Young Adult Movie Ministry
57 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 2 years ago -A podcast by Alissa Wilkinson and Sam Thielman (and assorted awesome guests) about Christianity and the movies -- all kinds of movies.
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Episodes
The Exorcisthood of All Believers
July 04, 2022 14:35 - 1 hour - 83.9 MBHello! Long time no post! Alissa is writing her book and Sam is working on [REDACTED] and we have let this fall by the wayside a little bit in the interest of drawing out the length between episodes, since we have precious little time to record these days. But we really ought to announce that sort of thing in the future, and for this we apologize. We have a very fun episode for you today, a little out of date but none the worse for wear, with the great Mason Mennenga, on James Wan’s faith-ba...
Vol. 2, Ep. 17: A Dark Knight Returns
May 04, 2022 18:04 - 1 hourHello! We are back with friend of the pod Jamelle Bouie to talk about the new Batman flick, which is good. We hope you enjoy it! Soon Alissa’s book will be out and we will announce the winner of our subscriber contest! This episode of Young Adult Movie Ministry is produced by John Kemp. Our theme song is Louis Armstrong and His Hot 5’s Muskrat Ramble, made freely available by the Boston Public Library and audio engineering shop George Blood, LP through the Internet Archive. The Batman is co...
Vol. 2, Ep. 16: Beep Beep Yeah
April 11, 2022 14:11 - 1 hourHello! We have acquired a wonderful producer, John Kemp, an old friend of Sam’s who offered to help a bit ago and whom Sam in his generalized lack of organization finally followed up with much more recently. John’s great, as you can hear, and we’re thrilled to have him aboard. This may also mean a more regular pod sked for a bit, and as such, we offer yet again a plea to subscribers: Please become one! This month (April, not March, as Sam says on the pod), if you subscribe, we will enter you...
Vol. 2, Ep. 15: It's a bird! It's a plane!
February 25, 2022 18:19 - 1 hourHello! Today we watched the critically acclaimed and Best Picture-nominated 138-minute $75 million Netflix dramedy Don’t Look Up so you don’t have to! We hated this. We hated it so much we didn’t have the heart to make a guest watch it. Sam is kind of ranty on this one. If you like hearing him angry, please subscribe. If you can’t do that (we understand!) please leave us a good review on your podcatcher of choice (but especially Apple Podcasts) so that more people can hear us. It’s the envir...
Vol. 2, Ep. 14: Never go to anybody's house
February 11, 2022 19:00 - 1 hourThis episode we have the marvelous Helen Shaw, New York magazine’s theatre critic, to talk about Joel Coen’s new film of Macbeth, which we all enjoyed immensely. The movie can be streamed on Apple TV and might still be in theaters; it’s good. Watch it. Our theme song is Louis Armstrong and His Hot 5’s Muskrat Ramble, made freely available by the Boston Public Library and audio engineering shop George Blood, LP through the Internet Archive. The Secret of Kells is copyright 2009 Cartoon Saloo...
Vol. 2, Episode 13: Work Backwards From the Cat
January 24, 2022 17:52 - 1 hourWe got to have Jeffrey Overstreet back! Hooray! Jeff is the author of the Auralia’s Colors fantasy novels and Through a Screen Darkly, as well as being writer-in-residence at Seattle Pacific University. We hope you enjoy this one. It’s free, but please subscribe if you haven’t! Jeff, Alissa, and Sam are talking about The Secret of Kells, Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey’s 2009 animated fantasy feature about the preservation of the great illuminated book of the gospels. Our theme song is Louis A...
Vol. 2, Episode 12: Felt Loss
December 24, 2021 16:41 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: Merry Christmas! This week’s episode is about The Muppet Christmas Carol, NOT A Muppet Christmas Carol, or Carol. Or Scrooge. Or Scrooged. There are lots of versions of the Charles Dickens novella, which you can see in its original manuscript form here. You can also visit it in person at the home, now museum, of real-life Scrooge JP Morgan! This is a free episode, so please consider subscribing! or buying your hosts a coffee using ko-fi.com/samthielman. Thank you...
