Episode 133. Surreal Spike

From skateboard videos to high-budget science-fiction drama, today Alex and Jonathan track the career of Spike Jonze through his feature films Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation. (2002), Where the Wild Things Are (2009), and Her (2013). We talk about the building of themes and structure in meta filmmaking, what makes interesting protagonists, and the variety…

Episode 127. So-Bad-It’s-Good

We all know those movies that are so bad you just have to watch them, and today Alex and Jonathan are talking through the history of these terribly good films with Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957), Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010), Sharknado (2013), and The VelociPastor (2018). We discuss the role intention plays in…

Episode 108. Pandemic Panic

There haven't been a lot of movies about pandemics, yet, but today Alex and Jonathan take a look at the various ways they have been done in the past, specifically in Outbreak (1995), Contagion (2011), and Flu (2013). We talk about the ways pandemic movies suffer from not having a defined genre, what they might…