Filmspotting

Film music historian and journalist ⁠Tim Greiving⁠, author of John Williams: A Composer's Life, joins Michael Phillips to explore one of the foundational dilemmas of movie music, courtesy of legendary...

Is The End of Oak Street the best Spielberg movie of 2026? Or is one of your hosts committing movie heresy? Adam and Josh review David Robert Mitchell's dinosaur-filled family adventure and consider w...

Kristen Stewart is back in theaters with The Wrong Girls, which is an excuse to share our Top 5 KStew Scenes from 2017.  Unlock the full archive, Filmspotting Discord, ad‑free + bonus episodes, a...

It’s all fine and good to be sealed up in a house with Wagner Moura and Greta Lee, but the longer Netflix’s new The Last House keeps us there, the more time Matt and Jordan have for questi...

Matt Johnson’s new biopic Tony sidesteps the infamous Walk Hard trap by narrowing its scope to a single summer that would end up shaping the rest of Anthony Bourdain’s ...

Screenwriter and producer David Kajganich (Suspiria, Bones and All) joins Michael Phillips to test a provocative rule of adaptation from filmmaker Whit Stillman: "You owe everything to the movie and n...

Adam and Josh share their favorite discoveries, performances, and scenes from the recently completed Dissident Cinema Marathon, which included Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, Kurosawa's No Regrets...

Jane Schoenbrun’s uncategorizable third feature, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, marks the director as among the most assured and provocative filmmakers of their generation. Adam and Josh ...

Anthony Bourdain, whose early experience working in a restaurant kitchen is chronicled in the new biopic Tony, once singled out Ratatouille as Hollywood’s best depiction of w...

In 2015, Adam and Josh welcomed poster designer Sam's Myth on the show to talk shop and share their Top 5 Movie Posters. Unlock the full archive, Filmspotting Discord, ad‑free + bonus episodes, a...

When the author of “Marvel’s Spider-Man: From Amazing to Spectacular” is the co-host of your show, you don’t avoid talking about the new Spidey movie Brand New Day just because...

What can your body tell you about a movie? According to legendary Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn, everything.This week's Movie Racket explores Cohn's infamous rule for separating hits from flops. ...

For the final film in the Dissident Cinema Marathon, Adam and Josh discuss Jafar Panahi’s formally ingenious 2000 film THE CIRCLE, an unflinching chronicle of Iran’s oppressive treatment o...

After a five-year hiatus, Tom Holland’s Peter Parker is back on the big screen with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, this time battling anonymity, a host of nemeses, and some arachnid-related changes....

It's been eight years since Adam and Josh did the Top 5 Superhero-Director Combos (We'd Like To See) and still somehow none of their pitches have been given the green light. Maybe that will change wit...

Chris Klimek presides over a multiversal showdown between two of the most beloved Spider-Man films: Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 and the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. One is a live-act...

With the world’s Spidey sense activated by Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Adam and Josh look back at the webslinger’s first 25 years on screen with their Top 5 Spider-Man Scenes. Yes, even And...

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey approaches Homer’s epic from a much more literal vantage point than O Brother Where Art Thou, but that doesn’t mean it’s a d...

Back in 2022, Adam and Josh gave Sam Raimi's Spider-Man the 20th anniversary Sacred Cow treatment.  Unlock the full archive, Filmspotting Discord, ad‑free + bonus episodes, and more when you ⁠joi...

Jordan and Matt break format - and Zeus’s Law? - for an Odyssey-themed episode, including thoughts on the new blockbuster film, favorite Christopher Nolan films, and streaming recommendations in...

Story analyst Billy Mernit joins Michael Phillips to test one of Hollywood’s most enduring (and slippery) unofficial rules: Howard Hawks’ idea that a good movie is three good scenes and no...

Is Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey a cinematic gift, or is it a Trojan Horse filled with the director’s narrative obsessions? Maybe both. In their review, Adam and Josh talk about the ways...

Considering The Odyssey is one of the most famous and influential stories of all time, there had been relatively few attempts to directly translate Homer’s epic poem to the big screen ...

As part of 2020’s Christopher Nolan Oeuvre-view, Adam and Josh revisited The Prestige (2006), which – alongside his current The Odyssey – is among the rare Nolans adapted from existi...

Matt and Jordan give Hulu’s new multiverse revenge thriller Redux Redux a spin, crediting Kevin and Matthew McManus’s film for its low-budget stylishness and its central performance (by an...

Film critic Amy Nicholson joins host Michael Phillips to test a set of unofficial Hollywood axioms: Preston Sturges’ 11 Rules for Box Office Appeal.Written (or so the story goes) in the early 19...

