Uncut Gems Podcast

Here's a short teaser of our brand new Patreon-exclusive episode of Uncut Gems Tie-ins, a monthly series where we take a classic movie and connect it to a film discussed on our main show. In this episode of the show tying into this month's theme of April Off The Grid, we are talking about Ted Kotcheff's First Blood . Joined by a special guest and friend of the show Rich Foster we are d...

In this episode of the show we are heading to the forest to begin our April Off The Grid together with William Friedkin's The Hunted . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about possible reasons why Friedkin decided to direct this movie, what it possibly owes to First Blood and whether it has a metaphorical connotation with the culture at large. We also talk about it being...

In this episode of our 2024 Spike Lee Joint-a-thon, we are gearing up for a serious discussion about Spike Lee's take on a prestige biopic, Malcolm X . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about how Lee reinvents the biopic formula while adhering to it, how Denzel Washington embodies the titular character and how this movie had to be as long as it was to allow the filmmake...

In this episode of the show, we are talking about Spike Lee's Jungle Fever , a dense societal diorama that begins with a premise of an elevated screwball rom-com and descends into deep and heavy thematic deliberations on race, relationships, drugs and familial sins. Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about Spike Lee finding his footing as a cinematic preacher, workplace...

In this episode of the show, we are closing our Spring Clinging series with a homerun as we are talking about Tony Scott's The Fan ! Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about how much Nine Inch Nails music is too much, whether this movie gets baseball right and if there is a point to it in the first place only a few short years after Cape Fear . We also talk about positio...

In the third episode of our 2024 Kathryn Bigelow Marathon we are entering the 90s together with her police procedural Blue Steel . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about Jamie Lee Curtis and whether Roger Ebert was right to call her character the next iteration of Laurie Strode, Bigelow's continuing fascination with John Carpenter and James Cameron, and how her own per...

In this episode of the show, we are continuing our exploration of obsession and stalking, aka Spring Clinging, as we are talking about the 1993 The Crush . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about Alan Shapiro as a filmmaker, his attempt at meshing real life experience with Lolita , his writing acumen or lack thereof, and whether he knew what to do with Cary Elwes's acti...

In this episode of the show, we are continuing our conversations about obsession and lack of personal boundaries, as we talk about The Fanatic . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us wonder if this universally panned movie can be salvaged, whether John Travolta's performance is overblown, by how much and why, as well as what we think about Fred Durst as a filmmaker. We also talk...

Here's a short teaser of our brand new Patreon-exclusive episode of Uncut Gems Tie-ins, a monthly series where we take a classic movie and connect it to a film discussed on our main show. In this show, which is tied into our month's conversations about obsession and people who don't know where the boundaries are, we are talking about one of the most iconic obsessed stalker fan movies o...

In this episode of the show, we are talking about Ingrid Goes West as we begin our March bout of Spring Clinging. Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about Aubrey Plaza's troll deadpan, the dangers of social media and how reality is warped by looking at carefully curated lives online. We also talk about Hollywood's fake-it-till-you-make-it toxicity, how the movie cont...

In this episode of our 2024 Spike Lee Joint-a-thon, we are talking about Lee's magnum opus, Do the Right Thing . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us try to deconvolute the intricate cultural mosaic that is this movie, understand Lee's political convictions and map them over the cyclical nature of American history. We also talk about racial relations as depicted in the movi...

In this episode of the show, making our monthly stop at the Spike Lee Station to talk about his fourth feature, Mo' Better Blues . Joined by our two great buddies, Jak and Carson, we dig into this dense movie to find out whether it should be faulted for its archetypal storytelling or applauded for its symbolic richness. We also talk about Lee's place in the pantheon of filmmakers at the ti...

In the second episode of our Kathryn Bigelow Marathon, we are talking about her vampire western sophomore, Near Dark. Joined by our great friend Hillary, we talk about Bigelow meshing genre, taking inspiration from James Cameron and John Carpenter, and wonder how much one can refresh the vampire canon. We also talk about her becoming an action director in the world dominated by men, the pros and c...

In this episode of the show, we are taking a slow and steady blimp trip as we talk about Robert Wise's The Hindenburg . Over the course of our chat you will hear us talk about the genre of disaster movies slowly reaching its climax and fizzling out towards the latter half of the 70s, how nice it is to see George C. Scott in shape and how the movie may have been built around a great idea for an...

In this jumbo jet-sized episode we are joined by our great buddy Jak to talk about the three movies that followed the 1970 Airport : Airport '75 , Airport '77 and The Concorde... Airport 1979 . Over the course of our conversation you will hear what we think about the early days of Hollywood franchising, how the Airport movies are either B-movies or Bond movies without Bond, and whether the...

Here's a short teaser of our brand new Patreon-exclusive episode of Uncut Gems Tie-ins, a monthly series where we take a classic movie and connect it to a film discussed on our main show. In this show, tied to our February theme of Terror in the Sky, we are talking about the 1970 Airport! Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about how this movie paved the way for the disas...

In this episode of the show we are getting jacked in the sky as we are talking Skyjacked to kick off our February theme of Terror in the Sky (or T-air-or?). Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about the ripples that Airport made in 1970, how the big studio heads grappled with the advent of The New Hollywood and how this movie maybe belongs in the 60s more than in the 70s. We...

In this inaugural episode of our Patreon side of the 2024 Spike Lee retrospective, we are looking at his sophomore feature School Daze. Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about the sophomore ego, the surprise of this movie being a musical and the perils of stuffing a musical template with too much content. We also talk about Spike Lee's acting chops or lack thereof, the...

In this episode of the show we are officially beginning our new long-term project where we will comprehensively go through the cinema of Spike Lee and there's only one way to begin such a journey, which is with his debut She's Gotta Have It . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about how this movie, short as it may be, fosters a truly nuanced discussion, how it commen...

In this episode of the show we are concluding our brief journey through Liam Neeson movies confined to different modes of transportation and we are taking off into the skies to talk about Non-Stop ! Over the course of our conversation you will hear us wonder why this movie was as successful as it was, the woes of making action movies in the Marvel era and the idea of staying busy in times of grief...

The time has come for us to get on our bikes and launch a brand new director marathon and for this year we decided to shadow Kathryn Bigelow and chart the course of her career as she went from indie obscurity to genre re-invention and all the way to the highest echelons of prestige filmmaking! We begin our escapade by talking about her indie debut The Loveless ! Over the course of our chat you wil...

In this episode of the show we are going on a road trip with Liam Neeson while trying not to be left out in the cold, as we talk The Ice Road ! Over the course of our conversation you will hear us try to understand what makes this movie work way better than it perhaps should, how important it is to anchor an action movie in the classics of the genre and whether it would have worked even half as we...

Here's a short teaser of our brand new Patreon-exclusive episode of Uncut Gems Tie-ins, a monthly series where we take a classic movie and connect it to a film discussed on our main show. This month we are talking about Taken , the movie which recalibrated Liam Neeson's career and transformed him from an aging prestige thespian into a latter-day superhero. Over the course of our conversati...

In this episode of the show we are beginning our January theme of Liam Neeson's Planes, Trains and Automobiles (transitioning from our recent chat on Terror Train ) and we begin with his train-bound thriller The Commuter . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about Neeson fully embracing his action stardom, the question whether this movie is perhaps too complex for its own...

In this episode of the show we are finally coming to an end of our epic journey through the cinema of Steven Soderbergh we have been on for the last thirteen months! We are also plugging a few blind spots here by discussing the two Spalding Gray movies he made ( Gray's Anatomy and And Everything Is Going Fine ), just to make sure we have covered his entire feature output. We also share our ref...