The Long Take Review

We’re in the end game of fall film festival season now! AFI, the last big festival of the year, is just wrapping up and, meanwhile, smaller regional film festivals get to show many of the films we’ve just been hearing about for months. P.T., Antonio, and I were lucky enough to attend the Korean Spotlight screening of Park Chan-wook’s dark satirical comedy, No Other Choice, at the Newport Beach Film Festival this week. We liked the film so much we couldn’t wait until its wide release in December to talk about it. In this episode...

Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz, was filmed and premiered in 1942, then saw wide release in early 1943. This makes it easily the oldest movie we have covered on this show by more than three decades! The World War II set and filmed movie tells the story of a jaded American expat (Humphrey Bogart) wrestling with whether to help his former lover (Ingrid Bergman) and her Resistance-leader husband flee from the Nazis and get out of the titular North African city. With one of the most quoted screenplays of all time, it is a stone-cold classic and is consistently ranked as...

The Venice Film Festival went wild for Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, based on the life and struggles of MMA/UFC Fighter Mark Kerr. When the film opened in theaters last weekend, however, the box office was a huge disappointment. What is the decision of The Long Take Review crew? Host Jen Sopchockchai is joined by Greg Cass and Antonio Elefano to discuss the Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson showcase.

We go into SPOILER MODE at the 19:25 minute mark. If you don’t want to go another round, you can listen safely until then.

Image Credit...

The superlatives that have already been bestowed upon the new PTA (Paul Thomas Anderson) movie that just hit theaters last weekend are, quite honestly, hard to believe: to many, it’s PTA’s best film, Leonardo DiCaprio’s career best performance, the best film of the year, and even the best film of the decade. How could the film, which chronicles an ex-freedom fighter’s frenzied chase away from a wing of the U.S. military and towards wherever his missing daughter might be, possibly live up to all that?

On this episode of The Long Take Review...

With the major film festivals completed, we launch into award season with the kind of prestige drama that was designed for the fall: an adaptation of Ben Shattuck’s The History of Sound. Host Jen Sopchockchai is joined by Greg Cass and Antonio Elefano to talk about the decades-spanning drama about a singer, played by Paul Mescal, and a musicologist, played by Josh O’Connor, who meet by chance and forever change one another’s lives.

This time, everyone on the episode has read the source material, so get ready for some serious book club time!

We g...

If you’ve ever argued back while listening to us prognosticate, now is your chance to show us up! We’re competing in Vulture’s Movies Fantasy League, and we want you to join our mini-league, “ltrpod,” so that we can all follow this year’s Oscar season together. The task is deceptively simple: use 100 fake dollars to buy eight movies that will earn you the most points for awards, box office, and critical reception. Should you spend big on films with a lot of hype? Or should you rifle through the bargain bin and take a chance on what could b...

When our favorite critics and journalists travel across the globe — from Venice to Colorado and Toronto — to watch and review new movies, Oscar addicts like us sit up and pay attention. Films from high profile, beloved directors can flop. New films from unknowns can break out onto the scene. It’s never what anyone expects. On this episode of The Long Take Review, P.T. and I pass the mic back and forth to share our winners, losers, and head-scratchers coming out of recent festival premieres. Whose hype draft weathered the storm? And what will the Oscar race look like g...

The air is turning crisp and the coffees are getting pumpkin spiced, but before we head into Fall Festival (and Oscar!) season, we want to do a quick recap on Summer Blockbuster season. On this episode of The Long Take Review, host Jen Sopchockchai is joined by P.T. McNiff, Antonio Elefano, and Greg Cass to debrief the season that was, reliving the highs (biplanes!), the lows (mutant dinosaurs!), and the forgotten (What is an Elio?). Listen along as we reveal our superlatives, such as “most athletic” and “cutest couple.” For some, we needed to reopen previous discussions, and, for othe...

Is an author allowed to deny any interpretations of his film? That’s exactly what Director Zach Cregger (Barbarian 2022) has done on his press tour for Weapons, which is playing in theaters now. Most of his interviews emphasize a personal tragedy of his that inspired the movie, rather than the various political valences one might place upon a story about 17 kids who mysteriously disappear in the middle of the same night. On this episode of The Long Take Review, we debate how much the film is trying to say something vs. what it’s actually saying to us, as well...

In more ways than one, The Fantastic Four: First Steps did not perform as expected. In spite of superhero fatigue, Matt Shakman’s retro futuristic adaptation of Marvel’s first family was well-received by many critics. Brandon Yu of the New York Times, for example, called it a “refreshingly new direction” and Amy Nicholson of the LA Times said she felt comforted by the film’s evocation of “classic sci-fi.” The box office, however, took a turn for the worst after opening weekend, with a 66% drop-off in sales. Currently, it ranks ninth in the worldwide box office for this year. That’s j...

Assuming you were all on the edges of your respective seats, waiting with bated breath to hear the rest of our Top 10 Best Films of the 21st Century lists, here is the long-awaited second half of our response to The New York Times’ list of “The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century.” Starting with our number six spots, we each take turns revealing our #1-6 picks of the best films made from 2000 to 2025. How did we do overall? Whose personal list do you like the best? What would you have put on your own list? Please share your thoughts with u...

When The New York Times released its full list of “The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century,” we quickly realized that this cinephile’s feast deserved an entire episode. Then, once we recorded for a little over three hours, we realized that we needed to split up our conversation into two episodes. So in this episode you’ll find our general discussion of the NYT list, how we put our individual top 10 lists together, and the on-air reveal of picks #7-10. (Picks #1-6 will be revealed in next week’s episode, Part Two.) Can you predict what we each chose? And...

