Watch This Tonight

My guests are Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka, writers of the new Apple+ film Sharper starring Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan, Jon Lithgow, Justice Smith and Brianna Middleton. We discuss the film’s genesis, the protective factor of Julianne Moore, Brian and Alessandro re-branding themselves as screenwriters, and how the film only exists because Alessandro was cleaning out his hard drive of o...

The reader report on the script for Unforgiven is one of the most scathing critiques I’ve ever read. I was able to find the original document on the internet, and it is the central part of this episode, as we break down why Sonia Chernus, an accomplished writer of Westerns herself, was so wrong about this Best Picture winning Clint Eastwood film, originally titled "The Cut Whore Killings" (this ma...

Don't be put off by the mixed critical reaction, running time and box office performance - Babylon is FUN, exhilirating, often funny, and perhaps most importantly never boring. It's big and messy and crazy, but I kind of loved it. If you love movies, I don't know how you can not get some enjoyment out of this film. Currently streaming on Paramount+, or available to rent on VOD. I was on the fence...

Contact - I went deep behind the scenes on this, the surprisingly tense creation of one of the most altruistic, life-affirming movies ever - later to cause lawsuits from Francis Ford Coppola and George Miller. Key creatives at all levels (cast, crew, writers, directors) differed wildly on the best way to tell the story. The film of an entire scene involving thousands of extras was destroyed. Someh...

Christoph Waltz stars in the new Amazon Prime series The Consultant, a bizarre show that I admittedly almost bailed on after the pilot, only for it to completely redeem itself for me with a strong second episode that manages to crystallize all its seemingly disparate elements into an engaging nightmare boss slash Whiplash-the-TV-series format, that totally worked for me. A dark sense of humor and...

Rather than do a straight Gladiator episode, I decided to go deep on the notoriously troubled production of the film, as well as touch on recent news about the sequel starring Paul Mescal, AND drop some insane true history facts about the absolutely deranged things that went on in the real Colosseum, including a lot of grisly spectacles so unhinged they could not possibly have been in the film. Pl...

Apple+ keeps throwing up impressive content. This is a movie that is impossible to market, and I almost didn’t watch it for that reason. I’m glad I did. Sharper is an incredibly written film that reminds me of great con films of the past, but has its own clever, unique structure. It also has a great cast (Jon Lithgow, Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan) and is directed with great style and flair. I ha...

Sometimes you're in the mood for a great documentary, something that will teach you about a subject, enrich you as a person, and still entertain you. A bad documentary is like a homework assignment. A stellar documentary can feel life-altering. On this episode of the podcast, we've got three recommendations for excellent documentaries, all of which happen to be available on Netflix. Thanks for lis...

Two resident Shymalan-heads here just choppping it up. My guest this episode is screenwriter Phil Clarke, and we discuss M. Night's latest film Knock At The Cabin, starring Dave Bautista. Would this movie be 45-seconds-long if it was my family? Are we sure The Village wasn't great (we both defend it)? Did Shymalan's divergence from the source book improve or hurt the story? Why is this movie alrea...

Another spin of the Netflix roulette wheel, this is Synchronic, from the trippy filmmaking duo of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, it is reminiscent of their previous film The Endless but with a bigger canvas and bigger names (Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan). An almost-impossible movie to market, which is likely why you haven't seen it either. Super-weird, but yet surprisingly grounded-feeling,...

Adam Prince, former Director of Development for Robert Duvall’s production company, joins the podcast to discuss the great Robert Duvall in general, his perhaps lesser-known anarchic sense of humor in specific (Duvall apparently was a legendary practitioner of mooning in his younger days), his world-class acting talent, and his precise, in-the-moment methodology, in specific. We cover general Duva...

Our new Netflix Roulette feature came up with the Liam Neeson film The Ice Road. When you need a grizzled, down-on-his-luck trucker to drive on a melting ice road to deliver vital equipment to rescue trapped miners… look no further than Liam Neeson. Part of this Netflix Roulette new episodic feature we’re doing is that I’m covering the movie no matter what. In some ways, this makes this episode mo...

Chiwetel Ejiofor is one of my favorite working actors, with an insane amount of range that David Mamet thought was “impossible” - he’s also part of the school of British actors who are able to do American accents so well they frequently play Americans without any trace of natural accent. In this episode, I rundown my 3 Chiwetel Ejiofor movies you need to watch, and discover that his upcoming direc...