Vol. 2, Episode 11: More Power to Him and His Big Stupid Face
December 08, 2021 16:41 - 55 minutesDetails, credits, errata: It is a two-episode week! Sam has finally gotten around to editing our episode on Free Guy, a very good one, if we do say so ourselves. The movie is fun! It’s neither a stone classic nor something we feel the need to apologize for inflicting on you, but it is fairly new and we do have to spoil it for you a bit to talk about it, so check it out before listening to the pod if that kind of thing bothers you. This is a free episode, so please consider subscribing! or ...
Vol. 2, Episode 10: God Is a Pink Robot
December 06, 2021 19:37 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week’s returning guest is the wonderful Tyler Huckabee, of Relevant magazine! He knows his Jack Kirby upside-down and backwards and he was definitely the guy to talk abou Eternals, Chloe Zhao’s new, much-discussed Marvel movie. It is… okay? There’s a lot of theology in it. This is a free episode, so please consider subscribing! or buying your hosts a coffee using ko-fi.com/samthielman. Thank you for listening! We love you! Our theme song is Louis Armstrong a...
Vol. 2, Episode 9: How to Live in a Circle
November 17, 2021 17:56 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week’s guest is Meg Conley, the terrific writer of homeculture, a newsletter about, uh, home culture! It’s very good and you may have seen it around as Meg’s work often attracts the kind of attention that elevates thoughtful writing into the general discourse. Meg was incredibly forthright and insightful about this week’s movie, Arrival, one of our favorites, and very open and honest about her own life in the Mormon church, as well. We thank her for it. This i...
Vol. 2, Episode 7: An Unworthy Manner
October 29, 2021 18:08 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week we watched Netflix’s incredible, terrifying show about [SPOILER] and Christian theology, Midnight Mass, which I don’t think I call Black Mass during the episode but if I do, please know that Alissa has already teased me about it and you will only be encouraging her if you do the same. Black Mass isn’t very good, whereas Midnight Mass is. Our guest us the delightful Andy Levy, costar of the only watchable show Fox News ever broadcast, Red Eye (long since ca...
Vol. 2, Episode 6: The Last Temptation of Silent Bob
October 20, 2021 18:25 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week Alissa and I watched Dogma, Kevin Smith’s goodhearted, filthy movie about theology and goofy stoners, a film that is very easy to watch but very hard to see! Alissa notes that there’s a YouTube upload and an Internet Archive version, neither of which seem terribly legit but since there’s no way to stream the movie or buy it from the distributor, we do not recommend watching a bootleg version but we also do not have an alternative. Sam mentioned Terry Sc...
Vol. 2, Episode 5: That's a Pipeline
September 27, 2021 19:10 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week we’re delighted to have the great Vinson Cunningham, theater critic at The New Yorker, essayist, humorist, and all-around terrific writer whose work we heartily recommend to you. We watched P.T. Anderson’s 2007 masterpiece There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano, beloved of our hosts but new to Vinson. Vinson is really wonderful and open about his own experience of charismatic worship and we are very happy to have him on this one. Our...
Vol. 2, Episode 3: Vibing Into a Dreamscape
September 03, 2021 20:34 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: Our guest this week is Friend of the Pod Isaac Butler, journalist and cultural historian who has a new and very good book called The Method coming out in February; he would be grateful if you’re able to toss him a pre-order—he’s a terrific writer and you won’t regret it. He also hosts a podcast of his own, Working, at Slate. Check him out! The movie we’re talking about is David Lowery’s The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, and Joel Edgerton. It’s ...
Vol. 2, Episode 2: Painted Women Who Will Do Anything for Silver
August 26, 2021 17:40 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: Our guest this week is the delightful Lyz Lenz, returning to watch another awkwardly erotic 1950’s Biblical epic with us. It’s a goofy one. Our film is The Prodigal, a notorious turkey that lost the studio a ton of money despite having the beautiful Lana Turner as a fertility priestess. It is, as you might imagine, “based on” the parable from the Gospels in only the loosest possible sense of that phrase. Please buy Lyz’s books! They’re good. Our image is a gorgeous...
Vol. 2, no. 1: Resting Pod Face
August 18, 2021 17:14 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: Welcome back! We took a break and now are thrilled to return to you with a new episode about Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake, and guest Jeff VanderMeer, short-story writer and novelist whose masterly book Annihilation got made into a terrific movie by Alex Garland and whose books Hummingbird Salamander and A Peculiar Peril are both very well-reviewed (and good!) and available at Midtown Reader signed and inscribed, should you so choose, ...
