The Long Take Review

Former Dateline NBC journalist Chris Hansen, of To Catch a Predator fame, claims that nothing in Lance Oppenheim’s new film, Primetime, actually happened. He has made a point to criticize A24 and Oppenheim for not consulting him during the making of the film and saying the film is overly dramatized. At the same time, he has taken out ads to play before screenings of the film in theaters.

You know how this looks, right?

In this episode of The Long Take Review, Greg and I share our thoughts on the film, historicize Oppenheim’s work as so representative of an early oughts cultural moment, discuss Robert Pattinson’s portrayal of Hansen, and share our top three Robert Pattinson performances!

We go into SPOILER MODE at the 22:32 minute mark. If you don’t want to be a part of that jump scare, you can listen until then.

Image Credit: IndieWire

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If you’re like us and you love movies but also want your cinephilia validated by points awarded in an online competition, then you’ve come to the right place! Every year we at The Long Take Review head on over to Vulture to participate in the MFL or Movies Fantasy League. We come up with pithy usernames and then proceed to unwisely spend 100 fake dollars on this year’s films to create a roster. Films on your roster can earn points for box office revenue, awards recognition, critical reception, and — new this year — Letterboxd scores. Greg, P.T., and I skip over explaining the rules and cut straight to sharing our picks, giving some unsolicited advice about how to balance your budget, take big swings, or, in some cases, spend big to play it safe.

Note that when we recorded this on Tuesday September 15th, we did not yet know that La Bola Negra would go on to win the People’s Choice Award at TIFF (the Toronto International Film Festival). As you listen to the episode, try to hear the exact moment I get egg on my face because I had La Bola Negra in my lineup but took it out because it’s a Netflix movie.

When you register for Vulture’s Movie Fantasy League, type ltrpod under “League Name (optional).”

Subscribe to The Long Take on Substack to chat with our community about your picks and progress week to week! We’re hoping to get a regular subscriber chat going to invite trash talk and punditry galore.

Image Credit: Vulture

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Summer’s coming to an end, and for those of us invested in the health of the box office, it was a great one. In fact, the U.S. box office broke an all-time record with 4.76 billion! This made our annual look back at summer movie season all the more celebratory as we shout out our favorites in a dozen superlative categories. We give credit to multiple films in each, and not just juggernauts like The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day; smaller movies you may have missed get their flowers too. Whose our class clown or cutest couple? And how many films from this past spring will P.T. try to smuggle in either intentionally or unintentionally? (He does both.)

This is a spoiler-free episode! We did our best to avoid spoilers throughout the. entire episode. Occasionally we issue an ad hoc spoiler warning, but even then we were intentionally vague.

Image Credit: Vanity Fair, New York Times, and The Hollywood Reporter

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On September 22nd, director George Lucas and business leader Melody Hobson will unveil their brainchild, The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, to the general public in Los Angeles. On September 5th, P.T., Greg (yes, Greg who lives across the country!), and I were lucky enough to visit the museum early, as a part of the Member Preview. And then, as if that weren’t enough, we ended the day with Maestro of the Movies: A Tribute to John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl.

In this episode of The Long Take Review, we not only recount our joyful in-person reunion; we reflect on the layout and philosophy of the museum, our favorite pieces, the Star Wars of it all, and what Lucas and Hobson might be trying to say about art, narrative, pop culture, and privilege. Listen in to hear about early film history, critical theory, art and cultural capital, as well as the story behind the previously unaired Star Wars Detours animated series.

We go into SPOILER MODE at the 30:20 minute mark. If you don’t want to hear about specific pieces in the museum or other details that may color your experience visiting for the first time, you may listen safely until then.

Image Credit: The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art website

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Whether or not they are personally into the films of Jane Schoenbrun, critics largely agree that the director of We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021), I Saw the TV Glow (2024), and now Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026), is a singular auteur, making films that no one else would or could make. Their first two films were critical darlings of the Sundance Film Festival, and their latest work, a surreal meta-satirical slasher film, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Queer Palm.

To parse the film’s complex story swirling around questions of genre, gender, sexual awakening, pop culture, and queer identity, we had to bring in our resident horror expert, Professor Sarah Hastings. She fills us in on the history of slasher films that inspired Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, nerds out with Jen about feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, and helps us better understand what might be real or not real in the film. Greg and P.T. also say smart things in between making awkward yet witty jokes about sex, death, summer camp, and, of course, dipping sauce. Take a dip with us in a conversation that is as lofty and fun as the film itself.

We go into SPOILER MODE at the 30:34 minute mark. If you don’t want to be a part of that jump scare, you can listen until then.

Image Credit: NPR

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For many Oscar pundits and fans, the 91st Academy Awards, held on February 24, 2019, and honoring the films of 2018, became the most notorious when Green Book, a heartwarming odd couple comedy about a black pianist and his white driver, won Best Picture instead of presumed favorite, Alfonso Cuaron’s poignantly personal historical drama about a Mexico City family and their housekeeper, Roma.

And so, of course, for our sixth Oscar Fairy Flashback episode, we wanted to confront this controversial year (and believe me when I say we deeply considered shying away from it and turning the clock back in a different direction). As with all Oscar Fairy Flashbacks, we share what we want to change about the winners and nominees, were we to be in the good graces of the all-powerful Oscar Fairy. We each have ten points plus whatever we had remaining from the last OFF episode to spend. How any Oscars will we take away from Green Book and its fellow Oscar villain, Bohemian Rhapsody?

Image Credit: Screen Rant

Here’s some more detailed context to show that this Oscar year has a mixed record to say the least.