Who knew the most unexpectedly popular movie of the summer would be an animated feature about KPop stars who protect the world from demons with both their music and their deadly weapons? We at the Long Take Review (and most other critics, it seems), surely didn’t. The latest offering from Sony Pictures Animation (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) has not only topped Netflix’s charts but musical charts like Spotify and Billboard as well, besting many real-life KPop groups. On this episode, I bring in two of my own idols to discuss KPop Demon Hunters: returning listener-turned-co-host Hasib and our...

It’s a bird…it’s a plane…it’s…the biggest movie of the summer? Superman is certainly the central focus of Director James Gunn, who left Marvel Studios to become the Co-Chairman & CEO of the shop across the street, DC Studios, in 2022. So did he do it? Did he do this iconic comic book character justice? Did he successfully launch the new DCU? On this episode of The Long Take Review, we debate this question among others. Greg and P.T. let hot takes fly, Jen gets in a fight with Greg, and we all do our best to disc...

Did you think The Shape of Water was romantic or just weird? In this Oscar Fairy Flashback episode, we look back at the 90th Academy Awards, which brought us one of the most polarizing Best Picture winners, Guillermo del Toro’s dark fantasy about a woman who falls in love with a fish man imprisoned in a government lab. Will we downsize some of its wins in favor of some other big nominees this year. Will anyone step forward to defend Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri? Will we do right by Jordan Peele’s Get Out, G...

Even if you yourself don’t follow Formula 1 racing, it’s hard to deny its global popularity, with an audience of 750 million, according to Nielsen Sports. But does that mean Director Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) can lap other movies at the box office this weekend with F1: The Movie? So far, news outlets like the New York Times have declared that the underdog sports action drama is a hit, with Deadline reporting a $57 million domestic and $89.3 million international opening weekend. That’s promising, and positions the film, which stars Brad Pitt as a washed up race car driver ready...

If you were Dakota Johnson, would you choose Pedro Pascal or Chris Evans? (And no, both is not an option.) On the surface, The Materialists seems to pose this as a pleasurably difficult question, in glossy rom com fashion. That’s a considerable departure from Celine Song’s last film, the Oscar-nominated indie and LTR favorite, Past Lives. Is the marketing for the film creating a bait and switch situation, or is Song’s second film a genuinely more commercial play? Antonio, Greg, and I reveal our answers to this question as we delve into what Song has to say ab...

Most film historians would say that when Steven Spielberg made Jaws in 1975, he changed Hollywood filmmaking forever. Not only would the shark tale launch his career into the stratosphere, making him a leading voice in American cinema, but it invented the summer blockbuster season and movie marketing that we easily take for granted now. This year (to the day, in fact!) marks Jaws’ 50th Anniversary, and we couldn’t be happier to celebrate it with our longtime friend and loyal listener, Sarah Hastings. As a huge horror fan and English professor who has taught courses on horror literature and film...

Calling all girl dads! Wes Anderson has a new film for you. Starring Benicio del Toro as business tycoon Zsa Zsa Korda and Mia Threapleton as his estranged daughter Liesl, The Phoenician Scheme begins when Zsa Zsa calls upon Liesl to become the legal heir to his vast fortune as more and more of his rivals attempt to assassinate him. Hijinks ensue as the two face off against the customary starry ensemble.

On this episode of The Long Take Review, we shoutout our favorite players from Anderson’s troupe, compare The Phoenician Scheme to his other films, an...

Stephen King contains multitudes. He may be more well known for classic horror stories like Carrie and The Shining, but he’s also responsible for equally successful emotional dramas like The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me. Whatever the genre or tone, his works almost always beg an adaptation to the big screen. That’s where Director Mike Flanagan comes in. Best known for Doctor Sleep (2019), Flanagan has an affinity for adapting King’s work. This year he brings us the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) audience award winner, The Life of Chuck, out in theaters this weekend. The genre...

The Oscars recently announced that their 100th ceremony in 2027 will feature a brand new Best Stunt Design category, and the timing for Tom Cruise and his infamously death-defying Mission: Impossible series could not be worse, as Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, the eighth and potentially final installment released in theaters this past weekend. The marketing for the film heavily implies that this is the end for Cruise’s iconic portrayal of IMF agent Ethan Hunt, but is this actually his last mission? Even at the film’s world premiere, there were reports that he dodged questions about the franchise’s future...

It’s difficult to write an intro to a Marvel movie review without feeling like a broken record: Marvel has been in a slump, it’s no longer king of the Hollywood hill, fans are out, theatrical releases aren’t an event anymore, yada yada yada. To be honest, I’ve grown very tired of talking about how far Marvel has fallen, so it is an absolute delight to be able to review an MCU film that everyone else seems to like: Jake Schreier’s Thunderbolts*. In this episode of The Long Take Review, Greg and I rejoice in critics’ d...

We have wanted to get more guests on the show for some time now, but didn’t necessarily want to subject them to the pace of our regular coverage of new releases and award season. Thus, we’d like to welcome you to The LTR Guest List, a special series in which we ask our friends to pick a movie – any movie – to discuss with us on air.

Our guest for this inaugural episode, Karl LaClair, is the co-host of one of our favorite Star Wars podcasts, The Wampa’s Lair. When we’re not talking to him about St...

Hello there, and May the 4th be with you! We’re so happy Revenge of the Sith (2005) returned to theaters this spring because it gave us an excuse to talk about Star Wars on the show. Greg, P.T., and I provide a retrospective look at how we experienced the film in 2005 vs. how we see it now. We discuss the impact of audience expectations, how this film influenced the future of franchise filmmaking, and share our list of favorites. Let us know in the comments if we had the high ground by the end!

Image Credit: In...

Anyone following movie news lately will likely know that Ryan Coogler’s new film Sinners is a sensation. After some controversial discourse surrounding its box office success, the film quieted all its skeptics when it only dropped off 6% in its second weekend, which is the smallest decline since James Cameron’s Avatar in 2009 and the smallest ever for an R-rated film. Most recently, the film has already been invited back to IMAX theaters on May 15, and tickets are selling fast.

