The Next Picture Show

Craig Gillespie’s crowd-pleasing new I, TONYA features a tragicomic tone, a genesis in tabloid true-crime, and an abundance of style, all qualities it shares with Gus Van Sant’s 1995 mockumentary TO DIE FOR, starring an ascendant Nicole Kidman. In this half of our discussion of the two films, we attempt to pinpoint where TO DIE FOR fits into Van Sant’s varied filmography, how it navigates its tric...

We return to the consideration of pleasure and heartbreak under the Italian sun via Luca Guadagnino’s sensual new romance CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, a film with a very different narrative than THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY that nonetheless shares some of its major characteristics. After sharing our reactions to CMBYN, we dive into a discussion of what the two films share, and don’t, in their portrayals of li...

The new CALL ME BY YOUR NAME’s gorgeous invocation of Italian summers and repressed desire brought to mind an earlier film that does the same, though to much darker ends: Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, starring top-of-their-games Matt Damon, Jude Law, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Gwyneth Paltrow. In this half of the discussion, we dig into what all three of those actors brin...

Our so-bad-it’s-good moviemaking double feature continues with a new film from James Franco that channels the spirit of Tim Burton’s ED WOOD: THE DISASTER ARTIST, about the tortured making of Tommy Wiseau’s cult hit THE ROOM. We discuss the new film in some depth before going into its connections to ED WOOD, from their depictions of the filmmaking process to their shared instinct to send their tra...

Inspired by James Franco’s new THE DISASTER ARTIST, we look back at another movie about bad movies and the people who make them, Tim Burton’s 1994 comic biodrama ED WOOD. In this half of our discussion, we muse on the motivations driving Wood and Burton alike, locate the emotional core of this highly stylized film, and try to determine what makes a good bad movie, rather than just a plain old bad...

Following our visit to David Mamet’s STATE AND MAIN, we head to another small town for a different sort of redemption tale: Martin McDonagh’s THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI. While the two films may not have a whole lot of overlap in terms of plot, they share a theatrical lineage as well as a tweaked view of small-town life, and both feature stacked ensembles with a strong handle on writ...

Inspired by Martin McDonagh’s new pitch-black comedy THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI, we look back at another playwright-driven film about redemption set in a small town populated by a colorful ensemble: David Mamet’s 2000 comedy STATE AND MAIN. How does the sex scandal at the center of Mamet's film look in a post-Weinstein 2017? What are we to make of the film’s cynicism toward Hollywoo...

We return to the dawn of the millennium to discuss Greta Gerwig’s new solo directorial debut LADY BIRD, and how it echoes the sardonic coming-of-age comedy that characterizes Terry Zwigoff’s GHOST WORLD. After parsing our individual reactions to and readings of LADY BIRD, we look at how the two films compare in terms of their view of nostalgia and mainstream culture, as well as the respective fami...

Greta Gerwig’s fantastic directorial debut LADY BIRD is set in 2002, when its protagonist might have recognized a contemporary kindred spirit in Enid, the protagonist of Terry Zwigoff’s 2001 coming-of-age comedy GHOST WORLD: Both characters are creatively minded outcasts who are leaving high school and facing uncertainty about their futures. In this half of our pairing of the two films, we focus o...

Noah Baumbach’s new THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED), starring Dustin Hoffman, has some strong connections to Hoffman’s star-making role in Mike Nichols’ THE GRADUATE, in particular, its depiction of generations trying to escape one another. After discussing our largely positive reactions to the new film (with one major exception), we talk over how the two stories reflect and refract each...

Noah Baumbach’s new THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES casts Dustin Hoffman on one side of a generational divide, which naturally brings to mind Hoffman’s breakout role as a character on the other side of that generation divide: Mike Nichols’ seminal 1967 comedy-drama THE GRADUATE. In this half of the discussion dedicated to that earlier film, we discuss how THE GRADUATE’s sympathies shift with age, argue ove...

Our consideration of Blade Running through the decades continues with a discussion of Denis Villeneuve’s new BLADE RUNNER 2049, which picks up several of the threads left dangling by Ridley Scott’s BLADE RUNNER and adds a few more of its own in the process. After discussing our mixed reactions to the new film, we dig into the many ways 2049 is informed by its predecessor, and the ways in which it...

Denis Villeneuve’s new sequel BLADE RUNNER 2049 made an inauspicious debut with audiences and critics alike when it opened, something it shares with its predecessor and inspiration, Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi noir touchstone BLADE RUNNER. Will the new sequel follow in its ancestor’s footsteps and become a cult classic that viewers are still picking apart 35 years later? It’s too soon to tell, but...

