Movie Nights with Dad

On Golden Pond gave Henry Fonda the only Oscar of his career — and he died just five months later. Katharine Hepburn won her fourth. Jane Fonda produced it as a way back to her own father. It's a quiet film about aging, distance, and the things fathers and children never quite manage to say to each other. This week Mark and Riley dig into all of it — but with a twist you won't get anywhere...

The Odd Couple (1968) pairs Jack Lemmon's neurotic, freshly divorced Felix against Walter Matthau's slovenly, exasperated Oscar, and the chemistry between them is the entire engine of the film. Neil Simon wrote the script, and more than fifty years later the comedic timing still lands. This week continues our Summer from the Stage series, and Mark played Murray the cop, one of the regulars...

Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986) adapts Neil Simon's own semi-autobiographical play about a cramped, struggling Brooklyn household during the Great Depression. Jonathan Silverman plays Eugene, the teenage narrator caught between adolescence and his family's hardships, and Bob Dishy plays Jack Jerome, the father quietly exhausted from trying to hold everything together. This week's episode...

The Rainmaker (1956) stars Burt Lancaster as Starbuck, a charming, larger-than-life con man who rides into a drought-stricken town promising rain, and Katharine Hepburn as Lizzie, the rancher's daughter who slowly, reluctantly lets herself believe in something for the first time. This week is the second episode in our Summer from the Stage series, and Mark played Starbuck in a theatrical produ...

You Can't Take It With You (1938) won Best Picture and Best Director for Frank Capra, and this week it kicks off our Summer from the Stage series — episodes where Mark has personally performed in a theatrical production of the film being reviewed. For this one, Mark played Boris Kolenkhov, the boisterous Russian ballet instructor at the center of the story's most chaotic scenes. Riley and...

Funny Girl (1968) is carried almost entirely on the back of one of the most magnetic screen debuts in Hollywood history. This week Riley and Mark close out Musical May reviewing Barbra Streisand's Oscar-winning performance as Fanny Brice, getting into what she does in this role that simply cannot be taught, how Omar Sharif manages to hold his own opposite her, what the film gets right and wher...

One year before this episode, Mark played Tevye in a community theater production of Fiddler on the Roof. Reviewing the 1971 film adaptation with that kind of experience in the room makes for a very different conversation. This week Riley and Mark get into what Norman Jewison got right and where the stage version still has the edge, what Topol brings to Tevye that caught Mark off guard, whether th...

Calamity Jane (1953) has been filed away as a cheerful Doris Day musical for decades — and that filing is doing it a disservice. This week Riley and Mark review the film starring Doris Day as the hard-riding, sharp-shooting Jane, digging into what Day actually pulls off in this role that tends to get ignored, why the friendship between Jane and Katie quietly outperforms every romantic subplot in t...

Singin' in the Rain (1952) is the kind of film that makes you wonder how it exists at all. Gene Kelly co-directed and choreographed most of it himself while starring in it. Debbie Reynolds had almost no formal dance training when filming began. Donald O'Connor shot "Make 'Em Laugh" in a single day and was bedridden for a week afterward. This week Riley and Mark review Stanley...

A Hard Day's Night (1964) wasn't trying to invent anything — and it invented everything. This week Riley and Mark review Richard Lester's Beatles mockumentary, the film widely credited with creating the music video format and directly inspiring the Monkees' TV show, all on a seven-week shoot with four non-actors and a modest budget. They dig into whether the Beatles are actually pe...

The Lady Eve (1941) is one of the smartest screwball comedies ever made — and it's been criminally underseen for decades. This week Riley and Mark review Preston Sturges' razor-sharp classic starring Barbara Stanwyck as a con artist who falls for the wrong man, gets burned, and comes back as an entirely different person for revenge. They dig into Stanwyck's total command of every scene...

The Apartment (1960) won Best Picture — but Billy Wilder wasn't making a feel-good film. This week Riley and Mark review one of classic Hollywood's most deceptively dark comedies, starring Jack Lemmon as a corporate nobody who loans his apartment to his bosses for their affairs, and Shirley MacLaine as the woman who makes him question everything. They dig into whether Baxter is actually a...

