Watch This Tonight

I always wondered, how did Amadeus, an expensive period film starring two relative unknowns, get made? The answer was there in research, starting with a hilariously contentious relationship between writer Peter Shaffer and director Milos Forman, continuing with the outsized, colorful character of uber-producer Saul Zaentz, and concluding with the rejection of bigger stars in favor of Tom Hulce and...

ChatGPT could never write Apple+'s new TV series Silo. Take a high concept premise (the remnants of humanity living underground in a giant silo) and subvert audience expectations of how that premise would typically be executed, at every turn. Stack the cast with incredible actors (Rashida Jones, David Oyelowo, Tim Robbins, Rebecca Ferguson). Burn through plot at a crazy-fast rate. And that's Silo....

Maybe the least-seen great television series, From is now available on Amazon. If you're like me and held off on watching this because you didn't have MGM+, Season 1 is currently readily accessible to stream for free if you have Amazon Prime. I suspect many people have not seen this show. But it's truly great. If it were an Amazon original, or on Netflix, or Paramount+ or really any other major st...

If you ever wanted to know about the real-life parallels between the Roy family on HBO's Succession and Rupert Murdoch's family, look no further. I went deep into the interwebs to find all the remarkable parallels between the characters of Kendall, Roman, Shiv and Logan and their equivalents in Rupert Murdoch and his adult children. I was always curious about this myself, and I was surprised to di...

Another spin of the roulette wheel, this time on Hulu, with a star-studded war epic, Medieval, starring Ben Foster, Michael Caine, Til Schweiger, Matthew Goode, and more knife-play than a Benihana. This is a film where in the opening sequence alone there are a half-dozen wince-inducing moments of gruesome action. But is the story as effective as the fight choreography? Listen and find out. Trying...

What director Liam O’Donnell has done with the Skyline movie franchise (Skyline, Beyond Skyline, Skylines) to my knowledge is - seriously - unprecedented in film history. This is a franchise where the first film was financially successful but was not well received by critics or audiences and Liam and his team somehow managed to make 2 excellent sequels well received by critics and audiences and no...

If you're looking for funny things to watch on Amazon Prime, look no further than Jury Duty. It's technically on Freevee, Amazon's free-ad-supported channel, so even if you don't have Amazon Prime you can still watch it for free. This might be the best funny TV show on Amazon Prime I've seen, certainly in 2023. The premise is so unique and insane, it seems like it must be faked or manipulated in s...

A seemingly gimmicky high-concept premise is surprisingly substantive in The Big Door Prize, another winning, charming, extremely watchable show from Apple+. Chris O'Dowd continues his run as film and TV's most underrated leading man, in a series that is thought-provoking and funny in equal measure. Come back to Watch This Tonight as your podcast for the best TV recommendations. Please leave us a...

Mister Police, you could have saved her. I gave you all the clues. The Snowman is based on a hit novel, produced by Martin Scorsese, directed by esteemed director Tomas Alfredson, and stars Michael Fasbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, Toby Jones, Chloe Sevigney and JK Simmons. Is it possible a film with such an extraordinary assembly of talent could not be good? This is a...

Alliteration excitement for the return of Barry, one of my favorite television series ever at this point, now fully off the grid narratively, pushing past a conventional ending into uncharted territory. If you've seen Episodes 1 & 2 of Season 4 (don't listen until you do), do you have a prediction for where the series will end? I include in this episode my own ideal ending, but I'd love to hea...

George Clooney contemplated suicide, writer-director Stephen Gaghan was kidnapped, and Harrison Ford almost played "Bob". Warner Brothers gave the film Syriana an unlimited research budget, and the resulting script netted one of the best casts of an adult drama in film history (George Clooney, Christopher Plummer, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper, Matt Damon, Amanda Peet, Tom McCarthy, Max Minghella,...

Everyone and their brother has demanded I watch Beef... and you were all right. Beef is incredibly engaging, really taps into some uncomfortable but I would argue universal truths about life, and is anchored by career performances from Ali Wong, Steven Yeun, and a murderer's row of stellar character actors in supporting roles. It is very hard to stop watching this show once you start. A perfect ex...

