Martini Giant – Details, episodes & analysis

The Big Lebowski and True Grit have cemented Jeff Bridges' position as one of the greatest character actors in the history of film. But early in his career, he took some wild swings as he tried to figure out what kind of roles fit him best! Tonight we look at two of his strangest, most interesting choices - a pair of imperfect but intense thrillers that no ingénue would dare take on today: Cutter's Way and Winter Kills!

Alex Garland has always been on the forefront of sci-fi - exploring the future of technology in Devs, reinventing the zombie genre with 28 Days Later, questioning our basic identity Annihilation, and debating the nature of consciousness in the MG favorite Ex Machina. But his latest might be his most relevant and upsetting work yet - and certainly his biggest. Join us for his unnerving vision of Civil War!

David Fincher has long been on the cutting edge of the killer/thriller genre, reinventing it many times over his career with classics like Se7en, Zodiac, Mindhunter, and Gone Girl. But with his latest Netflix-backed effort, he both cuts new ground - and, in a weird way, gets back to basics: join us as we look at The Killer, and its classic inspiration, Le Samouraï!

AI rising up and conquering humanity has been the subject of hundreds of films from Westworld to The Terminator - but tonight we feature a couple of films that suggest reality will be more insidious than that! Join us for the little-known 70s time-capsule Colossus: The Forbin Project, followed by Spike Jonze’s chatbot-gone-rogue love story, Her!

With the betrayal of Watergate and the release of the Pentagon Papers, America in the 1970's was a haunted, disillusioned society, and much of that stress can be seen in the films of the period. But MG argues that, even in a decade that brought us Apocalypse Now and Three Days of the Condor, no director was more plugged into this paranoid zeitgeist than Alan Pakula! Join us for his twin masterpieces, Klute and The Parallax View!

For decades, John Wayne's westerns created a vast mythology of America's early days that papered over historical truth in favor of heroic white male ego-fantasies. But towards the end of his career, two films stand out wherein he questions these narratives and his role in them - join us as we take a look at his masterpiece The Searchers, as well the Coen Brother's reinterpretation of his classic True Grit!

Disney spent 350 million making the pretty-fun Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and 288 million making the downright awful Black Widow.  But even though the combined budget of tonight's double feature wouldn't have covered craft service for those movies, each packed to the brim with incredible concepts and beautiful images.  Join us as we talk about Gareth Edwards' Monsters and Brit Marling's Another Earth!

Happy Halloween from MG! Tonight, pour yourself a nice pumpkin spice martini and cozy up to our Exorcist double bill! First up is William Friedkin's 1973 masterful original, featuring a decade-best performance from Ellen Burstyn as a possessed kid's beleaguered mom - then we follow it up with the film's second (and darkly comedic) sequel, Exorcist III - directed by the book's author, William Peter Blatty!

Jake Gyllenhaal has had an incredible career, working with a wide range of directors from Ambulance's Michael Bay, to Okja's Bong Joon Ho, to Zodiac's David Fincher.  But two filmmakers in particular saw him as more than a great actor - they saw him as a muse, and built movies around his unique voice.  Join us tonight as MG takes on Richard Kelly's iconic Donnie Darko and Denis Villeneuve's underseen Enemy!

Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach have teamed up on a number of 'learning-to-be-real' stories - and their collaboration went global this year with the year's undisputed megahit, Barbie. But MG argues that while it might not be in the billion-dollar club, their actual best team-up sits comfortably beside a defining classic of the genre: join us tonight for our pod on Frances Ha and The Graduate!