This week on Podcast Like It’s the 2000s, Phil and Emily continue their Valentine’s miniseries on the films of Wong Kar-wai with a deep dive into his dreamy, decadent, and divisive follow-up to In the Mood for Love: 2046. Joining them is Screen Drafts co-host Clay Keller to unpack memory, desire, sci-fi metaphors, hotel rooms, and the many women orbiting Tony Leung’s endlessly romantic (and endlessly messy) Chow Mo-wan.

Early in the episode, Phil provides context for listeners who may not have seen the film, walking through its fractured narrative, a futuristic train that takes passengers to a place where memories can be reclaimed, and a writer blurring fiction and reality as he drifts through the Oriental Hotel and the ghosts of love past.

The conversation explores how 2046 expands Wong’s romantic universe into something colder, more reflective, and more haunted. Is it a sequel? A remix? A sci-fi epilogue? A man trying to freeze time so he never has to grow up? The trio discusses the film’s nonlinear structure, its lush visual language, recurring musical motifs, and the way longing becomes both theme and architecture.

They also touch on the film’s limited U.S. release, its evolving critical reputation, and how it fits into Wong Kar-wai’s broader body of work. Along the way, the episode offers a brief glimpse behind the scenes of this Valentine’s miniseries and how close to release these conversations sometimes are.

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This week on Podcast Like It’s the 2000s, Phil and Emily kick off a brand-new Valentine’s miniseries on the films of Wong Kar-wai with one of the most celebrated movies of the century: In the Mood for Love. Joining them are Katie McGrath and Tom Mison, making their first appearance on the main feed after many beloved appearances on Podcast Like It’s the 90s (the Patreon-exclusive show).

The conversation explores why In the Mood for Love has become the defining cinematic text of longing, memory, and restraint. The group digs into Wong Kar-wai’s sensual, dialogue-light approach; the role of ambiguity and audience interpretation; the film’s obsession with time, repetition, and missed connection; and how Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung deliver one of the most emotionally charged screen romances ever filmed without ever fully consummating it.

They also discuss the film’s slow critical “glow-up,” its influence on filmmakers like Sofia Coppola and Barry Jenkins, the role of Criterion in canon-building, and why this movie works as pure cinema something that couldn’t exist in any other medium. Along the way: conversations about memory, performance without dialogue, and what it means for a film to trust its audience completely.

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We continue our Pixar 2000s miniseries with one of the studio’s most unexpectedly profound films: Ratatouille. Joined by Brooke Solomon and Jordan Gustafson of The Queer Quadrant, we dig into why this movie about a rat who cooks somehow became one of Pixar’s most emotionally resonant works.

We talk about Ratatouille as a love letter to food, Paris, and creative ambition; the film’s quietly radical worldview; the cultural impact of “ratatouilling” someone; and why the movie asks us to accept its reality completely or not at all. Plus: gay rat discourse, cursed 2007 box office math, and why this might be Pixar at the absolute height of its powers.

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On this episode of Podcast Like It’s the 2000s, Phil and Emily continue their Pixar 2000s miniseries by finally pulling into Radiator Springs to talk Cars with critic and scholar Myles McNutt.

Often dismissed as “the lesser Pixar,” Cars is also one of the studio’s most commercially dominant films and one of its strangest cultural phenomena. The trio digs into why this movie connected so deeply with kids, how Disney merchandising helped shape its legacy, and why Cars feels philosophically out of step with Pixar’s more emotionally precise storytelling. They also explore the film’s obsession with nostalgia, small-town Americana, Route 66 iconography, and the uneasy politics lurking under its warm glow.

Along the way, they discuss Pixar’s evolving reputation, the film’s place in the studio’s broader lineage, Cars Land as a theme-park response to Harry Potter, and why even if it’s flawed Cars might still be essential viewing to understand Pixar’s 2000s run.

Ka-chow!

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This week on Podcast Like It’s the 2000s, Phil Iscove and Emily St. James continue their Pixar of the 2000s miniseries by diving into Brad Bird’s The Incredibles with critic and writer Libby Hill.

Released in 2004, The Incredibles sits at a fascinating crossroads for Pixar part family sitcom, part mid-century spy fantasy, and part superhero deconstruction years before the genre would dominate Hollywood. Phil, Emily, and Libby unpack why the film’s action sequences double as character studies, how its superpowers function as metaphors for family roles, and why the movie still feels sharper than most modern comic-book adaptations. They also discuss the film’s complicated nostalgia, its cultural blind spots, and why The Incredibles managed to “get away with” things that live-action superhero movies still struggle to pull off.

Along the way, the conversation touches on Brad Bird’s direction, Pixar’s voice-acting process, the film’s critical and commercial legacy, and where The Incredibles sits in the larger Pixar pantheon especially when compared to its sequel.

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This week on Podcast Like It’s the 2000s, Phil and Emily continue their deep dive into Pixar’s 2000s run with Finding Nemo, joined by critic and writer Caroline Framke.

Released in 2003, Finding Nemo marked a major turning point for Pixar pairing cutting-edge animation with a surprisingly emotional story about parenthood, fear, and letting go. The group breaks down how revolutionary the film felt at the time, why it still holds up as one of Pixar’s most accessible crowd-pleasers, and how its influence reshaped both animation and merchandising culture in the years that followed.

