Medium Literate

This week we’re talking about Wicker and Wildwood , two fantasy movies that start with W, take place in the woods, and otherwise have almost nothing in common! But we love a theme so it’s Cottagecore Week, baby! We get into why Wicker worked so well as a cozy little fairy tale, why the movie is less about sex than the marketing would have you believe, Olivia Colman serving as everyone’s inspiratio...

Emily and Monika are some of the several people who saw Taika Waititi's Klara and the Sun this week, and it's not a huge mystery why it didn't resonate with critics or audiences. Based on the Booker Prize-longlisted novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, this adaptation starring Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams misses the mark on what made the book so beloved. Monika read the book so she's here to lea...

Emily loved Clayface . Monika did not love Clayface . But she also didn’t hate it (which is honestly much more annoying?) This week we’re talking about DC’s extremely gooey villain origin story, a movie with a clunky script, some genuinely great body horror, and enough cool shape-shifting stuff to keep Monika from fully turning against it. We get into why Emily apparently loves origin stories desp...

The biggest movie event of the year that was only announced a few weeks before its release has finally arrived. Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes documentary is as fascinating a project in execution as it is a log line, and we're very excited to talk about it this week. The movie's three hour runtime spans several years and several states as it digs into the truly strange people at its...

This week we’re talking about Whalefall , the surprisingly sincere survival drama starring Austin Abrams and Josh Brolin that takes a pretty ridiculous premise and turns it into a moving story about fathers, sons, grief and maybe most importantly: how much we should respect and fear the ocean. We get into why the father-son story actually worked for us, Austin Abrams’ continued reign as our nation...

It's not Mother's Day... it's Mommy Week at the Movies. Monika and Emily discuss two very different films: the Jessica Chastain-led horror Other Mommy, and the family drama/action thriller Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother starring Mahershala Ali. Monika has a shocking opinion on Other Mommy, and Emily lays out the differences between the movie and the book it's based on, Inciden...

LET'S GET READY TO RECKON. This week we're talking about The Social Reckoning, the long awaited follow-up to 2010's The Social Network. This time it's Oops All Aaron Sorkin, and the results... aren't great. Emily and Monika talk about their tech takes, the silicon valley movie and miniseries industrial complex, the surprise cameo from January 6th, the insane score, and why this...

Against all odds, we are here to defend Verity. This week, Monika and Emily dip their toes into the CoHo waters to talk about Michael Showalter’s star-studded adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s extremely popular/horny/violent thriller starring Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett, a movie we can only describe (lovingly) as prestige Lifetime schlock. We get into why Dakota Johnson’s particul...

This week we’re talking about Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger, starring Tom Cruise as an oil tycoon at the center of an apocalyptic climate disaster (and also some other stuff) We discuss whether a movie can be intentionally unpleasant and still simply not work for you, Iñárritu’s keen eye for bringing together incredibly skilled film crafts-people, and the exciting return of Tom Cruise doing somet...

Lance Oppenheim's 'Primetime' has been one of the most hotly anticipated films of the year, and Monika and Emily are both here to say that in their opinions, it did not disappoint. This episode covers a lot of ground, both within the movie itself: the electrifying performances from basically everyone, theorizing about what the movie makes of Chris Hansen as a man and as a cultural figu...

Fire up those PlayStations, we’re headed to Raccoon City baby!! This week, we’re talking about Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil. Neither of us has ever played a Resident Evil game, which puts us in an interesting position: How well does a video game adaptation work when you have absolutely no attachment to the source material? We get into the movie’s pretty darn effective attempt to recreate the feeli...

Almost 30 years after the first movie, the Owens sisters are back... but also somehow it's only about 12 years or so since the events of the first movie, but also it's somehow present day. Look: time in Practical Magic 2 is very confusing, as is the story, as are the character choices. The only magic in this movie is the chemistry between Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, which is thankful...

SURPRISE! WE ARE FINALLY IN PERSON FOR ONE OF THESE!! Monika and Emily wandered up to the Twin Cities to hang out, watch some youtube videos in an AirBnB, and of course check out the Minnesota State Fair! This week at the movies we cover Coyote vs. Acme, the Looney Tunes courtroom drama that almost never got released, and also Finding Emily, the rom-com that actually remebered to be both rom AND c...