We return to the realm of societal allegory in our examination of Darren Aronofsky’s divisive horror-comedy-whatsit MOTHER! and how it relates to Luis Buńuel’s 1962 surrealist satire THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL, a film Aronofsky has cited as direct inspiration. After grappling with our reactions to MOTHER! and its abundance of malleable metaphors, we look at what the two films share — and what they do...

In Darren Aronofsky’s MOTHER!, Jennifer Lawrence is stuck in a creepy old estate while a series of bizarre, inexplicable events drive her to the brink of madness — a premise and tone that’s surprisingly similar to the surreal black comedy of Luis Buñuel, in particular his 1962 classic THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL. In this half of the discussion, we dig into Buñuel’s film, its place in his filmography,...

We return to the realm of Stephen King adaptations for a first-impressions review of the new IT, whose vision of 1980s childhood camaraderie and adventure shares a lot with STAND BY ME’s vision of 1950s childhood camaraderie and adventure — only with a really scary clown in the mix. We dig into how the two films reflect some of King’s favored tropes around bullies and adults, how they each handle...

On the surface, Andy Muschietti’s new adaptation of Stephen King’s IT is about a scary clown and fear itself, but beyond that, it’s also about friendship, nostalgia, and the moment when childhood ends — themes it shares with another of the better cinematic King adaptations, Rob Reiner’s 1986 film STAND BY ME. In this half of our comparison of the two films, we speculate why King thought STAND BY M...

For the second half our gentleman-thieves pairing, we bring LOGAN LUCKY into the discussion, to see how it fits into the reliably eclectic filmography of Steven Soderbergh, and how it stands up to its clear forebear within that filmography, 2001’s OCEAN’S ELEVEN. But there are marked distinctions between the two films as well, from their wildly different settings and characters to the mechanics an...

Steven Soderbergh’s recent return to feature filmmaking, LOGAN LUCKY, has drawn comparisons to the director’s 2001 smash hit OCEAN’S ELEVEN, and not without good reason: The two crowd-pleasing heist films share a lot in terms of their structure, team dynamics, and filmmaking style. In this first half of our discussion of the two films, we dive into Soderbergh’s OCEAN’S to talk over how this finely...

Like Gillo Pontecorvo’s BATTLE OF ALGIERS, Kathryn Bigalow’s new film DETROIT expresses a strong point of view on racial injustice through a careful recreation of a real historical event — and also like BATTLE OF ALGIERS, it’s stirred up some controversy surrounding its docu-journalistic approach. We unpack that controversy, and DETROIT more generally, before diving into how the two films compare...

Kathryn Bigelow’s intense, controversial new docu-drama DETROIT owes no small debt to Gillo Pontecorvo’s intense, controversial 1966 film THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, which covers another volatile historical moment with a potent mixture of newsreel-style realism and expressionistic fervor. In this half of our comparison of the two films, we discuss what makes BATTLE OF ALGIERS such an unsettling and res...

We return to the PLANET OF THE APES series to see how it’s evolved from the 1968 original to Matt Reeves’ stunning new WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES. After discussing why the new trilogy, and WAR in particular, works so well in the current era, we examine how the two ends of this franchise speak to each other over the span of five decades, discussing their ape effects, their social themes, and th...

This week, we’re exploring two films from the opposite ends of the same ape-filled franchise. First, we focus on the cry of “YOU MANIACS” heard ’round the world, 1968’s PLANET OF THE APES, which introduced a fruitful concept that would continue evolve through sequels, TV series, remakes, and a modern prequel series, the most recent installment of which, WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES, we’ll discus...

We return to a plane somewhere between life and death (and between horror and drama) to discuss David Lowery’s new A GHOST STORY, both on its own and in the context of Herk Harvey’s similar haunting and genre-defying CARNIVAL OF SOULS. We talk over how the two films tackle big, weighty concepts like the nature of time and the afterlife, as well as how their distinctive use of music contributes to...

Inspired by David Lowery’s new A GHOST STORY, we’re looking back at another microbudget horror-drama that’s haunting in both the literal and puntastic sense: Herk Harvey’s creepy cult hit CARNIVAL OF SOULS, a 1962 oddity about a woman trapped somewhere between life and death who can’t ditch the strange figures following her. In this half of the discussion, we look for links to Harvey’s background...