Someone Else's Movie

His new movie Best Boy follows three adult siblings locked in a deeply dysfunctional rivalry with one another, so it makes perfect sense that writer-director Jesse Noah Klein would want to tackle Thomas Vinterberg’s radical Dogme drama The Celebration , aka Festen . Your genial host Norm Wilner guarantees this episode was recorded entirely handheld.

To mark the release of a new boxed set of her cinema from Severin Films and Yellow Veil Pictures, writer-director Lucile Hadžihalilović joins us to investigate the looping mysteries and chilling implications of Alain Resnais’ avant-garde masterpiece Last Year in Marienbad . Your genial host Norm Wilner is sure he’s had this conversation before.

This week, writer-director Alex Noyer – whose folk-horror creepshow Love Is the Monster is newly available on VOD – asks whether Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead is a faithful remake of the George A. Romero classic, or something entirely new. Your genial host Norm Wilner is very interested in the answer.

His new film Islands is now on digital and on demand, and writer-director Jan-Ole Gerster is here to dig into a favorite thriller: Martin Scorsese’s  revolutionary hit Taxi Driver . Your genial host Norm Wilner can’t believe no one’s ever picked this one before.

With her novel This Is Not a Test now a movie streaming on Shudder in the US and available on VOD in Canada, author Courtney Summers is here to howl about The Wolf of Snow Hollow , in which writer-director Jim Cummings plays a small-town deputy trying to solve a spate of violent murders while also dealing with his chaotic personal life. Your genial host Norm Wilner strongly suggests you watch the...

With his ‘80s dramedy This Too Shall Pass now streaming in the US and Canada, writer-director Rob Grant wants to celebrate Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me , the coming-of-age movie that changed everyone’s idea of what “a Stephen King movie” could look like. Your genial host Norm Wilner is embracing the melancholy on this one.

With her first feature Forastera opening at Film Forum in New York this Friday, writer-director Lucía Aleñar Iglesias is here to explore the hidden depths of Celine Sciamma’s Petite Maman , the 2021 drama about a little girl who copes with her grandmother’s death by making a new friend: Her own mother, when she was also eight years old. Your genial host Norm Wilner wants you to know it’s simpler t...

With her hybrid documentary Modern Whore now available on digital and on demand, and screening this Thursday in Toronto at TIFF Lightbox, director Nicole Bazuin takes some time to celebrate the wild creative freedoms of The Great Muppet Caper – the one where Kermit and Fozzie play identical twins, and Miss Piggy rides a motorcycle. Your genial host Norm Wilner is so glad someone finally brought th...

With their charming indie The Travel Companion rolling through its US release, directors and co-writers Travis Wood and Alex Mallis are here to ponder the paradoxes and metaphors of Hong Sang-soo’s 2011 drama The Day He Arrives . Your genial host Norm Wilner is really happy he could drop this one right after the Tropical Malady episode, for reasons that will become apparent.

It’s a Friday bonus episode! And we’re joined by writer-director Bretten Hannam , whose new film At the Place of Ghosts opens across Canada today, for a look at Apitchatpong Weerasethakul’s beguiling 2004 breakout Tropical Malady . Your genial host Norm Wilner is sorry about all the table noises, we recorded this one in-person during TIFF.

With his new film Two Pianos now playing in New York and Los Angeles, award-winning French writer-director Arnaud Desplechin is here to discuss a film he loves with his whole heart: Judd Apatow’s Funny People , the one where Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen play comedians grappling with life, death and jokes. Your genial host Norm Wilner truly did not see this coming.

With his latest drama Erupcja – starring Charli XCX as a young woman adrift in Warsaw – now playing select North American theaters, indie filmmaker Pete Ohs is here to explore the evocative world of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist , about a very polite collision of cultures in a Japanese mountain village. Your genial host Norm Wilner also thinks this was one of the best films of 2024.

