Watch With Jen™

This week, I'm honored to welcome back my favorite crime writer working today. Novelist Megan Abbott is the Edgar-winning author of such acclaimed, rich works as Give Me Your Hand , You Will Know Me , The Fever , Dare Me , Queenpin , and more. Her newest title The Turnout was released on August 3rd and became not only a Today Show "Read with Jenna" book pick but also a New York Times bestseller as...

This week, I was so excited to welcome back my friend, author S.A. Cosby, who I'm fortunate to know well enough to call Shawn. An Anthony award-winning writer from southeastern Virginia, with My Darkest Prayer and Brotherhood of the Blade already under his belt, last year, Shawn burst onto the scene with his multiple award-winning breakthrough hit Blacktop Wasteland , which drew raves from Stephen...

What better way to celebrate the 100th episode of Watch With Jen than with a Titanic-sized conversation about passionate Titanic filmmaker James Cameron with the ever-passionate Tomris Laffly? A contributor to Variety , RogerEbert.com, The Playlist , Timeout New York , Filmmaker Magazine , and Vulture , Tomris Laffly is a member of the prestigious New York Film Critics Circle. A noted lover of the...

In the tradition of my collaborative episodes with Bright Wall/Dark Room and the Classic Film Collective, I have another one for you today that is sure to make you see red (in a good way!). Since 1998, DVD Netflix has delivered more than 5 billion DVD & Blu-ray rentals to movie lovers in every American zip code and to military bases around the world in their famous, iconic red envelopes. With an e...

This week, I was honored to welcome back my gifted friend and an official friend of the show. William Boyle is the acclaimed novelist of such books as Gravesend , The Lonely Witness , A Friend is a Gift You Give Yourself , City of Margins , and the upcoming Shoot the Moonlight Out . A knowledgeable film buff and a bard of Italian-American New York life, especially in the era he came of age in the...

This week's guest is the impressive critic, in-demand lecturer, and insightful author, Mr. Adam Nayman. A contributor to The Ringer , Criterion, CinemaScope , and more, the Toronto-based Adam has written books on Showgirls , Ben Wheatley, the Coen Brothers, and Paul Thomas Anderson. His newest title, David Fincher: Mind Games is available for pre-order now and will be released in November from Abr...

This week, I was so pleased to welcome one of the best film writers currently working today - the wonderful Sheila O'Malley - to the podcast. A regular film critic for RogerEbert.com and a member of the prestigious New York Film Critics Circle, Sheila's work has also appeared in Film Comment , The New York Times , The L.A. Times , Criterion Collection, Sight & Sound , and other outlets. Additional...

This week, I was so pleased to welcome back the lovely, very funny, & terribly sweet Stephanie Crawford. A talented film writer and podcaster with an infectious love of cinema and physical media, you can check out Stephanie's work at her personal website House of a Reasonable Amount of Horrors. Teaming up to celebrate the new 4K release of Almost Famous , we study three key rock music movies that...

This week, I'm proud to welcome back one of my dear mates (as he would say), Mr. Blake Howard. A podcaster extraordinaire, Blake is the man behind One Heat Minute Productions. Recent acclaimed podcasts you can find from him include All the President's Minutes, Josie and the Podcats, Increment Vice - hosted by our good friend Travis Woods - and the new Zodiac Chronicle. Additionally, Blake is a ver...

Returning to Watch With Jen today is one of the podcast's most popular and frequent guests - my good friend and Pandemic Movie Club buddy Jordan Harper. An Edgar award-winning crime writer of the remarkable novel She Rides Shotgun and the terrific book of short stories Love and Other Wounds, Jordan also works in Hollywood as a TV writer and producer and has been behind such series as The Mentalist...

Since I was a few days late with the last episode, this week, you have two terrific new installments of Watch With Jen to enjoy (as well as a Patreon only bonus episode of Watch With Jen: Ask Me Anything where I answer your burning questions). And keeping with the theme of more is more, in this episode, I am joined by not one but five wonderfully talented women to talk about a handful of their fav...

This week, I was so excited to welcome back Elizabeth Cantwell, whom I enjoyed talking to about The Shining in the Bright Wall/Dark Room episode earlier this season. A poet and a high school teacher, Elizabeth is the author of the chapbook Premonitions , as well as two full-length books of poetry, Nights I Let the Tiger Get You and All the Emergency-Type Structures . Additionally an editor at Brig...

