A comedy of frustration and a look at how the media takes and then takes back one’s fifteen minutes of fame, Dog Day Afternoon (1975) is on of Sidney Lumet’s best films with one of Al Pacino’s best performances. Sonny wants to be Lee Marvin but acts more like Don Knotts; he wants to be a folk hero, but becomes more like a meme; he has a romance with the media and finds that his mistress is fickle. Sonny is the kind of person who accidentally appears in a viral video, comes to enjoy the renown, but then learns that his hour upon the stage is signifying nothing.

Bumper music: Bumper music by John Deley.

Interested in the real events that inspired the film and how the film was made? Read Rachel Walther’s Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Mike Takla is on substack at The Grumbler’s Almanac.

Tod Field’s Tár (2022) is one of the best ghost stories we’ve discussed on the show. The story of a troiubled genius, the film is also a wonderfully ambiguous portrat of a person persued by her past in the form of an unseen and vengerful force. Lydia Tár is by turns charismatic, repulsive, fascinating, and frightening. She’s a real person and demands a compicated response, just like the film as a whole. Part Amadeus and part Lolita, Tár is a high-water mark for anyone intrested in a portrat of the artist.

Bumper music: Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 - Trauermarsch by Jason Weinberger & WCF Symphony. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

If, like Lydia Tár, you’re fascinated by Mahler, check out Stephen Downes’ 2025 biography.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Mike Takla is on substack at The Grumbler’s Almanac.

In light of the dismal Disclosure Day (2026), we return to two films that show Spielberg tackling alien visitation (or invasion) stories while at the height of his powers. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and The War of the Worlds (2005) are decades apart, yet united by a single image and devotion to their audiences. The first is as Disneylike as Pinocchio; the second conjures memories of 9/11. Both show domesticity under great strain as families and infrastructures break down; one ends with hope while the other simply stops.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

The War of the Worlds is based on H. G. Wells’s 1898 novel, which you can purchase here.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

Tennyson called nature “red in tooth and claw,” but that warning didn’t keep Timothy Treadwell from living among the grizzlies of Alaska for thirteen summers–until one of them killed him and his girlfriend. Werner Herzog’s 2005 documentary Grizzly Man tells Treadwell’s story and raises the issues of what happens when we ascribe human motives and characteristics to animals and the ways in which we all attempt to stake out our own territory in an indifferent world.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Herzog’s most recent book The Future of Truth (2025) is a series of essays about what constitutes truth and the threats truth faces in our age of AI and deepfakes.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

Woody Allen has called A Streetcar Named Desire the most well-directed film ever made and its influence on Blue Jasmine (2013) is unmistakable. Both concern a woman whose fantasy life and self-deception break down and both feature incredible performances by the lead actress: in Streetcar, it’s Vivien Leigh and here it’s Cate Blanchett. And if Streetcar is a high point of Eliza Kazan’s filmography, Blue Jasmine is surely one of Allen’s and perhaps the best of the subgenre Woody Allen Movies Without The Woody Allen Character.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Blue Jasmine is Allen’s 44th film; his memoir, Apropos of Nothing, details how he became a writer and director of fifty films.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

In 1828, a seventeen-year-old boy was found wandering the streets of Nuremberg, holding two letters and unable to say more than a few words. The locals adopted him as a kind of municipal mascot; eventually, they learned that he had been bound in darkness until his release and struggled to learn more about his past. Werner Herzog took the story as a basis for his 1974 film–not one of his trademark documentaries–and used it as a meditation on the human condition. It’s an unforgettable experience, like seeing 2001 for the first time. Join us as we discuss the film’s ideas, humor, and audacity.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

The German title of the film is Every Man for Himself and God Against All, which is also the title of Werner Herzog’s 2024 memoir.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

“Forget it, Jake—it’s Chinatown.” This piece of advice is as famous as it is useless: Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) will never be able to forget what he’s seen. Chinatown (1974) is also impossible to forget: whether it’s the perfect nod to noir or the best noir of all time, it’s endlessly fascinating, compelling, and disturbing. Join us for an improvised conversation about why the film still fascinates and why Noah Cross (John Huston) might be the best movie villain of all time.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

If you want to read a great in-depth book about the making of Chinatown, check out Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

Hollywood loves making movies about itself: on this show alone, we’ve done Sunset Boulevard, Sullivan’s Travels, and Singin’ in the Rain. Get Shorty (1995) is Elmore Leonard’s contribution to the genre, a film that was “meta” before the term became overused: we are given the illusion of spontaneity and the story–like one of Leonard’s novels–seems like it’s being made up as it moves along. This perfect 90s movie is a lighthearted and wholly enjoyable dramatization of screenwriter William Goldman’s famous description of the industry: “Nobody knows anything.”

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

If you’re interested in reading the original novel, you can find it here.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

A Star Is Born has been filmed four times, but the first version is the best: a combination of Singin’ in the Rain and Death of a Salesman, David O. Selznick’s production drips with “movie” and artificiality, yet still delivers an ending that seems taken from Greek tragedy. No stars were harmed in the making of this film–yet the film also dramatizes the harm inflicted by a steady diet of fame. It’s not an indictment of Hollywood, but an illustration of how the machine works.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

If you’re interested in reading Dorothy Parker, Robert Carson, and Alan Campbell’s excellent screenplay, you can find it here. The collection Memo from David O. Selznick is an addictive edition of hundreds of memos, telegrams, and letters from the producer about the films he helped create, A Star Is Born among them.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

Every other movie seems to be touted as a “tour de force”--but Philip Barantini’s 2021 look at ninety minutes in the life of a chef and everyone around him really earns that praise. The entire film was shot in one take, not to be “original,” but because doing so reflects the tension and stress of the whole enterprise: a restaurant, like a film, is a complicated ecosystem in which personalities, hang-ups, failures, and backstories collide. Join us for a conversation about how the restaurant is, like so many of our jobs, a petri dish in which radically different people are placed and forced to coexist. Sometimes, things get ugly.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Adam Reiner’s The New Rules of Dining Out explains how restaurants work and complements the film like a Cabernet Sauvignon does a steak. You can also see Adam Reiner being interviewed about his book and favorite restaurant-based films here on Pages and Frames.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.