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Explore every episode of the podcast The Film Talk

Dive into the complete episode list for The Film Talk. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.

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TitlePub. DateDuration
Boorman and the Devil and the Beautiful Disaster of Exorcist II: The Heretic11 Oct 202600:23:51

Is Exorcist II: The Heretic really one of the worst sequels ever made, or have we been watching it all wrong Dear Listener?

Thanks to the documentary Boorman and the Devil, Jett and Gareth reconsider a movie that has been mocked for nearly 50 years. They explore Boorman's career, from Point Blank and Deliverance to Excalibur and The Emerald Forest, and examine how The Heretic fits into his lifelong fascination with myth, nature, and spirituality.

Along the way: Richard Burton's hypnotic screen presence, the spiritual differences between the two Exorcist films, and the mysterious synchronizer that just might explain 20 years of The Film Talk.

Sometimes folks the most interesting movies aren't necessarily the best ones.

Films discussed: Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) and Boorman and the Devil (2025).

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Digger: A Requiem for the World We Find Ourselves In08 Oct 202600:38:59

Jett and Gareth are overwhelmed by DIGGER, a film they see as exhilarating, horrifying and the most important movie of the moment.

How do you make art in a world that too absurd to satirize? Is DIGGER a climate horror movie, a satire, (or farce), a work about our complicity in the systems we condemn or a piece of art about the difficult job of making art itself? All of the above?

This is a spoiler-heavy conversation. If you haven't seen DIGGER, go see it first, preferably on the biggest screen you can find and then come back.

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Should We Stop Anthropomorphizing AI? What 2001, Colossus and The Outer Limits Can Teach Us03 Oct 202600:27:43

Why are we working so hard to make artificial intelligence seem human?

In this solo episode, Jett turns to three works of classic, and semi-classic, science fiction: Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Colossus: The Forbin Project, and Harlan Ellison's Demon with a Glass Hand, asking what movies can teach us about our increasingly personal relationship with AI.

HAL raises one possibility: What if a machine really does become something like a living being, with emotions and even a fear of death? Colossus offers a darker path, imagining what happens when we surrender authority to a machine and begin treating it less like a tool than an all-knowing god.

But The Outer Limits episode Demon with a Glass Hand suggests another way forward. Its computer, manifested as a literal hand of glass, is intelligent, extraordinarily useful, and completely unsentimental. It doesn't flatter. It doesn't pretend to be your friend. It's a tool.

Along the way in this episode: AI "personalities," the strange idea of giving software a soul, the pleasure of actually making things, Robert Culp's impeccable wardrobe, Harlan Ellison's legendary temperament, and why Jett has spent the past week wearing a glove and calling ChatGPT "the Glass Hand."

Maybe the question isn't whether AI can become more like us. Maybe it's whether we should stop asking it to.

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Coyote vs. Acme: Absurdity, Empathy, and Why We Keep Going18 Sep 202600:31:07

A cartoon coyote, Albert Camus, Mira Nair, and Albuquerque walk into a podcast. Jett and Gareth dig into the wonderfully humane Coyote vs. Acme: a film about persistence, absurdity, and the radical possibility of seeing the world through somebody else's eyes—even when that somebody has spent decades being flattened by anvils.

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Steven Spielberg Ranked: Our Number Ones, and What Greatness Means11 Sep 202600:44:37

Six episodes later, the ranking project finally reaches the summit. Jett and Gareth reveal their respective No. 1 Steven Spielberg films, argue about greatness, wander briefly into Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life, and confront the terrifying possibility that ranking art may have told us more about themselves than Spielberg.

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Steven Spielberg Ranked: Late Epiphanies and the Road to No. 112 Aug 202600:23:20

The Spielberg ranking has now escaped all reasonable containment. As Jett and Gareth approach the top of the filmography, old assumptions collapse, unlikely favorites rise, and Gymkata, Zodiac, and Quantum of Solace somehow enter a conversation ostensibly about Steven Spielberg. Cinema is a mysterious business.

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Blue Heron: Grief, Family, and the Miracle of Being Seen05 Aug 202600:24:48

Sophy Romvari's Blue Heron opens a conversation about memory, damaged families, grief, and the profound human need to be seen accurately. Jett and Gareth also consider why New Yorker critic Richard Brody remains such a vital voice—and why criticism is at its best when it risks having a point of view.

