Mise en Screen

Marty Supreme is a 2025 sports comedy-drama film directed, written, produced, and edited by Josh Safdie, with Ronald Bronstein co-writer, co-producer- and co-editor. In this film we follow Marty Mauser, an aspiring table tennis player who seeks to become the world champion of the sport while simultaneously outrunning the consequences of his various scams, affairs, prideful boasts, and collectors....

In this episode we discuss a litany of films we watched to fill in the gaps of 2025 releases, full spoilers for all films discussed. Time Stamps: (5:49) Broken Church  (19:36) Star Trek Section 31   (26:07) Avatar: Fire and Ash   (33:21) Black Bag (38:28) Sovereign  (43:31) Eephus (49:58) Train Dreams (56:41) The Phoenician Scheme   (1:01:21) The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar   (1:06:15) Ballad o...

Wake Up Dead Man is the latest Knives Out mystery film from writer-director Rian Johnson. In this film we find Father Jud Duplenticy (Joh O'Connor) under suspicion of the murder of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Joshj Brolin), stabbed in the back in a storage closet during his Good Friday service. The ensemble this time is played by Glenn Close as Martha, a lifelong servant of the church, Jeremy Renne...

Kill Bill The Whole Bloody Affair is a re-release of Kill Bill Volume 1 & 2 as one four hour thirty-five minute film with one 15 minute intermission. In this film we follow The Bride, played by Uma Thurman, who is pregnant and rehearsing for her wedding when her ex-lover Bill (David Carridine) arrives with the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah)...

Rental Family is the latest feature film by Hikari, cowritten by herself and Stephen Blahut, starring Brendan Fraser as a struggling American actor living in Japan who stumbles into a job working for a rental family agency who hire out actors to play unconventional roles for clients such as hosting a funeral for a still living individual, staging a wedding, playing a father for a mother-daughter w...

Angel's Egg is a 1985 Japanese animated OVA film written and directed by Mamoru Oshii, best known for his work directing the animated film Ghost in the Shell in 1995. This film follows two nameless characters, a young girl who carries an egg with her and a young man with a cross-shaped sword who joins her as they travel through a ruined empty city. Because of the abstract nature of the movie's set...

Die My Love is the fifth feature film directed by Lynne Ramsay, who, alongside Enda Walsh and Alice Birch, wrote the screenplay which is adapted from the 2012 Argentinian novel written by Ariana Harwicz. Cinematography is by Seamus McGarvey. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence as Grace, a woman transplanted with her lover Jackson, played by Robert Pattinson, from New York to Montana after the death o...

Frankenstein is the 992nd adaptation featuring the monster from Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus . It is probably the 6th that hews closer to the source novel than the 1931 Universal film adaptation. This 2025 adaptation is directed, produced, and based on a screenplay by Guillermo del Toro, best known for The Shape of Water , Pan's Labyrinth , and Pinocchio (no no...

Bugonia is a 2025 film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. This is an English remake of a 2003 South Korean film called Save the Green Planet! which was directed by Jang Joon-hwan. In Bugonia Jesse Plemons stars as Teddy Gatz, who together with his cousin Don, played by Aidan Delbis, kidnap and imprison CEO Michelle Fuller, played by Emma Stone, whom Teddy believes to be an alien. Time Stamps: (04:41) I...

Red Rooms , a 2023 psychological horror film written and directed by Pascal Plante. It follows Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy), a fashion model who takes an interest in the murder trial of Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos). She becomes acquainted with another observer, Clementine (Laurie Babin), who will tell anyone who will listen that Chevalier is innocent. As time goes on they learn more a...

Ben was able to attend the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville, VA and saw 12 feature films and one short film collection. He recorded some onsite reactions and introductions to each film and we intercut those with our post-festival conversational Q&A. Red Rooms discussion will follow tomorrow and our regular programming will resume next Thursday with Bugonia ! Sound Credit: drumroll2.aif by...

After The Hunt is a 2025 film directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Nora Garrett. It stars Julia Roberts as Alma Imhoff, a philosophy professor at Yale on the verge of tenure. Ayo Edebiri plays Maggie, a star student of Alma's and Andrew Garfield as Hank, a fellow professor also on the verge of tenure. Alma is caught between the two when Maggie confides in Alma that Hank sexually assaulted he...

