The Next Picture Show

BLACK BAG, Steven Soderbergh’s latest 90-minute collaboration with writer David Koepp, is in theory a sprawling international spy thriller, but in practice it’s a more intimate study of how a marriage can thrive in an environment where trusting your spouse is considered a weakness. This week we talk about how that genre disconnect works for and against BLACK BAG, before bringing in this pairing’s...

Steven Soderbergh’s new BLACK BAG is a spy thriller, sure, but it’s also the story of a marriage, and watching its sophisticated central couple banter their way through a sprawling mystery, it’s hard not to be reminded of one of cinema’s most enduring and endearing crime-solving couples, Nick and Nora Charles. So this week we’re going back to their film debut, 1934’s THE THIN MAN, to see how W.S....

Bong Joon Ho’s new MICKEY 17 takes a lot of big swings, from star Robert Pattinson’s vocal affectation to a comedic fixation on “sauce,” all of it in service of big, bold, arguably blunt satire. It all makes for a somewhat messy but highly discussable film, both on its own and in conversation with Paul Verhoeven’s STARSHIP TROOPERS, another big swing of a sci-fi satire that aims to entertain as it...

This week’s pairing is brought to you by: space bugs! Specifically, space bugs as a metaphor for a fascistic society’s disregard for any perceived-to-be-lower life form, human or otherwise. Inspired by the clear satire of Bong Joon Ho’s new MICKEY 17, we’re revisiting Paul Verhoeven’s STARSHIP TROOPERS, whose satirical intent was less clear to some audiences when it hit theaters in 1997. Today, wh...

Carson Lund’s feature debut EEPHUS moves at the same deliberate pace as the trick pitch for which it’s named, leisurely unfolding over the course of a season-ending game between two small-town recreation leagues that’s also probably the last time many on the field will ever play. This week we’re joined again by film critic and baseball lover Tim Grierson to discuss how EEPHUS approaches that sense...

Quietly observing as a small-town recreation league plays out their last game of the season, and likely ever, the new EEPHUS is a feature-length subversion of “the big game,” simultaneously embracing and rejecting such baseball-movie cliches in a manner that reminded us of 1988’s BULL DURHAM. We’re joined this week by pinch-hitter Tim Grierson to discuss all the ways Ron Shelton’s classic, often c...

The story of two journalists reporting on a common cause despite their vastly different backgrounds is what gives NO OTHER LAND its narrative shape — and is what inspired us to pair it with 1984’s THE KILLING FIELDS — but the Oscar-nominated documentary is at heart a story about activism, and the weight of maintaining hope amid a generations-spanning conflict with no resolution in sight. We’re joi...

Intro & Oscars Chitchat: 00:00:00-00:08:52 Keynote: 00:08:53-00:13:50 The Killing Fields Discussion: 00:13:51-44:37 Feedback & Outro: 00:44:38-end Summary:  The Oscar-nominated documentary NO OTHER LAND, a collaboration between Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers whose common cause and eventual friendship does not change the stark contrast in their political status, brought to mind another...

Steven Soderbergh’s new PRESENCE flips the typical haunted house narrative inside out, but unlike the other film in this pairing, THE OTHERS, it makes its point of view clear from the opening frames. But that POV doesn’t slide fully into focus until PRESENCE’s final-act reveal, which left us with some questions, both critical and metaphysical, to dig into this week. Then we bring THE OTHERS back i...

Steven Soderbergh’s new PRESENCE is an unconventional haunted house story with a twist that reminded us of 2001’s THE OTHERS, though to say exactly why risks spoiling how Alejandro Amenábar performs his own twist on a comparatively traditional haunted house story. That twist forms the foundation of our discussion this week, which freely roams spoiler territory as we consider how the ending revelat...

Given their shared source material, Robert Eggers’ NOSFERATU and Francis Ford Coppola’s BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA understandably have a lot overlap in terms of plot and character, but the two films are miles apart in their interpretation of that source material, particularly as applied to its titular vampire. We’re of split opinions on Eggers’ bleak, monster-forward characterization of Orlock, especia...

The heightened gothic sensibility of Robert Eggers’ new NOSFERATU recalls — in its intensity if not its precise contours — BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, Francis Ford Coppola’s feverish 1992 horror-romance that follows the same story from a markedly different perspective. This led us to reconsider Coppola’s flawed but fascinating DRACULA as a film that, even if it arguably never achieves greatness, inargu...