They also dig into Albert Brooks’ anxious Marlin, Ellen DeGeneres’ instantly iconic Dory, the film’s surprisingly existential undertones, and the question of whether Finding Nemo has been culturally overshadowed by later Pixar classics or simply made to look “conventional” by its own success.

Along the way, the conversation touches on disability representation, Pixar’s evolving thematic ambitions, and why the ocean remains one of cinema’s most quietly terrifying settings.

You can find Caroline Framke at: www.carolineframke.com

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Phil and Emily head back to early-2000s Pixar with Monsters, Inc., a movie that feels deceptively simple until you realize how much emotional and thematic weight it’s quietly carrying. Joining them is Griffin Newman for a deep dive into why this film has endured as one of Pixar’s most humane, rewatchable achievements.

The conversation unpacks the movie’s elegant world-building, its labor-comedy roots, and how it turns corporate systems, energy consumption, and fear itself into something legible for kids without flattening the ideas for adults. They talk Sulley as an unusually gentle Pixar protagonist, Mike Wazowski as both comic engine and emotional fulcrum, and Boo as a character whose impact far outweighs her screen time.

They also explore where Monsters, Inc. sits in Pixar’s creative timeline, how its humor is engineered, why its ending lands as hard as it does, and how the film reflects early-2000s anxieties about work, productivity, and empathy. Along the way, the group discusses the studio’s voice-casting philosophy, the film’s visual softness compared to later Pixar titles, and why its central message still plays cleanly more than two decades later.

Whether this was your childhood Pixar favorite or one you’ve come to appreciate more as an adult, this episode reframes Monsters, Inc. as a quietly radical movie about fear, care, and choosing connection over efficiency.

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Every year on Podcast Like It’s the 2000s, Phil and Emily pick one Chaos Pick a movie that doesn’t quite fit into any miniseries, but demands to be talked about anyway. This year’s selection is Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the ambitious 2004 pulp-sci-fi experiment that looked like the future of filmmaking… and then quietly disappeared.

Joining the conversation is Emma Stefansky, here to passionately defend Kerry Conran’s retro-futurist spectacle starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Angelina Jolie. The group digs into the film’s groundbreaking all-digital production, its sepia-toned visual language, and why it feels like a volume-stage movie years before volume stages became standard. They also explore how Sky Captain fits into a lineage of stylized adventure films like Dick Tracy and The Rocketeer, and why audiences often remember how the movie looked more than what actually happens in it.

Along the way, they discuss Roger Ebert’s glowing four-star review, the film’s middling box office and critical afterlife, the risks of resurrecting actors digitally, and whether Sky Captain is a misunderstood cult object or simply a fascinating near-miss. It’s a conversation about ambition, technology, and the strange movies that briefly convince us we’re looking at the future right before the future changes again.

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We close out our holiday run It’s Christmas and the Boys Are Sad with Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, a film that balances brutal violence, pitch-black comedy, and unexpected tenderness against a fairy-tale Christmas backdrop. Phil & Emily joined by writers and podcasters Clay Keller and Alan Sepinwall to unpack why this movie has only grown more beloved and more emotionally complicated over time.

The conversation dives into Colin Farrell’s career-defining performance, Brendan Gleeson’s quiet moral gravity, and Ralph Fiennes’ volcanic late-movie entrance. They explore McDonagh’s dialogue rhythms, the film’s strange tonal alchemy, and how Bruges itself becomes a purgatorial space beautiful, frozen in time, and quietly judgmental. Christmas lights, medieval towers, and European pageantry all heighten the sense that these characters are stuck between punishment and absolution.

They also discuss the movie’s reputation shift from cult hit to modern classic, its placement within McDonagh’s broader body of work, and why In Bruges may be the most emotionally honest entry in the “sad men at Christmas” cinematic canon. Along the way, the group touches on Carter Burwell’s melancholic score, the film’s theatrical release context, and the way humor is used as both shield and confession.

Whether you first saw In Bruges in theaters or came to it years later through word of mouth, this episode examines why the film still hits so hard and why it remains one of the defining dark comedies of the 2000s.

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Our holiday miniseries It’s Christmas and the Boys Are Sad continues with Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, a movie that feels breezy and charming on the surface and quietly devastating underneath. Phil and Emily are joined by author, video essayist, and YouTuber Lindsay Ellis to unpack why this film has only grown richer with time.

The conversation explores the movie’s deceptive simplicity, Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as a teenager performing adulthood, and Tom Hanks’ unusually vulnerable turn as an FBI agent defined by routine, loneliness, and obsession. They dig into Spielberg’s immaculate craft from match editing to tone control and why the film often gets overlooked in discussions of his “serious” work.

They also discuss the film’s Christmas framing, its melancholy view of masculinity and authority, and how its themes of fraud, bureaucracy, and institutional power feel more prescient now than they did in 2002. Along the way, the trio debates the movie’s length, its cultural reception, and why Catch Me If You Can plays like a con movie that slowly reveals itself to be about divorce, abandonment, and the quiet cruelty of systems.

Whether you remember it as a slick crowd-pleaser or are revisiting it for the first time, this episode reframes Catch Me If You Can as one of Spielberg’s most emotionally layered films of the 2000s and a perfect fit for a sad-boys Christmas.

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