This week is an Old Man vs. Baby smackdown when we talk about both 88 year old legend Ridley Scott's post-apocalyptic The Dog Stars and Gen Z newcomer Alexander Ullom's existential horror It Ends . We both preferred one over the other by a lot, and it wasn't necessarily the one we would have expected. The post-apocalypse setting also leads to a discussion about movies' brother, TV,...

This week we're taking it back to the summer of 1975 in Provincetown, Massachusetts for Tony, the newest entry into the very-specific-moment-in-the-subject's-life genre of biopics. Emily and Monika are absolutely thrilled to have a reason to talk about Matt Johnson (but let's be honest, they'll always find a reason somehow), and get into the intertwined threads of beauty and the me...

Get your running shoes on, we're fleeing from dinosaurs in the suburbs of Michigan with the J.J. Abrams produced, David Robert Michell film The End of Oak Street. Anne Hathaway dares to steal our hearts for a 4th time this year in this thrill ride of a movie and Monika and Emily are beaming with the energy of the "we are so back" vibes around this blockbuster. Monika also takes the sho...

The high-concept rom-com that everyone's been referring to as "the sex Purge movie" for the better part of the past year is finally out, and this week we're doing a full dissection. One Night Only has an undeniably strange premise, and we talk all about its logistics, implications, and how it lands in this current climate. We also talk about where the movie succeeds and fails on a...

Gregg Araki's I Want Your Sex stars Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman in a joyful, messy, unpolished sex romp that felt like a breath of fresh air after some very serious movies. We got into the Gregg Araki's film history, discussed how UNSTOPPABLE Olivia Wilde is this year and how Cooper Hoffman is THE "it" boy that we all need to be buying stock in NOW. Join the conversation with u...

This week's conversation about Nicolas Winding Refn's first feature film since The Neon Demon was really an exercise for us in how to discuss a movie that neither of us enjoyed in a way that goes deeper than just listing all the things we didn't like about it. Her Private Hell was made to be divisive, and we found that to be an interesting intention to try to dissect in itself. The who...

The time has come to have a lighthearted romp through the mediterranean with Odysseus. That's right, this week we're covering Christopher Nolan's take on The Odyssey, starring Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway. Join us as we go through the movie beat by beat and talk about the breathtaking spectacle of this movie, performances that are going to stick with us for a long time, and of course g...

This week we get into The Invite, an impressive four-hander about the nature of relationships both starring and directed by Olivia Wilde. We both loved this movie, and found it ripe for discussion in about a million different directions. There's also a little bit of Evil Dead Burn & Rose of Nevada conversation up top. Join the conversation with us below: https://www.instagram.com/mediumlit...

Bello! We are finally able to talk about THE theatrical event of the year: Minions and Monsters! Unsurprisingly, this movie had both Emily and Monika buzzing with excitement. But don't worry there are also some tough questions tackled in this one like "If you bite into a minion, what is the texture?" and "Do the minions have a beauty standard?" In this episode we also manage to...

This week we saw Supergirl and unfortunately we thought it was Super bad at being a movie. We try to break down why we disliked it so much, and we even have some differing thought paths we each took that ultimately got us to the same conclusion of feeling evil about it. We also touch on Jackass: Best and Last, but because Emily didn't have time to see it before recording (bad Emily, that's...

This week we're taking a break from new theatrical releases to do a mid year check in on the movies we've actually loved in 2026 so far. Below are the timestamps for the movies discussed: 04:32 Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie 23:01 Send Help 31:25 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple 45:32 Documentary: Stolen Kingdom (Rent it today on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/video-store/new-rele...

If we learned anything from Disclosure Day it's that revealing the truth is so important, and our truth is that we both absolutely hated this movie. We try to decipher why exactly Steven Spielberg's newest alien movie got under our skin so much, and why it's been so divisive in general. Our conversation is full of spoilers and what SOME might call "rants" about the script, the...