ENTER THE VOID is back for our fifth season, and this time around Renan and Bill have set themselves the task of talking about only films by directors they haven't covered on the show. How did they do? Pretty good! Except for the last episode, but we think you'll find it a forgivable exception. Starting next week, ETV will appear in your podcast feed each Wednesday, and here is the lineup so you can watch ahead: Solaris (Tarkovsky, 1972) The Lobster (Lanthimos, 2015) Heavy Metal (Potterton, 1981...
Mar 08, 2017•12 min
At last it is the final episode of the fourth season of Enter The Void. And to mark the occasion we're not just talking about Wong Kar-wai's 2046 (2004) but also the two films with which it forms a loose trilogy: 1990's Days of Being Wild and especially 2000's In the Mood for Love . Better still, Bill and Renan are joined by Wong aficionado Samarth Bhaskar from the New York Times . In this, they cover: lucking into a theatrical screening of Wong's films; a valiant attempt to describe what happen...
Dec 21, 2016•1 hr 24 min
Our penultimate episode of season 4 is about Richard Linklater's A SCANNER DARKLY, a 2006 adaptation of Philip K Dick's quasi-autobiographical novel of the same name. A blip on the screen—er, scanner?—at the time it was released, the film is now remembered best for its innovative rotoscope technique. But it's also a showcase for Robert Downey Jr. just before he became a superstar, a rare bright spot for Winona Ryder in her wilderness years, and also Keanu Reeves is here, being Keanu. In this epi...
Dec 14, 2016•1 hr 4 min
This week Renan and Bill welcome back season 2 guest Mark Netter to talk about what might just be the original mindfuck movie: 1961's French-language LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, directed by Alain Resnais in collaboration with novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet. If you've never seen Marienbad , worry not, there is nothing we can say about it that will ruin this movie. Even after multiple viewings and a long discussion, we still don't know what it means—but that doesn't stop your hosts from trying! Also dis...
Dec 07, 2016•1 hr 18 min
For the first time since ETV began, Renan and Bill examine a film that is actually in theaters at the time of recording: Denis Villeneuve's ARRIVAL, starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker. It is not every day that Hollywood releases a sci-fi movie aimed at adults, let alone one that messes with your head like this one does, and it's certainly rare for a film to be built around linguistic theory. Also in this episode: other big budget "puzzle" films and how they get made; examinin...
Nov 30, 2016•1 hr 15 min
In 1991, Wim Wenders leveraged the success of his crossover hit Wings of Desire to mount a project he'd dreamed of for years: a globe-trotting sci-fi epic he considered the "ultimate road movie". That film is UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD, and if you've never heard of it.... well. Warner Bros. made Wenders trim his nearly 5-hour cut by almost half, and the resulting film confused audiences and critics and sank without a trace. (But what a soundtrack!) And yet, the film all but predicted GPS navigat...
Nov 23, 2016•1 hr 6 min
Today Bill and Renan are joined by season 2 guest host Brian Gluckman for a wide-ranging discussion centered around Park Chan-wook's 2003 South Korean thriller OLDBOY. Among the topics covered: that famous hammer-hallway scene, that famous octopus scene, Spike Lee's misbegotten 2013 American remake, did you even know there was an unofficial Bollywood remake?, how it compares to the original Japanese manga, other films of Park Chan-wook including this year's The Handmaiden , and other daring work...
Nov 16, 2016•1 hr 1 min
Whoa, OK, have you ever seen a movie that's more a midnight movie than BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW? We're not sure that we have, and in this episode Renan and Bill get way into what at least they think Panos Cosmatos' 2010 custom-built mindfuckery is really all about. Discussed in this episode: the amazing music, the incredible art direction, and the kinda maybe just so-so story and characters. Whatever you take from Cosmatos' visionary project, after this you're totally gonna want to rewatch Tombs...
Nov 09, 2016•53 min
Kicking off the fourth season of your favorite podcast about mindfuck movies, we look deep into ADVANTAGEOUS, a 2015 low-budget sci-fi darling of Sundance. Directed and co-written by Jennifer Phang, starring and co-written by Jacqueline Kim, with a welcome understated performance by Ken Jeong, the movie explores eternal themes amid a futuristic backdrop that looks all too familiar: How will competition for the best jobs work in a more crowded world? What happens when technology is good enough to...
Nov 02, 2016•1 hr 9 min
The wait is over: Season 4 of ENTER THE VOID is right around the corner. This season we'll be talking about eight new movies—one of them in fact brand new—with double the guest hosts, bringing new perspectives to Bill and Renan unpack some really, really strange films. This season ETV will take on: Advantageous (Phang, 2015) Beyond the Black Rainbow (Cosmatos, 2002) Oldboy (Park, 2003) Until the End of the World (Wenders, 1991) Arrival (Villenueve, 2016) Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1961) A ...