On this episode of The Long Take Review, P.T., Antonio, Hasib, and I try to explain why...

Many critics, pundits, and podcasters have told us that the mantra for movie studios and theaters has been “survive until ‘25.” And now that 2025 is here and we know what movies are slated to come out for the rest of the year, our question is will we survive or thrive in 2025? In this episode of The Long Take Review, the whole crew gathers together to try to answer this very question. We take turns picking four of our most anticipated films in our annual Movie Hype Draft. Which films will go first? Will anyone steal another co-host’s top pick before t...

It’s been a minute, but we are so happy to be back with our Oscar Fairy Flashback project, in which we reexamine a slate of Oscar nominees and winners to “correct” them, as if we had the power of an all-powerful Oscar fairy. This time, we’re looking at the 89th Academy Awards — the infamous Moonlight vs. La La Land year, in which a card mix-up wreaked havoc when La La Land was announced as the winner of Best Picture when Moonlight had in fact won the award. Which film should have won Best Picture? Which song from La La Land...

The Russo brothers became household names for many Marvel fans after directing four of the biggest films in the MCU: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (2019). It’s no wonder, then, that Netflix was willing to give them a $320 million budget to create a science fiction action-adventure starring pop franchise superstars Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown and featuring a slew of high profile supporting actors. With unilaterally negative reviews from critics and a decent but far from record-breaking streaming numbers, is Electric State proof that the Russo brothers no lo...

It’s never a good sign when the McDonalds toys for your movie come out long before the movie actually does, and it’s an even worse sign that not all of the characters represented in those toys made it into the final cut of the film. After delays and reshoots, the latest cinematic entry in the MCU, Captain America: Brave New World, released in theaters this past Valentine’s Day to mixed to poor reviews and a decent box office, holding as the second highest grossing film in 2025, but 28th out of all 35 films to date.

On thi...

This time of year can be a little slow for awards junkies like us, but, every once in a while, a smaller film that has no chance at the Oscars surprises us. Clocking in at a crisp 1 hour 33 minutes, Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, a spy thriller mystery called Black Bag, is a smart and stylish genre exercise that was as fun to talk about as it was to watch. Acting titans Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender star as a couple whose marriage is tested by the agency for which they both work. We give shoutouts to our favorite ca...

Parasite (2019) is arguably one of the best Best Picture winners of the last decade, and it certainly put its director, Bong Joon Ho, on the global cinema map in a way he had not been before. It’s no surprise, then, that a big studio like Warner Bros. would essentially offer him a blank check to make his next film, Mickey 17. The film’s release has been far from a success, however. Warner Bros. delayed the film’s release nearly a year, and then changed the 2025 release date three more times. With a $118 million production budget and only having made $...

For many critics and fans (including us), one of the happiest upsets at this year’s Oscars was Flow winning Best Animated Feature, beating out acclaimed titans from much bigger animation studios like The Wild Robot and Inside Out 2. The film’s tiny team from Latvia, led by Director Gints Zilbalodis, went home national heroes, as their statuette now sits in the Latvian National Museum of Art, with people waiting in line for hours just to see it. It’s much easier for viewers at home to see the film itself, as it is now available to stream on Max. <...

What a night, especially for Sean Baker, the director of Best Picture winner, Anora! The film won five of the six of its Oscar nominations, surprising even those who had predicted it to win Best Picture. What does the indisputable success of a small indie film made for $6 million dollars (for reference, Wicked cost $150 million) with a 40-person crew mean for the future of movies? On this episode of The Long Take Review, we try to answer this question as well as react to the winners and losers more generally. Which wins made us happiest? Which were disappointing? Who...

Easily, the biggest surprise of Oscar nomination morning was the Brazilian docudrama, I’m Still Here, making it into the Best Picture 10 in addition to being nominated for International Feature. We recently got a chance to catch up with Walter Salles’ film about a family targeted by a military dictatorship in 1971 and knew that we absolutely needed to squeeze a review in before the Oscars this Sunday. We try to explain why Best Actress nominee Fernanda Torres is so acclaimed, debate the film’s thesis, and have an extended conversation about a dog named Pimpão.

Note that we...

The Oscars are finally here! If you haven’t had time to watch all the films, but find yourself looking to predict some winners, we at The Long Take Review have got you covered. In an epic, record-breaking episode, we discuss who will win and who should win in every. single. category. So this is your one stop shop for help with your Oscar pool. We’ve tiered the episode so you can opt in depending on your level of mania: first, all four of us talk the major “above the line” categories, then three of us stick around to talk...

Early speculation about films for 2024 frequently highlighted an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-prize-winning novel, The Nickel Boys, purely based on the source material’s notoriety. Few film critics, however, could have known then that Ramell Ross’ adaptation, Nickel Boys, would be so bold in its aesthetic choices. Ross reconfigures conventional film continuity to create what he calls a “sentient POV,” in which the camerawork reflects a sensory experience, as if the camera were a person. This radical, experimental style, deeply rooted in ideological resistance, has dazzled some critics while putting off others. It also seems to have had an impact...

It’s hard to believe, but The Long Take Review podcast has made it to 100 episodes! To commemorate this milestone, P.T., Greg, Antonio, and I take a break from our Oscar season coverage to ask each other some probing questions, both about the films we have covered during the first 100 episodes and more generally about our filmgoing lives. What has been our most memorable theatrical experience? What unpopular film would we defend? What film have we covered that we most associate with the other co-hosts? And if we were casting the pod, who would be in the ensemble? Fi...

Is it too early to talk about next year’s Oscars when this year’s hasn’t even happened yet? The Sundance Film Festival says no. In fact, a handful of films that premiere there go on to compete in the awards race the following year. And unlike most other film festivals, Sundance offers online screenings for us civilians, which means we can actually review some films! P.T., Antonio, and I share our thoughts on the films that we saw, and then we break down reactions to the titles we weren’t able to see, notable acquisitions, and all the...

