We discuss our love of documentary features and the Brattle's legacy of screening non-fiction, sometimes in conjunction with one of our series partners. We're then joined by the programmer of one of those series: GlobeDocs Film Festival Director of Programming Lisa Viola, who gives us a history of that series and a preview of 2023's line-up.

Diving deep into the ‘80s filmography of one of our favorite actors, we discuss the unique performance style of Christopher Walken; his sense of humor, sense of menace, skills as a dancer, the many commercial failures he made as a leading man during this decade, and why we think all his '80s movies are all worthy of revisiting. Along the way, we get into many cultural aspects of the decade: Madonna power ballads, the Roger Moore era of James Bond, Golan-Globus fairly tale musicals, pre-CGI special effects, actors who say "yes" to every role, and real-life alien abductions.

We pay tribute to the late great Paul Reubens and his iconic film Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Then we take a deep drive into some of the lesser-known works of New Hollywood legend, Billy Friedkin.

For the dog days of summer, we strap in for an episode that asks, if there is such a thing as "elevated horror," then what the devil is unelevated horror? We try to answer that question with a summer series of Thrill Rides featuring giant monsters, killer AI, and demons from hell.

In this rerun, we revisit an early episode that highlighted some small movies (and a couple of big ones) that are very much worth checking out.

We embark on our annual journey into movies celebrating their 25th, 50th, and 75th anniversaries in conjunction with our annual Reunion Week series. (Actually 10 days not a week this year, so this is a double episode!) With our upcoming Noir City Boston program entirely comprised of 75th-anniversary crime pictures, we spend some time on those as well.

We welcome Brian Tamm and Nancy Campbell back to the podcast to talk about the twenty-year history of the Independent Film Festival Boston and the line up for the 2023 fest.

To celebrate "Reel Film Day" and in honor of the Brattle's commitment to screening 35mm prints, we dive deep into why we love showing films on film and why Boston is such a unique and abundant city for repertory cinema. We talk with our fellow programs and projectionists at some of the other five cinemas in Boston and beyond that continue this rich tradition. And we chat with some of our patrons, visitors, and fellow podcaster as to why they love the celluloid experience.

We continue looking back on 2022’s best films via some listener suggestions for their favorite films of the year. We then discuss the Oscars nominations, the Best Actress “controversy,” the various rules and non-rules of the Academy’s nomination process, the pros and cons of digital color grading, and many other Oscar-adjacent topics we have strong opinions about. There’s never a dull moment around awards season.

We look back on the ups and downs of 2022, a year that saw some huge successes and some huge disappointments and some disturbing trends. This episode focuses mostly on the smaller films that people may have missed, but we start out with Top Gun Maverick and Everything Everywhere All at Once because we can't talk about 2022 in film without going deep on the two films that got people back to the cinemas.