Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Bilge Ebiri —the man, the myth, the legend—joins us to bookend our discussion of all things Mission: Impossible from a couple of summers ago , on the occasion of the final (?) film of a nearly 30 year franchise. We get into: the perils of Cruise-dom, building an extension on a plane you've already built, Luther!, missing Rebecca Ferguson, decompression chambers & gel manicures, Benji Impossible , no closure, loving these movies, and more. Relevan...
Jul 02, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 64
On this month’s bite-sized episode we're zooming in on a snappy/passionate moment from Ernst Lubitsch’s effervescent 1932 screwball comedy, Trouble in Paradise . We get into: sex & pre-code cinema, eye-widening lines, wikipedia marriage math, Betty and Veronica vibes, the Lubitsch Touch, what does classy even mean?, how a perfect escapist film from 1932 works just as well in 2025, and more. -- Hosts: Veronica Fitzpatrick & Chad Perman Producer: Eli Sands Music: Chad Perman ...
Jun 20, 2025•22 min•Ep. 63
Pop quiz, hotshot: join us as we welcome back BWDR veteran and De Palma completist Travis Woods for a special conversation on one of our all-time favorites, Jan de Bont’s Speed (1994). We get into: repetition compulsion and classical Hollywood storytelling, Keanu’s peak hotness, Speed ’s existential lessons, does Jeff Daniels close his eyes?, Mark Mancina’s love theme, what it means to “become bomb,” and more. Further reading/viewing: Veronica’s BWDR essay on Speed , the comprehensive 50 ...
Jun 04, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 62
This month’s micro-episode takes us inside the mysterious, sensual brilliance of Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger , a curated pick from director Ezra Edelman : "The idea of wanting to live with purpose, even if it’s someone else’s purpose—there’s just something so human about it." We get into: the comfort of slow cinema that doesn't feel slow, the aesthetics of existential malaise, the virility of 70s'-era Nicholson, the intensity of traveling relationships, and more. -- Bonus Feature: We'...
May 10, 2025•20 min•Ep. 61
This month we sit down with Vulture critic Angelica Jade Bastién , author of the newsletter Madwomen & Muses , where she recently started writing about “Movies That Fuck.” In honor of “cinematic sensuality,” we chat about Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) , Francis Ford Coppola’s ode to ahistorical melodrama and doomed romance. We get into: Roman Coppola’s practical effects, Keanu’s accent work, crossing oceans of time to find you, Michael Ballhaus (and whether this is the dark b-side of The Age ...
Apr 09, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 60
This month's bite-sized episode zooms in on the spectral perspective of Thomas Vinterburg's debut film, The Celebration (1998), one of Palestinian director/writer/producer Annemarie Jacir's curated picks. We get into: Dogme 95 , family gatherings as horror movies, the generative energy of stylistic constraints, dynamic chaos, ghostly POVs, and finding something in a film that's a little bit in excess of what the film seems to think it's doing. -- The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is hosted by ...
Mar 22, 2025•20 min•Ep. 59
In honor of guest Michael Koresky's new book announcement, we're revisiting this conversation with him from last summer about Steven Spielberg's A.I. Michael's new book, Sick and Dirty: Hollywood's Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness , will be out from Bloomsbury in June. --- Reverse Shot co-founder and editor, and Editorial Director at Museum of the Moving Image Michael Koresky joins us to proselytize Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). Michael takes us back ...
Mar 06, 2025•1 hr 8 min
We’re back with an episode analyzing writer-director Aaron Schimburg’s Kafkaesque body swap, A Different Man . Joining us is critic, actor, and BWDR darling Frank Falisi , co-founder of Garden State Lantern . We get into Adam Pearson’s Oscar snub and Sebastian Stan’s win, The Substance for boys, shooting in NYC, if you want to dance the mask, the humanism of karaoke, doing your life wrong, self-image as self-esteem, and what it means to never change a bit. Further reading: Le Cinema Club ’s inte...
Feb 04, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 58
Our first mini-episode of 2025 looks to one of director Andrew Haigh’s curated picks: Billy Wilder’s subversive farce Some Like It Hot . We get into the unlikely modernity of Hot ’s sexual politics, Orry-Kelly’s naked dresses, Wilder’s collaboration with I. A. L. Diamond, is this the greatest comedy of all time, and more. -- The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman , produced by Eli Sands , and edited by Buczar . Our theme music is composed by Chad. ...
