the arc.fm

Did you know people HATE Alejandro González Iñárritu's films, walked out of Amores Perros during its Premiere, and stopped being friends with Cole because of it? And on that note: we dig into why a movie this technically towering is so hard to actually love. EPISODE SUMMARY Amores Perros (2000), starring Gael García Bernal and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, is Cole's birthday pick this s...

THE ARC'S TAKE This episode argues that Airplane isn't a joke machine bolted onto a plot but a plot that never once stops being played straight — the "clothing line" every single joke hangs from — and that's precisely why deadpan dramatic actors, not comedians, were the only people who could have made it work. EPISODE SUMMARY Is Airplane! (1980) actually the funniest movie ever made — and does it...

THE ARC'S TAKE This episode argues that Back to the Future's whole plot is smuggled into the audience's lap before Marty's face even appears onscreen, you get literally the whole film encapsulated in one shot. EPISODE SUMMARY We revisit Back to the Future (1985) — and discover, mid-recording, that half the room has never actually seen it. Robby comes in ready to argue it's "the most perfect movie...

THE ARC'S TAKE The real argument here is that the stage play and the TV show only look like the same story wearing two outfits, when they're actually two different animals entirely — one built to survive a guinea pig's murder in a way the other never could. It's not quite "a very special episode," but something about this one feels much more personal, but also there is a Chekhov's Gun dance break...

If you are seeing this episode twice it is because the audio has been updated. Thank you/sorry. THE ARC'S TAKE This episode argues that Freaky Friday has "so much plot, no story" — and that its real, unplanned achievement isn't the mother-daughter reckoning it announces but the sibling truce it never bothers to take credit for. EPISODE SUMMARY On The Arc, three hosts finally watch the original 197...

THE ARC'S TAKE This episode asks whether Marty Supreme is Spielberg's version of Uncut Gems — sumptuous instead of feral, but just as committed to a hero who never actually becomes one — and finds a genuinely tragic American Dream story hiding inside all that Safdie chaos. EPISODE SUMMARY We tackle (backhand?) Marty Supreme , the Safdie brothers' Timothée Chalamet-led ping-pong biopic, and argue a...

THE ARC'S TAKE This episode's argument is that Project Hail Mary only pretends to be hard sci-fi about a dying sun — strip away the spaceships and it's La La Land with an alien, and our real case is that the film's quiet radical move isn't the science, it's refusing to make the alien the villain. EPISODE SUMMARY We watch Project Hail Mary — Ryan Gosling's big-budget adaptation of Andy Weir's bests...

THE ARC'S TAKE This episode's whole argument boils down to Jaclynn'ss tagline, repeated like a confession — "this movie is smarter than me" — and we spend an hour proving that the vampires are the least scary thing in Sinners , since Coogler already gave the real monster a name: Mississippi. EPISODE SUMMARY We tackle Sinners , Ryan Coogler's Oscar-nominated vampire movie starring Michael B. Jordan...

THE ARC'S TAKE In the grand tradition of this show, we watched this out of order in order to celebrate springing forward for Daylight Savings Time so true fans of "Back To The Future," please, be nice in the comments section because we have nothing but love for the genre (yes, "Back To The Future" is a genre unto itself). We ask whether Back to the Future Part II is even a movie or just a very exp...

Jaclynn made the most viral reel about our friendship, and Robby has never seen Instagram until now- this is a GREAT (all caps episode) about telling a story in less than thirty seconds. The view count is well over a million and shows no signs of stopping. This reel is so popular that it is actively making near strangers ask questions and have very strong opinions about our personal lives, which i...

THE ARC'S TAKE We argue that David Lynch made his most experimental film by removing every tool he usually relies on — no surrealism, no dread-tricks, just a man on a lawnmower — and dread showed up anyway, because it turns out the weirdness was never the trick, it was him. EPISODE SUMMARY Lynch is the master of the eery, absurd, surreal dream film, but he himself says that his most "experimental"...

Everything you need to know about David Lynch's style in five minutes! You really should watch the whole film eventually, but a five minute scene that appears fifteen minutes into David Lynch's masterpiece "Mulholland Drive" is all you really need. That said, you really should also know about Lynch's producer, editor, and sometimes screenwriter of twenty years, Mary Sweeney! Please, note: this sce...