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The Odyssey: War, Homecoming, and Our Responsibility to Act31 Jul 202600:56:19

THE ODYSSEY: It's important that a film at this scale is speaking to this moment that we're in Dear Listener. In this wide ranging discussion our hosts Higgins and Loe get into why THE ODYSSEY is so thought provoking and important a piece of mainstream entertainment, while along the way enjoining discussions about matters of life and death, one's responsibilities to act, and also completely forget to mention Zendaya's role in the film. Enjoy.

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Steven Spielberg Ranked: Sam Neill, Near Misses, and the Top Tier17 Jul 202600:42:45

Jett and Gareth would like to apologize for believing Steven Spielberg's entire theatrical career could be ranked in one episode. Part Four gets them almost, but emphatically not quite, to the end, while making room to remember the wonderful Sam Neill and the films and performances that stay with us after the rankings become meaningless.

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The Mandalorian and Grogu: Does Star Wars Still Have Moral Weight?10 Jul 202600:44:57

What is Star Wars actually for? Jett and Gareth welcome educator and Star Wars expert Dan Zehr to talk The Mandalorian and Grogu, the future of the franchise, and whether this enormous mythology still carries moral weight—or has become merely a very expensive machine for moving familiar shapes around the screen.

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Steven Spielberg Ranked: War Horse, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and the Movies That Divide Us05 Jul 202600:54:30

The great Spielberg ranking rolls onward, pausing for Au Hasard Balthazar, Tom Stoppard's work on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Gareth's entirely defensible—or indefensible—love of War Horse. The rankings matter less than the arguments they provoke, which is probably the point.

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Disclosure Day: Spielberg, Wonder, and the Courage to Listen21 Jun 202600:41:17

Take out the earplugs of your mind, Dear Listener. Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day prompts Jett and Gareth to talk about wonder, attention, and what happens when popular cinema asks us to remain open to something larger than our own certainty. Sometimes the recommendation really is simple: see the movie, then talk about what it did to you.

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Steven Spielberg Ranked: Raiders, Duel, and the Madness of Ranking Art16 Jun 202600:35:20

Gareth has placed Raiders of the Lost Ark somewhere Jett regards as evidence of a collapsing civilization. Part Two continues the impossible Spielberg ranking, with Duel helping clarify a useful principle: in the absence of reason, there is madness. Naturally, this does nothing to stop them.

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Steven Spielberg Ranked: The Absurdity of Applying Metrics to Art14 Jun 202600:53:36

Can art be reduced to a numbered list? Almost certainly not. Jett and Gareth proceed anyway. Part One begins the dangerous work of ranking every theatrically released Steven Spielberg film from least great to greatest—or perhaps from slightly brilliant to most brilliant. Metrics meet movies. Reason does not necessarily prevail.

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Backrooms: AI Anxiety and the Death of the Analog World07 Jun 202600:10:01

Backrooms arrives disguised as analog nostalgia and turns out to be something more unsettling: a film about what it feels like to live amid synthetic images, AI-generated culture, and the nagging suspicion that reality itself is becoming less tangible. Recommended—with caveats, unease, and a healthy distrust of infinite content.

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Natchez: Southern Charm, American Myth, and the Need to See Clearly25 May 202600:31:58

Natchez dismantles comforting myths about the American South while asking a larger question: what happens when culture lets us float free of place, history, and consequence? Gareth calls it an early film-of-the-year contender; Jett recommends it without reservation. Before we act, the episode argues, we first have to see.

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Field of Dreams: Fathers, Sons, Regret, and the Possibility of Repair22 Apr 202600:45:28

Gareth has spent roughly 20 years trying to make Jett watch Field of Dreams. The long national nightmare is over. What follows is a conversation about fathers and sons, baseball ghosts, Burt Lancaster, lost monoculture, regret, forgiveness, and whether it is ever truly too late to make amends.

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Project Hail Mary: When Big-Hearted Sci-Fi Leaves Us Cold30 Mar 202601:04:40

What? Two film critics who may not actually recommend PROJECT HAIL MARY? It's true folks, in this massive episode we go in-depth into the pitfalls PROJECT HAIL MARY falls into and recommend some alternatives, namely: E.T., TITANIC, SILENT RUNNING, THE DAY AFTER (TOMORROW), THE CAT FROM OUTER SPACE, LIFEFORCE, MELANCHOLIA, MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, SOLARIS, CONTACT, I, ROBOT, DARK CITY, KNOWING and even THE OMEGA MAN. We hope you enjoy.

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Oscars 2026: The Movies, the Crafts, and the Stories We Choose14 Mar 202600:55:41

The 98th Academy Awards become an excuse to talk about what awards occasionally get right, what they miss, and the hundreds of people whose work makes movies possible. Jett and Gareth discuss the directors, actors, cinematographers, editors, craftspeople, and Best Picture nominees—with the usual understanding that art stubbornly refuses to behave like a horse race.

