The Pacific Northwest Insurance Corporation Moviefilm Podcast

What does the rapid end of an empire feel like? One movie has two answers. Ryder joins us. Features an announcement! Next episode is about Raiders of the Lost Ark! It's on DISNEY PLUS!!!

Tintin, boy reporter. Snowy, his dog. Captain Haddock, his best friend. Matt Ellis and Andy Morse and Steven Spielberg all grew up with these wonnderful comic books, but only one of them made a movie based on them. Is it any good? We discuss.  Andy's podcast regarding the topic of James Bond pictures is "Rekindling our Bonds," listen to it here .  Next week's episode is about The Bridge on the Riv...

Corbin has been intending on doing an episode about High Hopes since the show started. Why? You'll find out when you listen to the episode!!! Topics: Thatcher, the bitterness of leftists living in capital, some suprising facts about the actress who plays the mother, and the role of acting in Cinema. Next week's show is about "THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN!" You can watch it on Kanopy . 

Corbin in has never quite understood what is going on in Antonioni's movies. Matt, on the other hand, is an an enthusiast. Can Dr. Movies use his teaching skills to enlighten his ignorant friend? Listen and learn!  Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing . Matt is also on there . And we got a Bluesky going. Next episode is about "High Hopes." watch here . 

Slow cinema movie about colonialism shot on a middle grade DSLR? That's like all the topics we're interested in, you know we had to crack this one open!!!! Ryder joins us. Watch it here, it's great . Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing . Matt is also on there . And we got a Bluesky going. Next episode: L'Eclisse! Watch it here . 

In 1954, Hollywood legend and almost blacklisted Nicholas Ray and on-the-outs-movie-star Joan Crawford got together to make a bonkers paella western melodrama for a Poverty Row studio about the terror of desire and American reaction with TruColor. it's really quite something. we discuss! Read Jennifer Peterson's analysis of Johnny Guitar's particular brew of gender studies and politics here . Our...

Third chair Ryder Canepa joins us to talk about "The White Ribbon," Michael Haneke's exporation of the world's worst town, the horrible adults who live there, and the ways their misery warps their children. Nazi origin story, anti-patriarchal tract, or something entirely more upsetting? We discuss.  Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing . Matt is also on there . And we got a B...

This week, Matt and Corbin are joined by DOM SINACOLA ( Film Critic at The Portland Mercury , The Werner Hertzblog ) to talk about LESSONS OF DARKNESS, Werner Herzog's impressionistic non fiction essay movie about the burning oilfields of Kuwait in the wake of the first Gulf War. Topics include: is this movie responsible? Germany in the post war, Herzog and truth and lies, and other stuff. Honestl...

Do you remember that when Jean-Luc Godard took psychedelics and made a Spider-Man Movie? We talk about it! Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing . Matt is also on there . And we got a Bluesky going. Next episode is about "Lessons of Darkness," watch it here .

Corbin and Matt talk about "J'accuse!," Abel Gance's nearly-three hour long French silent film epic about the horrors of the First World War and the generational crashout it evoked.  Watch it here . Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing . Matt is also on there . And got a Bluesky going. Next episode is about "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse." It's on Disney+.   

Oh hey! Sorry for the delay, Matt was really busy for a few weeks so we had to take a break. But, hey: we've back, talking with Madeline Lane-McKinley, feminist writer, parent, teacher, and author of Solidarity with Children: an Essay Against Adult Supremacy (Haymarket, 2026). We discuss Weapons , Zach Cregger's recent 2025 horror comedy/suburban Brothers Grimm pastiche. Topics include: the figure...

The master is here, folks, and this time he wields the themes and some of the particulars of one WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S great work KING LEAR in service of a hypnotic nightmare about the horrors of war. It whips! We talk about that, about Kurosawa as a supremely 'Cinematic' figure trying on a 'Theatrical' hat in this movie, Lear as an eternal political fable, some of the hot shit sequences in here,...

Ryder C. joins Matt and Corbs to discuss "The Secret Agent," a drama film that uses the rythyms of historical research to tell a story about a man getting suqeezed by the military dictatorship in 1970's Brazil. It's a cool movie, scope it out.  Matt rec . Ryder's rec sounds cool but is hard to find on streaming. Perhaps you can take a journey and find it. Corbin reccomends a movie currently in the...