Find someone who looks at you the way everyone in A Complete Unknown looks at Timothee Chalamet playing Bob Dylan.

For James Mangold’s film, covering Dylan’s four-year journey from first arriving in New York City through “going electric” in 1965, one debate amongst critics centers on the representation of Bob Dylan’s genius: does the film fall into the stereotypical biopic trap of putting its subject on a pedestal, unabashedly touting his generational talent and nothing more? Or does Mangold offer a more nuanced, complicated story, subverting the tropes that he arguably codified in Walk The Line (2005...

Everyone over at The Long Take Review got up bright and early Thursday morning to watch the live announcement of this year’s Oscar nominations. We share our thoughts on the broadcast, as well as the nominees. How many did Jen correctly predict? How many has Greg already seen? What is P.T.’s mastermind theory about which films have a path to winning Best Picture? And why did we spend so much time talking about monkeys? Listen to find out!

Image Credit: New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, Mubi, and Slate

You can list...

Director Brady Corbet gave not one but two acceptance speeches at The Golden Globes, as he won for Best Director and his film, The Brutalist, won Best Motion Picture Drama. Star Adrien Brody also won Best Actor Motion Picture Drama. There were two predominant themes amongst those three speeches: that immigrant stories matter, and that film studios should take more chances on filmmakers’ artistic visions (especially when their ideas don’t seem as commercially viable). Those who have seen the two-part period drama know that these themes also manifest in the epic story of fictional architect, László Tóth. Duration: 02:13:28

Before we describe this episode of The Long Take Review, we would like to acknowledge and express our support for the victims of the Los Angeles wildfires. Here are some ways to help:

The Entertainment Community Fund provides a safety net for performing arts and entertainment professionals, including those impacted by the wildfires.

This GoFundMe supports a colleague of ours displaced by the Eaton Canyon fire in Altadena.

The Red Cross works with local partners to provide shelter, food, emotional support and health services for victims.

According to another colleague who...

After years of scandal, attempts to change, and a host who bombed last year, it seems like the Golden Globes has finally found its footing. Comedian Nikki Glaser, best known for her roast of Tom Brady, has received ubiquitous praise for her appropriately pitched jokes. And after expanding and diversifying their voting body last year, critics seems to be much less judgmental about the Golden Globes Foundation’s nominations.

And yet, pundits were uncertain going into last night’s ceremony. Would a frontrunner finally emerge? Would the Globes fall back onto their celebrity-pandering ways? Will they serve as m...

Happy Holidays from the crew at The Long Take Review! In the spirit of the season, we spent this week’s episode celerating our holiday favorites. We each share two classics and (at least) one movie from any genre to watch over the holidays with your loved ones. Do television specials count as movies? Which actor played Scrooge the best? Which one of us will make the most hipster picks? Join us to find out.

And if you have films that you love to watch during this time of you, please share in the comments!

Im...

We’re far enough away from “Glicked” weekend that we can declare a box office victor, and it wasn’t Gladiator II, Ridley Scott’s long-awaited follow-up to Best Picture-winning Gladiator (2000). Despite that, will the sword and sandals epic still get a thumbs up from the Academy? On this episode of The Long Take Review, P.T., Greg, and I deliberate this question (and celebrate Denzel Washington) after unpacking our diverse reactions to the film. Who had the best time? Who knows about the previous pitches that never got green-lit? And who is the biggest (OG) Gladiator super fan? Lend us yo...

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…and here at The Long Take Review, we mean awards season when we make that declaration. We took this entire episode to check in on the Oscar race in the wake of the first big slew of precursor awards and nominations. From New York to LA, regional critics groups have been chiming in with their picks in the hope that they can have some sway or create the right conditions for a film or actor’s campaign to gain momentum. Bigger groups like The American Film Institute (AFI) and the Nation...

Right now, it seems as though Wicked’s potential is unlimited. It’s on the verge of hitting $500 million in worldwide box office, with no signs of slowing down over the holidays. It’s garnered a slew of award nominations, including four Golden Globes, as well as wins, including Best Film by the National Board of Review. The question on every pundit’s mind now is: does Jon M. Chu’s fantasy musical spectacular have what it takes to win at the Oscars?

On this episode of The Long Take Review, we too debate this very question. We share w...

Most will recognize Jesse Eisenberg as an actor, if not for his iconic portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010), then for his turn as Lex Luthor in Zack Snyder’s DC films. Fewer will know him as a director, and yet his second film, A Real Pain, is currently in the Oscars conversation. The film follows two cousins, Benji (Kieran Culkin) and David (Jesse Eisenberg), who sign up for a Holocaust tour of Poland, in an attempt to honor the memory of their immigrant grandmother. Their personalities clash as they confront both the pain of t...

Based on popular discourse, critics often dub one movie a year the “Oscar villain.” That’s usually a film that is a major contender in the race that also has a lot of haters or people who deem it unworthy of all the potential accolades. Jacques Audiard’s crime thriller musical, Emilia Pérez, could very well be this year’s Oscar villain; one only need look to the strong reactions that have flooded the Internet since the film became wildly available for subscribers to watch at home on Netflix. Many critics and viewers have identified potential problems with the represe...

Steve McQueen’s filmography has had an eclectic filmography: Hunger (2008) is about the 1981 Irish hunger strike, Shame (2011) is about sex addiction, Widows (2018) is a heist thriller, and Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave (2013) adapts the 1853 memoir of Solomon Northrup, a free-born Black man kidnapped and sold into slavery. McQueen’s newest film, Blitz, focuses on a mother and son separated during the bombing of London during WWII, and while this is a return to the historical drama genre for McQueen, Blitz has not been unilaterally embraced by critics as 12 Years a Slave was. Despite the more muted reception, could McQu...

