The Next Picture Show

By Filmspotting Network

TV & Film

What's The Next Picture Show about?

Looking at cinema's present via its past. The Next Picture Show is a biweekly roundtable by the former editorial team of The Dissolve examining how classic films inspire and inform modern movies. Episodes take a deep dive into a classic film and its legacy in the first half, then compare and contrast that film with a modern successor in the second. Hosted and produced by Genevieve Koski, Keith Phipps, Tasha Robinson and Scott Tobias.

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#376: Rocket Manimal, Pt. 1...

05.23.2023

James Gunn’s new closing entry in his GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY trilogy for Marvel revolves around a tragic backstory for Rocket-don’t-say-Racoon that draws from a history of creation-vs.-creator narratives that stretches back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. But Gunn himself has ...

The Next Picture Show episodes:

05.23.2023 #376: Rocket Manimal, Pt. 1 — Island of Lost Souls (1932) James Gunn’s new closing entry in his GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY trilogy for Marvel revolves around a tragic backstory for Rocket-don’t-say-Racoon that draws from a history of creation-vs.-creator narratives that stretches back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. But Gunn himself has ...
05.16.2023 #375: Pre-Teen Sensations, Pt. 2—Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. Kelly Fremon Craig’s winning new adaptation of Judy Blume’s ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET is as gentle and good-natured as the other film in this pairing, Todd Solondz’s WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, is acerbic and off-putting. But both ...
05.09.2023 #374: Pre-Teen Sensations, Pt. 1 — Welcome to the Dollhouse Inspired by the new adaptation of Judy Blume’s classic coming-of-age novel ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET, we’re beginning this pairing by looking back at another rocky journey through adolescence in the New Jersey suburbs — though Dawn Wiener’s ...
05.02.2023 #373: Our Favorite Films of 2023 (So Far) The first few months of the year have a reputation — arguably an unfair one — as a dumping ground for films unlikely to draw blockbuster crowds or notice from awards-giving bodies. Here at The Next Picture Show, we don’t ...
04.25.2023 #372: Shoe Me the Money, Pt. 2 — Air Like Cameron Crowe’s JERRY MAGUIRE, Ben Affleck’s new AIR takes place in the world of sports but is more concerned with matters off the playing field. In the case of AIR, those matters ultimately come down to a triumph of ...
04.18.2023 #371: Shoe Me the Money, Pt. 1 — Jerry Maguire Ben Affleck’s new AIR is a feel-good capitalist tale about a guy-behind-the-guy who bets it all on a single sports star, a.k.a “pulling a Jerry Maguire,” but that premise really only represents one half of Cameron Crowe’s 1996 crowd-pleaser. Much ...
04.11.2023 #370: Stranger Flings, Pt. 2 — Rye Lane While the new RYE LANE shares a basic premise with 1995’s BEFORE SUNRISE — two strangers meet by chance and spend the day exploring a city and getting to know each other — Raine Allen-Miller’s film operates as a romcom ...
04.04.2023 #369: Stranger Flings, Pt. 1 — Before Sunrise The new Sundance hit RYE LANE is broadly speaking a romantic comedy, but it is more specifically a walk-and-talk romance, focused on two attractive young strangers who share a moment that turns into a day spent traveling around a city ...
03.28.2023 #368: Revenge Tour, Pt. 2 — John Wick Chapter 4 The John Wick series originated as the straightforward story of a skilled killer on a mission of revenge, but since then its mythology has expanded to encompass four films spanning multiple countries, an ever-mounting body count, and increasingly opaque motivations ...
03.21.2023 #367: Revenge Tour, Pt. 1 — Point Blank (1967) The revenge narrative has proven fertile ground for film in general (indeed, this is not our first pairing inspired by the subject) and the John Wick franchise specifically, which has just spawned its fourth chapter tracing a one-man killing machine’s ...
