Already the biggest blockbuster of the year so far, Project Hail Mary has proven itself about as audience-friendly as a story about looming worldwide ecological collapse can be. That makes it an interesting point of contrast with 1972’s Silent Running, which approaches many of the same basic narrative beats — a man in space on a solo mission that threatens his sanity, who finds his most human connection in a non-human companion — with a melancholic tone and deeply unpleasant protagonist. So this week we’re looking back at one of just two movies made by pioneering special-effects artist Douglas Trumbull to consider how Silent Running functions today as both an environmental parable and a counterculture story about fighting The Man, how it tests our sympathies for its supposed hero, and whether that supposed hero knows anything about growing plants, in space or otherwise. Then in Feedback, a listener prompt inspires us to revisit some of our most memorable interruptions to the theatrical experience. 

Please share your thoughts about Silent Running, Project Hail Mary, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730.

This episode is presented by⁠ ⁠⁠Regal Unlimited⁠⁠⁠⁠, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. Use code NEXTPIC26 for 15% off.

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The Bride! is already a certified box-office flop, but does Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ambitious but deeply flawed sophomore feature as a writer-director have potential for a second life as a cult film? We consider that possibility as we run through the highs and lows, both intentional and unintentional, of a movie that, if nothing else, offers a lot to talk about. It also offers the opportunity to revisit an unambiguous classic via Gyllenhaal’s stated inspiration point of 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, which we bring back in for Connections to consider how The Bride! stacks up, in both conception and execution, in its ideas about lovers on the lam, outlaw media sensations, and empowered women empowering women. Then for Your Next Picture Show, we offer a recommendation for another film about coupled-up criminals that predates Bonnie and Clyde, the 1950 noir Gun Crazy. 

Please share your thoughts about Bonnie and Clyde, The Bride!, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730.

Next pairing: Phil Lord & Chris Miller's Project Hail Mary and Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running.

This episode is presented by⁠ ⁠Regal Unlimited⁠⁠⁠, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. Use code NEXTPIC26 for 15% off.

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The obvious point of comparison for The Bride! is apparent in the title, but Maggie Gyllenhaal’s new revivification of The Bride of Frankenstein finds its animating spirit in a different film, with her protagonist couple spending a good portion of the movie on the run from the law in the 1930s in scenes that openly evoke Bonnie and Clyde. Whether The Bride! manages to rise anywhere close to the level of its inspiration is a question for next week’s episode; this week, we’re revisiting Arthur Penn’s "lovers on the lam" classic to consider why it hit the way it did in 1967 and what remains striking about it to this day. Then in Feedback, we tackle a couple of listener questions concerning our recent discussions of Send Help and Wuthering Heights.

Please share your thoughts about Bonnie and Clyde, The Bride!, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730.

This episode is presented by⁠ ⁠Regal Unlimited⁠⁠⁠, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. Use code NEXTPIC26 for 15% off.

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With the 98th Academy Awards around the corner, we are breaking format this week to register the Next Picture Show's recommendations to the Academy of who should take home Oscar gold. Join us as three critics with competing tastes attempt to find consensus for this podcast's official endorsement for a single winner in all the major categories.

Please share your thoughts about this year's Oscar nominees, winners, ceremony, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730.

Next Pairing: Maggie Gyllenhaal's THE BRIDE! and Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE

This episode is presented by⁠ Regal Unlimited⁠⁠, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. Use code NEXTPIC26 for 15% off.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emerald Fennell’s new Wuthering Heights is full of stylistic provocations — skin walls, bed eggs, and light BDSM among them — but whether they are in service of, or distractions from, a bigger idea about the source material is up for debate this week. The divided reactions to Fennell’s contemporized take on an oft-adapted classic are reminiscent of the love-it-or-hate it response that greeted Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet back in 1996, which we bring back in for Connections to examine the core romantic notions driving these two tales of doomed (and frequently soaking wet) love and/or lust. And in Your Next Picture Show we continue the Wuthering Heights adaptation discussion with a couple of recommendations that illustrate some of the different tonal directions this material can take.

Please share your thoughts about Romeo + Juliet, Wuthering Heights, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730.

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With its bold stylization, pop soundtrack, and provocative sensibility, Emerald Fennell’s new Wuthering Heights appeals to a contemporary audience so openly it can’t help but call to mind Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 adaptation of another literary classic about doomed lovers, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. Fennell citing it as a reference point for her film prompted us to revisit what made Lurhmann’s approach so enticing and/or annoying at the time, and consider how its maximalist mix of reverence and irreverence toward the source material — not to mention an ascendant Leonardo DiCaprio in peak heartthrob mode — has turned it into a generation’s formative Romeo and Juliet. 

Please share your thoughts about William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Wuthering Heights, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730.

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Sam Raimi's new survival thriller Send Help is more overtly comedic and cartoonishly violent than the other film in this week's pairing of dueling castaway duos, but those qualities are both rooted in complimentary ideas about class, gender, and power. They're also both rooted in a baseline cynicism toward humanity that informs a lot of Raimi's work, as well as our discussion of Send Help, for which we are once again joined by cultural critic and friend of the show Charles Bramesco. Then in Connections we bring 1974's Swept Away back into the discussion to see how its sexual fantasy aligns with Send Help's revenge fantasy, and how both are shaped by these films' desert (or is it deserted?) island setting.

Please share your thoughts about Swept Away, Send Help, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730.

Next Pairing: Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights and Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet.

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What happens when two people on opposite sides of a power imbalance end up stranded together on a deserted island? Before that was the premise of Sam Raimi’s new comedic thriller Send Help, it was the setup for Lina Wertmüller’s 1974 romantic farce Swept Away, only with the genders reversed and the sexual and political provocation turned way up. So this week we’re joined by critic, friend of the show, and Wertmüller aficionado Charles Bramesco to sort through Swept Away’s overlapping layers of satire, metaphor, and titillation, in an attempt to pinpoint what the film is actually trying to say about gender and class relations.

Please share your thoughts about Swept Away, Send Help, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730.

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Even without Al Pacino's name in its cast list, the new Dead Man's Wire would invite comparisons to Dog Day Afternoon in its dramatization of a real-life 1970s hostage situation turned public spectacle. Whether it benefits from comparisons to Sidney Lumet's 1975 crime classic is another question, one we take up in our discussion of Gus Van Sant's first new feature in eight years. After that, we bring Dog Day Afternoon back in for Connections, to consider how these two films about volatile, narcissistic men and their ostensibly populist schemes fit into the proud tradition of amateur-hour crime movies, and whether a modern film depicting Indianapolis half a century ago has any hope of evoking its setting the way Lumet captured contemporary 1970s New York.

Please share your thoughts about Dog Day Afternoon, Dead Man's Wire, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730.

Next pairing: Sam Raimi's Send Help and Lina Wurtmuller's Swept Away.

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In adapting the true story about a '70s hostage crisis that played out on television and in the public eye, Gus Van Sant's new Dead Man's Wire is just asking to be compared to 1975's Dog Day Afternoon — and who are we to resist an invitation to talk about yet another Sidney Lumet classic? So this week we revisit a film we have all previously seen and admired, but still has the ability to surprise with its unconventional approach to a bank robbery gone wrong, from its persistent sense of humor to its shifting perspective on Al Pacino's criminal protagonist. Then in Feedback, we continue the conversation about our podcast's namesake film, and answer a recurring question about our archives.

Please share your thoughts about Dog Day Afternoon, Dead Man's Wire, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730.

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