Oct 30, 2016•11 min
Closing out season 3 of Enter The Void, Renan and Bill consider Don Hertzfeldt's Oscar-nominated animated short WORLD OF TOMORROW, which asks more brilliant and terrifying questions in its 17 minutes than many feature length sci-fi movies put together. For Emily, the 4-year-old central protagonist, and the viewer alike, it's a head-spinning tour of the medium-near future where cloning and life extension, virtual reality, autonomous robots, "discount" time travel, and even living on the moon are ...
Aug 24, 2016•59 min
Wong Kar-wai's CHUNGKING EXPRESS is a little different from the psychological thrillers and existential horrors this show usually talks about, but it's no less experimental and just as much a ride through crazytown. It's appropriate that the 1994 film could be called Pulp Fiction meets Reality Bites , since the film's Western popularity is largely thanks to Quentin Tarantino, who brought it to U.S. theaters. Today, Bill and Renan also discuss: whether it matters that Faye Wong is a so classic "m...
Aug 17, 2016•1 hr 1 min
Darren Aronofsky's first feature and still one of his weirdest, PI (or "π") is a B&W-shimmering orb providing a view to several convergent trends of the late 1990s: young independent directors scraping together a mainstream career; the use of obscure math and especially chaos theory in popular art; and the low-level burbling ambient electronic music of artists with names like Orbital and, well, The Orb. In this week's episode, Renan and Bill consider all of the above, and with it: pop mystic...
Aug 10, 2016•1 hr 4 min
If you think you've ever had an uncomfortable dinner party experience, well, THE INVITATION will remind you just how boring your life really is. The most contemporary film we've discussed on the show to date, Karyn Kusama's 2015 slow-burn seriocomic ensemble drama / psychological thriller is one worth seeing knowing as little as possible, but still an absorbing study of character and group dynamics even if you know where it's going. This week Renan and Bill are joined by Emily Gaudette of Invers...
Aug 03, 2016•54 min
Many years after directing SECONDS, John Frankenheimer reflected, the 1966 film went from failure to classic without ever having been a success. It was too arty and weird for Rock Hudson fans, and too Rock Hudson-y for weird art film fans. Though rejected by the public upon first release, the story it tells is no less compelling 50 years later. And now, thanks to Criterion and iTunes, this once obscure-for-a-cult-classic is available for rediscovery at the push of an Apple TV remote button. In t...
Jul 27, 2016•57 min
What exactly is one to make of INLAND EMPIRE? Certainly, it's the kind of film only David Lynch could make. But it's unusual even by his own famously weird standards. It seems to have no plot or maybe three or else a secret design connecting it all together; it deliberately confuses you about its characters' identities, but at least its characters are confused, too; even the symbolism seems to have been sliced apart and glued back together as if to deliberately frustrate the viewing audience. Oh...
Jul 20, 2016•1 hr 1 min
Why isn't JACOB'S LADDER better known than it is? It's director Adrian Lyne's best film, Tim Robbins' first starring role, secretly way more influential than you know, and one of the few Hollywood movies to avoid flinching at the implications its psychological horror implies. Besides that, it has has Biblical allegories, military testing of psychoactive drugs, and is one of the few films to sustain a commitment to dream logic through its entirety. In this episode, Renan and Bill unpack its possi...
Jul 13, 2016•56 min
For the first episode of season 3, Renan and Bill consider their second Jeunet et Caro film: 1995's THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN. Featuring Ron Perlman in his first starring feature role (in phoenetically-memorized French!), six times the Dominique Pinon as Delicatessen , incredible constructed harbor town sets and all the water to go with it, Rube Goldberg-inspired sequences, and conjoined twins, CITY is a feast for the senses. So, how does it stack up against other Jeunet films? What makes it wor...
Jul 06, 2016•46 min
Season 3 of ENTER THE VOID is almost here! And because our episodes come with absolutely no spoiler warnings, we want to give you advance notice of what we're watching and discussing so you can keep up with us. In this short episode, Renan and Bill discuss a modest change to the show's schedule, and then get on to previewing the films themselves: The City of Lost Children (Jeunet et Caro, 1995) Jacob's Ladder (Lyne, 1990) Inland Empire (Lynch, 2006) Seconds (Frankenheimer, 1966) The Invitation (...
Jun 29, 2016•12 min
The final episode of season 2 attempts to grapple with Terrence Malick's 2011 THE TREE OF LIFE, a wildly ambitious epic concerning matters both micro and macro, from small-town family life in midcentury Texas to nothing less than the birth and death of the universe. Starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain with behind-the-camera contributions from Douglas Trumbull and Emmanuel Lubezki, your hosts aren't entirely sure what it all means, but it sure is fascinating to think and talk about. I...
