The Strange Harbors Podcast

This week, we review director Steven Soderbergh's second film to be released in as many months. Black Bag sure is steamy — Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett playing married spooks certainly heightens its seductiveness — but its real heat lies in its surprising juxtaposition, honing in on a passionate kernel of loyalty and devotion within a sea of spy-versus-spy cynicism: the ultimate, lean exp...

It's been six long years since the last Bong Joon-ho film, Parasite, swept through the 2020 Oscars, including the prize of Best Picture. A beloved filmmaker that has brought us both intimate, grounded thrillers as well as propulsive genre yarn, Bong Joon-ho is once again dipping his toe into sci-fi class warfare with Mickey 17. Featuring Robert Pattinson in multiple roles and another "freaky littl...

A welcome respite from Jimmy Kimmel's irony-pilled sarcasm, the 97th annual Academy Awards found late-night legend Conan O'Brien in the host chair. Jeff, Derek, and Amir break down the broadcast and the nominees, from the winners to the losers, the graceful to the ugly. We discuss Anora's historic evening, a weird in-memoriam tribute, and the longest acceptance speech in Oscar history.

This week, after a long month of lists, recaps, and Oscar nominated heavy hitters, we lighten the mood with the gory, splatter-filled Stephen King adaptation of The Monkey. Oz Perkins' second film in a year, The Monkey stars both Theo James and Christian Convery in dual roles, Tatiana Maslany, Colin O'Brien, Adam Scott, and Elijah Wood. Does Perkins follow up last summer's Longlegs with a potent m...

It's incredibly easy to overpraise something like Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist just for its degree of difficulty and the unlikelihood of it even existing, but it’s the real deal: a living Great American Novel plucked from time. We sit down and review the three-and-a-half-hour epic - complete with intermission - and discuss its performances, ambition, and staggering scope.

This week we review RaMell Ross's Nickel Boys, an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's novel of the same name. The story of two Black boys who form an unshakeable bond at a segregated reform school in the Jim Crow South, Nickel Boys transcends its first person conceit, its Oscar-bait trappings, and the swerve of its twist ending to deliver a major work of American cinema. Keep an eye on this one.

As per tradition, we follow up the best of 2024 with our Most Anticipated Films of 2025 episode as Jeff, Derek, and Amir list what's got them excited going into the new year. Running the gamut of indie gems to the massive blockbusters, tune in to find out what's on our hotlist for 2025!

Another year of cinema in the rear view as we count down our personal top tens of 2024. A year that highlighted the limits of accessibility for some of its best films, 2024 gave us the most varied lists we've ever had on the show with showings across all genres. What made Jeff, Derek, and Amir's lists? What were honorable mentions? Tune in and find out.

At 94-years young, Clint Eastwood is still going strong with his latest meat-and-potatoes legal thriller, Juror #2. Featuring a murderers' row of actors and a premise to die for, is Eastwood's latest just a redux of your dad's favorite movie from the mid 90s? Or is there something more than meets the eye?

Happy new year! We ring in 2025 by reviewing podcast favorite filmmaker Robert Eggers' latest historical horror: his grim vision of the vampire classic, Nosferatu. We talk vampires, Dracula, and Eggers' slavish devotion to granular detail. Does it continue his streak of bracing period terror, or is it more of a hindrance this time around? Tune in and find out.

This week, we review Cannes and awards season darling Anora. Another exploration of director Sean Baker's working class milieus, this story of a fiery stripper who falls in with an immature son of Russian oligarch is a barnburner showcase for Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, and Yura Borisov. Does it live up to its festival hype?

For better or worse, Bertrand Bonello's The Beast is one of the most memorable movies of 2024. A discombobulating sci-fi trip through time that stars Lea Seydoux and George Mackay, it explodes the kernel of loneliness at the center of Henry James' 1903 novella - The Beast in the Jungle - into something much more...perplexing.

2024's challenger to last year's "Barbenheimer" phenomenon is here in the form of the Gladiator II and Wicked double feature. We review both highly anticipated films, and our discussion just might surprise you! Tune in and find out!

This week we review Edward Berger's Conclave, a papal conspiracy thriller in the guise of a serious business, hiding a goofed-up B-movie underneath. We talk about its twists and turns, its murderers' row of a cast, and its absolutely preposterous ending. Will this make our best-of-the-year lists? Tune in and find out!

This week, we review Aaron Schimberg's under-the-radar indie darling, A Different Man, an unlikely companion piece to this year's The Substance and may even overtake it as the essential 2024 text on self-hatred and the self-wounding blade of wish fulfillment. Effortlessly smart without an ounce of ostentatious force, this is a movie with a million layers underneath its cruel, nasty joke of getting...

This week we review Pascal Plante's Red Rooms, an under-the-radar indie that's taken the horrorsphere by storm. A serial killer thriller that finds power in its restraint and shocking prescience, Red Rooms is an evil — yet vital — film to understand the stranglehold of postmodern, screen-abetted detachment. We discuss our culture of macabre obsessions, parasocial madness, and growing numbness, as...

This week we review the new Max series continuing Matt Reeves' The Batman saga: The Penguin. Starring Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, and Clancy Brown, the eight-episode miniseries details Oz Cobb's rise from Gotham nobody to connected crime boss. We review the first five episodes.

This week, we review Todd Phillips' highly anticipated sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux. Is it a misbegotten misfire? Or is it a movie with a strange set of balls? Is it both? We discuss its interesting metatext, spiteful movies, and the odd throughline between Joker 2 and Megalopolis.

Self-financed and over 40 years in the making, Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis is the most divisive movie of the year. Is it an unmitigated disaster or an old master's magnum opus? Or is it somewhere in between? We're all divided on this one, but we can all agree on one thing: you've never seen anything like this before, and you might not ever again.

Once again transmogrifying old-school exploitation into her own feminist styling of New French Extremity, Coralie Fargeat trades in the empowered bloodletting of 2018’s Revenge for body horror. Your mileage may vary with The Substance, but whether you wince, cackle, or simply abandon the theater out of disgust, one thing is quite clear: it's quite unforgettable.

Director Jeremy Saulnier follows up his brutal downers of Green Room and Hold the Dark with a politically angry new action thriller. With a star-making turn from actor Aaron Pierre, Rebel Ridge rides into the pantheon of contemporary suspense in ways that might be surprising, especially if you're expecting more sanguine violence from Saulnier. We discuss all the ways Rebel Ridge subverts your typi...

It's a deeper cut this week as we dive straight into a smaller, VOD action gem with Bren Foster's kinetic martial arts actioner, Life After Fighting. We review this by-your-bootstraps indie gem that puts big budget blockbusters to shame with its brutal confidence and unbelievable choreography. We're giving away what we thought about it right here, but that's because we want all of you action fans...

Fede Álvarez takes over the reins of Xenomorph terror with Alien: Romulus. In this episode, we review the first Alien movie in seven years, and the first in over a decade to depart from series godfather Ridley Scott. Does Álvarez chart his own path with his tense, gorehound pedigree from Evil Dead and Don't Breathe? Or is it just a rehash of better movies before it? Listen and find out.

It's not an M. Night Shyamalan film without some divisiveness. We discuss his new Josh Hartnett vehicle, Trap, his late career stylings, and the pros and cons of his heightened realities. Is Trap one of Shyamalan's best? Or is it another dud?

We return to television this week to conduct a postmortem on the controversial second season of HBO's House of the Dragon. The Game of Thrones spinoff has its fans split down the middle with a divisive finale, and season in general, as the Greens and Blacks head to war. We discuss the contention at the center of the series' reception, as well as give our own differing thoughts.