03.14.2023 #366: Round Three, Pt. 2 — Creed III Michael B. Jordan’s Adonis Creed begins the new CREED III in a similar position to that of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa in ROCKY III, as a highly regarded, highly comfortable champion who must return to his roots in order to ...
03.07.2023 #365: Round Three, Pt. 1 — Rocky III Originating as a late-stage ROCKY sequel, CREED has since evolved into its own multi-sequel franchise, with the new third entry bringing star Michael B. Jordan back into the ring as well as the director’s chair. That’s the same dual role ...
02.28.2023 #364: Dance With the One That Bought You, Pt. 2 — Magic Mike's Last Dance Steven Soderbergh’s MAGIC MIKE’S LAST DANCE ends the Channing Tatum male-stripper trilogy in a much different place than it began, centered on the unlikely romance between Tatum’s Mike and a wealthy woman, played by Salma Hayek, who’s interested in nurturing ...
02.21.2023 #363: Dance With the One That Bought You, Pt. 1 — An American In Paris While both of the films in this week’s paring center on American men living and dancing abroad, the main thing linking the new MAGIC MIKE’S LAST DANCE to 1951’s AN AMERICAN IN PARIS is the relationships those men have with ...
02.14.2023 #362: A New Hope, Pt. 2 — The Last of Us It’s difficult to watch HBO’s new hit dystopian drama THE LAST OF US without being reminded over and over again of Alfonso Cúaron’s CHILDREN OF MEN, and for good reason: the video game on which the series is based was ...
02.07.2023 #361: A New Hope, Pt. 1 — Children of Men HBO’s new dystopian TV series THE LAST OF US is an adaptation of a dystopian video game that was inspired in part by Alfonso Cuarón’s dystopian film CHILDREN OF MEN, a strikingly timely 2006 thriller whose consideration of cynicism and ...
01.31.2023 #360: A Crime to Remember, Pt. 2 — Saint Omer The question of “Why?” hovers over Alice Diop’s new SAINT OMER, as well as the 2016 French crime that inspired it, in the same way it hovers over 1967’s IN COLD BLOOD, Richard Brooks’ film adaptation of the Truman Capote ...
01.24.2023 #359: A Crime to Remember, Pt. 1 — In Cold Blood (1967) The new French film SAINT OMER fictionalizes the true story of an inexplicable crime, giving the perpetrator’s story a full airing in a way that recalls Truman Capote’s formative non-fiction novel IN COLD BLOOD, and by extension director Richard Brooks’ ...
01.17.2023 #358: Friends 'Til the End, Pt. 2 — M3GAN The new tech-horror movie M3GAN achieved viral status before it even hit theaters, but its subsequent box-office performance suggests there’s more to this film’s success than just dance memes. Part of it can be chalked up to the degree to ...
01.10.2023 #357: Friends 'Til the End, Pt. 1: Child's Play The new horror-comedy M3GAN is full of conscious, obvious throwbacks to other movies, but none as foundational as 1988’s CHILD’S PLAY. Director Tom Holland and writer Don Mancini’s now-iconic villain Chucky was not horror’s first killer doll, nor its last, ...
01.04.2023 #356: Top 10 Films of 2022 Once again, we’re kicking off the new year with a look back at the film year that was, with Keith, Scott, and Tasha sharing their respective lists of the Top 10 Films of 2022. There’s a lot of overlap this ...
12.27.2022 #355: With Friends Like These, Pt. 2 — Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery Rian Johnson’s new GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY is openly indebted to the 1973 Herbert Ross whodunnit THE LAST OF SHEILA (and has the Stephen Sondheim cameo to prove it), but perhaps even more so to the 2019 Rian ...
12.20.2022 #354: With Friends Like These, Pt. 1 — The Last of Sheila While in the midst of filming the new GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY, Rian Johnson expressed open admiration for one of the film's inspiration points, Herbert Ross’ 1973 whodunnit THE LAST OF SHEILA, a film which in turn displays ...
12.13.2022 #353: Love Kills, Pt. 2 — Bones and All Luca Guadagnino’s new BONES AND ALL follows a pair of young people on a killing spree across America, which put us in mind of lovers-on-the-lam movies generally and Terrence Malick’s debut feature BADLANDS specifically. But Guadagnino’s film resists such easy ...
