Season 1

Billy Friedkin's iconic 1971 game-changing NYC police procedural/car chase classic 'The French Connection' has a fascinating backstory and making-of h...

Peter Yates was quietly one of the most interesting film directors of his time. His seminal 1967 British train-robbery film 'Robbery' got him noticed ...

Martin Scorcese's new film 'Killers of the Flower Moon' is in many ways his magnum opus; it's a film carefully wrought with all of his and his product...

A particular interest of mine is phone calls in movies. I'm interested in them as plot devices, as examples of good or indifferent screenwriting, as o...

An appreciation of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and his brilliant portrayal of real-life CIA Most Interesting Man Gust Avrokotos in Mike Nichols' final fil...

'Lost In America' was Albert Brooks' 3rd film as a writer/director/star and remains probably the most broadly-appealing of his films.  It's one of two...

'Across 110th Street' is a 1972 Harlem crime film that contains many of the tropes of the exploitation films of the era...but it also contains incredi...

Elmore Leonard's cocky, energetic ATF Agent Ray Nicolet is a key protagonist in his book 'Rum Punch'.  For Quentin Tarantino's film adaptation of 'Rum...

Quentin Tarantino surprised fans with the release of his third film, 'Jackie Brown' coming as it did on the heels of the global phenomenon that was 'P...

Billy Friedkin, maybe the weirdest (in a good way) major American director of his generation, almost doesn't make sense on paper; wait...the same guy ...

A deep-dive into the semiotics of 'Barbie' and its post-feminist critique of corporate capitalism and American mores. Just kidding, I went and saw 'Ba...

I'm joined by legendary ad-man-turned brand-identity guru, author, screenwriter, and producer Ernest Lupinacci to talk all things 'The Godfather' and ...