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Song Sung Blue: The Crowd-Pleaser That Missed Its Crowd04 Feb 202600:24:39

Gareth loves Song Sung Blue. Jett attempts to survive the experience physiologically. Together they ask why this warm, unabashed crowd-pleaser failed to find the audience it deserved—and whether sincerity has become strangely difficult for modern movie culture to process. Come for the film talk; stay because "Sweet Caroline" has become unavoidable.

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Marty Supreme and Eephus: Exhilarating, Empty—or Both?20 Jan 202600:30:52

Two very different movies raise a suspiciously similar question: can a film be exhilarating and leave you strangely empty? Jett and Gareth put Marty Supreme and Eephus into conversation, looking for the difference between cinematic energy and actual nourishment. Baseball may or may not provide the answer.

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The Best Films of 2025: The Movies That Mattered01 Jan 202600:40:00

It's the end of the year folks, so time for lists! Here's Jett and Gareth's Top 10 films of 2025.

Gareth: BLUE MOON, A LITTLE PRAYER, KÖLN 75, THE HISTORY OF SOUND, SENTIMENTAL VALUE, SINNERS, SORRY BABY, IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT, KISS OF THE SPIDERWOMAN and TRAIN DREAMS.

Jett: AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH, PLURIBUS, THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, RIEFENSTAHL, 28 YEARS LATER, SORRY BABY, BUGONIA, TRAIN DREAMS, SINNERS and ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER.

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Avatar: Fire and Ash: Does Avatar Need the Big Screen to Work?22 Dec 202500:40:18

One host saw Avatar: Fire and Ash in IMAX 3D. One did not. What follows is TFT's most divided conversation of the year and a useful experiment in what spectacle actually does: is Avatar a movie, an experience, or something that fundamentally changes when the screen gets smaller? Reconciliation remains uncertain.

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Rob Reiner, Train Dreams, and Sorry, Baby: Kindness, Grief, and How Movies Can Hold Pain16 Dec 202500:49:07

Remembering Rob Reiner leads Jett and Gareth back to a quality that ran through his work almost regardless of genre: kindness. From there, Train Dreams and Sorry, Baby open two different windows onto grief, vulnerability, survival, and the strange ability movies have to hold pain without reducing human beings to it.

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Frankenstein: Why Tell This Story Again?11 Nov 202500:35:56

There have been hundreds of Frankensteins. So why another one? Jett and Gareth ask whether a filmmaker's obsessive need to tell a familiar story can itself justify the retelling—and what a new Frankenstein has to say about creation, responsibility, monsters, and the people who make them.

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Bugonia: The Genre You Shouldn't Know Before You See It07 Nov 202500:06:20

Bugonia is one of those films best approached with as little protection as possible. Jett and Gareth discuss a movie they regard as a pinnacle of something they refuse to name because doing so would ruin one of its great pleasures. Watch first. Then return. Trust can occasionally be rewarded.

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A House of Dynamite: Is Dread Enough?31 Oct 202500:35:39

A House of Dynamite is brutally effective at producing nuclear dread. But what responsibility does a film assume once it has frightened us? Jett and Gareth consider catastrophe cinema from Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove onward, asking whether depicting the train coming at us is enough—or whether art can also help us imagine another track

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Tron: Ares, Diane Keaton, and the Radical Act of Being Yourself24 Oct 202500:33:02

Tron: Ares, The Cat from Outer Space, and Diane Keaton may not seem like natural companions. TFT accepts the challenge. Jett and Gareth consider the latest Tron while remembering Keaton and the rare quality she embodied so completely: the courage to be unmistakably, gloriously yourself.

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One Battle After Another: A Great Film That's Painful and Funny at Exactly the Same Time01 Oct 202500:45:09

Jett sees an all-time great. Gareth finds the experience almost unbearable—and may still agree. One Battle After Another opens a conversation about visual grandeur, political violence, white supremacy, resistance, vulnerability, and the difficult distinction between admiring a film and enjoying the experience of watching it.

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Weapons: A Horror Film for Our Age / Remembering Terence Stamp27 Aug 202500:49:25

Gareth calls Weapons a lament that earns the right to call itself a true story. Jett and Gareth explore why this horror film feels disturbingly fitted to its moment, then remember the presence, mystery, and startling career of Terence Stamp. Horror looks backward, sideways, and directly at us.