Episode 47: I'd Buy That for a Dollar
July 07, 2021 16:17 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week we’re delighted to have the great comics writer Mark Russell on the pod to discuss another 1980’s classic action movie, Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 sci-fi satire Robocop, much of which has come to pass in the years since its release. Mark calls it the best of the superhero movies; we are inclined to agree. It adapts and sends up all kinds of cool and weird comics without smoothing out any of their rough edges, and, of course, manages to be very much its own thin...
Episode 45: Good Music, the Flesh, and the Devil
June 22, 2021 16:10 - 1 hourThis week we are privileged to have the great Gregory Thornbury, author of Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music and some terrific essays as well, notably this one on QAnon, to talk with us about The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Jeff Feuerzeig’s 2005 documentary about the late, supernaturally gifted, near-unknown singer-songwriter whose struggles with bipolar disorder kept him out of the public eye even as he amassed a following of similarly talented people. Also, demons. Demonology is...
Episode 44: The Shadow of the Torturer
June 09, 2021 17:31 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week’s guest is friend of the pod and all-around good guy Spencer Ackerman, who won the Pulitzer and the IRE Medal for his work on the Guardian’s Snowden coverage team and a National Magazine Award for his reporting on anti-Muslim training materials used to teach FBI recruits. His book Reign of Terror, which builds on that excellent reporting, is due out from Viking on August 10; you can pre-order it here. Sam has read it; it’s very good. Our film, I’m sorry t...
Episode 43: Mortified
June 02, 2021 17:10 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week’s film is another A24 horror picture, Saint Maud, director Rose Glass’s first movie and a terrific flick Alissa has been trying to get Sam to watch for months. It has pretty much everything we like to talk about on this podcast, so it’s just the two of us this week, and we think you’ll dig the discussion. Our header image on the website this week is a picture of a polychrome wood carving of Mary Magdalene wearing a cilice or hair shirt undergarment, carve...
Episode 42: Notes on Church Camp
May 26, 2021 15:43 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: Saddle up your horses, we’re back and want to thank you so much for your patience during our unannounced week off. We have some great episodes banked and here’s the first of them: friend of the pod Emily VanDerWerff returns with her friend Cassie LaBelle to talk about, appropriately, A Week Away, country music video director Roman White’s sophomore feature film, a Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) jukebox musical set at a church camp and distributed through Netflix...
Episode 40: Thigh Guy Summer
May 05, 2021 17:55 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week’s episode is about Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s classic film of faith, missionary life, and repressed desire, Black Narcissus, as chosen by our wonderful guest, Jessica Winter, an editor at The New Yorker and the author of the new novel The Fourth Child, which Alissa read, loved, and recommends to all of you. Our image is a still from the film; the hat, we are reasonably certain, is a mashed-up bycocket, though we welcome correction on this poi...
Episode 39: [Whispers to date] "That's the resurrection"
April 27, 2021 04:59 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week we had the wonderful Sarah Welch-Larson, Alien franchise scholar extraordinaire, on to discuss the least-loved and weirdest movie in the series, Alien Resurrection. It was great. You can read an excerpt from Sarah’s excellent book, Becoming Alien: The Beginning and End of Evil in Science Fiction's Most Idiosyncratic Film Franchise, here at RogerEbert.com, you can follow her on Twitter here, and you can buy her book for yourself and then a duplicate in c...
Episode 38: St. Joan and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
April 19, 2021 21:09 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week we have the delightful Rob Weinert-Kendt, editor of American Theatre magazine and contributor to America, The New York Times, and many other discerning publications, and absolutely one of our favorite people. His terrific pitch was to watch Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 silent drama The Passion of Joan of Arc, one of many movies made from the story of Joan’s trial, largely because, as Rob observes, there’s lots of documentary material about the trial, notably...
Episode 37: Mom Let Me Sleep In... Forever!
April 12, 2021 19:13 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week we have the delightful Natasha Oladokun, the poet, journalist, and teacher; her most recent arcticle is here and two of her wondeful poems can be read here. Our film, as we have threatened for many months, is Left Behind: The Movie, directed by Vic Sarin and starring, though perhaps that word is misleading, Kirk Cameron, Brad Johnson, Gordon Currie, and Chelsea Noble, among other luminaries. It is… astounding. I believe this is the first time we’ve discuss...