Hey Next Picture Show listeners, sorry there’s no new episode in your feed today. Real life got in the way of podcast life and prevented us from recording our next pairing in time to release it this week. But we will be back next Tuesday with part one of our double feature comparing Robert Eggers’ new Nosferatu with Frances Ford Coppola’s own take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula from 1992. If you’re play...

With the beginning of a new year comes our customary look back, as Keith, Scott, and Tasha gather once again to compare their personal lists of the best films of 2024. While there is some crossover among their picks — particularly when it comes to films that have been discussed in-depth on this podcast — there is much more variance, reflective of a movie year that was light on prestige-season heav...

The moments in NICKEL BOYS that nod to 1958’s THE DEFIANT ONES are less direct citations than stylized invocations by director RaMell Ross, who incorporates a number of abstractions and flourishes into the film’s visual language. Chief among those stylistic gambits is the film’s use of first-person perspective, which kicks off our discussion of NICKEL BOYS’ uniquely textured take on Colson Whitehe...

Stanley Kramer’s 1958 feature THE DEFIANT ONES, a film very much of its time, makes multiple on-screen appearances in RaMell Ross’ new NICKEL BOYS, a film about the way the past haunts the present. Both movies take place in the Jim Crow-era South and engage with that setting’s lopsided ideas about justice, but THE DEFIANT ONES does so from a much more straightforward approach, operating as both a...

The antagonist becomes the protagonist in Jon M. Chu’s WICKED, which adapts a stage musical — the first act, anyway — which adapts a novel that flipped the script on 1939’s THE WIZARD OF OZ (itself an adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s novel). So while there are plenty of narrative and character parallels between the two films, they often run perpendicular to each other in their respective notions of g...

The new movie musical WICKED, along with the Broadway show and novel that preceded it, is specifically out to subvert the version of the magical land of Oz that was codified in 1939’s THE WIZARD OF OZ, making it the perfect time to consider what made that film a phenomenon to be subverted in the first place. So this week we wade into the vast, varied legacy of THE WIZARD OF OZ to discuss why it ov...

Sean Baker’s ANORA takes the fairy-tale premise of 1990’s PRETTY WOMAN as its starting point, but ends up on a very different route to a very different sort of happy ending. It’s also a best-of-the year contender for most of us, so we spend some time discussing what makes it so before bringing its romcom predecessor back in to consider how these two films about sex workers falling for their wealth...

Sean Baker’s new ANORA takes its initial cues from 1990’s PRETTY WOMAN, but its story of a sex worker who develops romantic feelings for a client in spite of class difference and social stigma soon peels off in a vastly different direction. So this week we’re focusing on that shared starting point to determine what makes PRETTY WOMAN both a deeply weird depiction of sex work and a resoundingly suc...

Edward Berger’s new CONCLAVE is a low-key, intimate political thriller full of unexpected reveals, but fundamentally about power, purity, belief, compromise, perception, and committee decisions. This week we share our thoughts on CONCLAVE’s insular focus and messaging around religion and politics before considering how its power brokers and kingmakers compare to those found in the 1964 presidentia...

While the new CONCLAVE concerns the election of a new pope, its intrigue, backstabbing, and backroom deals have many echoes in secular politics, in particular those found in 1964’s THE BEST MAN. Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and written by Gore Vidal adapting his own stage play, the film’s depiction of the behind-the-scenes machinations involved to secure an unnamed party’s nomination for the...

In its attempt to capture the chaotic comedic alchemy leading up to the first-ever SNL broadcast, Jason Reitman’s SATURDAY NIGHT is carrying the weight of the show’s nearly 50-year legacy and its personification in protagonist Lorne Michaels. Whether it manages to get off the ground despite that is up for debate in the first half of this week’s discussion, before we bring in another tense evening...

Capturing the tense hours leading to a pivotal moment in live TV history, the new SATURDAY NIGHT is defined by a looming deadline that reminded us of another New York-based all-nighter captured on film: D.A. Pennebaker’s 1970 TV pilot turned documentary film ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM: COMPANY. Despite being less than an hour long, the fly-on-the-wall document of Stephen Sondheim and company recording th...

The new Dreamworks animated feature THE WILD ROBOT is partially about the struggles of parenthood, partially about the joys of community, and the larger idea bridging those two parts — that of being more than you were “programmed” to be — is also what links it most directly to Brad Bird’s THE IRON GIANT. But there’s a lot more going on in THE WILD ROBOT besides that, arguably too much, which forms...