Jason and the Movienauts

Shawn and Paul are back to continue our look into the void - or, at least, into the Black Lodge, as we continue our look at Twin Peaks the Return . This time the guys are looking into episodes 4, 5 and 6 and debating when to get tired of Dougie, how frightening EvilCoop feels, and what is Twin Peaks when most of the show doesn't take place in that small town? Oh, and much, much more...

Shawn and Paul are back for the latest blockbuster look at the films and TV shows of David Lynch. This time the guys start their bite of the biggest apple of Lynch's career as they start their review of Twin Peaks: the Return , covering episodes 1, 2 and 3. The guys discuss subverted expectations, meandering plot, and visual and audio brilliance.

Eric is back and this time he and Jason are starting their looks at the brilliant, mysterious fictional films of Hiroshi Teshigahara. This time they look at his first full-length features, Pitfall and Woman in the Dunes, two of the more fascinating films of any time period but especially the 1960s. Lots of interesting debate and perspectives in this episode!

Starting yet another series on Jason and the Movienauts, this time talking about the beautiful, transcendent films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Michelle joins Jason and the duo talk about their deep appreciation for I Know Where I'm Going, A Canterbury Tale and Black Narcissus - three films which are all about travel in some way, and all of which find uniquely P&P insights into th...

I got together with a group of friends to discuss The Shining , Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror classic. The resulting two-hour discussion of the film is fascinating listening, getting into many questions about acting, artifice, camera, the unknowability of evil, and the cosmic sublime. I think this is one of the best film discussions I've been part of, two hours of smart discussion which shed a tre...

The world of film fandom erupted into a small controversy recently when Criterion announced they'd be releasing a 40th anniversary boxset with 40 movies they selected. That got Jason, Bryant and Michelle talking: What would they include in their 40 movies in their boxset? So the group decided to get together and debate their selections, and slowly but surely build a collection which we believe...

Blaize is back with Jason to continue their look at the films of Paul Schrader, this time with perhaps Schrader's oddest career killing move. In 2014 Schrader was contracted to deliver a "geezer teaser" action thriller with Nicolas Cage called Dying of the Light . But the film was taken away from Schrader and edited without his consent. So Schrader created his own take on Dying and p...

Eric is back to talk Masahiro Shinoda again with Jason, this time chatting about three of the master's movies centered around love: O ne Way Ticket to Love , Epitaph to My Love and Love, New and Old. These are early Shinodas, which means they're less experimental - but even in these early films, a lot of the genius of Shinoda shines through and makes these films well worth watching. Join u...

Now Eric and Jason come to an odd point in their look at the films of the great Masahiro Shinoda. Shinoda made one unabashedly commercial film, his look at the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics. So they had to look at that movie, but what to pair it with? They ended up deciding to look at perhaps the most critically acclaimed Olympics documentary ever made, Kon Ichikawa , 1965 Tokyo Olympiad. The films...

This week, Paul and Shawn join Jason as the trio discuss a pair of outlier films in the careers of two of their favorite directors: first, Fast Company , directed by David Cronenberg, divided the crew. Fast Company is a fairly by-the-numbers look at drag racing in western Canada in the late 1970s. Paul felt like the film didn't use its talent well enough, while Shawn and Jason fell into the fi...

This time in our look at the films of Paul Schrader, Blaize and Jason get obscure and controversial. First they look at Schrader's decidedly different Adam Interrupted , which stars Jeff Goldblum as a former popular German entertainer who is sent to a Nazi concentration camp - and the trauma that camp visits upon him. It's a very Goldblum type of performance, as the guys discuss. Then they...

This week Carl Smith of Becoming Valiant: A Valiant Comics Podcast joins Jason to talk about one of the more oddball intriguing stories of comics-to-film. You might never have heard of Valiant Comics, but it's possible that if COVID had never happened, Valiant would be a household name these days. See, their big-screen debut, Bloodshot , hit just as Coronavirus shutdowns hit the world. That me...

