Fall Movie Preview and The Social Reckoning | #1085

With the fall film festival season (mostly) in the rearview and release dates set through the end of the year, Adam and Josh hold a Fall Movie Preview Draft that sees them largely ignoring obvious picks like Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three in favor of battling over some of the most intrigui…

Trial By Media, Pt. 2 — Primetime | Next Picture Show

Primetime is a far-from-straightforward take on a true story, using the mid-aughts TV phenomenon To Catch a Predator and especially its host, Chris Hansen, for a darkly comic exploration of the morally murky place where ambition and justice overlap. It’s a tonal high wire act that gets a lot of mil…

Top 5 of 1991 | Archive

The 1991 movie year turns 35 this year. T2, Barton Fink, Boys in the Hood. In 2014, Adam and Josh looked back a mere 23 years for their Top 5 of '91.    

Is Prime’s Carrie Remake Too Much of a Good Thing? | SVU

Stephen King’s Carrie has been adapted for film twice, has endured a sequel and even a Broadway musical, and now Mike Flanagan has brought the writer’s debut novel to the small screen in a limited series for Prime Video. Flanagan is a peerless adapter of King’s work, but does any version of Carrie …

"Hollywood's like Egypt, full of crumbled pyramids" with Laura Friedman & Ron Falzone | The Movie Racket

Hollywood has been dying for more than a century. At least, that's what people keep saying. This week, Michael Phillips explores one of the industry's favorite prophecies of doom: producer David O. Selznick's famous comparison of Hollywood to ancient Egypt, "full of crumbled pyramids" destined to …

Digger and Primetime, plus Chicago International Film Fest Preview | #1084

Not everyone hates Digger. The big swing from star Tom Cruise and director Alejandro González Iñárritu was met with chilly box office and hostility from critics, but Adam and Josh (yes, even Iñárritu skeptic Adam!) found lots to like — especially after the film’s bold transition from politically-ch…

Trial By Media, Pt. 1 — Sweet Smell of Success | Next Picture Show

Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime paints problematic TV phenomenon To Catch a Predator — and especially its host, Chris Hansen — as an enterprise fueled by ambition, amorality, and a tenuous grasp of journalistic ethics. Those qualities put us in mind of the cursed collaboration between desperate press a…

Top 5 Tom Cruise Performances | Archive

With Cruise back in ac-tor mode in Alejandro González Iñárritu's Digger, we're sharing our 2017 consideration of the long and storied career of "the last movie star." Unlock the full archive, Filmspotting Discord, ad‑free + bonus episodes, and more when you ⁠join the Filmspotting Family⁠. 

The Low-Budget Gumption of Shudder’s Goody Goody | SVU

For the first show of Scare-tober, Jordan and Matt take a look at the Shudder Original Goody Goody, a low-budget home-birth horror tale from first-time feature director Raymond Creamer. For a seasonally appropriate streaming watch, you could do worse. You could also do better, which is why Matt and…

Halloween ('78) vs. A Nightmare on Elm Street | Movie Death Match

Chris Klimek convenes a showdown between arguably the two most influential slasher films ever made: John Carpenter's "Halloween" and Wes Craven's "A Nightmare on Elm Street." One helped define the modern slasher, introducing audiences to the silent, implacable force of Michael Myers and transformi…