Cinebuds

Last year, Milwaukee Film held its inaugural season of “ Cinematic Sisterhood ,” a series of films that brings well-deserved (and often overdue) attention to the work of women in the industry. Now in the midst of its second go-around, the series will bring Wildwood, NJ to the Oriental Theatre on July 11, which made this episode the perfect time to welcome the perfect guest to the podcast. Tracey T...

Our bold and adventurous podcast hosts will go to fairly reasonable lengths to see a good movie. To infinity? No. Beyond? Definitely not.  Something they WILL do, though, is invite a new friend to join them for some general merriment with a few opinions thrown in for good measure. That’s what Dori and Kpolly did for this trip back to the playroom to review Toy Story 5 with special guest Heather De...

The last time Wisconsin-born writer/director Nathan Deming stopped by for a podcast visit, he was coming off a big win that went beyond any single project. Now he’s back to focus a little more intently on one of his own creations — and talk a bit about that previous victory. Deming and his Action! Wisconsin cohorts had plenty to smile about when he joined us in November of 2025, a few months after...

Get ready to lean into the darkness!  For this episode, we invited a special guest to help us celebrate the most wonderful (and miserable) time of the year: Bleak Week . Running from June 21-27 at the Oriental Theatre , Bleak Week is an international phenomenon featuring some of the greatest, saddest and most soul-crushing films from around the world. This year, the series delves into the theme of...

All throughout June, Milwaukee Film is serving up three separate helpings of hand-picked movies for the organization’s Pride Month program . There’s the “Queerious” mini-series devoted to queer-coded selections, the “Summer Camp 2” mini-series featuring queer classics that lean into the outrageous, and a trio of bonus picks to round out the month. To help us navigate the four weekends of movies, w...

Fresh from the theater, we dive headfirst into Boots Riley’s latest, I Love Boosters. This colorful, high-fashion heist film follows a crew of shoplifters who resell designer gear, as they target a cutthroat fashion icon played by Demi Moore. We break down the incredible cast, from the great Kiki Palmer leading the charge to a nearly unrecognizable Don Cheadle. The film is a total feast for the se...

'Blue Heron'

A public service announcement from your friends at Cinebuds : “Animated movies” and “Anime” are NOT the same thing. It’s a good time to point this out because throughout this month, Milwaukee Film will turn its lens on the magic of both categories as part of its “Ani-May” movie series . Yes, the more general moviegoing public will notice familiar titles like The Iron Giant , Ferngully and Smashmou...

Step inside the Goblin King's maze with this special live episode of Cinebuds!  Recorded at the historic Oriental Theatre during the 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival, this episode celebrates the 40th anniversary (and 4K restoration) of the fantasy classic, Labyrinth .  For this very special occasion, Dori and Kpolly enlisted some help from Steve Horton, Eisner-winning author of the graphic novel Bowie...

The Milwaukee Film Festival goes to a lot of trouble filling two whole weeks with tons of movies for us to see. So the least we can do is dedicate two podcast episodes to the big event before it wraps up April 30. Just like we did in part one, we invited Milwaukee Film programming director Kerstin Larson to join the podcast and provide her wonderful perspective to the final seven days of the 2026...

MKE Film Fest Week 1 & 'Now! More! Yes!'

Sound Vision at the 2026 MKE Film Festival

The 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival is coming up in just over two weeks and if you’ve never been, it’s kinda incredible! From April 16 - 30 hundreds of films will be shown across five screens at The Oriental and The Downer theaters on Milwaukee’s very fashionable East Side. So, with 250 short and feature-length documentary and fiction films from near and far to choose from, where does one even start...

With Milwaukee Film getting ready to celebrate 414 Day by screening the Song Sung Blue  documentary at the Oriental Theatre, we're taking a timely jump back to our conversation with a key player in the 2008 film about local musical couple Mike and Claire Sardina. Enjoy. ##### After coming down from our Hugh Jackman interaction at the Song Sung Blue premiere at the close of 2025, we pulled back the...

