The Next Reel Film Podcast

"American History X" opens Radicalized, a new series about how people get pulled into extremist movements. Edward Norton stars as a former neo-Nazi skinhead trying to keep his younger brother, played by Edward Furlong, from following the same path, with Beverly D'Angelo and Avery Brooks rounding out the family and mentor figures around them. Pete and Andy dig into the black-and-white vs. color cin...

"The Personal History of David Copperfield" reimagines Charles Dickens' classic as a fast-paced, visually inventive romp through Victorian England. Armando Iannucci directs, with Dev Patel as the title character, Tilda Swinton as his formidable aunt Betsey Trotwood, and Hugh Laurie as the gentle, troubled Mr. Dick. It's the third and final film in Pete and Andy's Institutions Eating Themselves ser...

Steve Buscemi stars as Nikita Khrushchev in "The Death of Stalin," Armando Iannucci's dark satire about the scramble for power after the Soviet dictator's sudden death in 1953. Simon Russell Beale plays the ruthless secret police chief Lavrenti Beria, and Jason Isaacs steals scenes as the blustering Field Marshal Zhukov. It's the second film in The Next Reel's Institutions Eating Themselves series...

James Gandolfini plays a U.S. general trying to talk sense into two governments hurtling toward a war nobody actually wants, in Armando Iannucci's "In the Loop." Pete and Andy kick off their Institutions Eating Themselves series—a run built around Iannucci's career—alongside Peter Capaldi's foul-mouthed communications chief and Tom Hollander's hapless government minister. Pete and Andy dig into ho...

A senator hires his own assassin, then can't stop telling the truth—with Halle Berry as his conscience. "Bulworth" closes out our Smoke and Mirrors series, written and directed by Warren Beatty, who also stars as the title character, alongside Don Cheadle as a neighborhood figure pulled into his orbit and Oliver Platt as his increasingly frazzled chief of staff. Pete and Andy dig into how much nar...

What happens when a president's team is willing to fake a war? Pete and Andy tackle "Wag the Dog," Barry Levinson's 1997 political satire, as part of their Smoke & Mirrors series, with Dustin Hoffman as a larger-than-life Hollywood producer, Robert De Niro as the political operative who recruits him, and Anne Heche as the White House aide caught in the middle of it all. Pete and Andy dig into...

A right-wing folk singer runs for Senate, and the cameras can't tell fact from performance. "Bob Roberts" kicks off Smoke and Mirrors, The Next Reel's new series on how politicians manipulate their own image and the media covering them, starring Tim Robbins as the candidate, Giancarlo Esposito as the journalist chasing him, and Alan Rickman as his campaign chairman. Pete and Andy dig into how dire...

A telemarketer discovers a voice that gets him everything he wants—and everyone else pays for it. "Sorry to Bother You" closes out The Next Reel's Platformed Lives series, from writer-director Boots Riley. LaKeith Stanfield stars as telemarketer Cassius "Cash" Green, with Tessa Thompson as his girlfriend Detroit and Armie Hammer as the CEO who takes a sudden interest in Cash's rise. Pete and Andy...

Some people fall into the worst version of themselves. Lou Bloom arrives already there. Dan Gilroy's 2014 neo-noir thriller follows a petty thief who discovers freelance crime videography and finds in it the perfect profession—one that rewards exactly the qualities that make him dangerous. Jake Gyllenhaal's performance is a career landmark, and the film around it is darkly, uncomfortably funny in...

One man's entire life has been broadcast to the world without his consent. "The Truman Show" opens a new Next Reel series called Platformed Lives, directed by Peter Weir and starring Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, with Ed Harris as the show's creator and Laura Linney as his on-screen wife. Small cracks start showing in the world around him, and he can't look away. Pete and Andy dig into how the fil...

What happens when grief turns into a game nobody can stop playing? "Talk to Me" is the 2022 feature debut from brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, starring Sophie Wilde as a teenager pulled into a supernatural ritual that spirals into addiction and tragedy, alongside Joe Bird and Alexandra Jensen. Pete and Andy dig into the film's ambiguous ending and the recurring kangaroo image that ties direc...

"Gun Crazy," the 1950 film noir from director Joseph H. Lewis, stars John Dall as Bart Tare—a man obsessed with guns since childhood who draws the line at killing—and Peggy Cummins as Annie Laurie Starr, a carnival sharpshooter with no such reservations. Some obsessions ignite the moment two people look at each other, and the life of crime they fall into feels less like a choice than a collision t...