"Garbo Laughs." That was the entire marketing campaign for Ninotchka (1939) — and it worked. This week Riley and Mark review Ernst Lubitsch's classic comedy starring Greta Garbo as a Soviet envoy who travels to Paris and slowly, reluctantly, loses her ideological armor. They dig into Garbo's performance, whether Melvyn Douglas earns his place as the romantic lead, the film's...

It Happened One Night (1934) swept every major Oscar — Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay — and it only happened one other time in history. This week Riley and Mark review Frank Capra's screwball classic starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, breaking down the performances, the chemistry, the class dynamics at the heart of the story, and whether a film from 1934 can st...

Riley and Mark take on About Time — Richard Curtis's 2013 romantic drama about a young man who discovers he can travel back in time, and the film that quietly becomes about fathers and sons somewhere along the way. They dig into what Domhnall Gleeson brings to the lead role, what Bill Nighy does that makes the film's emotional payoff land, and whether the time travel logic matters at all g...

Riley and Mark dig into Vengeance — B.J. Novak's directorial debut, a dark comedy that starts as a fish-out-of-water story and slowly becomes something more unsettling. They get into what Novak is doing with his own performance, what Ashton Kutcher does that genuinely surprises, and whether the film's critique of media and authenticity earns its ending. A first-time director writing, direc...

Riley and Mark take on Whiplash — Damien Chazelle's 2014 film about a young drummer and the music teacher who may or may not be destroying him. They dig into what J.K. Simmons is doing as Fletcher, whether Miles Teller makes Neiman sympathetic enough, and what the film ultimately thinks about the relationship between abuse and greatness. It's a film about a director and a performer — the k...

Riley and Mark dig into Wake Up Dead Man — Rian Johnson's third Benoit Blanc mystery and the most ambitious entry in the Knives Out series. They get into what Daniel Craig is doing with Blanc this time around, whether the mystery mechanics hold up to scrutiny, and how it stacks up against Knives Out and Glass Onion. Johnson has now built an entire cinematic universe out of a Southern accent an...

Riley and Mark take on 12 Angry Men — Sidney Lumet's debut feature and one of the most purely theatrical films ever made, set almost entirely inside a single jury room. They dig into what Henry Fonda is and isn't doing as Juror 8, which of the twelve performances deserves more attention, and how Lumet makes a film with no action feel genuinely tense from start to finish. For a show with a...

Riley and Mark take on The Philadelphia Story — the 1940 screwball comedy that sent Katharine Hepburn from box office poison back to the top of Hollywood, with Cary Grant and James Stewart along for the ride. They dig into who actually wins the movie, what the film's attitude toward its heroine looks like from a modern perspective, and why the chemistry between all three leads still crackles....

Riley and Mark dig into 84 Charing Cross Road — the 1987 film based on Helene Hanff's correspondence with a London bookseller, and one of the most unusual love stories ever put on screen. They get into what Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins do with roles built almost entirely out of letters, why a film this quiet and literary works as well as it does, and what it says about connection across d...

Riley and Mark take on Fargo — the Coen Brothers' 1996 crime thriller and one of the most purely satisfying movies of the last 30 years. They dig into what Frances McDormand does as Marge Gunderson that makes the character so indelible, whether Jerry Lundegaard is tragic or just stupid, and what the Coens are doing with all that snow and silence. Marge Gunderson might be the most quietly radic...

Riley and Mark dig into Hud — Martin Ritt's 1963 character study in which Paul Newman plays one of Hollywood's most deliberately unpleasant protagonists. They get into what Newman is doing to make Hud charismatic enough to watch while being impossible to root for, what Melvyn Douglas and Patricia Neal are doing that earned them both Oscars, and what the film says about a certain kind of Am...

Riley and Mark take on Casablanca — the film that sits at the top of more greatest-movies-ever-made lists than almost anything else. They dig into what Bogart does to make Rick work, whether Ingrid Bergman's Ilsa is as passive as she seems, and whether a film made under studio chaos with a script rewritten daily holds together as well as everyone says it does. The reputation is enormous — this...

Riley and Mark take on Gone with the Wind — the longest, most decorated, and most contested film in Golden Age Hollywood. They get into what Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable are actually doing in those roles, how you watch a film this beautiful that is also this historically irresponsible, and whether its status as a classic is still defensible. There is no comfortable way to talk about this film and...