12.06.2022 #352: Love Kills, Pt. 1 — Badlands Luca Guadagnino’s new BONES AND ALL slots nicely into the tradition of films about outlaw lovers on the lam, but also bucks the tropes of that tradition in a manner reminiscent of Terrence Malick’s mold-breaking BADLANDS. This week we’re looking ...
11.29.2022 BONUS: Let's Talk About Video Stores and the VHS Era In a bonus episode originally recorded for our Patreon, Keith, Scott, and Tasha got together to talk through their recollections, fond and otherwise, of VHS and the video-store era, from misleading box art and unrated oddities to tracking knobs and ...
11.22.2022 #351: McDonagh's Discontented Duos Pt. 2 — The Banshees of Inisherin 14 years after Martin McDonagh’s feature film directorial debut IN BRUGES, he has reunited with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson for THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN, a quieter and arguably much darker film about a different splintered friendship, with similar ideas ...
11.15.2022 #350: McDonagh's Discontented Duos Pt. 1 — In Bruges Martin McDonagh’s THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN reunites the writer-director with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, stars of his debut film IN BRUGES, for another tale of a platonic breakup between wordy Irishmen, in a very different but equally picturesque setting. ...
11.08.2022 #349: Conduct Unbecoming, Pt. 2 — TÁR The contemporary setting of Todd Field’s new TÁR has inspired some to label it a movie about the modern idea of “cancel culture,” but the film’s baseline ideas about sex and power are more timeless, and its story of a ...
11.01.2022 #348: Conduct Unbecoming, Pt. 1 — Dangerous Liaisons (1988) The abuse of power and resulting fall from grace in Todd Field’s new TAR put us in mind of another cautionary tale of entitlement and bad behavior, in the form of 1988’s DANGEROUS LIAISONS. So this week we’re revisiting Stephen ...
10.25.2022 #347: Internal Affairs, Pt. 2 — Decision to Leave Park Chan-wook’s new DECISION TO LEAVE openly takes inspiration from David Lean’s 1945 classic BRIEF ENCOUNTER (along with VERTIGO, which we also considered for this pairing), but the extramarital affair at the center of Park’s film is much more complicated ...
10.18.2022 #346: Internal Affairs, Pt. 1 — Brief Encounter Park Chan-wook’s quiet thriller DECISION TO LEAVE is about an affair of the heart between two people who have to hide what they’re feeling from the world, a dynamic drawn directly from David Lean’s 1945 melodrama BRIEF ENCOUNTER, which Park ...
10.11.2022 #345: The Unvarnished Sleuth Pt. 2: Confess, Fletch Greg Mottola’s new CONFESS, FLETCH has so far flown under the radar in a modern-day moviegoing landscape to which it is not particularly suited, but we were won over by Jon Hamm’s take on the character first portrayed by Chevy ...
10.04.2022 #344: The Unvarnished Sleuth Pt. 1: The Long Goodbye Greg Motolla’s new CONFESS FLETCH revives the character of Irwin Fletcher, popularized by Chevy Chase in the mid-‘80s, but its low-key, shaggy-dog quality is less reminiscent of those films than Robert Altman’s 1973 comic neo-noir THE LONG GOODBYE. So we ...
09.27.2022 #343: Talkin' Tolkien, Pt. 2: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Adapting the appendices of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth saga for a streaming series slated to run for 40 episodes is a much different exercise than paring down the writer’s most celebrated work to feature-length, which is one reason, among many, that ...
09.20.2022 #342: Talkin' Tolkien, Pt. 1: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring The new streaming series THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER is not technically a prequel to Peter Jackson’s early-aughts film trilogy, nor is Jackson involved with the series, but it’s hard to imagine it existing in a ...
09.13.2022 #341: Djinn Expression, Pt. 2 — Three Thousand Years of Longing George Miller’s new fantasy-romance THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING may not have made a splash in theaters, but your Next Picture Show cohort agrees it’s the sort of odd-duck movie that tends to age well, in part because it fits ...