Adam Rosen has edited a series of essays about the greatest bad/good film ever, The Room. A cult phenomenon (I've personally attended one of its Los Angeles Rocky Horror Picture Show style screenings), this movie is objectively problematic, but subjectively extraordinarily entertaining. It is surreal, earnest, hilarious, nonsensical, confusing, and just straight up great. Adam and I discuss buying...

If you really miss Forgetting Sarah Marshall Jason Segel - look no further than the new Apple+ TV series Shrinking, co-starring Harrison Ford (who, despite being 80+, still has a movie-star shirtless scene in the pilot). This show is warm, it’s fun to be with these characters, it is amiable yet messy in a way you might describe as Apatow-an. Come to Watch This Tonight as your podcast for best TV r...

Frank Grillo is one of the hardest-working actors, but he's also legitimately a masterful actor. In this episode, I run down his three movies you have to watch. These three films clearly demonstrate that, in addition to being a credible cinematic tough guy, Frank is capable of delivering world-class acting craft. What's exciting about this episode, and likely a side effect of Frank doing so many f...

If you listen carefully, you can hear me shouting in deranged glee, because Mayor Of Kingstown is back for Season 2. To my extreme joy, the show is not only back and better than ever, but has surprisingly taken up the mantle of The Shield, as a pitch black crime drama with deep emotional chords, shocking explosions of violence, and gallows humor. Jeremy Renner's real-life recent brush with death o...

Douchebag Goes West... is one of the would-be titles for the podcast BJ Novak is making in this unusual film, now available on Amazon Prime, also starring Ashton Kutcher and Boyd Holbrook. Kind of a mystery, kind of a cultural commentary drama, very much about the collision between a condescending New Yorker and the Texans he embeds with to investigate a murder, this is kind of undefinable in a go...

"Happy Wayne Jenkins Day, Motherf**kers" - it's the Jon Bernthal Episode. First, I uncovered a bizarre, incredible series of coincidences (I swear I'm not making this up) that demonstrate that to my great surprise Jon Bernthal and I have more in common than I realized. Then, I break down my top 3 Jon Bernthal performances you need to watch. Jon has been steadily rising up through the ranks of acto...

Some cream of the network TV crop here, with the new Fox show Accused (available on Hulu). Michael Chiklis! Jill Henessey! Robert Wisdom! The Homeland team (Howard Gordon, Alex Gansa, Michael Cuesta)! With this collection of talent in front of and behind the camera, it stands to reason that Accused is going to be better than the average network TV crime procedural. This may also explain its surpri...

What did Juno do that was that bad? S.A. Bradley of the Hellbent For Horror podcast joins the show for an unlikely candidate for our longest episode of all time - Neil Marshall's spelunking-gone-wrong film, The Descent. We dive deep into the echoes of Deliverance (almost literally in the case of a radio station switch bit early in the film), Neil's career trajectory, the drastic difference in me v...

Ben Foster was my first interview as a journalist eons ago. Ben was one of my favorite actors at that time, and he's still one of my favorite actors. In this episode, I run down the top 3 Ben Foster film performances you have to watch. If you're enjoying the show, please leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, and write into your review what movie or TV show you'd like me to cover next in the...

Genevieve Hassan joins the podcast to bring a female perspective to American Pie. Genevieve has also previously interviewed Thomas Ian Nichols (who plays Kevin in the film) on her podcast, Celebrity Catch Up: Life After That Thing You Did and shares some behind the scenes details from him on the possibility of a new film in the series. I first saw this film as a teenager, in someone's house, in se...

Fungus among us. If you had no familiarity with the video game that the new HBO series The Last Of Us is based on, you might have some concern this is another zombie post-apocalyptic thing. But it has a unique wrinkle on that formula that sets it apart. And beyond that, it is everything you could hope for from a prestige HBO series - stellar actors (Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Anna Torv), incredib...

Film journalist Mark London Williams joins the podcast to discuss the Mark Rylance starrer The Outfit, currently available on Amazon Prime. This is the film equivalent of going to a Broadway play to see a master actor work their craft. It’s a showcase vehicle for Mark Rylance start to finish. While the underlying plot, under scrutiny, may face some questions (we discuss that in the spoiler section...