The Dissident Cinema Marathon continues with Marcel Ophuls’s towering 1969 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity, which challenged the so-called “Gaullist myth” that the French people ...

Adam and Josh take stock of the movie year with their Top 5 Films of 2026 (So Far), making picks that reflect the strength of of the year’s genre offerings, comedies, and intimate dramas. Plus: ...

A good chunk of Supergirl’s DNA can be traced back to True Grit by way of the comics miniseries the film is adapting, which is why we paired it with Joel and Ethan Coen’s 20...

For this week's Archive episode, we go back to 2014 for the Top 5 Movie Tattoos (That We'd Get). The "we" being Adam and Josh. 16 years later... no tats yet. But they're sticking by (most) of their pi...

Matt and Jordan deep-dive into the free, ad-supported streaming platform Tubi. They evaluate the platform across five distinct categories: library; playback/interface; reliability; originals; and pric...

Welcome to The Movie Racket, a new Filmspotting production hosted by Michael Phillips. Each week, we’ll test a so-called "law" of cinema — a bit of received wisdom about how movies work, o...

Adam and Josh celebrate Fargo's 30th anniversary with a Pantheon Project review (the show’s longest ever) of the Coen Brothers' career-altering 1996 film. Plus, Olivia Wilde's The Invite, David ...

This week's archive episode is Adam and Josh's 2018 Sacred Cow review of the Coen Brothers' period gangster film Miller's Crossing.  Unlock the full archive, Filmspotting Discord, ad‑free + bonus...

Matt and Jordan review Netflix’s new comedy Little Brother, which stars Eric Andre as a chaos agent who disrupts the life of a tightly wound real estate agent played by John Cena. Hijinx, nudity...

The new Supergirl isn’t an outright adaptation of the comic-book miniseries Woman of Tomorrow, but it retains enough of its shape that it evokes that comic’s own source of i...

Welcome to the sophomore installment of Movie Death Match. Host Chris Klimek presides as two Christopher Nolan films go head to head in anticipation of The Odyssey. Arguing for Inception is Bilge Ebir...

Adam and Josh celebrate the holiday weekend with a "Blind Cow" review of Independence Day, the #1 movie at the box office back in '96. Thirty summers after its release, Adam catches up with Roland Emm...

As part of their 2020 Christopher Nolan "Oeuvre-view," Adam and Josh revisited 2014's Interstellar, a film they'd split on six years earlier.  Unlock the full archive, Filmspotting Discord, ad‑fr...

Matt and Jordan check out Julian Schnabel’s In The Hand of Dante, a rare midsummer Netflix prestige picture with a stacked cast that includes Oscar Isaac, Al Pacino, Gerard Butler, John Malkovic...

Is Toy Story 5 an inspired reorienting of the venerable Pixar franchise, or a tired rehash? Adam and Josh offer differing takes. Plus, Adam reviews Michael Sarnoski's bleak but intriguing The Death of...

When the fourth Toy Story installment came to theaters in the summer of 2019, Adam invited the Blank Check podcast's Griffin Newman to join him for the Top 5 Toy Story Scenes.  Unlock the full ar...

Matt and Jordan review Netflix’s generically titled but surprisingly witty Office Romance. Co-written by and starring Brett Goldstein alongside JLo, the workplace rom-com rises just above the st...

Adam and Josh review Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, praising star Emily Blunt and the impeccably staged action while questioning whether Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp’s spirit...

In 2020, Adam and Josh used the 45th anniversary of Jaws to Power Rank the Spielberg Decades — from the Close Encounters ’70s to the Lincoln 2010s. With the release of Disclosure Day, the ...

Matt and Jordan review HBO’s Sundance acquisition Miss You Love You. And while Jordan finds it to be a handsome, moving, and well-acted "filmed play", Matt finds too modest and predictable. For ...

Adam and Josh reach a definitive milestone in Filmspotting’s Dissident Cinema Marathon with Costa-Gavras’s Oscar-winning 1969 masterpiece, Z. A thinly veiled account of a political assassi...

Adam and Josh catch up with the summer's surprise hit Obsession, the “monkey’s paw” update from YouTube creator turned first-time feature-director Curry Barker. Then, it’s John...

From amps cranked up to eleven, to the sweet, soulful harmonies of a dynamic rhythm and blues revival, Adam and Josh count down their Top 5 (Fictional) Movie Bands. Unlock the full archive, Filmspotti...

Matt and Jordan review Netflix's massive true crime tabloid horror hit, The Crash, a direct-to-streaming look at the tragic Mackenzie Sherilla case. Jordan walks away feeling like he needs a shower fo...