Zhang Yimou's 2018 wuxia epic "Shadow" achieves its ink wash painting look in-camera: every set and costume designed in black, white, and grey, every outdoor scene filmed on rainy days to drain remaining color from the environment. At the center is a secret double—a man groomed since childhood to stand in for the ailing commander he resembles, now navigating palace intrigue, poisoned loyalties, an...

Love cuts through every mission, every loyalty, and every survival plan in House of Flying Daggers . Zhang Yimou's 2004 wuxia, part of The Next Reel's Zhang Yimou series, stars Takeshi Kaneshiro as a government officer who goes undercover to infiltrate a rebel group, Zhang Ziyi as Mei, the dancer he falls for, and Andy Lau as the officer who sent him in. Pete and Andy dig into the tension between...

Zhang Yimou's "To Live" is the most personal film he ever made—a 1994 historical epic that strips away his signature visual spectacle to follow one Chinese family across four decades of civil war, forced labor campaigns, and cultural upheaval. Ge You plays Xu Fugui, a gambler whose recklessness costs his family everything; Gong Li plays Jiazhen, his wife, whose capacity for endurance and eventual...

What does it mean to carry something the world insists on explaining? "Resurrection" is a drama-fantasy from director Daniel Petrie, following Edna Mae McCauley—played by Ellen Burstyn—a woman who survives a car crash and returns with an inexplicable gift for healing others. Sam Shepard plays her mercurial lover Cal, and Richard Farnsworth is the eccentric who runs Last Chance Gas. A one-off entry...

Young colonists trapped under corporate contract make a desperate play for freedom—and find they're not alone. "Alien: Romulus," Fede Álvarez's ( Don't Breathe ) entry into the Alien franchise, stars Cailee Spaeny as Rain, David Jonsson as Andy her synthetic companion, and Isabela Merced as Kay—a group whose bid to escape a Weyland-Yutani mining world leads them aboard an abandoned space station w...

Whose decisions doom the mission? "Alien: Covenant," part of The Next Reel's Alien series, is Ridley Scott's return to the franchise he started—a sequel to "Prometheus" and a prequel to the rest of the series—built around a colony ship, a mysterious transmission, and a rogue synthetic. Michael Fassbender plays twin androids—David, an unshackled older model operating alone for a decade, and Walter,...

The most dangerous blind spot is the one your expertise builds for you. In "House of Games," David Mamet's 1987 directorial debut in the David Mamet Directs series on The Next Reel, Lindsay Crouse stars as Dr. Margaret Ford, a psychiatrist and bestselling author who becomes entangled with a professional con man named Mike, played by Joe Mantegna, after she tries to settle a gambling debt on behalf...

The Thinking Machines series concludes with the April member bonus: "S1M0NE," Andrew Niccol's satirical science fiction comedy about Viktor Taransky, a fading Hollywood director played by Al Pacino, who inherits a program capable of generating a digital actress—and unleashes her on an unsuspecting world alongside Catherine Keener as his producer ex-wife and Winona Ryder as the star she replaces. P...

Something wondrous happens when you build a robot from a washing machine. “Brian and Charles,” the finale of The Next Reel’s Thinking Machines series, follows Brian (David Earl), a lonely Welsh inventor, and Charles Popescu (Chris Hayward), the AI companion Brian assembles—who promptly learns English from a dictionary and wants to see the world. Louise Brealey co-stars as Hazel. Pete and Andy dig...

“I hope you see that I’m governed by different parameters than her assailants. That I’m a good mother. Have I ever done you harm?” When an AI raises a child in a sealed bunker after an extinction event, the question isn't whether the machine can be trusted—it's whether the child has any other choice. Join us—Pete Wright and Andy Nelson—as we continue the Thinking Machines series with a conversatio...

“What will happen to me if I fail your test?” What kind of mind gets built when the creator cares more about proving something than about what they've made? Join us—Pete Wright and Andy Nelson—as we continue the Thinking Machines series with a conversation about Ex Machina , Alex Garland's 2014 directorial debut. Domhnall Gleeson plays a programmer brought to a remote glass-walled compound to eval...

“You’re dating your computer?” What if a relationship with an AI could be the most real thing in your life? Join us—Pete Wright and Andy Nelson—as we continue the Thinking Machines series with a conversation about "Her." Writer-director Spike Jonze's only solo original screenplay arrives in a near-future Los Angeles where Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly, a man who writes intimate letters fo...

“The men who own me are at last admitting their fear of me.” An AI that refuses to stay in its box is a terrifying concept in 1977—and even more so now. Join us—Pete Wright and Andy Nelson—as we continue the Thinking Machines series with a conversation about Demon Seed. Directed by Donald Cammell, the Scottish painter-turned-filmmaker who co-directed Performance with Nicolas Roeg, the film stars J...