Podcast Like It's ...

Phil and Emily are joined by Mitchell Beaupre, editor and podcast host at Letterboxd, to dig into Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy (2008). Michelle Williams stars as a woman driving to Alaska for work who gets stranded in a small Oregon town when her car dies and she loses her dog, and the film turns that small catastrophe into one of the quietest, most devastating portraits of American poverty th...

Phil and Emily are joined by journalist and author Josephine Riesman to continue their Richard Kelly Reichardt mini-series with the magnificent disaster that is Southland Tales (2006). And there is no better guest for it: Josie wrote the definitive deep-dive on this movie and once spent three hours walking Venice Beach interviewing Richard Kelly himself. Set in an alternate 2008 where nuclear atta...

Phil and Emily are joined by critic and editor Isaac Feldberg to continue their Richard Kelly Reichardt mini-series with Kelly Reichardt's quiet breakthrough, Old Joy (2006). Isaac edits at Letterboxd Journal and writes for RogerEbert.com and Fangoria, and as a former Eagle Scout, he might be the perfect guide to a movie about two guys going camping. Made for roughly $30,000 and shot in the forest...

Phil and Emily are joined by actress Fiona Dourif to launch a brand new mini-series, Richard Kelly Reichardt, with the cult classic that started a thousand dorm-room arguments: Donnie Darko (2001). Richard Kelly's debut premiered at Sundance, opened the same day the Patriot Act was signed into law, and promptly bombed in theaters before Drew Barrymore's Flower Films, a $4.5 million budget, and a g...

Phil and Emily are joined by writer Elias Isquith (Necessary Fictions blog) to close out the Angelina Jolie Action Films of the 2000s miniseries with the loudest, messiest entry yet: Timur Bekmambetov's Wanted (2008). James McAvoy plays a cubicle drone recruited by Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman into a secret fraternity of assassins that takes its orders from a magical loom. Yes, a loom. The mo...

Phil and Emily bring in writer Lindsey Romain for the fourth installment of the Angelina Jolie action films miniseries, and it is the one LaToya Ferguson was promised. Lindsey's work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Vulture, and Bright Wall/Dark Room, and she saw this movie four times in theaters as a teenager. She still has the promotional pin from when she worked at a movie theater in high s...

Phil and Emily continue the Angelina Jolie action films miniseries with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider — The Cradle of Life (2003), joined by Carson Betts and Caroline Thompson, co-hosts of the How Have You Not Seen It podcast. All four participants are watching this film for the first time. This is relevant information. The Cradle of Life follows Lara Croft racing to find Pandora's Box before a rogue sc...

Phil and Emily continue the Angelina Jolie action films miniseries with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), joined by BJ Colangelo and Harmony Colangelo, co-hosts of the This Ends at Prom podcast. BJ and Harmony previously joined the show for Hard-Boiled, which Phil describes as a superior action movie. Harmony agrees with everything about that sentence. Tomb Raider follows aristocrat archaeologist La...

Phil and Emily are joined by LaToya Ferguson to kick off a new miniseries on Angelina Jolie's action films of the 2000s, beginning with Gone in 60 Seconds (2000). LaToya is a TV writer, critic, and co-host of the Empire Diaries podcast. She has appeared on the show before, covering The Other Sister and Ladybugs on previous installments. She wanted to cover Mr. and Mrs. Smith. She did not get Mr. a...

Phil and Emily are joined by film critic, screenwriter, and Hip Pocket podcast host Drew McWeeny to discuss Where the Wild Things Are (2009), the Spike Jonze adaptation of Maurice Sendak's 85-word picture book that cost roughly $100 million, barely broke even, got one Blu-ray release, and has been sitting in a strange kind of limbo ever since. Drew has been close to this film longer than almost an...

Phil and Emily are joined by Angie Han, TV critic at The Hollywood Reporter, to discuss  Synecdoche, NY  (2008), Charlie Kaufman's audacious directorial debut and the film Roger Ebert called the best of the 2000s. Kaufman wrote and directed this hallucinatory portrait of Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an ailing theater director who uses a MacArthur Fellowship to build a life-size...

Phil and Emily are joined by Katey Rich, awards editor at The Ankler and host of the Prestige Junkie podcast, to discuss Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Michel Gondry's Charlie Kaufman-written love story and one of the defining films of its generation. This episode is part of the ongoing miniseries on the 2000s films of Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry. Jim Carrey plays Joel and Kat...

Phil and Emily are joined by film critic and author Jason Bailey to revisit Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, George Clooney's 2002 directorial debut based on Chuck Barris' unauthorized autobiography. Jason is the author of Gandolfini: The Real Life of the Man Who Made Tony Soprano, now available in paperback. Chuck Barris created The Dating Game and The Gong Show. He also claimed to have secretly...

