Mama Needs a Movie

Writer and storyteller Jessica Lee Williamson joins to discuss Terrence Malick's directorial debut BADLANDS starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Loosely based on the real-life 1958 killing spree of Charles Starkweather and his accomplice (or kidnapping victim?) 14 year-old Caril Ann Fugate, BADLANDS is a meditative portrait of shattered innocence and a landmark achievement of low-budget fil...

Comedian Greg Stone joins to discuss the 2022 action comedy THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT starring Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Ike Barinholtz, and Tiffany Haddish. Cage portrays an altered version of himself who, suffering from a career slump and dejected from missing out on a good role, agrees to appear at a billionaire's birthday party in Majorca for a quick $1 million dollar payda...

Actor, writer and comedian Sam Brown ( The Whitest Kids U' Know ) joins to discuss Martin Scorsese's THE COLOR OF MONEY starring Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. This 1986 sequel to 1961's THE HUSTLER finds the aging, once-slick pool hustler "Fast Eddie" Felson long retired from the game and making a living as a liquor salesman. When he meets Vincent,...

Scott Gairdner ( Podcast: The Ride ) returns to discuss the biographical drama MOMMIE DEAREST starring Faye Dunaway, Diana Scarwid and Mara Hobel. Frank Perry directed this adaptation of Christina Crawford's eponymous memoir which portrays Crawford's adoptive mother, Hollywood actress Joan Crawford, as unstable and abusive. Featuring a legendary lead performance by Dunaway as Joan Crawford...

Actress and comedian Alana Johnston ( Self Esteem Party ) joins to discuss the 1995 coming-of-age drama NOW AND THEN starring Christina Ricci, Thora Birch, Gaby Hoffmann and Ashleigh Aston Moore. Director Lesli Linka Glatter helmed this period piece about four adolescent friends growing up in a small Indiana town in 1970, bookended by scenes of the same quartet in adulthood played by Rosie O'Donne...

Actor and writer Allan McLeod ( You're the Worst ), returns to discuss the gothic chiller INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Slater and Antonio Banderas. This 1994 adaptation of author Anne Rice's bestselling novel spans centuries in the lives of elegant bloodsuckers from late 18th century New Orleans to mid-90s San Francisco. Neil Jordan di...

Director Eric Appel ( Weird: The Al Yankovic Story ) returns to MNAM to discuss the 1992 comedy WAYNE'S WORLD starring Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Rob Lowe and Tia Carrere. Directed by Penelope Spheeris, WAYNE'S WORLD was the second ever cinematic adaptation of Saturday Night Live sketch, following two lovable heavy metal headbangers whose sudden opportunity to bring their public-access show...

Joe Saunders ( Solar Opposites ) returns to MNAM discuss Ruben Östlund's Academy Award-nominated comedy, TRIANGLE OF SADNESS starring Charlbi Dean, Harris Dickinson, Dolly de Leon, Zlatko Brić and Woody Harrelson. Östlund's acerbic satire, set amongst the rich and beautiful passengers of a luxury yacht, premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, taking home the Palme d'Or and eventually achieving...

Writer and comedian Tim Barnes, ( Maurice on Mars ), returns to discuss the 1998 direct-to-video comedy THE WONDERFUL ICE CREAM SUIT starring Joe Mantegna, Edward James Olmos, Clifton Collins Jr., Gregory Sierra, and Esai Morales. Based on a Ray Bradbury short story and written for the screen by Bradbury himself, the fantastical plot concerns five men in East Los Angeles who pitch in to buy an exq...

Writer Brad Evans ( The Tonight Show ) joins to discuss the 2019 neo-noir SERENITY starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jason Clarke, and Djimon Hounsou. Steven Knight wrote and directed this sultry pulp tale of a fisherman seduced by his ex-wife into a plot to murder her current husband. A steamy thriller with a jaw-dropping twist, SERENITY was unceremoniously dumped into theate...

Actor, writer Jon Daly ( Ding Dong Delicious ) joins for an epic discussion of David Lynch's 1984 version of the science fiction classic DUNE starring Kyle MacLachlan, Virginia Madsen, Patrick Stewart, Kenneth McMillan, Dean Stockwell, Max von Sydow, and Sting. Based on author Frank Herbert's mammoth novel, DUNE was conceived as a mega-budget blockbuster to follow in the footsteps of STAR...

Writer Craig Rowin ( Search Party ) joins to discuss James Cameron's long-awaited blockbuster sequel, AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER, starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, and Stephen Lang. Coming 12 years after the original AVATAR became the highest grossing film of all time, expectations were uncertain for Cameron's followup. Would audiences rush to revisit the Pandora's...