This week, Béla Tarr, a Hungarian art film director of note, passed away at the age of 70. Tarr's stark, highly idiosyncratic dramas about the dread in the heart of every man are favorites of Matt Ellis and many other philosphically inclined, hard thinking movie fans the world over.  'The Turin Horse,' Tarr's last film, released in 2011, tells a story so small you can drown it in a bathtub: A farm...

A Great American Film Artist made a movie about a liar trying to power through his banal midcentruy existence by grifting. It's not Marty Supreme, though, it's "The Mastermind" by Kelly Reichardt! We talk about it! Listen to KR on the LARB Radio Hour here! Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing . Matt is also on there . We also got a Bluesky going. Our next episode will be abou...

Merry Christmas. In the mid-80's, Godard made a fascinating high art movie about the Virgin Mary and the Christmas story. It made some people extremely angry. Should they have been angry? We discuss. Watch the movie here . Also check out these essays about the film, if you're inclined .  Corbin rec . Matt's rec is life management based. Next episode is about THE MASTERMIND. It's available on Mubi...

Frederick Wiseman made a movie about a horse racing track in New York State. That's all it is. But then what? We discuss.  Watch the movie here, it rocks . Interview with  Wiseman here . You can also find hundreds of other interviews with him. He's very smart.  Corbin rec . Matt rec .  Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing . Matt is also on there . We also got a Bluesky going....

Corbin plays a flu game for "Earth," early Soviet filmmaker Alexander Dovzhenko's weird mashup of Soviet Propoganda and Art Film. Topics include: Soviet Cinema: what's up with that, Lenin's role in constructing the industry, Ukraine, and the question of the spiritual in Soviet soceity.  An article about Earth that could be worth check out .  Corbin rec . Corbin accidently skipped Matt's rec rushin...

Why did a great American director who doesn't speak French make a movie about one of the most famous French movies of all time? What was the French new wave all about? Why does Zoey Deutch resemble Jean Seberg as deeply as she does? Why didn't Corbin remeber Hit Man when talking about Linklater and Netflix? How is Michael Bay involved in all this? Why doesn't anyone do this kind of thing anymore?...

'The Dark Crystal' is a monument to craft, a movie made entirely with puppets, primative robots, strings, fog machines, lighting rigs, and spit. A true monument to analog filmmaking. But is it any good? We discuss.  Matt rec . Corbin rec . Corbin apoligizes for rambling about rap lists like a weirdo at the end of this episode.  Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing . Matt is a...

Earlier this year Ari Aster released a movie About Now that some people liked and some people didn't like. Corbin and Matt and friend of the program John Wilmes DID like it and we get into it! Feelings! Politics! Money! The whole gang is here, folks! Corbin  recommends a book. Ellis recommends this article . Wilmes recommends a Jazz musician .  Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that...

Werner Herzog deals in ecstatic truths. But are they truthful enough to deal with the brutal legacy of slavery and colonialism? We discuss COBRA VERDE, Herzog's last collaboration with Klaus Kinski, a movie about the slave trade and the little freaks who kept it running. Topics include: producing a shot with thousands of extras, Herzog and history, and, weirdly, Michael Haneke. Watch the movie her...

Since we started this show we've known that, someday, we would sit down to talk about Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, a movie about Metallica, and the world, going to therapy for the first time. Topics include: popular music, thrash, the 80's, drinking, how exactly you make a heavy metal record, the way computers absolutely annihilated the music business in a way that predicted the future annihil...

Happy Halloween! To celebrate spooky season, Corbin and Matt are joined by NATHAN LEE, a film academic and critic whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Film Comment, The Village Voice, and NPR, among others, to discuss THE SHROUDS, David Cronenberg's movie about the SPOOKIEST topics of all... Grieving and Technology and Anxiety and Conspiracy. SpoooOOOoooOOOoooOOOky! Read Nathan's fabulou...

Matt's working on this week's episode still, so we excerpted the beginning, where we talk about OBAA. I saw it again after this and loved it more