The Next Picture Show

Due to some unavoidable scheduling conflicts, your regularly scheduled Next Picture Show pairing is delayed a week, but in its place, Genevieve, Keith, and Tasha are sharing some of their favorite films of the year so far. Some of these got an in-depth discussion on the regular podcast, some showed up as subjects of a bonus episode on our Patreon, and some are completely new to the podcast, but al...

The new THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT contains a lot of the same DNA as ADAPTATION, but instead of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, the film’s meta energy is focused on star Nicolas Cage, once again playing two competing sides of the same tortured talent. This week we get into how the confluence of actor, persona, and screenplay works differently in each film, but first we process UNBEARABL...

We’re offering four Nicolas Cages for the price of two with this week’s pairing, inspired by Cage’s latest, THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT, which finds the actor playing two connected versions of himself. But before entering that hall of mirrors, we’re heading back to 2002’s ADAPTATION for a different strain of meta exercise centered on another set of Nicolas Cages, this one playing the f...

Despite its clear thematic and philosophical connections to the other film in this pairing, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s BLIND CHANCE, Daniel Schienert and Daniel Kwan’s new EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE is a unique experience, a bold, humanistic film full of big messages and also butt jokes. It’s a film that’s built to surprise and delight on first viewing, but what does it offer in terms of rewatc...

In addition to being an examination of how much chance determines the person we become, as well as something of a Rosetta Stone for the work of Krzysztof Kieslowski, BLIND CHANCE also plays like the 1980s version of a multiverse story, making it a clear precursor to Daniels Kwan and Scheinert’s new EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. But Kieslowski’s film has different ideas about fate, determinati...

Ti West’s new X is very much inspired by Tobe Hooper’s 1974 shocker THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (and to an extent, Hooper’s lesser-known EATEN ALIVE), following another bunch of ill-fated van passengers, this one a group filming a low-budget porno, who wind up on the wrong side of the owners of a remote Texas farmhouse. The film’s late-’70s setting invites all sorts of analysis and interpretation...

Ti West’s new horror film X is very openly inspired by THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, carrying through the spirit of Tobe Hooper’s 1974 shocker more capably than most of the subsequent films in what would become a nine-film franchise (in particular this year’s dreadful remake). Before getting into how it does that next week, this week we’re revisiting Hooper’s film with the help of film critic and s...

Kogonada’s new AFTER YANG plays in many ways like a mirror to Steven Spielberg’s misunderstood android epic A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE as it explores ideas about human nature through the experiences of an artificial being. It’s also an unusually warm, thematically rich science-fiction film that opens up countless avenues of discussion, a few of which we travel down before bringing AFTER YANG int...

Kogonada’s new science-fiction film AFTER YANG wrestles with the humanity of artificial beings, and their relationship to humanity, in a way that feels distinctly reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s 2001 feature A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Both films are highly sympathetic toward the android companions on which they center, but Spielberg’s film, which began life as a Stanley Kubrick endeavor, has...

Steven Soderbergh’s new thriller KIMI is as brisk, stylish, and sure-footed in its approach as Tom Tykwer’s 1998 arthouse hit RUN LOLA RUN, but with a much different set of cinematic goals and references in play. Does KIMI’s spare, simple, stylish approach alchemize into what one of our panelists calls “pure entertainment” that’s “easy as breathing,” or does it leave too many unfilled spaces and n...

Steven Soderbergh’s new straight-to-streaming movie KIMI wears its many influences on its sleeve, but we saw our inspiration for this week’s pairing in its protagonist’s colorful dyed hair, reminiscent of one of the many eye-popping elements of Tom Tykwer’s 1998 international breakout RUN LOLA RUN. But what really links the two films is the breakneck pace they share as they chase after women tryin...

Kat Coiro’s new MARRY ME is a rarity in 2022: a major-studio romcom released to theaters (okay, and Peacock), that features recognizable stars and tries to honor the genre without apologies or winky self-awareness. It’s a modern yet old-fashioned romcom that relies on audiences’ affection for its genre, and in particular its incandescent star, Jennifer Lopez, to smooth over its rough patches, whic...