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Superman: Kindness as Radical Power16 Jul 202500:38:12

Jett and Gareth disagree sharply about one performance in Superman. On the larger point they are united: this is a movie willing to treat empathy and kindness not as weakness, sentimentality, or branding, but as genuine forms of power in a world very good at rewarding cruelty. Sometimes decency really does need a cape.

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28 Years Later: Horror, Compassion, and Caring About Strangers08 Jul 202500:24:44

"It made me care about strangers." That may be the most important thing Gareth says about 28 Years Later. Jett and Gareth explore a startlingly beautiful horror film whose cinematic ancestry reaches toward Boorman, Powell and Pressburger, Mike Leigh, and Lynne Ramsay, and whose real subject may be the persistence of human care.

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The Phoenician Scheme: Wes Anderson, Harris Yulin, and Learning to Love the Artificial20 Jun 202500:22:36

Has Jett finally become a Wes Anderson person? Civilization awaits the verdict. Jett and Gareth discuss why The Phoenician Scheme works for both of them and make room to remember Harris Yulin, one of those extraordinary actors capable of making a few minutes of screen time feel like an entire life.

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Mountainhead and Friendship: Can Men Really Be Friends?17 Jun 202500:33:09

Can men actually be friends? Jett puts the question to Gareth, his co-host and possible friend, on TFT's 300th episode. Mountainhead and Tim Robinson's Friendship become entry points into masculinity, status, loneliness, Emerson, Joseph Beuys, RoboCop, Starship Troopers, and whatever friendship is when nobody is trying to win.

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Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: Why This Impossible Movie Works23 May 202500:49:58

Surprise: Jett and Gareth love it. The Final Reckoning somehow evokes Lawrence of Arabia, The Abyss, and Sidney Lumet's Fail Safe while remaining very much a Mission: Impossible movie. The conversation considers spectacle, sacrifice, the series as a whole, and why some gigantic movies still feel unexpectedly personal.

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Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources: Crime, Hope, and Atonement20 May 202500:42:36

Spoiler alert: your neighbors are terrible. In a culture offering an infinite amount of "content," Gareth proposes something better: watch Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. Jett and Gareth explore two enduring films about cruelty, inheritance, consequence, hope, and atonement. Please watch them first. Some spoilers deserve to remain spoilers.

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Sinners: What Ryan Coogler's Film Means for the Future of Movies01 May 202500:43:41

Friends, lovers, sinners all: see this movie. Jett and Gareth take on Ryan Coogler's sprawling, multifaceted Sinners and the reasons it feels bigger than a single successful film. What does it reveal about genre, popular cinema, authorship, and the kinds of ambitious movies audiences might still demand?

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Black Bag: Trust, Marriage, and Politics in a Dangerous Moment03 Apr 202500:29:21

Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag arrives as a sleek spy film and becomes something much more useful: a story about trust, loyalty, intimacy, and what people owe one another when institutions become unstable. Jett and Gareth consider why this deceptively elegant entertainment feels unusually alive to its political moment.

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Gene Hackman, the Oscars, and the Responsibilities We Can't Duck20 Mar 202500:46:52

The episode goes off the rails. This is acknowledged early. Jett and Gareth remember their favorite Gene Hackman performances and what made him irreplaceable, examine what the 2025 Oscars did—and did not—say about the surrounding world, and ask the harder question underneath both subjects: when circumstances demand something of us, what are our responsibilities?

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Oscars 2025, Part Two: Nickel Boys, Wicked, The Substance and More28 Feb 202500:47:31

Emilia Pérez, I'm Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance and Wicked - these are the films we're discussing today Dear Listener. As always Gareth Higgins and Jett Loe agree to disagree, especially about Gareth's shocking pick for best film out of the nominees. Enjoy.

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Oscars 2025, Part One: Anora, The Brutalist, Conclave, Dune and More16 Feb 202500:39:12

Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave and Dune: Part 2 - these are the films we're discussing today Dear Listener. Of one of these Gareth Higgins says, "It's about 80 percent as good as The Godfather". Listen in and find out what he's talking about, if you can stand our rendition of The Brutalist score.

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The Brutalist: Beauty, Ambition, and the Cost of Building Something Real02 Feb 202500:37:55

The Brutalist is bleak and beautiful at exactly the same time. Jett is ready to call it magnificent. Gareth is almost there. Their disagreement opens into a larger conversation about ambition, architecture, history, suffering, and what happens when monumental acts of creation are built on lives that refuse to fit neatly inside them.