May 04, 2016•1 hr 4 min
It's scary. It's depressing. And it's a kids' movie. For many children of the 1980s, Wolfgang Petersen's THE NEVERENDING STORY was their introduction to concepts such as existential annihilation, insurmountable sadness, and nested story structures. But how does all this play for someone who sees it for the first time as an adult? Our hosts fall on opposite sides of this pseudo-generational line, and explore their different experiences in this penultimate episode of season 2. Also considered: Naz...
Apr 27, 2016•54 min
With influences ranging from Chaplin and Fellini to Rube Goldberg and Terry Gilliam, DELICATESSEN by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and occasional co-director Marc Caro defies easy summary. Maybe you'd better just give it a try? Set in a single apartment building in a dystopic future France, Jeunet et Caro imagine a world of hidden connections, quiet desperations, quirky comedy, light-hearted cannibalism, and a roster of peculiar residents whose dependence on their barbarous landlord-butcher is challenged b...
Apr 20, 2016•54 min
Directed by possible madman Sion Sono and possibly driving you to the brink yourself, SUICIDE CLUB is exactly what it sounds like, and one of the gorier films to emerge from Japan's 2000s-era horror movement. Unlike The Ring or The Grudge , this is one that hasn't been remade, but its themes of Internet-based teen fads and suicidal hysteria might work better today than in the pre-smartphone era. In this episode, we unpack suicide in wealthy countries and its role in Japanese culture; other socie...
Apr 13, 2016•55 min
Robin Wright plays herself in a film already almost forgotten if just three years old, THE CONGRESS, directed by Waltz With Bashir 's Ari Folman. It's well and truly bonkers, telling at least two distinct stories—Wright signing away to a Hollywood studio her digital performance rights, and a future society where humanity lives a drug-induced, half-animated experience where what's real or not is impossible to summarize here. In this episode, we're joined by friend of the show Brian Gluckman to di...
Apr 06, 2016•54 min
Kathryn Bigelow's NEAR DARK is an inspired genre-bending horror-western featuring vampires, cowboys, and a totally whacked out Bill Paxton. While not a perfect film, it's also unlike anything else, and makes for a fun excuse to revisit other vampire flicks of the 80s and 90s, including The Lost Boys and Interview with the Vampire . Also discussed in this episode: mindful that this is Enter The Void's first female-directed film, why does it seem like so few women make "mindfuck movies"? NEAR DARK...
Mar 30, 2016•52 min
Our new episode focuses on David Cronenberg's VIDEODROME, and for the first time on ETV we are joined by a guest host: Mark Netter, director of indie sci-fi thriller Nightmare Code . Thought-provoking and surprisingly timely given its 1983 release date, VIDEODROME provides the starting point for a wide-ranging discussion about the power of TV in the 80s vs. the Internet today vs. radio in the distant past—with a small digression on how we listen to podcasts; society's relationship to shock conte...
Mar 23, 2016•55 min
A 1970s future vision undone by its own airless weight, Nicolas Roeg's THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH is also mesmerizing when it's just David Bowie in the role he was born to play, himself but a real deal alien. Promptly forgotten after Star Wars came out the next year, TMWFTE merits another look, but also—unlike last week's Brazil —actually would benefit from losing about 30 minutes, and by the way, how about a Bowie soundtrack? If anyone thinks they can help make this happen, really email us at vo...
Mar 16, 2016•58 min
Gloriously disorienting and hugely influential, Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL almost didn't happen the way we know it today. In the second season's second episode, Renan and Bill excavate Gilliam's endless battle with Sid Sheinberg and Universal Studios; debate films and directors inspired by BRAZIL (Tim Burton's Batman , how did we not see it until now!); altercate over whether Rian Johnson's directorial work counts as a descendant (but Mike Judge's Idiocracy totally does); and deliberate on where it ...
Mar 09, 2016•1 hr 2 min
We're finally back with season two of Enter the Void, a movie podcast about strange, crazy, mind-altering films! We start with the canonical midnight movie, the ur-text for David Lynch's unusual filmography: his first feature, ERASERHEAD. Covered in this episode: the film's cultural status then and now; its influence on other filmmakers—including Kubrick!; what it says about Lynch and his later career; the meticulous art direction and set construction; the grotesque "baby" and its possibly distu...
Mar 02, 2016•46 min
Season 2 of ENTER THE VOID is nearly upon us. This time around, we're giving you a sneak preview of the films we plan to talk about, so you can follow along more closely. In this short episode, Renan and Bill give a quick rundown of the season ahead, and are over quick so they can get back to planning and you can get to watching. And now, every film from the coming season, in episode order: Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977) Brazil (Gilliam, 1985) The Man Who Fell To Earth (Roeg, 1976) Videodrome (Cronenb...
Feb 10, 2016•18 min
