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Phil and Emily are joined by Vulture TV critic Roxana Hadadi for the second stop in the October Guillermo del Toro mini-series, Blade II (2002). Wesley Snipes's half-vampire Daywalker teams up with the Bloodpack, an elite vampire hit squad built to kill him (Ron Perlman and Donnie Yen among them), to hunt the Reapers, a mutant strain that feeds on vampires and humans alike. It opened March 22, 200...

Phil and Emily are joined by Monica Castillo, film critic for The A.V. Club, to open a Halloween-season mini-series on all five of Guillermo del Toro's 2000s films with The Devil's Backbone (2001). In the last week of the Spanish Civil War, twelve-year-old Carlos is left at a remote orphanage run by Carmen (Marisa Paredes) and Dr. Casares (Federico Luppi), where an unexploded bomb sits in the cour...

Phil and Emily are joined by film journalist and podcaster Blake Howard (One Heat Minute Productions) to close out the 2000s Best Actress Oscar follow-ups mini-series with Michael Mann's Public Enemies (2009). Johnny Depp's John Dillinger robs Depression-era banks and romances Marion Cotillard's Billie Frechette while Christian Bale's Melvin Purvis and Billy Crudup's J. Edgar Hoover build the mode...

Phil and Emily are joined by writer Emma Stefansky for Jon Turteltaub's National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007). Nicolas Cage's Ben Gates kidnaps the President (Bruce Greenwood) and chases a hidden city of gold to clear his great-great-grandfather's name in the Lincoln assassination. Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Jon Voight, Ed Harris, and a scene-stealing Helen Mirren carry her Queen Best Actres...

Phil and Emily are joined by writer, actor, and Horror Movie Survival Guide host Teri Gamble for Mark Palansky's Penelope (2006). Christina Ricci is an heiress born with a pig's nose thanks to a family curse, kept out of sight while her mother (Catherine O'Hara) hunts for a blue blood willing to marry her, which is how a broke gambler played by James McAvoy ends up being paid to get close. Reese W...

The Black Dahlia (2006) is one of Hollywood's most infamous true crime stories brought to screen a labyrinthine noir that refuses easy answers. Directed by Brian De Palma, the film weaves the 1947 unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short through the lives of two LAPD detectives, tangling glamour with corruption, obsession with justice, and the cold machinery of Los Angeles ambition. Starring Josh Hartne...

Phil and Emily are joined by film critic and historian Kristen Lopez to break down Karyn Kusama's Æon Flux (2005). Charlize Theron plays the title assassin, sent by the rebel Monicans to kill the ruling Chairman of the last walled city on Earth (Marton Csokas), only to find a conspiracy about cloning and memory that goes back generations (Frances McDormand, Sophie Okonedo, Jonny Lee Miller). What...

Phil and Emily are joined by Emmy-winning Hacks creator Lucia Aniello for Lars von Trier's Dogville (2003). Nicole Kidman's fugitive Grace hides out in a Depression-era Rocky Mountain town staged entirely with chalk outlines on a bare soundstage, and the townsfolk's charity slowly curdles into something monstrous. Paul Bettany, Lauren Bacall, Chloë Sevigny, Patricia Clarkson, and James Caan fill o...

Phil and Emily are joined by Brooke Solomon and Jordan Gustafson, hosts of The Queer Quadrant, for Lee Tamahori's Die Another Day (2002). Pierce Brosnan's last outing as James Bond runs from a North Korean prison to an Icelandic ice palace, with Halle Berry surfacing as NSA agent Giacinta "Jinx" Johnson in the follow-up to her Monster's Ball Best Actress win. Rosamund Pike (in her screen debut), T...

Phil and Emily are joined by writer and podcaster Katharine LaRonde to dig into Joe Roth's America's Sweethearts (2001). Julia Roberts plays the overlooked assistant stuck managing the press junket for her superstar sister (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and her sister's washed-up, soon-to-be-ex-husband (John Cusack), whose divorce turns out to be the only story the reporters actually want. It spirals into...

Phil and Emily are joined by writer and critic April Wolfe for Sam Raimi's The Gift (2000). Cate Blanchett plays a widowed Georgia fortune teller who reads cards to keep her family afloat and gets pulled into a murder when a local woman (Katie Holmes) goes missing. Giovanni Ribisi, Keanu Reeves, Hilary Swank, and Greg Kinnear round out a stacked Southern-gothic ensemble. The three dig into Raimi w...

Phil and Emily are joined by comedian Carson Olshansky for Mimi Leder's Pay It Forward (2000). Haley Joel Osment plays a seventh-grader who answers a social-studies assignment think of a way to change the world by inventing a simple chain reaction: do a big favor for three people, and ask each of them to "pay it forward." Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt orbit as the scarred teacher and the struggling...