Director Ian Pfaff joins to discuss William Friedkin's 1985 crime thriller TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. starring William Petersen, Willem Dafoe, John Pankow, Debra Feuer, and John Turturro. The film follows a pair of Secret Service agents resorting to extreme measures to catch a notorious counterfeiter. As a west coast equivalent to Friedkin's own The French Connection , TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. is reme...

Writer Eva Anderson ( You're the Worst, WeCrashed ) helps us kick off a new year of Mama Needs a Movie with a discussion of the year-end awards contender, THE WHALE starring Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Ty Simpkins and Samantha Morton. Darren Aronofsky directed this 2022 adaptation of playwright Samuel D. Hunter's intimate drama about a reclusive and obese teacher trying to reconcile wit...

Writer and actor Dan Chamberlain ( The Tonight Show ) joins to discuss Todd Field's drama TÁR starring Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, and Nina Hoss. TÁR was released in 2022 to near unanimous acclaim for Blanchett's  lead performance as Lydia Tár, a highly accomplished composer-conductor whose regimented existence begins to unravel in the face of personal scandal. Is this slow-tempo tale...

Writer Morgan Cline joins to discuss the romantic drama FLASHDANCE starring Jennifer Beals and Michael Nouri. This 1983 film was director Adrian Lyne's first breakout success, wowing audiences with the tale of a welder/cabaret performer who, despite no formal dance training, aspires to join the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance. FLASHDANCE was a star-making turn for Jennifer Beals, taking home a Be...

Director Danny Jelinek (Jimmy Kimmel Live!) returns to Mama Needs a Movie to discuss Steven Spielberg's autobiographical family drama, THE FABELMANS starring Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, and Gabriel LaBelle. Spielberg's newest release tells the story of an aspiring filmmaker named Sammy Fabelman coming of age in mid-century America, torn between his scientist father and whimsi...

Actor and musician Michael Cassady ( Don't Stop or We'll Die ) joins to discuss Christopher Nolan's INCEPTION starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elliot Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, and Ken Watanabe. This sleek science-fiction caper wowed and confounded audiences in 2010 with its complex heist plot about dream "extractors" on a mission of corporate espionage...

Writer/comedian Tim Kalpakis ( The Sloppy Boys ) joins to discuss the culinary comedy BIG NIGHT starring Stanley Tucci, Tony Shalhoub, Minnie Driver, Ian Holm, and Isabella Rossellini. Tucci and Campbell Scott co-directed this 1996 independent film that tells the story of two Italian immigrant brothers struggling to keep their restaurant alive on the Jersey Shore in the 1950s. Easily interpretable...

Nashville-based singer-songwriters Carly Layne and Andrew Shaver join us for a special family-themed Thanksgiving episode to discuss the dark comedy, THE REF starring Denis Leary, Judy Davis, and Kevin Spacey. MNAM's holiday season kicks off with this Ted Demme-directed movie about a professional thief who gets more than he bargained for while holding a dysfunctional family hostage. THE REF was re...

Writer, director and actor Bridey Elliott ( Clara's Ghost ) joins to discuss Nicolas Roeg's dark psychological drama BAD TIMING starring Theresa Russell, Art Garfunkel, and Harvey Keitel. The film uses a non-linear structure to portray a tumultuous love affair between a free spirited young woman and a psychiatrist living in Vienna. Receiving an extremely limited release in 1980, Roeg's lush and co...

Writer and performer Alison Tafel (Bojack Horseman) joins to discuss the post-apocalyptic action spectacular WATERWORLD starring Kevin Costner, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Dennis Hopper. Director Kevin Reynolds' environmentalist cautionary tale of a water-submerged planet was the most notoriously troubled production of Hollywood's old school blockbuster era, going wildly over-budget and releasi...

Writer/director/actor Courtney Davis joins to discuss the 1991 comedy-fantasy DEFENDING YOUR LIFE starring Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep, Rip Torn, and Lee Grant. This was Brooks' fourth feature film as writer and director and his most ambitious comedy yet, depicting the afterlife as an efficient and religiously-unaffiliated destination called Judgment City, where highly intelligent bureaucrats pros...

MNAM welcomes its first repeat guest, writer and filmmaker Alex Kavutskiy, who returns to discuss David Lean's World War II epic THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI starring William Holden, Alec Guinness and Sessue Hayakawa. The 1958 film concerns a British Lt. Colonel held in captivity as a prisoner of war by Japanese forces, and his obsessive need to finish a railway bridge connecting Bangkok and R...

Comedian and actor Holly Prazoff (Comedy Bang! Bang!) joins to discuss the 1987 romantic comedy MANNEQUIN starring Andrew McCarthy, Kim Cattrall, James Spader, and Meshach Taylor. A loose adaptation of the Pygmalion myth, the Michael Gottleib-directed film tells the story of a department store mannequin inhabited by an ancient Egyptian woman. Though critically dismissed upon its release, MANNEQUIN...