For the last two weeks on this podcast, we've been discussing David Lynch films. So what better topic to discuss to follow up on the Lynch analysis than to talk about a director whose work reminds many of Lynch? Chris joins Jason again as the guys try to make sense of Beau is Afraid , Hereditary and Midsommar - and they come up with some interesting conclusions. We think you'll enjoy this...

Shawn and Paul join Jason once again to discuss the biggie of all the David Lynch films: Mulholland Drive . Ofte called one of the best - if not the best - film of the century - the guys attempt to examine why the film is so well loved, what the heck it's all about, and just who was lying dead in that bed anyway?

Shawn and Paul are back once again to help Jason make sense of David Lynch's most massive and often overwhelming film: Inland Empire . Just what is it about this film that resists analysis and compels a myriad of YouTube users to create hour long breakdowns of this film? And why is does the film still compel us to stare into the abyss and try to add a rational plot to a fundamentally irrationa...

Eric and Jason are back talking about the films of Masahiro Shinoda , this time discussing three films with bizarre emotional triangles of a sort: Our Marriage , Gonza the Spearman and The Petrified Forest. The guys are surprised how emotionally satisfying Our Marriage is despite its brief 66-minute running length. The film captures a specific moment in Japanese history with a brilliant sort of al...

Blaize and Jason are now getting towards the later section of Paul Schrader's complex career. This time they get to a couple of really pretty intriguing films by him. Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist is one of those films which has a backstory as compelling as what viewers see up on the screen. Blaize gets into all of the amazing backstory here, exploring how Schrader opted to go back to work...

Keith and Jason have been wanting to discuss a pair of films for a long time, a pair of films which seem perfectly in dialogue with each other: Jean-Pierre Melville 's brilliant Le Samouraï (1967), the story of a lone assassin, and David Fincher 's great The Killer (2023), the, umm, story of a lone assassin. Keith and Jason compare and contrast, considering which protagonist is cooler, the...

So Eric and Jason got to talking about Steven Spielberg's movie The Fablemans and they got to pondering... is this the finest movie ever directed by th film master? Okay, probably not, but where does it rank in his films, and what makes it so compelling? Join the guys as they discuss these interesting topics.

Shawn and Paul are back to talk David Lynch films with Jason. This time they have a split decision on Wild at Heart and dig deep into possible meanings in Lost Highway . The Lost Highway discussion goes deep and complex, which means this is a long, wonderful listen we hope you will enjoy.

Eric and Jason are back to continue their looks at the brilliant films of Masahiro Shinoda . This time they look at two films which present intriguing, contrasting views of childhood in wartime and post-War Japan, MacArthur's Children and Takeshi: Childhood Days . The films are a great pair for each other and for any study of Japanese post-War cinema, and we think the discussion of them makes...

Blaize and Jason are back to continue their look at the films of the great Paul Schrader. This time in their chronological review, they're looking at the justifiably obscure Forever Mine and the fascinating, odd, kinda brilliant Auto Focus .

Seijun Suzuki was one of the finest directors of the Japanese New Wave. Eric and Jason thought this was a good time to look at perhaps Suzuki's most famous works, Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill , and have a great time talking about why these are such special and fantastic films.

Eric is back, and he and Jason are in for a marathon session discussing the film work of one of the most underrated, popular directors of the 1970s - George Roy Hill. Hill is best known for his work on such smashes as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid , The Sting and Slap Shot , but the guys dig deep into his catalog to find a few more interesting works - can you say Funny Farm ?

Frederico Fellini's 8½ seems to have dropped off of many lists of the greatest films of all time. Is that a sign of its lack of quality or of something else? Keith and Jason discuss this amazing film and say - it's the audience and not the film because this is a brilliant, kaleidoscopic, recursive masterpiece in which the truth about people slowly seems to emerge from a structure that leav...