Content & Trigger Warning: this episode discusses sexual assault in the film and in real life. THE ARC'S TAKE We argue that "Women Talking" only looks plotless if you're measuring plot by what happens on screen instead of what it costs to decide anything at all — and that the film's real subject isn't the assault but the coerced forgiveness that lets it keep happening. EPISODE SUMMARY Women Ta...

THE ARC'S TAKE We spend most of Carol braced for the tragic, closeted ending 1950s convention demands, so when Highsmith and Haynes hand the women the reins instead, it recasts everything we just watched as an argument that withholding psychology isn't distance — it's trust. Carol takes place in the "liminal space" that floats between Christmas and the start of the new year, and it occupies the sp...

THE ARC'S TAKE We argue Michael Caine playing Scrooge dead straight, like Shakespeare, is exactly why the Muppets around him are allowed to be so funny — and why this version, not the somber ones, earns its ending. EPISODE SUMMARY The Muppet Christmas Carol is, against all odds, one of the most emotionally sincere adaptations of Dickens ever put to film — and this week on The Arc, we figure out wh...

We put a six-second Vine of a guy falling outside a 7-Eleven up against Hemingway's baby shoes and argue the getting-up is the whole story — the difference between a joke and a hero's journey is one extra beat of dignity. EPISODE SUMMARY This week on The Arc, we throw out the usual movie-review format entirely and spend an episode dissecting a six-second Vine — the one with the glitching GameCube...

Robert Weinstein, our far too humble host and resident storytelling teacher has written yet another play, which was performed by the Barrow Group, and we get to talk about it, celebrate it, and accidentally tear into it. Read the play here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1O_pb-vqXSIgZY2o9UsmZRMpkdBG1STGN?usp=sharing THE ARC'S TAKE We dig into a ten-minute play about an angry old woman reco...

We put Jaclynn's favorite writing-room legend on trial — that Phoebe Waller-Bridge scrapped three finished episodes of Fleabag season 2 to open on a 90-second dinner-table gut-punch instead — and end up asking whether "cut everything until you hit the marrow" is a universal law of good storytelling or just a very expensive miracle only one person on Earth could afford to pull off. EPISODE SUMMARY...

THE ARC'S TAKE We bring on an actual Chicago improviser to argue that "Don't Think Twice" gets the community right and the improv itself completely wrong — and end up debating whether the film's jealous, unsupportive troupe is a realistic portrait of ambition or just a group chat full of people who need therapy. EPISODE SUMMARY This week on The Arc, Sophie Long joins the crew from Sydney by way of...

We argue about whether Freaky Friday is a "film" or a "movie" — Cole makes his case on the strength of the cinematography, Robby makes his on how much interior life every character gets — and end up crying, more than once, over a body-swap comedy we all showed up ready to make fun of. EPISODE SUMMARY We revisit Freaky Friday (2003) fresh off watching its sequel, Freakier Friday, and only one of us...

We argue Freakier Friday is a box of nostalgia cupcakes that somehow turns into a real conversation about empathy, grief, and exactly how meta you can make a story before the Easter eggs start to break. EPISODE SUMMARY Freakier Friday (2025), directed by Nisha Ganatra and starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, marks Lohan's first leading role in wide theatrical release in 18 years — and on T...

We analyze a single sixty-second silent scene from Crashing (UK, 2016) and argue it contains a masterclass in heightening — and a complete portrait of the whole series. EPISODE SUMMARY Crashing (UK, 2016) is a six-part comedy series created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge — one of her first public-facing works before Fleabag changed everything. On The Arc (thearc.fm), we spend an episode on a single silen...

We argue The Studio Episode 02 is structured as a flawless bookend where basically every line is a Chekhov's Gun that goes off — and that someone couldn't resist turning it from a pistol into a machine gun, which somehow makes it more perfect. EPISODE SUMMARY The Studio, Episode 02 — "The Oner" — is a half-hour of television in which nearly every line is a Chekhov's Gun waiting to fire, and they a...

We suspend our disbelief for two straight hours watching The Rock out-muscle a helicopter — and then completely lose it over one shot of a sunrise — which tells you everything about how precisely David Leitch controls what you see and when you see it. EPISODE SUMMARY Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019), directed by David Leitch and starring Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elb...

We argue that "My Life as a Dog" gets sold as the gentlest movie ever made when it's actually a devastating study of a kid coping with his mother's death by barking like a Soviet space dog no one bothered to bring home — and the trick is that it hides the wreckage in something that looks, on the surface, like whimsy. EPISODE SUMMARY We celebrate Virgo season with Robby's favorite film — My Life as...