Film School

So, Milo wants to go clean... NWR wraps up his deep dive into the seedy underbelly of the Copenhagen drug world. This time, we're following the bad guy from the first film! Milo has grown a conscience. He's trying to be the good family man. No drugs. Stay calm. Can he stick with that? (spoiler: no. ...omg, no)

Almost all you have in a script is dialogue. 99% of a play is dialogue. The majority of fiction prose is dialogue. It's probably the most effective way to tell a good story...so how do we do it WELL? Josh and Ira discuss what good advice they've received, and what tips and tricks that have worked for them thus far. Plus: we recommend watching Inception and NBA playoff basketball.

Nicolas Winding Refn had a hard time following up the success of the first Pusher film, so much so that he decided to dip back into the seedy Copenhagen underworld. This time we follow Tonny, played by a rising star in Mads Mikkelsen. It's drugs and prostitutes and deals gone bad and motherf*ckers of a father . . . it's Pusher II.

What makes a good schedule? Obviously, it's one where we're as productive as we want to be . . . but what about sustainability? What about when life throws its inevitable curveballs? How do we build ourselves a schedule that fits US? Josh and Ira share what works for them? Plus some quick check-ins on the very busy personal lives, AND some great recommendations on what we've been watching: Josh re...

Frank Frank Frank... Kim Bodnia stars in Nicolas Winding Refn's breakout film. It's a stark, hopeless world and YET...there are some stunning moments of tenderness and authenticity. It was also a singularly important film for Josh in his formative filmmaker years. It also introduced us to a young Mads Mikkelsen. Let's watch and discuss!

You fell off the horse. Your work in progress is sitting idle. You want to get started again, but you're not sure how. Josh and Ira talk tips and strategies they use to get started again. Also, Josh recommends  Severance  on AppleTV+.

You're in Ala-f---in'-bama! Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei chew up the scenery as New Yorkers in the South, trying to solve a murder mystery. It won Tomei an Oscar. Criminally Underrated. It'll make you feel good inside.

Sometimes we want something so much we can crush it, freeze, run away, or otherwise shoot ourselves in the foot. So…how do we keep that from happening? What tools can we use to keep moving forward to get the thing we actually want so badly? We discuss. Also, Josh recommends  Lost in Translation , and Ira recommends  Severance  on AppleTV+.

Ah, Remy. Josh kicks us off with a raucous, violent, hilarious, and shockingly disturbing Belgian indie from the early nineties. It's easily one of the more controversial films we've watched thus far on the podcast--mostly for one particular scene--and one of the most innovative. It really is a must-see that Ira had never seen before today. What did he think? Listen and find out!

Dude, you gotta see this! Next up on the podcast, Josh and Ira have accumulated a list of films they know the other hasn't seen yet that they MUST see...and now, they're going to show each other those movies on the podcast. Ten movies apiece (plus maybe one or two extra...we'll see). We start that in two weeks from today. They also give personal updates on what they've been up to the past couple m...

We decided to end the AFI Top 100 Starter Pack with some old school "class"... Old movies feel like Disneyland. This, and many, many epiphanies are brought to you by the black and white classic romance  Swing Time  with the lanky, debonaire Fred Astaire and the drop dead gorgeous smokeshow Ginger Rogers. It's all about The Way You Look Tonight, Cinema with a capital C, and never gonna dance, never...

Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me . . . aren't you? It's the movie that made Dustin Hoffman a star, and rightly so. He plays the naive, uptight and awkward Benjamin Braddock who masks a disenchanted with his parents' rich, vacuous, meaningless lives, with a frozen mask for a face that says 'I'm screaming on the inside.' But, then the wife of one of his father's friends propositions him wit...

If any of them move, kill 'em! It was our first Western on the AFI list, and it's a bloody, gritty, corker of a bandit heist flick. It stars William Holden, whose star power was waning at the time, along with Ernest Borgnine and his iconic gap-toothed smile, and some truly EPIC action sequences that forever changed movies. It's also one the very first R-rated films in history. There are no heroes...