09.06.2022 #340: Djinn Expression, Pt. 1 — The Thief of Bagdad (1940) George Miller’s new 3000 YEARS OF LONGING is a story about storytelling that’s full of color and pageantry, which makes it a nice match for producer Alexander Korda’s 1940 fantasy THE THIEF OF BAGDAD — and that’s before the films’ ...
08.30.2022 NPS: The Return (Our Next Pairing) Tasha announces plans for the next pairing: 'Three Thousand Years Of Longing" and 1940's "Thief of Bagdad." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
08.02.2022 #339: Close Encounters, Pt. 2 — Nope In terms of narrative, there’s not that much connecting NOPE’s flying-saucer story with that of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, but Jordan Peele’s latest is as likely to someday serve as a document of this particular moment as its 1953 ...
07.26.2022 #338: Close Encounters, Pt. 1 — The War of the Worlds (1953) Jordan Peele’s latest film, NOPE, tells a flying saucer story decades removed from the Atomic Age concerns of Byron Haskin’s 1953 adaptation of H.G. Wells’ WAR OF THE WORLDS, but both operate from a similar understanding that an encounter with ...
07.19.2022 #337: Human/Nature, Pt. 2 — Fire of Love Sara Dosa’s new documentary FIRE OF LOVE is more stylized than Werner Herzog’s GRIZZLY MAN, but it’s a remarkably close companion piece, with its interest in themes of obsession and fatalism, and in people who felt the most important thing ...
07.12.2022 #336: Human/Nature, Pt. 1 — Grizzly Man The festival hit FIRE OF LOVE follows a pair of volcanologists who yearned to get up close and personal with nature at its most dangerous, eventually paying for their obsession with their lives, a tragic arc that naturally calls to ...
07.05.2022 #335: In Baz Taste, Pt. 2 — Elvis In covering the entire scope of Elvis Presley’s career, ELVIS defies certain biopic conventions while embracing others, but it’s as distinctively a film by Baz Lurhmann as MOULIN ROUGE. Like that 2001 musical, ELVIS expands the frame of history in ...
06.28.2022 #334: In Baz Taste, Pt. 1 — Moulin Rouge! Would the feverishly stylized, irreverently ahistorical spectacle of Baz Luhrmann’s MOULIN ROUGE! resonate with audiences today the way it did in 2001? We may be about to find out with the director’s latest, ELVIS, which takes a very similar approach ...
06.21.2022 #333: Life Finds a Way, Pt. 2 — Jurassic World Dominion The new JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION is in constant, open communication with 1993’s JURASSIC PARK, from its nostalgic casting to its egregious callbacks. But there’s more going on in Colin Trevorrow’s second sequel to JURASSIC WORLD — perhaps too much, thanks ...
06.14.2022 #332: Life Finds a Way, Pt. 1 — Jurassic Park Let’s get this out of the way: Yes, we were so preoccupied with whether we could do a JURASSIC PARK pairing, we didn’t stop to think if we should. But if not on the occasion of JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION, the ...
06.07.2022 #331: Once Upon a Toon In Hollywood, Pt. 2 – Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers Despite its box-office success in 1988, Robert Zemeckis’ WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT never received a direct sequel, but the new CHIP ’N’ DALE: RESCUE RANGERS works as a spiritual sequel in more ways than one. Recognizing that this direct-to-streaming feature ...
05.31.2022 #330: Once Upon a Toon in Hollywood Pt. 1 — Who Framed Roger Rabbit? From its Hollywood setting to its central missing-toons mystery, the new Disney+ streaming exclusive CHIP ’N’ DALE: RESCUE RANGERS is openly and carefully patterned after 1988’s WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. Robert Zemeckis’ groundbreaking hit set a high bar for cameo-packed, ...
05.24.2022 #329: Into the Raimiverse, Pt. 2: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS carries its director’s fingerprints more clearly than most films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but is it ultimately more of a Sam Raimi movie or an MCU installment? We hash out that question ...

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