Reel Deep Dive

Arguably the most ambitious and accomplished of the many, many outside media adaptations of Louisa May Alcott's 1868 coming-of-age novel, Greta Gerwig's 2019 take on Little Women scored rave reviews and high box office returns. Its studio, knowing that period dramas with lots of actorly moments tend to do well at the Oscars, campaigned hard for it during awards season (it got lots of major award n...

One of the most acclaimed films of 2022, Everything Everywhere All At Once follows a struggling laundromat owner (Michelle Yeoh) as she navigates dealings with a stern IRS agent (Jamie Lee Curtis), her disapproving father (James Hong), her disappointed husband (Ke Huy Quan), and her distant child (Stephanie Hsu). Things take a turn when she gets roped into a wider struggle centered upon various al...

While Toy Story holds the distinctions of being the first computer animated feature film and the IP that established Pixar's brand identity, its endurance in pop culture goes far beyond its groundbreaking elements. Toy Story is a deeply emotive and humanizing film that also possesses great story structure, a deep bench of likable characters, and a warmly relatable sense of humor. Toy Story becomes...

Founded shortly after unionization struggles at Disney resulted in a talent exodus, United Productions of America (UPA) specialized in wartime propaganda cartoons before subcontracting for Columbia Pictures. Their output, heavily indebted to abstracted modern art and limited animation, pushed the boundaries of what an animated short film could be. This recording focuses on four groundbreaking cart...

Film distributor Miramax spent the 80's and 90's cannily marketing its products with great success to critics, audiences, and film award committees. One of the biggest beneficiaries of Miramax gamesmanship was Good Will Hunting, a coming-of-age drama surrounding a troubled Bostonian math prodigy. Good Will Hunting only had one famous actor in its cast and its story could not be easily boiled down...

Made at the height of World World II, Casablanca centers on a group of drunks, gamblers, criminals, refugees, cops, and Nazis contending for a valuable set of papers that can ensure one safe transit out of the reach of the Third Reich. These documents wind up in the hands of saloon owner Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), meaning that everyone from corrupt police Captain Renault (Claude Rains) to Rick...

Centering on a group of jewel thieves bickering with increasing severity after a heist goes horribly wrong, Reservoir Dogs broke several molds, inspired numerous imitators, and immediately turned writer/director Quentin Tarantino into an adjective. Its brisk pace, unconventional structure, fondness for pastiche, cavalier approach to violence, and rambling dialogue became hallmarks of independent c...

Troop Beverly Hills is a late 1980's comedy centering on a privileged housewife (Shelley Long) taking a position as the leader of her daughter's Wilderness Girls group. This is initially so she can demonstrate her resolve to her estranged husband (Craig T. Nelson), but she gradually bonds with her child (Jenny Lewis), forms connections with the other girls, and develops a rivalry with the Culver C...

Arguably the most fantastical (and sexy) of the Bard's comedies, A Midsummer Night's Dream was first adapted into a movie in 1925 and has received numerous treatments since. This podcast episode delves into a 1999 Hollywood treatment directed by Michael Hoffman and starring Kevin Kline, Anna Friel, Stanley Tucci, Christian Bale, Rupert Everett, Michelle Pfeiffer, Calista Flockhart, Dominic West, a...

Defying the ascent of talkies, Charlie Chaplin conceived and filmed City Lights as a romantic comedy in pantomime and released it well after the silent era was dead. Despite this, City Lights was an acclaimed success and is routinely argued as Chaplin's masterpiece. It's also Ryan's favorite Chaplin film, meaning that he was eager to drag Sylvan and Cheryl in for a discussion about its merits, imp...

The titular character of Steven Universe is a young boy whose heritage stems from both the human race and a species of alien gem people rebelling against an intergalactic colonial state. Caught in the middle of this centuries-long conflict, Steven is forced to grow up very quickly over the course of the series. This leads him to take a very idiosyncratic approach to concepts like kindness, empathy...

While its Halloween episodes tend to get far more attention, The Simpsons has inevitably aired a number of yuletide episodes. In fact, the very first episode of the program takes place at Christmas (although that wasn't part of the original plan). It's possible to track the growth, evolution, and decline of The Simpsons through the way it has approached the 25th of December throughout its lengthy...