This week on Podcast Like It’s the 2000s , Phil Iscove is joined by writer David Iserson ( Ponies ) and author/podcaster Dana Schwartz ( Noble Blood , Anatomy: A Love Story ) to unpack one of the most inventive films of the decade: Adaptation . Part of our Spike Jonze & Charlie Kaufman mini-series, the group explores Kaufman’s famously meta screenplay, Nicolas Cage’s dual performance as Charli...

Phil and Emily are joined by Colby Day to discuss Human Nature (2001), Michel Gondry's feature directorial debut and Charlie Kaufman's second produced screenplay. The trio dives into this offbeat comedy about a woman with hypertrichosis, a scientist obsessed with teaching table manners to mice, and a feral man raised in the wild. They explore how Kaufman and Gondry use this absurd love triangle to...

Phil and Emily are joined by Adam B. Vary to discuss For Your Consideration (2006), Christopher Guest’s razor-sharp satire of Hollywood awards campaigns and the strange machinery behind Oscar buzz. As actors, publicists, and studios chase nominations, the film hilariously exposes how quickly hype can spiral into ego, anxiety, and manufactured prestige. This episode also wraps up our brief three-fi...

This week on Podcast Like It’s the 2000s, Phil and Emily continue their Christopher Guest 2000s miniseries with A Mighty Wind, joined by writer and author Carrie Courogen. They break down Guest’s uniquely gentle mockumentary style, the film’s satirical take on folk music culture, and why its characters feel both absurd and deeply human. Plus, a closer look at the performances, the emotional underc...

Phil and Emily continue their journey through the 2000s with Christopher Guest’s beloved mockumentary Best in Show . Joined by critic Kathryn VanArendonk, they discuss the film’s improvisational comedy, its incredible ensemble cast—including Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Parker Posey, and Fred Willard—and why the world of competitive dog shows created one of the funniest comedies of the decade. T...

On this episode of Podcast Like It’s the 2000s, Phil and Emily are joined by film critics Josh Spiegel and Scott Renshaw to discuss Pixar’s emotional adventure about Carl Fredricksen, a widowed balloon salesman who lifts his house into the sky in search of Paradise Falls only to discover an unexpected stowaway along the way. The group breaks down the film’s famous opening montage, its unusual elde...

Phil Iscove and Emily St. James continue their Pixar 2000s miniseries with a deep dive into WALL·E , Andrew Stanton’s 2008 animated sci-fi romance about a lonely trash-compacting robot left behind on Earth. Joined by Justin and Laura Khoo, they break down the film’s near-silent first act, Ben Burtt’s groundbreaking sound design, the Axiom’s consumerist dystopia, and why WALL·E may be Pixar’s most...

This week on Podcast Like It’s the 2000s , Phil and Emily wrap up their Valentine’s Day Wong Kar-wai miniseries with a deep dive into My Blueberry Nights (2007), joined by David Sims ( Blank Check ). They discuss Norah Jones’ debut performance, Jude Law’s rom-com era, the film’s Cannes premiere, its American road movie structure, and why this English-language detour feels so different from In the...

This week on Podcast Like It’s the 2000s, Phil and Emily continue their Valentine’s miniseries on the films of Wong Kar-wai with a deep dive into his dreamy, decadent, and divisive follow-up to In the Mood for Love: 2046. Joining them is Screen Drafts co-host Clay Keller to unpack memory, desire, sci-fi metaphors, hotel rooms, and the many women orbiting Tony Leung’s endlessly romantic (and endles...

This week on Podcast Like It’s the 2000s, Phil and Emily kick off a brand-new Valentine’s miniseries on the films of Wong Kar-wai with one of the most celebrated movies of the century: In the Mood for Love. Joining them are Katie McGrath and Tom Mison, making their first appearance on the main feed after many beloved appearances on Podcast Like It’s the 90s (the Patreon-exclusive show). The conver...

We continue our Pixar 2000s miniseries with one of the studio’s most unexpectedly profound films: Ratatouille. Joined by Brooke Solomon and Jordan Gustafson of The Queer Quadrant, we dig into why this movie about a rat who cooks somehow became one of Pixar’s most emotionally resonant works. We talk about Ratatouille as a love letter to food, Paris, and creative ambition; the film’s quietly radical...

On this episode of Podcast Like It’s the 2000s, Phil and Emily continue their Pixar 2000s miniseries by finally pulling into Radiator Springs to talk Cars with critic and scholar Myles McNutt. Often dismissed as “the lesser Pixar,” Cars is also one of the studio’s most commercially dominant films and one of its strangest cultural phenomena. The trio digs into why this movie connected so deeply wit...