Thankfully, Creator/Showrunner  Nick Antosca had no interest in one. Apple TV ’s “Cape Fear” is sweaty, violent, emotionally ugly, and pitched somewhere between a domestic thriller and a full-blown hyper-violent fever dream. The show takes the basic machinery of the 1962 film and Martin Scorsese ’s operatic 1991 remake,...

On paper, “ Furious ” sounds like something we’ve all seen before. An FBI agent. A serial killer. A cat-and-mouse chase stretched across eight episodes. That’s technically what the show is, but it's also not really what the show is. The cat is carrying around a mountain of old trauma. The mouse has a disturbingly decent argument. Neither one is behaving in a way that makes it easy to decide wh...

“ Motor City ” feels like somebody found a filthy ’70s revenge movie in the trunk of a burned-out Cadillac, wiped off the blood, and restored the whole thing in 4K and Dolby Atmos. It is loud, violent, strangely romantic and, thankfully, almost entirely uninterested in people sitting around explaining themselves. The fists, engines, needle drops and occasional shotgun blast handle most of the talk...

Apple TV ’s “ Lucky ” joins the platform’s growing collection of prestige shows about attractive, deeply stressed people having the worst week of their lives. “ Presumed Innocent ,” “ Hijack ,” “ Your Friends & Neighbors ”—the streamer has become weirdly good at watching people sprint from one life-altering disaster to the next. Anya Taylor-Joy ’s title character has a slightly more complicate...

There is no graceful way to ask another married couple whether they would like to have sex with you. There are only varying degrees of disaster. That is the combustible premise behind “ The Invite ,” a sharp, funny, and increasingly bruising relationship comedy directed by Olivia Wilde . Wilde and Seth Rogen play Angela and Joe, a married couple who have become more like irritated roommates than r...

The “ Enola Holmes ” films have never been short on charm and wits, but “Enola Holmes 3” gives the franchise a little more room to breathe and, dare I say, mature. The mystery is still there. The cheeky banter is still there. Enola is still starting fires and solving crimes. But this time, the story heads to Malta and lets Enola and Tewkesbury deal with a mystery that makes them grow up and face t...

“ The Agency ” approaches espionage less as a series of action beats and more as a study in information, perception, and control. The show is at its absolute best when it leans into that tension, allowing seemingly ordinary conversations to simmer with unease while drawing on its wealth of densely fleshed-out characters, each carrying their own agendas, vulnerabilities, and secrets. Conversations...

Robin Hood has been a lot of things over the centuries: noble thief, romantic outlaw, swashbuckling folk hero, animated fox, Kevin Costner with an accent that wanders wherever it pleases. But in Michael Sarnoski’s hands, the myth becomes something darker, sadder, and more spiritually eviscerated. His new film, “The Death of Robin Hood,” is less interested in the legend as a heroic brand than in th...

Just when you think Spider-Man has lost all novelty,  “Spider-Noir” finds its spark by going backward into smoke, shadow, bruised conscience, silly accents, and old Hollywood fatalism. It’s still a comic-book story, complete with masks, villains, superpowers, and a hero trying to decide whether he can outrun the thing he was built to become, but its real trick is tonal. The series treats noir not...

Following up on a cultural phenomenon like “ Yellowstone ” is no easy task. Any spin-off has to balance honoring what made the original series a hit while finding its own fresh ground. With “ Dutton Ranch, ” especially after the letdown of “ Marshals ,” that challenge falls on Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler, who leave Montana behind for Texas in hopes of building something new, only to discover that...

Some shows walk into the room with a genre label pinned neatly to their shirt. They wear it like a badge of honor and adhere to all rules therein.  “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” kicks the door open, knocks over the lamp, checks its phone (Where's my phone?!), spirals emotionally, and somehow still has time to become a murder mystery. It's part divorce drama, part paranoid thriller, part lo...

Be careful what you wish for, sure. But maybe be even more careful what you confuse for love, because Curry Barker ’s “Obsession” takes one of horror’s oldest tricks and turns it into something queasy, funny, tragic, and deeply uncomfortable. It is the kind of movie that starts with a premise simple enough to fit on a cursed greeting card, then keeps tightening the rope until everyone in the room...

The town on “From” has always felt less like a place and more like an emotional pressure cooker with monsters hiding in the walls. Every season cranks that pressure a little higher on the survivors, then asks them to keep pretending they can still function as leaders, parents, lovers, or even just regular people. Season 4 somehow makes all of that feel even more unstable. Hope is not dead in this...

Director Damian McCarthy really loves to hit that dread button, and in “Hokum,” he absolutely wears that thing out. Not with loud shocks or cheap jolts, but with the kind of slow, creeping unease that just sits there, staring back at you. The longer you watch, the more it feels like the movie isn’t escalating so much as tightening, quietly, deliberately, until there’s nowhere left to go. Then he s...

Lots of action shows begin with some no-nonsense badass fully in charge of their faculties, but “Man On Fire” starts with a man who just plain isn’t. Before anything even happens in the story, Creasy is a suicidal, messy shell of his former peak CIA agent self. But, as with other iterations, that lack of stability is the hook. This isn’t " Reacher ," and a muscular heroic soldier boy doe...

When networks spin off popular series, it's easy to come at them with arms folded and write them off as cash grabs. A " Stranger Things " animated spin-off really could have failed. A version of this show exists, in another reality, as something like a Saturday morning cartoon with “Stranger Things” as a disguise: bright colors, low stakes, perhaps Dustin and a sweet monster learning...

We’ve all probably been incredibly annoyed with our partner at one point or another, and thought (just for a second!) “I could kill them,” then went and made dinner as a perfectly functioning adult. The comedy thriller “ Over Your Dead Body ” from director  Jorma Taccone  (“Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping,” “Macgruber”) starring  Jason Segel ,  Samara Weaving  as the warring couple, asks what w...

Some films are just…films. Others feel as though a hugely skilled group of people were challenged to beautifully suffer in front of the camera. “ Apex ,” the new survival thriller on Netflix  on April 24th, absolutely falls into that second category. It’s stark, pared-back, and wonderfully, not-so-slightly crazy. There are two people, a seriously awful predicament, and a huge number of bad choices...