Can we all admit that The Night Agent is the great guilty pleasure TV series of 2023? This is an end of season discussion of Season 1 of The Night Agent (Netflix), including all the weird, silly, strange elements of the show that I would argue are actually the secret sauce that kept me watching. I’m joined in this episode by longtime listener, first time co-host, James Jefferson (aka Brother of Do...

Anna Kendrick stars in the ultimate your friend's boyfriend sucks movie - a psychological drama where almost everything is implied, suggested, inferred, until the end. Wisely paced at a slim 80 something minutes, this is a compelling character study, with great performances from Anna, Charlie Carrick, Wunmi Mosaku, and Kaniehtiio Horn. Very much in the tradition of tense character dramas like The...

Podcasting from the road, I decided to highlight three great road trip movies for you. Road trip movies are a great way to give direction to a plot, create opportunities for buddy stories, and function as a metaphor for life. In the case of one of my picks, they are also a great opportunity for Tom Hardy to prove he doesn't always need to work in a virtuoso-mumbling performance. As always, I tried...

Denzel Washington is obviously one of the biggest movie stars in recorded human history, but despite that, some of his movies, have fallen under the radar. On this episode, I lay out three less-celebrated Denzel films you might not have watched, and why they are all great in their own ways. Come back to Watch This Tonight as your podcast for the best film recommendations. Please leave us a five-st...

Just renewed by Netflix for Season Two, The Night Agent sees Shawn Ryan (a legendary talent, immortally great after The Shield) effectively working overqualified on what (worst case scenario) could have been a forgettable network spy thriller series. But this variation on a familiar formula has a nifty concept. The Night Agent is basically 911 for spies. And it sets up a great "will they, won’t th...

Sicario: Day Of The Soldado holds a 62% score on RottenTomatoes (vs. the first film at 92%). Roger Deakins and Josh Brolin agreed in a podcast interview that it was more action-based than character-driven. My perhaps controversial opinion is that Sicario: Day of the Soldado is to the first Sicario as The Godfather Part II is to The Godfather (bolder, darker, requires repeat viewings to access, but...

Thanks for inviting me to your haunted house, you f**king pricks, I'm gonna be up all night. Season 2 of Mayor of Kingstown has concluded. A show that seems to live below the radar, Mayor of Kingstown became even better in Season 2. While it's not as slick and polished as other similar shows, the messiness of the show actually echoes the messy, flawed nature of the characters, which is what makes...

A remarkably clear-headed distillation of an incredibly complex true crime story, Boston Stranger does a great job of laying out the most likely case of what happened with the Boston Strangler (to say more would be to venture into spoilers). Keira Knightly, Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola, and Chris Cooper are just some of the great ensemble cast in this film. It is a bit more reserved in the early...

Grab a water cup filled to the brim of vodka, your AK-47, and your kids, and let’s go shooting by the lake! On this episode, I’m joined by Matt Gerasimovich of the Tipsy Tolstoy podcast, to discuss Russia’s entry into the Academy Awards (it also won awards at Cannes) from 2014, Leviathan. In light of recent events the film is even more powerful. It starts a little slow but really builds to an incr...

Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, who are basically their own French/American buddy cop film and trade jabs at each other as often as they collaborate on scripts, wrote Taken as part of a bread-and-butter of lower budget action films meant to prop up Besson's production company. Its success was just as surprising to Liam Neeson, who took the part primarily to take a vacation in France and have fun...

What is the best movie watching experience of your life, and why? In this episode, I break down 4 of mine, from seeing a film in the largest IMAX screen in America, to a relatively obscure movie that may have led to me proposing marriage to my now-wife. Let me know about YOUR best watch of your life. Reach out to me by email at dan@voyagemedia.com, or @BenamorDan (Twitter), watch_this_tonight (Ins...

With the insane amount of choices in the TV landscape, it's easy for good television shows to slip through the cracks. On this episode, special guest Jess Spoll (of TV podcast "Double Take") joins me to discuss the best 3 TV series you're not watching. We both had basically no major exposure to two of our picks, and then despite not telling each other our choices prior, we had the exact same third...

TV's most depressing show we can't stop watching, The Last Of Us has been a massive hit for HBO. Season One concludes, fittingly, with the most upsetting episode yet! All this being said, the execution is so extraordinary that watching the series has been compelling throughout. This is an episode that demands discussion, framed around a horrifying dilemma. I'm not sure I went with it, but I am sur...