The Oscars are the Super Bowl of movies. We’re not talking about the prestige of winning, although that certainly lines up. We’re talking about how the wider world swoops in once a year to make predictions, rubberneck at the spectacle of it all and maybe even watch the actual event itself. Obviously, Dori and Kpolly are not “the wider world.” They’re unpretentious, welcoming, discerning film lover...

We use the phrase “action star” to describe the massive talent at the center of this episode, but Michelle Yeoh has demonstrated over the course of her remarkable career that she’s so much more than that. In fact, her career as a performer didn’t start with scripts or stunts. She was more focused on pirouettes and pliés as a classically trained ballet dancer, getting all the way to London’s Royal...

When Emily Brontë shared Wuthering Heights with the world back in 1847, the response to the book was … let’s just say mixed. Critics used words like “sickened” and “unsettling” and “a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors” to communicate how unnerved they were by such a scandalous work (something that only got worse when they discovered it was written by [gasp] a woman!!!). In that co...

When Catherine O’Hara died late last month, it was a sizable blow to the entertainment world. Whether it was on television or in movies, she brought a quality that was very particularly “her.” While that’s a tough thing to wrap up in just one episode, Dori and Kpolly give it a shot — with a little help from the Radio Milwaukee family. Fellow O’Hara appreciator Jon Adler joins our familiar cinema-l...

Brrr, it’s cold out there! ❄️  On this episode, Dori and Kpolly lean into the freezing Wisconsin temperatures by discussing their favorite harsh winter movies . Forget the cozy blankets; for the full experience, the hosts suggest cracking a window while you watch these "could be worse" cinematic picks. The duo dives into bone-chilling thrillers like A Simple Plan and the iconic horror of The Shini...

Last February, having just inherited the title of Black Lens programmer at Milwaukee Film, Ty Williams absolutely nailed his selections for a series showing off the range of Black stories that have come to the big screen over the years. Now, he’s putting that UW-Milwaukee film degree to good use once again. This time, however, he pulled in his picks around a particular theme. “ Afrofuturism: Fates...

Grab your tissues and your popcorn (but maybe chew quietly) because the Cinebuds are back to talk about some of the season's biggest buzz films. Dori and Kpolly start with a dive into the beautifully heartbreaking Hamnet from visionary director Chloe Zhao. They explore this historical-fiction tale of William Shakespeare’s family, featuring stunning performances by Jesse Buckley and Paul Mescal, pl...

The death of a public figure can hit pretty hard because we feel like we know those people. For many of us, the feeling runs deeper with the passing of an artist or creator whose work has embedded itself in our daily lives. Milwaukee Film’s currently running “In Memoriam” series stirs up those emotions by honoring people from the film world who we lost in 2025 — instantly recognizable figures, lik...

In the final days of 2025, the Milwaukee music community --- and the wider world --- lost a truly wonderful human being. Will Bush was half of Immortal Girlfriend, the music project he shared with his brother Kevin. Their collaborations were undeniable, and their love of pop culture in general extended well beyond the songs they created together. Back in August of 2024, we invited Will and Kevin B...

We ended 2025 on a high note (or a Hugh note?) with our review of Song Sung Blue , featuring a cameo from multitalented global superstar/song-and-dance man Hugh Jackman. So what better way to start 2026 than by pulling back the curtain on the Milwaukee connections that inspired the recently released biopic? For that, we called in a special guest: local filmmaker Jimmy Sammarco. He was instrumental...

There are so many “firsts” on this episode, we’re honestly not sure what to do with ourselves. Let’s start by telling you (in case you skipped the headline) that we’re reviewing Song Sung Blue , the based-on-a-true-story of real-life Milwaukee couple Mike and Claire Sardina, also known as Lightning & Thunder. Their Neil Diamond tribute act — with occasional departures into ABBA, Patsy Cline an...