Jan 20, 2025•18 min•Ep. 57
Be thankful we did your Gladiator II homework, rewatching Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 1 (2000) with amateur Russell Crowe historian Blake Howard . This is a Gladiator II- spoiler-free conversation: listen as we get into Crowe kissing disembodied feet, Scott’s world-building, the technology of acting, Oliver Reed’s digitized face (RIP), is anything better than practical effects, expressionism vs. historical accuracy, and more. Gladiator : a good movie. Further reading: here’s Gladiator cinematograph...
Dec 26, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 56
This month’s mini-episode takes us into the rich opening sequence of a pick curated by director Andrew Haigh: Nicolas Roeg’s Venetian nightmare, Don’t Look Now . We get into Graeme Clifford’s expressionist editing, celebrating movies for grownups, the color red, non-chronology, grief, and what lies “beyond the fragile geometry of space.” -- The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman , produced by Eli Sands , and edited by Buczar . Our theme music is co...
Dec 15, 2024•18 min•Ep. 55
This holiday season, we're revisiting last year's holiday special: an audio essay of one of the most popular articles we've every published on the site: Ethan Warren's A Grand Yuletide Theory: The Muppet Christmas Carol is the Best Adaptation of A Christmas Carol . Written and read by Ethan himself, with holiday music from Ryan Pollie . (Originally aired December 17, 2023) -- We'll be back later this month with two brand new pods, but in the meantime: Happy Holidays from Bright Wall/Da...
Dec 08, 2024•41 min
On this special mega episode, co-host Veronica sits down with critic Fran Hoepfner and our producer Eli Sands to postmortem the 62nd New York Film Festival. This is a mainly spoiler-free conversation! We get into: Hard Truths , Caught by the Tides , Nickel Boys , April , Harvest , The Brutalist , The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Shrouds , Queer , Maria , Stranger Eyes , Eephus , I’m Still Here , Anora , The Room Next Door , one stray line about Misericordia, plus: wife guy directors, the survei...
Nov 08, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 54
This month’s mini-episode takes us into one of costume designer Sophie de Rakoff’s curated picks: Irvin Kershner’s The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), an American giallo with style to spare. We get into Faye Dunaway’s scream, POV in horror, how this is Helmut Newton x John Carpenter, the ethics of glamorizing suffering, and, yes, the clothes. -- The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman , produced by Eli Sands , and edited by Buczar . Our theme music is co...
Oct 23, 2024•17 min•Ep. 53
This whole episode is a trap. In it, we join Josh Hartnett scholar and The Film Stage gentleman Dan Mecca to dissect the ins and outs of M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap. We talk about: baby bangs, Hartnett always being a little bit weird, the tooth gap, Sleeping with the Enemy ’s hand towels, auteur theory, one good part in The Village , Hayley Mills on the walkie-talkie, and more. Further reading: Dan’s interview with Hartnett for Film Stage , Nicholas Russell’s M. Night Shyamalan essay for BWDR , an...
Oct 08, 2024•1 hr•Ep. 52
Inspired by the curation of costume designer Sophie de Rakoff, this month we're taking a loving look at the gear-shifting, hybrid charms of Jonathan Demme's screwball noir, Something Wild —and the Ray Liotta entrance that changes everything. -- This episode is sponsored by Galerie , a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can now sign up for 3 months of free access here ....
Sep 17, 2024•19 min•Ep. 51
Joining us this month: Blank Check co-host & staff writer at The Atlantic, David Sims ! In summer’s last gasp, we go back to a flashpoint of summer blockbuster season: Jan de Bont’s 1996 Twister , plus its legacy in Twisters (Lee Isaac Chung, 2024), epic ensemble casting, craving movies about grown-ups, Hollywood’s dangerous brunettes, why not kissing at the airport matters, whether anyone votes in the world of Twisters , cinema sequences and storm spectatorship, Daisy Edgar Jones’s accent w...
Aug 31, 2024•56 min•Ep. 50
Chad goes full dad in this mini-episode on Richard Linklater’s 2014 coming-of-age epic Boyhood. Specifically, the plural meanings of Patricia Arquette’s anguished move-out speech, and why raising children to lead their own lives is a bittersweet success. The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands . Our theme music is composed by Chad. --- This episode is sponsored by Galerie , where you can join Veronica & Chad ...