Episode 35: Release the Schrader Cut
March 26, 2021 20:43 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: For Holy Week, we have decided to be a bit daring and look at Martin Scorsese’s 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ, the much-maligned work of two Christians, Scorsese and Paul Schrader, based on the work of a third, Nikos Kazantzakis, who published Last Temptation in 1955, two years before his death. With us is dear friend and author of The World Only Spins Forward and The Method, Isaac Butler. We re-recommend Alissa’s excellent interview with Schrader here,...
Episode 34: More of a Comment Than a Question
March 21, 2021 04:05Details, credits, errata: This week’s documentary double-feature is Cameraperson and Dick Johnson Is Dead, both directed by Kirsten Johnson, the former available through the Criterion Channel and the latter on Netflix, both eminently and easily watchable and well worth your time. Our wonderful guest this week is Eric Hynes, curator of film at Astoria’s incredible Museum of the Moving Image and a critic for Film Comment; please check out the Museum’s publication Reverse Shot, which is near an...
Episode 33: Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?
March 10, 2021 19:06 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: First, a quick explanation—last week Sam had some unexpected childcare stuff and had to bail out on an episode that he and Alissa still plan to do. This week we’ll have two for you: This one, and, to sweeten the deal for potential subscribers, an unlocked episode from our archives, going up on Friday. Thanks for your patience and apologies for the schedule interruption. This week we have a very fun treat for you in the form of award-winning documentarian Penny La...
Episode 32: Circolwyrde-Generated Imagery
February 26, 2021 19:43 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week we watched the extremely lurid and silly 2007 Robert Zemeckis CGI movie Beowulf, easily the best of on-location shoots in the uncanny valley, starring Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, Crispin Glover, and John Malkovich, and written by Neil Gaiman (Good Omens) and Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction). It’s both terrible and wonderful at the same time. Our guest is medievalist Ethan Campbell, which is a lot like having Noam Chomsky on your show to discu...
Episode 31: The Five People You Meet in Hell
February 19, 2021 22:23Details, credits, errata: This week’s episode is about the ridiculous 2005 horror-noir Constantine, one of the early comic-book movies of the modern era and probably the best DC movie in… ever? Our guest is Vox’s terrific healthcare reporter Dylan Scott, a stand-up guy, an interesting Christian with an enormous brain, and a big fan of this flick, which we’re kicking ourselves for not thinking of doing before him (but we’re glad we didn’t, so we could have him talk about it). Dylan has a big...
Episode 30: Theodicy Speedrun
February 12, 2021 22:27Details, credits, errata: This week we watched Darren Aronofksy’s 2017 horror film mother!, the baby-eatingest Bible allegory in all the land. It was great? One error: Sam said Téa Leoni when he meant Marisa Tomei; he is forever making this mistake despite having met Marisa Tomei a few times and had pleasant conversations with her. He apologizes to Mss. Tomei and Leoni, who are, we want to emphasize, different people. We mention a few different articles for your reading delectation; here’...
Episode 28: Dinnae Tread on Me
January 29, 2021 17:34 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: We almost called this “Mel O’Drama” and were also considering “Claymore Minds” and “No Relation,” since our wonderful guest is Tyler Huckabee (no relation) and this film’s most famous line—“Every man dies, not every man really lives”—was written by the poet William Wallace, also no relation. This week’s film is the unbearable turkey Braveheart, a movie that won Best Picture, Best Director, and a ton of other awards it did not deserve. Fargo and Trainspotting, both...
Episode 27: Modest Pixie Dream Girl
January 25, 2021 20:55 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week we subjected ourselves to Adam Shankman’s 2002 surprise hit romantic drama A Walk to Remember, an amazing time capsule of a movie about the importance of gender roles but not exactly about Christian complementarianism? It’s confusing. Don’t worry, we get into it. Our guest is Katelyn Beaty, founding editor of her.meneutics, former managing editor of Christianity Today, and author of A Woman’s Place. She was terrific and has many wise insights into what on ...