Four films won multiple awards:

-Bohemian Rhapsody: 4 wins (Actor [Rami Malek], Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing)

-Green Book: 3 wins (Picture, Supporting Actor [Mahershala Ali], Original Screenplay)

-Roma: 3 wins (Director, Cinematography, Foreign Language Film)

-Black Panther: 3 wins (Score, Production Design, Costume Design)

-That is certainly a list of movies. Other films that won awards: The Favourite (Actress [Olivia Colman]), If Beale Street Could Talk (Supporting Actress [Regina King]), BlacKkKlansmen (Adapted Screenplay, finally getting Spike Lee a competitive Oscar), Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (Animated Feature), A Star Is Born (Song, netting Lady Gaga her first Oscar), Vice (Makeup & Hairstyling), and First Man (Visual Effects)

-Other nominated movies include The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Cold War, First Reformed, Isle of Dogs, Mary Poppins Returns, Avengers: Infinity War, A Quiet Place, At Eternity’s Gate, The Wife, and Solo: A Star Wars Story

-There were also some notorious snubs, including Paddington 2, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Crazy Rich Asians, Hereditary, and Widows

Buckle up, because we have a lot of work to do!

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Why is Spider-Man: Brand New Day spinning webs around the summer box office? How is it breaking all kinds of records? We keep returning to this question throughout this week’s episode, coming up with various theories about what might be behind the massive success of the fourth Tom Holland Spider-Man film. What does this mean for superhero movies? For the future of the MCU? For Tom Holland’s career? We speculate very broadly from every angle of this franchise, folding in discussion of the X-Men, casting announcements at D23, other iterations of Spidey, and more. Come to hear who our favorite supporting characters were and stay for the deep discussion of the political implications of this film as it reaches a hand out to mutantkind.

At one point in this episode, Greg asks why there hasn’t been a solo Hulk movie. Jen explains that Universal still holds the rights to standalone Hulk movies, but not to movies in which Hulk appears alongside other Marvel characters. That’s only partially true. Apparently, Universal holds the distribution rights to standalone Hulk movies while Disney/Marvel hold the production rights to the character across the board. Universal has a right of first refusal for distribution of Hulk-focused films only. So we haven’t gotten one in so long because Disney/Marvel doesn’t want to pay Universal a cut of whatever Hulk-centric film that they might make. The nuance of production rights vs. distribution rights should have been a part of our on-air conversation.

We go into SPOILER MODE at the 27:50 minute mark. If you don’t want your secret identity revealed yet, you can listen until then.

Image Credit: Deadline

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It’s been a month since Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey arrived in theaters and nearly three weeks since we put out our first episode reviewing it. We’re happy to report that it’s still going strong. It handily passed the $1 billion mark in global box office by the first week of August, in spite of Spider-Man: Brand New Day breaking all kinds of records (don’t worry, we’re reviewing that for next week!). And it seems to have weathered a cycle of discourse after the translator whose work inspired Nolan’s adaptation, Dr. Emily Wilson, wrote a scathing, nay brutalizing review. Will it be smooth sailing from here to the Oscars? P.T. returns from his own mini-odyssey to provide the Oscars Watch that Greg and I abstained from in our earlier episode. We also dig into Zeus’ Law, the sea people, Circe vs. Calypso, and a quick (at the very end) updated ranking of our top 3-5 Nolan films.

[Please note that we recorded this episode before Emily Wilson’s review came out, so we do not discuss the review as we had no knowledge of it at the time.]

We go into SPOILER MODE at the 21:00 minute mark. If you just want to get home without them, you can listen safely until then.

Image Credit: New York Times

You can listen to The Long Take Review on Substack, Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All music licensed through Epidemic Sound.

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You know, you have ONE troubled production that culminates in Harry Styles allegedly spitting on Chris Pine and that’s all critics want to remember you for. That may very well be a major frustration for Director Olivia Wilde as she tries to promote her newest film, a sex comedy drama called The Invite. Because over and over again I have seen headlines and reviews from critics framing their praise of the A24 film in relation to Wilde’s previous controversy-embroiled flop, Don’t Worry Darling. Never has a compliment been so back-handed. The praise is deserved just the same, as this comedy for adults has been deemed a box office success in spite of competing against The Odyssey.

On this episode of The Long Take Review, we were lucky enough to have Antonio back on the show to pick apart The Invite’s screenplay, discuss each of the performances/characters that constitute the foursome at the center of the story, and speculate as to whether or not this film has any “little indie that could go all the way to the Oscars” energy. Join us for some jamón and flan!

We go into SPOILER MODE at the 23:53 minute mark. If you wish to take a raincheck on spoilers, you can listen safely until then.

Image Credit: IndieWire

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Happy Spider-Man weekend to all who celebrate! Our review of Spider-Man: Brand New Day may take a little while because I’m on vacation for the next couple of weeks, but, to tide listeners over, we wanted to record an episode in which we discuss Tom Holland’s portrayal of your friendly neighborhood Avenger up until Brand New Day. And who better to join us than our very own Marvel correspondent, Colby Mead of The ColbyCast?

We begin by sharing our relationship with Spider-Man as a character/franchise and pinpointing what unique qualities Tom Holland brings to the role. Then we rank all six films in which Tom Holland has appeared as Spider-Man* in order to set up a larger discussion about how much the MCU has defined his version of the character and to what extent we can historicize each Spider-Man as a product of Hollywood and American culture at the time.

*This number doesn’t include Venom: Let Their Be Carnage, which P.T. notes should technically be on the list. Guess how many times we mention this Sony Spider-Man Universe film before you listen.

Note that we’re doing all spoilers for any Spider-Man or MCU-related content in this episode from the start.

Image Credit: IndieWire

You can listen to The Long Take Review on Substack, Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Image Credit: original image from Meming Wiki, modified in Canva

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