We're gonna need a bigger boat. Jaws: the genesis of the summer blockbuster, and the film that launched Steven Spielberg into the stratosphere. Dude was 26 when he made this move. TWENTY. SIX. And it defined an entire genre of films. We still make Shark Movies to this day. So, let's go back to the original "don't go in the water" scary movie, and probably our TOP favorite watch on the entire AFI l...

War is hell. Any sample of the AFI Top 100 wouldn't be complete without Francis Ford Coppola, and he is the real star of this ambitious, disturbing, madness-inducing look into the horrors of the Vietnam War based on the novella "Heart of Darkness." Starring Martin Sheen and a veritable cavalcade of other recognizable actors, this film might just be the best representation ever made of how war feel...

Orson Welles, by all accounts, was a Hollywood outsider. He knew nothing about filmmaking coming in to make  Citizen Kane , and yet it's on the tippy top of the AFI's "best" list. So, how exactly did he do that? And why is this film so beloved, so venerated? Is it a fitting pick as the #1 film in American history? We break it down!

Chaplin makes an entry on the Starter Pack, and his *second* appearance on The List as the hapless Klondike Gold Rush prospector…and he does not disappoint. We weren't too hot on Chaplin's previous film Modern Times . This time around, the gags are fresher, the story is tighter, and the music is absolutely breathtaking. It's epic, funny, poignant, and romantic. Even to this day, some of the visual...

James Cagney is a song and dance man! Music is in the air. Vaudeville. Romance. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It's the 1942 classic Yankee Doodle Dandy this time around, a movie neither Josh nor Ira had ever even HEARD of…so what put this movie on the map? Why is it on the list? Listen and find out!

I'm funny? FUNNY HOW?! Martin Scorsese is in the house, dropping what could arguably be considered the greatest mob/gangster movie ever made. Joe Pesci took home an Oscar for his role as Tommy, while Robert DeNiro, Lorraine Bracco and Ray Liotta round out an astonishingly good cast. Watch out for helicopters, and mind your step going into the Copacabana. It's time to watch Goodfellas! The Story Gr...

We kick off the starter pack with a Hitchcock classic: Old pal Jimmy Stewart is front and center to a possible MURDER. He's laid up with a broken leg with nothing to do, and there's a neighbor acting shady as sh*t whose wife is suddenly nowhere to be seen...so does Jimmy just have too much time on his hands? Or is there foul play? It's an absolute classic of a film, and truly Hitchcock at his fine...

You are invited to watch along with us over the next ten episodes! 100 Films is quite the mountain to climb. We understand exactly how overwhelming watching that many movies can feel. So . . . we made a list of just 10 films as a much smaller, much easier, much more digestible way to dip your toes into the AFI Top 100. We'll watch, discuss and break down this ever-so-manageable sampling of the ful...

Happy New Year! 2022 is upon us. What do you want to accomplish? What did you do poorly last year and want to do better in the new year? And what did you do well that you want to continue? We're looking ahead, this week on the Cutting Room Floor!

The sh*tter was full! Chevy Chase takes a turn as every-dad Clark Griswold in a John Hughes CLASSIC holiday film. One of several, actually, if you throw in Home Alone; Hughes, apparently, does the holidays like no other. Chase is the over-acheiver, the wound-too-tight but pretending-to-be-fine Dad that just wants everything to be perfect. Everything is not perfect . . . which might be exactly why...

How was this past year? Josh and Ira take a look back over the past calendar year. While 2020 was full of external changes,  challenges, and shake-ups for both podcast hosts, 2021 was an intense year personally. Both had some breakthroughs. Big ones. And so much finishing. We dive in and talk about it all.

Love, actually, is all around. Ten separate stories of love, all told over the run-up to the holidays. It seems like such sprawling ensemble pieces rarely work, and yet this one does. Perhaps not as well as it used to, for various reasons the we attempt to discuss, but it is rather remarkable what director Richard Curtis was able to assemble and execute. It's a Christmas "classic," this week on Fi...