How far would you be willing to go to look younger and more beautiful? That is the question that Carolie Fargeat’s The Substance horrifically asks and answers. In what some are calling a career best performance, Demi Moore plays an iconiclfilm and television actress who discovers an alluring new drug called The Substance just as the men in control of her career want to show her the door. It seems many viewers are interested to see what happens next, as the film marks MUBI’s most successful release to date, and has already collected several awards nominations and, in s...

The Palm d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, is a big deal. And it has become an even bigger Oscar bellwether in recent years, as the Academy has expanded, diversified, and, as a result, become more international. The winners have certainly been international, as American films have won only 13 times during the award’s 80+ year history. In fact, an American film has not won since 2011 when Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life took the prize (and, later, three Oscar nominations). That all changed this year when Sean Baker’s romantic dramedy (maybe rom-com-dram?), Anora, earned t...

With an especially close Presidential Election only three days away, it’s nearly impossible to watch Edward Berger’s papal thriller Concalve without drawing a parallel to the American political process. The pope has died, and a conclave has assembled to elect another. But with so many scandals and secrets, can they find a suitable candidate? Which candidates will cling to their ideals? How many must inevitably compromise theirs? And will ambition or a pursuit of the truth win the day?

Oscar pundits all wonder the extent to which the winner this Tuesday will have a direct impa...

Yes, this is the movie with the carousel horse.

After enjoying/enduring viral Internet fame long before its release, John Crowley’s We Live in Time is now in theaters and we can finally see the derpy carousel horse in context. Meme lovers may be disappointed, though, as the non-linear love story is unambiguously sincere in its meditation on life, death, and love. Luckily, Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh are here with an onscreen chemistry that overshadows any meme humor. Garfield plays Tobias, a cereal company employee who just ended a long-term relationship and Pugh plays Almut, a...

We did a thing! P.T., Antonio, and I were fortunate enough to attend three screenings as a part of the Newport Beach Film Festival: Steve McQueen’s Blitz, Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, and Malcolm Washington’s adaptation of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson. Meanwhile, Antonio and P.T. got to see an early screening of Edward Berger’s Conclave, hosted by USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in collaboration with Outside the Box [Office] and Focus Features. Great times were had by all; seeing so many films before they come out in theaters made us feel like real fi...

Next year, 2025, will mark the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live (SNL), and NBC is planning a big live special in February to celebrate. In the meantime, though, Director Jason Reitman, whose own father, Ivan, had a close connection to the sketch comedy series, has made Saturday Night, out in theaters now. The film careens in “real” time towards the moment the first episode of SNL aired in 1975, and stars Gabriel LaBelle (The Fabelmans) as Lorne Michaels, along with a vast ensemble of exciting young actors playing the original SNL cast and well-loved veterans like J.K. Simmons and Will...

At a time when so much of public discourse surrounding A.I. swirls in fear and doom, it is rare to find a movie about a robot that does not tap into that sentiment. From Minority Report (2002) to Ex Machina (2014), Hollywood often adopts the position of a canary in the coal mine, trying to warn everyone about our robot overlords. And considering corporate interest in using artificial intelligence to replace human creators, I don’t necessarily blame them for wanting to do that, especially now.

Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot, however, defies that popular narrative, with a fres...

What if The Scarlet Witch from the MCU, Nora Durst from The Leftovers, and Charlie Cale from Poker Face were trapped in a tiny New York City apartment for several days? I jest, in part; Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon, and Natasha Lyonne play characters who are distinct from their more well-known roles, but they do get to flex their acting muscles in His Three Daughters, a dramatic chamber piece now streaming on Netflix.

The film’s story follows three semi-estranged women who reunite to guide their father through his final days of life. The astringent dialogue offers a...

When legendary artists have really made it, they should be able to do anything, right? Their creativity unfettered and untethered from pleasing others or financial concerns. By this margin, Francis Ford Coppola is living the dream. He became an icon for classics such as The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979). And for forty years he has been working on his magnum opus called Megalopolis. He funded the entire film — $120 million — by taking a line of credit out on his own winery No one could put a damper on his creative vision.

And the result, suffice it to say, is u...

For movie nerds and, more fervently, awards season nerds like me, fall is a wonderful time of year because it is nothing but possibility and potential. Like Schrodinger’s cat, movies are both good and bad until you actually see them for yourself. As I impatiently wait to do that, though, there are some indicators: reactions from critics and journalists attending film festivals, awards given by festivals, and whether films without a home score a deal with a big distributor.

In this episode of The Long Take Review, Greg, P.T., and I process and analyze all the...

Box office, box office, box office! Tim Burton’s long-awaited sequel to his 1988 hit has conjured a successful opening weekend at $111 million domestic. This may indicate that audiences show no sign of fatigue for nostalgia-laden sequels (which is good news for Gladiator 2, perhaps?). But how does Beetlejuice Beetlejuice fare as a 36 years later follow-up to one of Burton’s best? Does it contain clunky fan service moments like Alien: Romulus? Or is it more of a fun, don’t-think-about-it-too-hard hang like Deadpool & Wolverine? How well does the Beetlejuice ethos jive with 2024 sensibilities?

These are the questions we try to...

The Alien franchise, suffice it to say, has legs. Xenomorphs and facehuggers are among the most iconic sci-fi creatures in movie history. And multiple directors, including legends Ridley Scott and James Cameron, have made nine Alien films in 45 years. And it would seem that the latest installment, Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus, shows that interest in watching people fight gooey space parasites has not waned. The worldwide box office currently sits at $289.5 million, and it had the second highest opening weekend of any Alien movie to date.

In this episode of The Long Take Review, P.T., Gre...

Director Sean Wang has arrived. His documentary short film, “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” landed an Oscar nomination and, a few months later, his first narrative feature film, Didi, won the Audience Award for the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

While “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó” has been available to watch on Disney+ for some time, Didi just released in theaters at the end of July. It offers a window into the life of Chris, a Taiwanese-American teenager, the summer before he starts high school. He must traverse friends, family, girls, parties, and o...

