Cinebuds

Cultural festivals are a major part of Milwaukee’s DNA, although we usually think of them in the context of summer celebrations at Henry Maier Festival Park. This category of events extends well beyond the lakefront, however, including the ones that take place in southeastern Wisconsin’s movie houses. Getting the spotlight in this episode is the Milwaukee Muslim Film Festival , which returns for i...

In this episode, Dori and Kpolly dive into Time Warp , a moving new documentary featured at the Dialogues Documentary Festival . The film spotlights a passionate community group in a small Wyoming town, led by the delightfully optimistic Kenny Starling, as they put together a shadow cast production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show . What starts as an ambitious theatrical experiment unfolds into a...

Strange but true. Funny but true. Deeply emotionally moving … but true. Those feelings — and many others — are the foundation for Milwaukee Film’s Dialogues Documentary Film Festival , which returns to the Oriental and Downer Theatres from Sept. 24-27. The key aspect of the event, however, is truth. The features screening across the four days are the real experiences of real people, from community...

There isn’t a single formula for becoming a global superstar. But there are a lot of different ingredients that could potentially go into it. While Dolly Parton’s particular mixture went heavy on music, her time on screen took her to a level only a select few reach. When news of her death started to spread, Dori and Kpolly didn’t hesitate to upend their schedule for a chance to dive into the more...

Many years ago, in a “you got chocolate in my peanut butter” type of moment, a wonderfully innovative mind looked at the disparate genres of horror and comedy and decided those two great things would, indeed, go great together. And so we got Evil Dead II and Shaun of the Dead and Tucker & Dale vs. Evil and — as of a few weeks ago — Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma . The latest film from wr...

When your last installment pulled in three separate Spider-Men (Spider-Mans?) and five different villains from across seven previous movies — plus a Sorcerer Supreme and the near-collapse of the universe itself — it’s almost impossible for a franchise to get even bigger. So the minds behind Spider-Man: Brand New Day did something that’s simply unheard of in the realm of superhero movies: They got...

Music has vinyl. Literature has hardcover editions. Movies have the 70MM format. Used in decades past for sweeping epics like Lawrence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey , the preferred presentation of film purists has found modern boosters in luminaries like Quentin Tarantino and — more relevant for this episode of Cinebuds — Christopher Nolan. Booking the British-American director wasn’t really...

We heard from a few Spotify users who didn't receive the correct audio for this episode, so we uploaded and republished it in an effort to correct the issues. Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused. ##### Boiling down a person’s nearly 91 years on the planet into 94 minutes is a tremendous feat. But what about when that person is someone your entire audience has, in a matter of speak...

To make a good movie, you can take something expected (your standard romantic comedy, good vs. evil, etc.) and execute it at a high level, or you can take a familiar situation and keep tossing unexpected things at the audience to keep them on their toes. With that second scenario, it’s still necessary — and arguably more difficult — to do it well, which is what Olivia Wilde seems to have pulled of...

Last year, Milwaukee Film held its inaugural season of “ Cinematic Sisterhood ,” a series of films that brings well-deserved (and often overdue) attention to the work of women in the industry. Now in the midst of its second go-around, the series will bring Wildwood, NJ to the Oriental Theatre on July 11, which made this episode the perfect time to welcome the perfect guest to the podcast. Tracey T...

Our bold and adventurous podcast hosts will go to fairly reasonable lengths to see a good movie. To infinity? No. Beyond? Definitely not.  Something they WILL do, though, is invite a new friend to join them for some general merriment with a few opinions thrown in for good measure. That’s what Dori and Kpolly did for this trip back to the playroom to review Toy Story 5 with special guest Heather De...

The last time Wisconsin-born writer/director Nathan Deming stopped by for a podcast visit, he was coming off a big win that went beyond any single project. Now he’s back to focus a little more intently on one of his own creations — and talk a bit about that previous victory. Deming and his Action! Wisconsin cohorts had plenty to smile about when he joined us in November of 2025, a few months after...

Get ready to lean into the darkness!  For this episode, we invited a special guest to help us celebrate the most wonderful (and miserable) time of the year: Bleak Week . Running from June 21-27 at the Oriental Theatre , Bleak Week is an international phenomenon featuring some of the greatest, saddest and most soul-crushing films from around the world. This year, the series delves into the theme of...

All throughout June, Milwaukee Film is serving up three separate helpings of hand-picked movies for the organization’s Pride Month program . There’s the “Queerious” mini-series devoted to queer-coded selections, the “Summer Camp 2” mini-series featuring queer classics that lean into the outrageous, and a trio of bonus picks to round out the month. To help us navigate the four weekends of movies, w...

Fresh from the theater, we dive headfirst into Boots Riley’s latest, I Love Boosters. This colorful, high-fashion heist film follows a crew of shoplifters who resell designer gear, as they target a cutthroat fashion icon played by Demi Moore. We break down the incredible cast, from the great Kiki Palmer leading the charge to a nearly unrecognizable Don Cheadle. The film is a total feast for the se...

'Blue Heron'

A public service announcement from your friends at Cinebuds : “Animated movies” and “Anime” are NOT the same thing. It’s a good time to point this out because throughout this month, Milwaukee Film will turn its lens on the magic of both categories as part of its “Ani-May” movie series . Yes, the more general moviegoing public will notice familiar titles like The Iron Giant , Ferngully and Smashmou...

Step inside the Goblin King's maze with this special live episode of Cinebuds!  Recorded at the historic Oriental Theatre during the 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival, this episode celebrates the 40th anniversary (and 4K restoration) of the fantasy classic, Labyrinth .  For this very special occasion, Dori and Kpolly enlisted some help from Steve Horton, Eisner-winning author of the graphic novel Bowie...

The Milwaukee Film Festival goes to a lot of trouble filling two whole weeks with tons of movies for us to see. So the least we can do is dedicate two podcast episodes to the big event before it wraps up April 30. Just like we did in part one, we invited Milwaukee Film programming director Kerstin Larson to join the podcast and provide her wonderful perspective to the final seven days of the 2026...

MKE Film Fest Week 1 & 'Now! More! Yes!'

Sound Vision at the 2026 MKE Film Festival

The 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival is coming up in just over two weeks and if you’ve never been, it’s kinda incredible! From April 16 - 30 hundreds of films will be shown across five screens at The Oriental and The Downer theaters on Milwaukee’s very fashionable East Side. So, with 250 short and feature-length documentary and fiction films from near and far to choose from, where does one even start...

With Milwaukee Film getting ready to celebrate 414 Day by screening the Song Sung Blue  documentary at the Oriental Theatre, we're taking a timely jump back to our conversation with a key player in the 2008 film about local musical couple Mike and Claire Sardina. Enjoy. ##### After coming down from our Hugh Jackman interaction at the Song Sung Blue premiere at the close of 2025, we pulled back the...

The Oscars are the Super Bowl of movies. We’re not talking about the prestige of winning, although that certainly lines up. We’re talking about how the wider world swoops in once a year to make predictions, rubberneck at the spectacle of it all and maybe even watch the actual event itself. Obviously, Dori and Kpolly are not “the wider world.” They’re unpretentious, welcoming, discerning film lover...

We use the phrase “action star” to describe the massive talent at the center of this episode, but Michelle Yeoh has demonstrated over the course of her remarkable career that she’s so much more than that. In fact, her career as a performer didn’t start with scripts or stunts. She was more focused on pirouettes and pliés as a classically trained ballet dancer, getting all the way to London’s Royal...