Phil and Emily are joined by writer Jude Ellison Doyle to open up Richard Kelly's The Box (2009). Cameron Diaz and James Marsden play a cash-strapped 1976 couple handed a simple, horrible deal by a scarred stranger (Frank Langella): press the button on the box, collect a million dollars, and somebody you don't know dies. What starts as a Twilight Zone morality test (via Richard Matheson's "Button,...

Phil and Emily are joined by Mitchell Beaupre, editor and podcast host at Letterboxd, to dig into Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy (2008). Michelle Williams stars as a woman driving to Alaska for work who gets stranded in a small Oregon town when her car dies and she loses her dog, and the film turns that small catastrophe into one of the quietest, most devastating portraits of American poverty th...

Phil and Emily are joined by journalist and author Josephine Riesman to continue their Richard Kelly Reichardt mini-series with the magnificent disaster that is Southland Tales (2006). And there is no better guest for it: Josie wrote the definitive deep-dive on this movie and once spent three hours walking Venice Beach interviewing Richard Kelly himself. Set in an alternate 2008 where nuclear atta...

Phil and Emily are joined by critic and editor Isaac Feldberg to continue their Richard Kelly Reichardt mini-series with Kelly Reichardt's quiet breakthrough, Old Joy (2006). Isaac edits at Letterboxd Journal and writes for RogerEbert.com and Fangoria, and as a former Eagle Scout, he might be the perfect guide to a movie about two guys going camping. Made for roughly $30,000 and shot in the forest...

Phil and Emily are joined by actress Fiona Dourif to launch a brand new mini-series, Richard Kelly Reichardt, with the cult classic that started a thousand dorm-room arguments: Donnie Darko (2001). Richard Kelly's debut premiered at Sundance, opened the same day the Patriot Act was signed into law, and promptly bombed in theaters before Drew Barrymore's Flower Films, a $4.5 million budget, and a g...

Phil and Emily are joined by writer Elias Isquith (Necessary Fictions blog) to close out the Angelina Jolie Action Films of the 2000s miniseries with the loudest, messiest entry yet: Timur Bekmambetov's Wanted (2008). James McAvoy plays a cubicle drone recruited by Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman into a secret fraternity of assassins that takes its orders from a magical loom. Yes, a loom. The mo...

Phil and Emily bring in writer Lindsey Romain for the fourth installment of the Angelina Jolie action films miniseries, and it is the one LaToya Ferguson was promised. Lindsey's work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Vulture, and Bright Wall/Dark Room, and she saw this movie four times in theaters as a teenager. She still has the promotional pin from when she worked at a movie theater in high s...

Phil and Emily continue the Angelina Jolie action films miniseries with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider — The Cradle of Life (2003), joined by Carson Betts and Caroline Thompson, co-hosts of the How Have You Not Seen It podcast. All four participants are watching this film for the first time. This is relevant information. The Cradle of Life follows Lara Croft racing to find Pandora's Box before a rogue sc...

Phil and Emily continue the Angelina Jolie action films miniseries with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), joined by BJ Colangelo and Harmony Colangelo, co-hosts of the This Ends at Prom podcast. BJ and Harmony previously joined the show for Hard-Boiled, which Phil describes as a superior action movie. Harmony agrees with everything about that sentence. Tomb Raider follows aristocrat archaeologist La...

Phil and Emily are joined by LaToya Ferguson to kick off a new miniseries on Angelina Jolie's action films of the 2000s, beginning with Gone in 60 Seconds (2000). LaToya is a TV writer, critic, and co-host of the Empire Diaries podcast. She has appeared on the show before, covering The Other Sister and Ladybugs on previous installments. She wanted to cover Mr. and Mrs. Smith. She did not get Mr. a...

Phil and Emily are joined by film critic, screenwriter, and Hip Pocket podcast host Drew McWeeny to discuss Where the Wild Things Are (2009), the Spike Jonze adaptation of Maurice Sendak's 85-word picture book that cost roughly $100 million, barely broke even, got one Blu-ray release, and has been sitting in a strange kind of limbo ever since. Drew has been close to this film longer than almost an...

Phil and Emily are joined by Angie Han, TV critic at The Hollywood Reporter, to discuss  Synecdoche, NY  (2008), Charlie Kaufman's audacious directorial debut and the film Roger Ebert called the best of the 2000s. Kaufman wrote and directed this hallucinatory portrait of Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an ailing theater director who uses a MacArthur Fellowship to build a life-size...

Phil and Emily are joined by Katey Rich, awards editor at The Ankler and host of the Prestige Junkie podcast, to discuss Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Michel Gondry's Charlie Kaufman-written love story and one of the defining films of its generation. This episode is part of the ongoing miniseries on the 2000s films of Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry. Jim Carrey plays Joel and Kat...