Episode 26: Taxi Pastor
January 15, 2021 22:06 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week’s movie is Paul Schrader’s 2018 romcom First Reformed, a feel-good romp about a fish-out-of-water preacher (Ethan Hawke) in the New York exurbs who finds his faith tested by a beautiful widow (Amanda Seyfried), a conniving businessman (Michael Gaston) and a bumptious supervisor (Cedric the Entertainer). Just kidding, it’s devastating. But it’s very good. Here’s Alissa’s marvelous interview with Schrader, a masterly director and screenwriter with his own e...
Episode 24: Dribble the Ball, Kirk
December 23, 2020 20:38 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week we have a crossover episode for Christmas, starring our friends at the Good Christian Fun podcast, Kevin T. Porter and Caroline Ely! Please listen to their pod, subscribe, buy their merch, and wish them a merry Christmas. Our film is the amazingly bad yuletide confection Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas, starring Kirk Cameron as himself and director Darren Doane as Christian White, the white christian. It is a holiday miracle of bad editing, bad sound des...
Episode 23: The Cheeriness That We Are Expected to Feel
December 16, 2020 19:36 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: Hello! This week’s guest is the wonderful Emily VanDerWerff, critic at Vox alongside Alissa, the first TV editor of The AV Club, author with Friend of the Pod Zach Handlen of Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to The X-Files, available at a number of fine booksellers, and host of her own mystery-comedy podcast, Arden. She is great! Our film for the week is the 1965 CBS holiday special A Charlie Brown Christmas, an important film for a lot of Chr...
Episode 21: Bread Alone
November 29, 2020 16:06 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week Sam and Alissa discuss Gabriel Axel’s beautiful 1987 comedy Babette’s Feast with the great Jeffrey Overstreet, professor at Seattle Pacific University, film critic at Christianity Today for many years, author of the Auralia Thread series of fantasy novels, and current contributor to the film journal Image. Jeffrey writes about art and faith at LookingCloser.org, and you can buy his books, including his highly regarded memoir, Through a Screen Darkly, here...
Episode 20: There's a Bad Word in the Bible
November 21, 2020 16:15 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week is a Sam and Alissa special, in which we discuss an obscure but hugely influential direct-to-VHS kids’ movie, Rick Garside’s 1985 Jumanjoid stop-motion extravaganza Hoomania, which is sort of the ur-Adventures in Odyssey and was billed as “A journey into Proverbs!” when it debuted in Christian bookstores across this great nation. (Hey kids! Proverbs!) It’s surprisingly pleasant and lacks the sadism of the eventual Focus on the Family offerings, and the pr...
Episode 19: Divine Comic Horniness
November 12, 2020 18:23 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week’s guest is the wonderful Alan Scherstuhl, whose incredible Studies in Crap column is one of the great works of 21st century journalism and can be read here. Alan suggested we watch Carl Reiner’s 1977 box office smash Oh, God!, starring John Denver as a schmoe and George Burns as God. It’s a really interesting artifact of the period if not a particularly good movie (Terri Garr, who is awesome in everything, is worth the price of admission), and it was hugel...
Episode 18: Christwashing Trump
November 04, 2020 00:37 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: Today, with our special guest Tara Isabella Burton, we finally ask the question: How did we get Trump? We watched the Liberty University-produced drama The Trump Prophecy to answer this question. It was… an experience. Tara is an all-around genius: read her great piece on this film here and buy all her books for yourself and then again as Christmas presents here. Our episode art for the week is twitterer recordsANDradio’s amazing photoshop of Donald Trump’s mouth...
Episode 16: God's Gonna Run You Over
October 23, 2020 21:25 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week Sam and Alissa talk about God’s Not Dead, Harold Cronk’s 2014 Obama-era fever dream about liberal professors run amok on campus, a sort of Christian version of Crash or Magnolia where a bunch of tangentially related characters have mini-adventures throughout the Fox News Cinematic Universe. Americans can watch God’s Not Dead on Netflix, if they so choose. Our guest is the wonderfully funny comedian and writer Josh Gondelman, an absolute treasure of goodwi...
Episode 15: The Omega Effect
October 17, 2020 21:18 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: Episode 15: The Omega Effect is written by Sam Thielman and Alissa Wilkinson. Our special guest is the wonderful Sarah Jones, politics writer for New York magazine and all-around solid citizen. Sarah wrote a fantastic piece for New York about Donald Trump’s tendency to bait evangelicals and that one time it seemed like he’d accidentally declared himself the Antichrist in the process. Here’s a profile of her in the New York Times. Sarah suggested we watch The Omeg...