When I think of the genre of prison drama, what do I think of? As a child of the 90s, Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Green Mile (1999) come to mind first; the former in particular defined the genre forever thereafter. I think of the struggle to survive, full of violence and terror. I think of the bleakness of never getting out and the desperate scheming to escape or undermine the system. I think of crime and corruption perpetuated within the carceral system itself.

Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing, in theaters now, defies all of these expectations. While it do...

As summer blockbuster season winds down and awards season just starts to warm up with a flurry of fall film festivals, P.T., Greg, and I thought it would be a great time to nerd out about Star Wars. First, we react to some recent news coming out of the D23 Expo (including a movie! finally!), and then we review the entire season of The Acolyte that concluded on Disney+ a few weeks ago. That naturally brings us to a ranking exercise. We debate, negotiate, and conciliate to put all the Disney+ Star Wars series in order from best...

LFG!!! Deadpool & Wolverine has slashed its way through multiple box office records. Its opening weekend has made more money than any other R-rated movie, and it’s currently in sixth place for the highest-grossing weekend of all time. Will it have the summer movie legs to join last summer’s winner, Barbie, in the billion dollar club? And what does this success signify? Does it portend anything for the future of the MCU? Or is it more a testament to Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman’s collective star power?

In this episode of The Long Take Review, Colby...

Look. We know that Deadpool & Wolverine is about to take over theaters and probably dominate the summer box office narrative. We, too, are excited to see the merc with a mouth team up with everyone’s favorite clawed hero. But, what we fear may get lost in the MCU shuffle is another fun summer blockbuster already out in theaters: Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters.

This sequel to the 90s hit that put disaster movies on the map stars Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anthony Ramos, and a slew of other up and coming actors who all give charismatic perf...

We are less than five days away from Deadpool & Wolverine! Though, based on how much marketing has been coming at us, if you didn’t know that already, you may be living under a rock. As we so often say with the MCU these days, a lot is riding on this movie. The expectations for the box office, despite it being a Rated R film, have gone sky high. With Marvel/Disney scaling back and slowing down its offerings on the big and small screen, critics are left wondering if this film will impact the recent trajectory of the MC...

In this episode’s Oscar Fairy Flashback, we go back to the 88th Academy Awards, held on February 28, 2016 and honoring the films of 2015. Some of the big contenders that year included Mad Max: Fury Road, Spotlight, The Revenant, The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Steve Jobs, and The Martian. Which snubs will we correct? Which films will divide or unite us? How many more Oscars will we try to give to Mad Max: Fury Road? And why was Jen the only one who saw The Revenant when it came out in 2015? Listen to find out!

What is an...

Hot off the success of four-time Oscar winning film Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos is already back with Kinds of Kindness, playing in theaters now. This anthology film, with three distinct stories in one, is very different fare, with a darker, more brutal humor and more obtuse storytelling. Most critics agree that this is a return to the Yorgos of yore, when he previously collaborated with Efthimis Filippou on films such as The Lobster (2015) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), as opposed to Tony McNamara, who was the writer for the relatively tamer (emphasis on relatively!) period pieces, The...

Have you recently found yourself endlessly scrolling through Netflix, not knowing when to press play? Are you looking for a something to watch while you wait for the next big summer blockbusters (and our reviews of them)? Whether you’re impatiently awaiting Greg’s hype draft pick, Twisters, on July 19 or, more realistically (sorry, Greg), Deadpool & Wolverine on July 26, we’ve got recommendations for smaller films from this year that we think are worth seeing. Many are available to watch at home, while others have just arrived in theaters.

For this episode of The Long Take Review, we’ve...

When Inside Out came out in 2015, critics and fans showered it with praise for its innovative storytelling, as it translated a series of basic human emotions — joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust — into lovable characters who work in an elaborate visualization of the human mind. It was a commercial hit and an award-winning film. It seemed then like Pixar could do no wrong; little did critics know that from that point forward Pixar would steadily decline, losing its apex position in the animation industry.

Much to everyone’s surprise in the face of such a downturn, Inside Out 2 h...

Glen Powell’s having a great year. He arguably entered the movie star chat with 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick (in which he played Hangman), but this year alone he has had/will have three big releases. Despite middling reviews, Anyone But You, Powell’s rom com with Sydney Sweeney did exceedingly well at the box office this past winter. Looking ahead, Powell will star in a sequel to the 1996 disaster film Twister. (And yes, it’s called Twisters.) The trailers and press for that film indicate that if the film is a hit, it could launch Powell into a new leve...

Godzilla Minus One is finally back! On June 1st, without much warning, the acclaimed film finally became available to watch at home on Netflix. Obviously we had to scramble to squeeze in a review as soon as we could.

Back in December of 2023, Godzilla Minus One, produced by Toho, the Japanese studio from which the character originated, quietly came out in theaters in U.S., yet blew up in cinephile and pop culture circles very quickly. Passion for the film grew and grew, yet Oscar pundits weren’t sure if it was enough to garner any nominations fo...

At the Long Take Review, we have one eye always on the Oscar race. Usually, that means we are looking forward to the upcoming Academy Awards, talking through the race as it happens. But given our collective history of caring about these silly awards, we thought it would be fun to occasionally step back and train our eye on an earlier year in Oscar history. Regular listeners know we frequently talk about what we would change in the current race if we had the power of an Oscar Fairy; we decided to use that magic wand on the past...

This past weekend, George Miller’s long-awaited follow-up to Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) unfortunately became the impetus for headlines about a failing film industry. After the rom com stunt spectacular The Fall Guy underperformed at the box office and then whimpered onto home video much earlier than expected, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has emerged as another big disappointment, opening during a holiday weekend to a measly $32 million domestically. As a result, trade journalists have already begun to question whether the next Mad Max film, which George Miller has referred to as The Wasteland, will even get made now.

Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw The TV Glow was one of the buzziest titles to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this year, and P.T. and I were very disappointed that it was only available to screen in person. Fortunately, it’s now out and theaters and we were finally able to see what all the fuss was about.

The film follows two teenagers, Maddy and Owen, as they strike up a friendship over a supernatural teenage drama called “The Pink Opaque.” That fictional series strongly evokes shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, Are You Afra...

Thirty years after the original Mad Max films — Mad Max (1979), Mad Max 2: Road Warrior (1981), and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985) — George Miller wowed critics and Academy voters with Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). The dystopian post-apocalyptic action spectacle won six Oscars, and has earned a spot on countless best of lists for 2015, the decade, and even the century. It stands to reason, then, that many eagerly await the next installment in the franchise: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. The prequel film, which premieres at the Cannes Film Festival tomorrow and hits theaters May 23rd, recounts the traumatic past of Fury Road’s most...

May the 4th be with you! Just in time for Star Wars Day this year, The Phantom Menace, the 1999 prequel film written and directed by George Lucas, returned to theaters in honor of its 25th anniversary. In those 25 years, the film has been on a tumultuous journey. After its initial release, it withstood harsh reviews from critics and backlash from fans. The more toxic among them harassed actors like Jake Lloyd and Ahmed Best. Fast forward to today and the film seems to be beloved by many. In fact, to the surprise of The Hollywood Reporter, The Phantom Menace c...

After a strike-induced 8-month delay, Luca Guadagnino’s psychosexual sports drama, Challengers has finally bounced into theaters. The film follows a tennis coach and her star player husband who find themselves competing against a former friend and lover. A powerhouse trio comprises the cast: household name Zendaya, Mike Faist, who stood out as Riff in West Side Story, and Josh O’Connor, is best known for playing Prince Charles on Netflix’s The Crown. Guadagnino, for those who might not know, directed Oscar-winner Call Me By Your Name (2017), starring Timothee Chalamet. Since Amazon MGM Studios has distribution rights in the U...

We’ll basically take any excuse to talk about Dune on this show, but for this episode we had two fairly good reasons. Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two recently became available to rent or buy at home, and it likely won’t be long before the science fiction epic hits streaming services — I would guess on Max this summer. Now that the film has become more widely accessible, we thought that it would be a great time to revisit it and dig a little deeper. 

Meanwhile, we have a cadre of Star Wars podcaster friends who have not...

At the Long Take Review, we have one eye always on the Oscar race. Usually, that means we are looking forward to the upcoming Academy Awards, talking through the race as it happens. But given our collective history of caring about these silly awards, we thought it would be fun to occasionally step back and train our eye on an earlier year in Oscar history. Regular listeners know we frequently talk about what we would change in the current race if we had the power of an Oscar Fairy; we decided to use that magic wand on the past...

Monkey Man, directed by and starring Dev Patel, opened this past weekend. That, apparently, was a small miracle. The cast crew had to maintain a covid “bubble” during the pandemic, Dev Patel broke his hand during filming on location in Indonesia, Netflix dumped the film, their co-financier Bron Studios went bankrupt, and then, after all seemed lost, Academy Award winner Jordan Peele and Universal Studios swooped in to revive it.

Now, the film seems to have risen above all that, receiving rave reviews out of the SXSW Film Festival, where it premiered, and recouping its 10 million dollar budg...

With the Oscars for 2023 releases in the rearview mirror, we look to the movie slate for the rest 2024. And we’re left with a lot of questions. With the studios’ slow resolution of the actor and writer strikes halting production for months, for example, will the release schedule feel thinner than years past? And considering Marvel has scaled back in the wake of recent flops and the loss of an actor who was supposed to play their primary villain for the foreseeable future, will the handful of summer blockbusters lined up be enough to keep the box office afloat? Will...

Last month, P.T. and I traveled to Albuquerque for an academic conference hosted by the Southwest Popular and American Culture Association. Like Oppenheimer, we thought that if we could find a way to combine podcasting with New Mexico, our lives would be perfect. We presented on a panel titled “Pedagogy and Popular Culture Roundtable: Between Two Scholastic Worlds: Teaching, Blogging, and Podcasting” with our dear colleague and host of The Nostalgia Test Podcast, Dan Dissinger. It’s a lot of shop talk and behind-the-scenes-stories about what it’s like to be an academic and a podcaster. We hope you enjo...

When Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things premiered at the Venice International Film Festival last year, many critics were blown away by it, but unsure whether or not it would be “too weird” for the Academy. Months later, the fantastical dark comedy would win four Oscars: Production Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Costume, and, of course, one of the biggest surprises of the night, Emma Stone for Best Actress. 

The nouveau-Frankenstein tale was the only Best Picture nominee that we never got around to reviewing before the Oscars. But it recently became available to stream on Hulu, and as such a discu...

That’s a wrap, folks! We have arrived at the end of awards season, with one of the better Oscar telecasts in recent memory. Oppenheimer’s predicted success largely came to fruition, but there were also some key surprises in categories Oppenheimer did not take.

In this episode of The Long Take Review, Greg, P.T., and I share our experience watching the 96th Academy Awards, evaluate this year’s Oscars as a televised show, and dissect all the winners, diagnosing the surprises and celebrating what made us happy. Which jokes landed? What do the upsets tell us abo...

Hollywood’s biggest night is only days away, this Sunday, March 10. The ceremony will air live on ABC at 4PT/7ET. Voting has closed. All the precursors have been awarded. It’s time to place your bets and shoot your shot!

Need some help with your office Oscar pool? Want to be more informed at the party you’ve been invited to? We at The Long Take Review are here to help. Across two episodes, we will share our final predictions in each category, while comparing those predictions to which nominees we personally think should win.