As Leo Tolstoy wrote in the first sentence of Anna Karenina , "happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Joining me to discuss five wide-ranging international films centered on families with varying levels of dysfunction is NYU trained freelance television editor and writer, producer, director Steven Santos. A New York City native who now lives in Los Angeles,...

Joining me today is a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic and a podcaster in her own right, the wonderful Rosa Parra. A member of the Hollywood Critics Association, the Latino Entertainment Journalist Association, GALECA, and a fellow member of the Online Association of Female Film Critics, Rosa is also the co-founder and co-host of Latinx Lens. In her fun and informative podcast and companion website...

In this entertainingly super-sized episode, we have two guests for the price of one! First up, is a teacher and writer from Lafayette, Louisiana. After graduating from AFI with an MFA in directing, Mike Miley first got his start as an award-winning short filmmaker. Having left life in the L.A. entertainment industry behind to work in education in California and Louisiana, Mike has taught middle an...

An animation lover since childhood with fond memories of belting out songs from the contemporary Disney classic The Little Mermaid , this week I'm joined by the Rotten Tomatoes approved film critic and podcaster Rachel Wagner. In addition to covering as many films as she can each year on her website Rachel's Reviews, Rachel has a particular love of interviewing others - from actors to directors to...

Kind, witty, and wildly gifted, Nikki Dolson is a prolific crime writer whose work has been published in such well-respected places as Shotgun Honey , Tough , ThugLit , and Bartleby Snopes . The author of what she affectionately calls "a novelish thing" - the book All Things Violent - Nikki has also released a short story collection entitled Love and Other Criminal Behavior . And later this year,...

Washington City Paper film critic Noah Gittell joins me to discuss two cult-favorite Gen X titles from the '90s - our mutual favorite "Zero Effect" and the brilliant "Fight Club" - in this nerdily analytical episode. A reporter at BBC Talk Movies and a guest lecturer at Smithsonian Associates , Noah is also a freelance contributor for a number of outstanding outlets, including The Atlantic , The R...

A witty and wonderful writer-director currently living in Los Angeles, Jessica Ellis attended UCLA and the prestigious American Film Institute. Having recently made her feature filmmaking debut with the lovely coming-of-age movie What Lies West, Jessica's film is now available for pre-order at all online retailers and will be released on VOD on May 11. A bright light on Twitter, in this episode, s...

This week, we have back a wonderfully talented writer I enjoyed chatting with last year: Robert Daniels. A freelance film critic based in Chicago who holds an MA in English, Robert is the founder of 812FilmReviews and has written for RogerEbert.com , The Playlist, Polygon, Consequence of Sound, and more. In this lively episode, we dissect 5 of the most offbeat characters that America's Dad - the i...

A film critic for publications such as L.A. Weekly , New York Magazine / Vulture , The New York Times , and formerly The Village Voice , Bilge Ebiri is one of my favorite journalists working today. Additionally, he is a writer-director known for the movies New Guy , Purse Snatcher , and The Barber of Siberia . Joining me for a chatty, fast-paced, feature-length exploration of 6 legal thrillers mad...

As witty as she is articulate, Diana Drumm is a critic, historian, researcher, and self-described "full-time nerd." An assistant editor at Cineaste Magazine, which is America's leading magazine on the art and politics of cinema, Diana is also the marketing coordinator at Quad Cinema, New York's first small four-screen multiplex theater. Additionally, she is assisting in the production of the upcom...

BenDavid Grabinski is a television and film writer, director, and producer based out of Los Angeles. His 2010 short film Cost of Living played at festivals around the world and then his first screenwriting credit came with Skiptrace , which starred Jackie Chan and Johnny Knoxville, and was directed by the great Renny Harlin. In 2019, he served as the writer, executive producer, and showrunner of t...

A singular and passionate writer, Kate Hagen's work has appeared in Playboy , The Hollywood Reporter , 538 , Seed & Spark , and more. In 2019, she brought her essay "The Last Great Video Store" to TedX and she also appears in the new documentary The Last Blockbuster to discuss the importance of video stores in our lives. Since 2014, Kate has served as the Director of Community at The Black List wh...

I'm so delighted to welcome one of my oldest Twitter friends - Marya E. Gates - to the podcast for what I hope will be the first of several episodes. A writer, film lover, and former editorial manager for Netflix, Marya was also the social media manager for Rotten Tomatoes and Film Struck. Additionally, she created such viral film movements as A Year with Women, where she spent a year watching and...