Anemone is a 2025 film directed by Ronan Day-Lewis, written by Ronan with his father Daniel Day-Lewis, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Ray Stoker, and Sean Bean as Jem Stoker, with supporting performances from Samantha Morton as Nessa Stoker, Samuel Bottomley as Brian Stoker, and Safia Oakley-Green as Hattie. In this film Jem seeks out his brother Ray, who has lived in isolation for an extended perio...

The Smashing Machine is a 2025 film directed, written, produced, and edited by Benny Safdie and starring Dwayne Johnson as Mark Kerr, Emily Blunt as Dawn Staples, Ryan Bader as Mark Coleman, and Bas Rutten as himself. We follow Mark Kerr from 1997-2000 as he wins his first title in a Brazilian tournament before skipping forward to focus on a fight in Tokyo, Kerr's tumultuous relationship with his...

Leftist guerillas Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) and her lover "Ghetto" Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) leading their revolutionary group the French 75 in storming and liberating a migrant holding facility operated by race pervert Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn). But after a bank robbery turns deadly the group is shattered and scattered, with Perfidia vanishing and Pat going into hiding...

HIM follows Cameron "Cam" Cade (Tyriq Withers) an up and coming college quarterback star who suffers a serious head injury before the draft combine. Unable to participate, Cam finds himself singled out and selected by his idol, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) who invites Cam to his isolated compound to train for a week as a test to see if he is capable of succeeding White as the San Antonio Saviors n...

The Long Walk is the latest film adaptation of a Stephen King novel and takes place in an alternate 1970s United States in which a past war has ruined the country economically. The totalitarian regime that now runs the country has devised a new annual event to encourage larger GDP growth: a marathon walk in which one kid from each state is chosen via voluntary raffle. Each individual must walk at...

Private eye Honey O'Donahue (Margaret Qualley) begins investigating the suspicious death of one of her clients, who turns up dead in a car accident before they can even meet. Her sleuthing, with the help of MG (Aubrey Plaza), a police officer she hooked up with, points to the Four Ways church of Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans), a sleazy preacher who brings new meaning to the term 'Come to Jesus...

We get into the nitty gritty details of the back half of Ne Zha 2 as well as dive into the cultural war between the US and China and specifically China's rapid gains in dominating the worldwide box office seemingly all on its own. Timestamps (00:00) Na Zha 2 spoilers (37:20) China, America, the global box office, and international influence (1:15:05) American culture, past and future Works Cited A...

Ne Zha 2 is the fifth highest grossing film of all time worldwide, so why hasn't anyone in the US really seen or heard about it? We talk about the awful, no good animated film Foodfight! (2012) first, followed by our guessing game for related screenings, then get into Investiture of the Gods, Ne Zha 1 from 2019 and Ne Zha 2 released earlier this year in China and subbed in the US and most recently...

This is our spoiler filled section for not only Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest but also the original Akira Kurosawa film High and Low . We talk about pretty much everything that happens in the second half of both films, what we liked and did not like about how each film handles the same overarching scenario and how they differ in execution. Next week we will be discussing Ne Zha 2 the Chinese animat...

In this non-spoiler episode we discuss both Spike Lee's latest joint Highest 2 Lowest which sees the famed director reteaming with Denzel Washington in a reinterpretation of the classic Akira Kurosawa film from 1963: High and Low . We discuss the first half of both films, their differences and similarities in focus and execution of the same premise (taken from the novel King's Ransom: An 87th Prec...

In present-day Japan, a series of destructive offshore phenomena leads to the appearance of a unidentified giant lizard-like creature. The mysterious nature of the beast and the destruction it leaves in its wake causes political confusion and paralysis within the Japanese government. A task force is created to research the creature and solve the puzzle of an enigmatic chart left behind by Goro Mak...

In this episode we both watched awful, terrible, no-good films as punishment for losing the guessing game last episode. We then get back to regular scheduling with guessing and talking about two related films to our main feature: The Naked Gun , directed by Akiva Schaffer as well as written by Schaffer, Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, and starring Liam Neeson as Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr. who is pulled of...

In this episode we discuss Together , written and directed by Michael Shanks and starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a couple in a relationship currently going through troubled times that is only exacerbated by a supernatural effect that begins to forcibly push the two together with horrific outcomes. Spoilers begin at 1:03:00 and end at 1:22:38 Next week we will be discussing The Naked Gun st...