With her award-winning first feature Blue Heron rolling into theatrical release, writer-director Sophy Romvari returns to the podcast to unpack Martha Coolidge’s devastating 1975 documentary Not a Pretty Picture , in which Coolidge enlisted a group of actors to re-create her own sexual assault and explored the effect the project has on her cast, and herself. Your genial host Norm Wilner has never...

With the East Coast drama Little Lorraine starting its Canadian theatrical run this Friday, April 17th, actor Auden Thornton is here to discuss Sarah Polley’s first feature Away from Her , and unpack the layers of emotion and loss running through it. Your genial host Norm Wilner had to brace himself for this one.

With his goopy, giddy contagion thriller Cold Storage now available on digital and on demand, director Jonny Campbell takes a swing at Mike Hodges’ stylish crime classic Get Carter – you know, the one where Michael Caine rampages through the Newcastle underworld. Your genial host Norm Wilner is bloody delighted to have this as our 600th episode. 

Now that his new creeper The Mortuary Assistant is streaming on Shudder, director Jeremiah Kipp ventures into the sinister funeral home of Don Coscarelli’s midnight horror classic Phantasm . Your genial host Norm Wilner isn’t worried about those silver spheres at all.

With her new drama Maya and Samar now in theaters across Canada, director Anita Doron invites us to fall under the spell of Tsai Ming-Liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn , about the last screening at a grand old Taipei movie house. Your genial host Norm Wilner takes this one very personally.

It’s our 11th anniversary, and critic and author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas – whose 2020 book 1000 Women in Horror is now a documentary, and streaming on Shudder this Friday – is here to discuss Abel Ferrara and Zoe Tamerlis Lund’s unforgettable Ms. 45 , which rewrote the rules of the rape-revenge thriller. Your genial host Norm Wilner has been looking forward to this one for a while.

The Oscars are tomorrow night, and Montreal filmmaker Alison McAlpine will be there with perfectly a strangeness, which is nominated for Best Documentary Short Film. But first, she wanted to talk about Maren Ade’s epic father-daughter dramedy Toni Erdmann . Your genial host Norm Wilner put his false teeth aside for this one.

It’s kind of weird that no one’s brought George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead onto the show in eleven years, right? Writer, actor and comedian Jon Blair thought so too, so in advance of premiering A Comedy Show at the End of the World at TO Sketchfest on Friday, he’s here to really sink his teeth into the zombie picture that changed movies forever. Your genial host Norm Wilner can't wait.

Before her new show One Butthole After Another premieres at TO Sketchfest, Toronto comic Tiyawnda stops in to talk about her fervent love for Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning horror procedural The Silence of the Lambs , starting with her first, entirely inappropriate experience of it. Your genial host Norm Wilner promises there is not a single Chianti joke in this entire episode.

With her semiautobiographical family study Jimpa rolling through theaters in the US and Canada, writer-director Sophie Hyde is here to plumb the depths of Andrew Haigh’s moody masterpiece All of Us Strangers . Your genial host Norm Wilner has been hoping someone would pick this one.

With his new documentary Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It opening in New York on Friday, veteran director Paris Barclay is here to unpack Stanley Kramer’s 1967 hot-button love story Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner – a picture he knows inside and out. Your genial host Norm Wilner is here to take it in.

Actor and filmmaker Joan Chen has been racking up awards for her performance in Xiaodan He’s Montreal, My Beautiful ; now that it’s opening across Canada on Friday, February 13th, she’s here to talk about how much she loves Julian Schnabel’s 2007 drama The Diving Bell and the Butterfly . Your genial host Norm Wilner regrets that we only had half an hour for this one.

Writer-director Blake Winston Rice – whose latest short film Disc is playing this week in the Clemont-Ferrand Short Film Festival – is so enraptured by Chloe Zhao’s swooning historical drama Hamnet that he had to bring it onto the show. Your genial host Norm Wilner can see how that could happen.