In th...

Happy Oscars week, everyone! Hollywood’s biggest night is this Sunday, March 10. The ceremony will air live on ABC at 4PT/7ET. Voting closed last week, and all the guilds and other awards groups have given out their prizes. So we have all the clues we’re going to get to predict who takes home a gold statuette this weekend. 

Need some help with your office Oscar pool? Want to be more informed at the party you’ve been invited to? We at The Long Take Review are here to help. Across two episodes, we will share our fin...

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two is finally here! And only one weekend into its opening, the prestige blockbuster has already delivered at the box office, bringing in $81.5 million domestic and $178.5 million global at the time of this post. Meanwhile, speculation percolates as to whether or when Villeneuve plans to make a third Dune film, presumably based on Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah. Warner Bros. has not yet confirmed that there will be a third film. How long will fans hang in the balance, hungry for more?

In this episode of The Long Take Review, Greg, P.T...

After multiple delays due to historic Hollywood labor disputes, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two finally arrives in theaters this weekend. His 2021 hit Dune: Part One made $433 million worldwide, and cleaned up at the Oscars with six Academy Awards. The film was not immune to discourse, however. Many critics claimed they couldn’t pass judgment upon the film until they saw how the story completed in Part Two. Others were upset that they only got half a movie. Regardless, early reviews of Part Two seem very positive, with a 4.5 (out of 5) average on Letterboxd and 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. So it s...

Out of all the Best Picture nominees this year, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro has probably generated the most “discourse,” amongst film critics and Internet users alike. The film in general has been polarizing, but narratives like “it’s just Oscar bait” or “Bradley Cooper is so desperate to win an Oscar” have also formed. The Academy nominated the film for seven Oscars: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor, Original Screenplay, Makeup and Hairstyling, Cinematography, and Sound, but it has won very little since nomination day. Is this film getting a fair shake? Would it have performed in any other year?

Maes...

Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is one of the ten Best Picture nominees at the Oscars, as well as one of the films nominated for Best International Feature. Even the Producer’s Guild of America, which typically favors more mainstream blockbusters rather than arthouse films — nevermind international ones — included the disturbing Holocaust film in its nominations.

The film adopts an immersive fly-on-the-wall view of the family of Auschwitz’s manager or commandant, who live just on the other side of a wall, next to the concentration camp. We never see what’s happening on the other side of...

Andrew Haigh’s romantic fantasy, All of Us Strangers, got shut out of the Oscars, with zero nominations. And that’s a shame. A strong ensemble cast — Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, and Jamie Bell — delivers subtle yet heartbreaking performances. The screenplay adapts its source material with a series of bold choices. And it shows us things we think we know in completely unexpected and fresh ways.

The unusual story of All of Us Strangers follows Adam, a screenwriter who lives alone in London and has to confront the loss of his parents along with the prospect...

The Chiefs may be on their way to Disneyland, but we’re going to the movies. The Super Bowl is, of course, famous for its high-powered ads, and this year was no exception, with several new movie trailers airing during the live broadcast. Can Deadpool save the MCU? Are we entering the era of unsolicited 90s reboots? And should Jen binge all of the Planet of the Apes movies? In this episode of The Long Take Review, P.T. and I share our thoughts on all the newest and most noteworthy trailers.

While Las Vegas readied for th...

It may seem premature to speculate about next awards season when we haven’t even made it to the Oscars, but that’s never stopped us before! The Sundance Film Festival wrapped last week at Park City, Utah and online. It’s the first big film festival of the new year and, in recent years, has premiered several Oscar-winning films, such as Navalny (2022), Coda (2021), Judas and the Black Messiah (2021), and Minari (2020). Oscar buzz aside, there’s usually a few exciting acquisitions, and sometimes even some bidding wars as distributors try to snatch up films they think will become hits upon rel...

While Internet fires continue to rage after Barbie visionaries Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie did not get nominated for Best Director and Best Actress respectively, Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut, American Fiction, quietly over-performed with five Oscar nominations. Supporting Actor was a little unexpected, and Score was a total surprise, indicating broader strength and support for the film.

The relatively small dramedy, adapted from Percival Everett’s novel, Erasure, follows a professor and fiction writer named Thelonious “Monk” Ellison as he struggles to write a best seller because, according to his editor, his books aren’t “Black” enough. While...

Oscar nominations are finally here! On Tuesday January 23rd, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — the Oscars — announced their nominations in all 23 categories during a live broadcast on ABC. A full house of bleary-eyed Angelenos cheered when hosts Jack Quaid and Zazie Beetz named welcome surprises like America Ferrera. Current frontrunner Oppenheimer was the big winner of the day with 13 nominations. And two notable snubs for Barbie have sparked considerable discourse and, in some cases, outrage.  

In this episode of The Long Take Review, P.T., Antonio, and I share our reactions to this year’s nomin...

Oscar nominations will be announced on Tuesday morning, and in anticipation of that fast-approaching mile marker in awards season, most Oscars podcasts have been releasing episodes with their full set of predictions. We went in the opposite direction, and awarded our personal favorites for the year, before we become unduly influenced by the Academy’s lineup.

In this episode of The Long Take Review, we host our own awards ceremony, The Long Take Review Awards…or LTRs…or “Letters,” as we’re hoping to call them. We cover the four acting categories, director, and picture, with a quick dip in...

The Golden Globes have long had the reputation of being Hollywood’s biggest party, but the recent exposure of corruption and scandal plaguing their voting body, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, shut that party down. Celebrities boycotted them. NBC dropped them. It looked as if the Golden Globes would be no more. Last June, however, the HFPA disbanded, Dick Clark Productions bought the show, and CBS agreed to broadcast the ceremony. Rising from the ashes, the 81st Golden Globe Awards aired on CBS and Paramount+ this past Sunday.

Did the Globes successfully reinvent themselves, though? To what ex...