Episode 14: How I Love You, You Are the One
October 08, 2020 20:03 - 1 hourThis week’s episode is Vera Farmiga’s 2011 debut feature Higher Ground, a beautiful comedy-drama new to Sam and Alissa, recommended by friend, colleague, and coreligionist Justin Chang, the film critic for the LA Times. Justin reviewed the movie for Variety when he and Sam worked there together; Sam, Alissa, and Justin all more or less lived in this movie as kids, which is surprising since Sam grew up in a white Presbyterian church in the South, Alissa grew up in a white non-denominational c...
Episode 13: Swords AND Sandals? In This Economy?
October 05, 2020 23:42 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: Episode 13: Swords AND Sandals? In This Economy? is written by Sam Thielman and Alissa Wilkinson. Our special guest is Caitlin Mae Burke, supervising producer of Field of Vision’s IF/Then Shorts initiative; she is the first honest-to-goodness movie producer we’ve had on the show and she was fantastic. She forced us to watch The Ten Commandments (1956), Cecil B. DeMille’s nearly four-hour Biblical extravaganza starring Charlton Heston as Moses, Yul Brynner as Pharoa...
Episode 12: Noir 101
September 28, 2020 17:37 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week Sam and Alissa talk about The Maltese Falcon, one of Sam’s favorite films, with our terrific guest Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times. It’s a great flick we recommend highly do you—one of the all-time great movies ever made by any standard, and a great introduction to film noir. The movie is available to stream on HBO Max and also to rent or buy through various outlets but Sam hates the degraded quality you get with streaming and recommends the Warner Ar...
Episode 11: Intrigued by the Guillotine
September 18, 2020 22:49 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: This week Sam and Alissa talk about Donald W. Thompson’s kitsch classic/terrifying youth group mainstay A Thief in the Night, a trim 68-minute horror film about the Rapture, which, Sam was annoyed to learn after having rented it twice on Amazon, is available for free on Tubi, as is are its sequels. Our guest is the wonderful Elizabeth Spiers, who wrote an absolutely terrific piece about the downfall of Jerry Falwell, Jr. and the conservative heirarchy of sin for t...
Episode 10: Why Are You Following Me?
September 11, 2020 21:24Details, credits, errata: This week Sam and Alissa talk about Silence, Martin Scorsese’s 2016 masterpiece of tested faith and cultural contrast. Sam had never seen it before and it instantly became one of his favorite movies so if you saw the trailer and were like “oh, the torture one,” please rest assured that that’s not what this is it all, in fact it’s unbelievably good. Out-of-this-world great. Our guest is the great film writer Bilge Ebiri, whose piece about Silence is one of the best...
Episode 9a: Back-Masking, The Movie (sample)
September 04, 2020 20:49 - 9 minutesNotes: Sam and Alissa both managed to get into socially distant critics’ screenings of Tenet, which they had long and passionate thoughts about, and they felt strongly that they should yak about them to each other and spare their spouses at least some of the agony of being married to people who can’t be stopped from talking about movies for hours on end. Nolan is a very interesting filmmaker; most of his movies are on Amazon Prime, a couple of them for free. Sam’s essay about whether or not...
Episode 9: What Normal People Wear
September 04, 2020 18:09Details, credits, errata: This week’s episode is a fun one: Sam and Alissa talk to renowned feminist public intellectual Jessica Valenti about a movie of her choosing: Brian Dannelly’s 2004 Christian high school satire, Saved! It’s a movie neither of your hosts had seen because frankly they were afraid of being retraumatized but it turned out to be really sweet and funny and we recommend it highly. Jessica is a remarkable writer and thinker and there’s a lot we mentioned here that I’ll try ...
Episode 7: An Extra or a Principal
August 21, 2020 20:37 - 1 hourDetails, credits, errata: Episode 7, An Extra or a Principal, is written by Sam Thielman and Alissa Wilkinson, produced by Sam and distributed by Alissa, with our very special guest, A.O. Scott—Tony, to his friends. Tony is the co-chief film critic at the New York Times and does not have to be nearly as nice as he is. Please go read his wonderful book Better Living Through Criticism at once; you can buy it here. Our film for the week is the Coen Brothers’ 2016 Hollywood comedy Hail, Caesar...