Perhaps interested in creating a seasonal perennial that would yield residual checks for years to come, Emma Thompson spent eight years trying to make a movie based on the popular Wham! song "Last Christmas". The resulting film, starring Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding, was released shortly after the death of former Wham! frontman George Michael. It received a critical drubbing, but still made a h...

One of the most profitable films of a year that had no shortage of memorable blockbusters, Gremlins is a horror comedy centering on a family besieged by folkloric monsters during the holiday season. Made with a relatively modest budget and cast with no major stars, Gremlins succeeded largely due to Joe Dante's idiosyncratic direction, Chris Columbus's novel script, and the ingenuity demonstrated b...

The Killer Shrews is a cheaply-made horror movie about a guy who finds himself on an island filled with genetically-altered monsters (who look an awful lot like hand puppets). Nobody involved in the production felt that they were making high art or even something that would be fun to watch. The Killer Shrews exists because a dude who owned a regional theater chain needed something to fill a schedu...

The TV sitcom is arguably the most widespread artistic representation of ordinary, quotidian life and, as such, many sitcoms tackle popular holidays on their episodes. It is Ryan's opinion that Bob's Burgers handles Thanksgiving with better craft and thematic focus than just about any other program of its kind. He brings on Sarah for a discussion about three of these episodes, all of which were sc...

Spinning off from the long-running animated TV sitcom, The Bob's Burgers Movie finds the Belchers struggling to keep financially afloat after a massive sinkhole opens up right in front of the family restaurant. A slim beacon of hope exists in the possibility of their landlord being lenient with the rent until things are sorted, but even that option is jeopardized when a skeleton found in the sinkh...

The script for Splash, a romantic comedy where a jaded New Yorker falls in love with a mermaid, had been kicking around Hollywood for a while before Disney became interested. Ultimately, it became the first project released by Touchstone Pictures, a brand that Disney created in order to produce movies that fell outside the carefully-cultivated Disney identity. Starring relatively unknown actors To...

Several decades after narrowly avoiding the appetites of the supernatural monster who manifests as their darkest fears, the band of lovable misfits from the prior movie are now adults struggling to live their lives and deal with a trauma that they only vaguely remember. Unfortunately for them, the creature survived their fateful encounter and has emerged from hibernation to prey on the vulnerable...

Centering on a group of outcast kids who are being terrorized by a hungry supernatural entity that knows their deepest fears, It was a bestselling Stephen King novel before it was adapted into a 1990 TV movie. Horror buffs do have fond memories of that film because of a memorable performance by Tim Curry as the villain, but many were still excited by the prospect of the story getting a big screen...

Often credited with kicking off the Universal Monsters series that gave us Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and The Wolf Man (1941), The Phantom of the Opera was created at great expense and with numerous production woes. Intended from the onset to be a vehicle for superstar actor Lon Chaney, his scene-stealing performance and memorably gruesome makeup job still manages to engage audiences alm...

Eager to repeat the success of 1965's A Charlie Brown Christmas, CBS instructed director Bill Melendez, producer Lee Mendelson, and writer/creator Charles M. Schulz to craft another Peanuts holiday special that they could rebroadcast year after year indefinitely. Mendelson pushed Halloween as the next logical step and, after bringing back most of the original voice cast and musician Vince Guaraldi...

Easily the most popular entry in the "killer car" microgenre, Christine centers upon an awkward, dweeby teenage boy who is gradually corrupted by an evil spirit found inside the vintage automobile that gives the film its name. Directed by John Carpenter as the Stephen King source novel was being prepared for publication, Christine received mixed reviews, earned modest success at the box office, an...

The result of an infamously prolonged and troubled shoot, Jaws was greeted with critical acclaim and record-breaking box office from the moment of its release. Not every hit movie maintains a good reputation and a looming presence in pop culture as it ages, but Jaws has arguably grown in esteem in the six decades since it was released. Jaws has "inspired" scores of knockoffs, director Steven Spiel...

Looking to reinvent her image after starring in a string of lowbrow erotic thrillers throughout the 1990's, Drew Barrymore grew passionate about a script that reframed the Cinderella story through the lenses of historical fiction and third wave feminism. The resulting Ever After was a commercial hit that charmed millions of millennial girls and led to Barrymore starring in a series of warm, bubbly...