Despite a very 2022 premise, the new MARRY ME acts in many ways like a romantic comedy from the genre’s late-20th-century heyday, from its star-driven nature to its central fantasy of a romance between a world-famous celebrity and an everyday schlub. That particular combination pointed us in the direction of one of the era’s romcom highlights, 1999’s NOTTING HILL, starring Julia Roberts and Hugh G...

Is Joel Coen’s new THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH the most by-the-letter, scrupulous adaptation of Shakespeare’s play ever put to screen, or a series of subtle but surprising decisions applied to an extremely familiar text? We’re a little divided on that question this week, as we’re joined once again by David Chen, host of the Culturally Relevant podcast (among many other projects), to parse what distingu...

There are no shortage of adaptations we could pair with Joel Coen’s new THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, but for our purposes the choice was always clear: Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 classic THRONE OF BLOOD is an ideal Next Picture Show companion piece for the way in which it takes what it needs from the original Shakespeare while changing the language, setting, and performance style, and cherry-picking elements...

Mamoru Hosoda’s new anime feature BELLE moves the classic fable of Beauty and the Beast into a futuristic VR world, but that’s not the film’s only major departure from its original source material. Although it contains some direct visual references and corollary characters to Disney’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, it’s ultimately concerned with different, more unruly emotions, which drives the story in un...

Mamoru Hosada’s new anime BELLE is the latest take on a certain tale as old as time, one that was previously enshrined in the animated feature canon with 1991’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, one of the touchstones of Disney’s storied late-20th-century renaissance. This week we crack open the clamshell VHS case on Disney’s version, in particular its labored-even-by-Disney-standards development process, its...

Our look back at 2021 in film concludes with Tasha, Keith, and Scott’s picks for films number five through one on their respective top 10 lists—or at least their top 10s as they stood at the tail end of December. All three acknowledge that the year offered several quality releases that on any other given day might have made their way onto one of these lists, but for the overlapping factors of time...

We’re kicking off 2022 by setting aside our usual format for a look back at 2021 in film, via that tried and true structure, the Top 10 list. Keith, Scott, and Tasha have each come to this two-part episode bearing their individual top 10 lists, as well as broader thoughts on a year in which established moviegoing models seem to be shifting more rapidly than ever. This week covers the films at the...

Guillermo del Toro’s new NIGHTMARE ALLEY is a first for the director, a film with no supernatural or fantasy elements at all, and yet it is still arguably more recognizable as a del Toro film than as a remake of the 1947 Edmund Goulding noir of the same name. Why this project, for this director, and with these actors? We’re joined once again by our friend and critic Noel Murray to hash out our var...

Guillermo del Toro has emphasized that his new NIGHTMARE ALLEY is not a remake of Edmund Goulding’s 1947 noir of the same name, but rather an attempt to more faithfully adapt the 1946 novel by author William Lindsay Gresham, about a carnival con artist who expands his hustle into spiritualism and subsequently opens himself up to disaster. Nonetheless, this week in preparation of our discussion of...

With less of a narrative focus on survival than DELIVERANCE, Jane Campion’s new POWER OF THE DOG takes a comparatively subtle approach to unpacking the nuances of toxic masculinity and the myriad ways in which it can poison relationships — but there’s nothing subtle about that ending and the way it makes everything leading up to it click into place. We dig into the power of POWER’s storytelling, p...

Jane Campion’s new POWER OF THE DOG includes a tense passage involving a banjo that plays as a nod to the 1972 John Boorman classic DELIVERANCE, but the two films’ shared thematic concerns go much deeper than banjo duels. Chief among those is the theme of toxic masculinity and its myriad manifestations, which we explore this week via DELIVERANCE’s four male archetypes and their misbegotten river a...

Rebecca Hall’s new PASSING takes a more restrained, internal approach to its story about racial identity and the rejection thereof than Douglas Sirk’s 1959 classic IMITATION OF LIFE, but the two films share an awareness of how style and subject matter can work hand in hand. We’re joined again this week by critic Odie Henderson to discuss how each film balances its messaging, storytelling, and styl...

Rebecca Hall’s new film PASSING centers on a complicated female friendship defined in part by semi-porous racial boundaries, a thematic throughline that pointed us directly to Douglas Sirk’s IMITATION OF LIFE — with an assist from RogerEbert.com critic Odie Henderson, who in his recent review of Hall’s film invoked Sirk’s 1959 melodrama, citing it as his #3 film of all time. We’re joined this week...