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David Lynch Remembered: The Dream Never Ends24 Jan 202500:15:57

David Lynch has passed away. What strange words to be typing. We, like many others one suspects, expected him to be around always, and maybe he is…he's before and after, or perhaps there's no actual now.

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The Best Films of 2024: The Movies That Mattered01 Jan 202500:57:46

The annual list arrives with categories, disagreements, honorable mentions, movies everybody missed, movies everybody saw, and one film that is emphatically not the best film of the year. From Dune: Part Two and Conclave to Nickel Boys, Challengers, All We Imagine as Light, and Joker: Folie à Deux, this is TFT's unruly map of 2024.

Discussed on the show:

Haven't Seen But Need to See:
La Chimera
Seed of the Sacred Fig


Good Enough to Talk About:
Trap
Cabrini
It Ends with Us
Babygirl


Many Folks Haven't Heard About:
It's Only Life After All
A Real Pain
The Wise Guy
Christmas Eve in Miller's point
Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger
Between the Temples
Emilia Perez
My Old Ass
I Saw The TV Glow
Kneecap
The Apprentice 
Memoir of a Snail 


Sheer Joy:
Wallace and Gromit


Underrated:
Furiosa
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Juror #2


Bubbling Under:
Dune Part Two
Civil War
Inside Out 2
The Bikeriders
Anora
The Brutalist 


Gotta See It Again:
A Complete Unknown


List of Its Own:
Megalopolis


Not the Best Film of the Year:
Reagan


Top Twelve Films of the Year:

12: His Three Daughters
11: Small Things Like These
10: Wicked
9: Rebel Ridge
8: Conclave
7: Evil does not exist
6: Sing Sing
5: Robot Dreams
4: Nickel Boys
3: Challengers
2: All We Imagine as Light 
1: Joker Folie à Deux

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A Complete Unknown: Bob Dylan, Identity, and the Mystery of Other People31 Dec 202400:25:07

Can we ever really know another person? James Mangold's Bob Dylan film gives Jett and Gareth a reason to ask, while also raising the equally urgent question of why A Complete Unknown occasionally appears to inhabit the same cinematic universe as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Identity, performance, mythmaking, and hats ensue.

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Wicked: Transcendence, Ugliness, and the Tension of Opposites01 Dec 202400:51:29

Can Wicked contain genuine seeds of transcendence while simultaneously looking strangely awful? Yes, apparently. Jett and Gareth embrace the contradiction, traveling through Jung, Attack of the Clones, the glorious color of 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood, and the possibility that learning to hold opposing truths may actually help us live better lives.

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What to Watch After an Election: Movies for Purpose, Connection, and Joy21 Nov 202400:29:09

What might help us become part of somebody else's happiness? In the aftermath of the 2024 U.S. election, Jett and Gareth turn to movies not as an escape from reality but as companions for meeting it: After Life, Ed Wood, Starship Troopers, and other films about purpose, absurdity, courage, and remaining human when the weather turns rough.

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Conclave: Power, Compassion, and the Possibility of Change / Remembering Teri Garr09 Nov 202400:48:51

We recorded this episode on Monday, November 5th, right before the U.S. Presidential Election Dear Listeners, yet, rather than seeming dated, it feels more timely than ever as we navigate choppy waters ahead. In this episode Jett and Gareth both revel in Conclave, a high-end, well-produced slice of the best cheese one can enjoy, that, interestingly, shows a potential way forward towards a more just and compassionate world, and reminisce about the wonderful performances of the late, (though still with us), Teri Garr. Along the way something near-miraculous happens to Jett at a screening. Enjoy.

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Joker: Folie à Deux: Brokenness, Meaning, and the Movie Everyone Was Busy Scoring16 Oct 202400:42:30

Why don't film critics address the meaning of the movies they watch Dear Listener? We say enough with the horse race and the box office numbers. To that end, on this episode, Jett and Gareth get into what the new Joker film actually seems to be saying about human nature and the brokenness within it. Along the way Terrance Malick's The Thin Red Line is referenced, Sidney Lumet's magnificent The Verdict is invoked, a TikTok creator is recommended, science fiction classic Forbidden Planet is manifested and we realize we must all "first accept, then luxuriate". Enjoy.

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Megalopolis One Point Five08 Oct 202400:14:29

Megalopolis wants to talk about creativity: the human urge to make rather than destroy. Jett and Gareth follow that idea into stranger territory by handing the conversation over to their silicon avatars and asking what machines make of Coppola's grand, unruly vision. Whether the machines "think" is left deliberately unresolved.

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