Aug 16, 2024•17 min•Ep. 49
Welcome back to the pod Carrie Courogen , author of Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius out now from St. Martin’s Press. Carrie joins us to discuss Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid (1972), her honeymoon horror film co-starring May’s daughter Jeannie Berlin and Charles Grodin as doomed newlyweds and Cybill Shepherd as the coed for whom Grodin’s Lenny quite literally risks it all. Further reading: here’s Chad’s interview with Carrie in the June 2024 i...
Jul 31, 2024•58 min•Ep. 48
Follow us into one of Rachel Kushner ’s picks: Maurice Pialat’s slow ode to the sacred and profane, Under the Sun of Satan (1987). Co-starring Gérard Depardieu and Pialat’s muse Sandrine Bonnaire alongside Pialat himself, Under the Sun is a pastoral parable with a lot of dialogue and a few good screams. The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands . Our theme music is composed by Chad. This episode is sponsored by Gal...
Jul 21, 2024•17 min•Ep. 47
As summer begins in earnest, we're looking back at a 2022 highlight—Charlotte Wells’s staggering debut feature Aftersun —and revisiting one of our most popular episodes ever: a conversation with film critic, author, and educator Adam Nayman . Adam shares special insights from his conversation with Wells about the film, plus the case for cinematic mystery, Paul Mescal crying, analog devices and the technology of memory, good karaoke scenes, fatherhood feelings, and why 2022 stinker The Whal...
Jul 03, 2024•1 hr 4 min
It’s showtime–in this episode, Chad takes us through the opening of one of Ethan Hawke’s curator picks: Bob Fosse’s autobiographical kaleidoscope, All That Jazz (1979). Here’s the Motion Pictures Editors Guild on what makes All That Jazz the fourth-best edited film in history, and Hawke himself on “personal filmmaking at its finest.” The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands . Our theme music is composed by Chad. T...
Jun 18, 2024•18 min•Ep. 46
Back from vacation with our summer blockbuster episode: author, Reverse Shot co-founder and editor, and Editorial Director at Museum of the Moving Image Michael Koresky joins us to proselytize Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). Michael takes us back to being an intern in 2001, watching A.I. six times in theaters, how both Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick do “sentimentality with a point,” Jude Law’s dialogue, parables of loss, and how this “unexpected sledgehammer” of 00s’ filmm...
Jun 04, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 45
Riffing on Kim Gordon’s curation , we get into Lynne Ramsay’s atmospheric Morvern Callar (2002), a mixtape of a film whose cursed vacation vibes echo something of Barbara Loden’s Wanda and foreshadow Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun . Shout outs to Georgia Humphreys’ terrific essay “Another Girl, Another Planet” and The Mamas and the Papas’ unlikely club banger, “Dedicated to the One I Love.” The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited ...
May 20, 2024•14 min
In honor of the 50th anniversary of its release this month , we're revisiting our conversation on Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974), looking at the film through the lenses of surveillance and seclusion, Gene Hackman and Walter Murch, Catholic guilt and cool jazz. From its bird’s eye opening to the obliterative final shots, we get into the nuts and bolts of Coppola’s “personal” post- Godfather film and what it means to watch, fixate, deduce, mishear, and, despite everything, to long ...
Apr 24, 2024•1 hr 16 min
Joining our spicy all-in-the-family March episode are substitute co-host Fran Hoepfner and BW/DR staff writer Sarah Welch-Larson . Listen as long-time Dune -thusiast Sarah absolutely schools us on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two (2024). We get into the finer points of adapting Frank Herbert, how all the Bene Gesserit are sexy, space gravity, Rebecca Ferguson’s jaw, the secularization of Chani, are thumpers biodegradable, and more. Special shout-outs to Sarah’s prescient piece on Dune (2021) an...
Apr 01, 2024•52 min•Ep. 43
On this month's micro episode, we get into Elliott Smith soundtracking a savory first kiss in Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting (1997), a film that changed one of our co-host's lives forever. -- The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25 is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands . -- The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25 is sponsored by our friends at Galerie . To find out more about Galerie—a new kind of film club—sign up for two free months at join.galerie.com/bwdr ....
Mar 17, 2024•18 min•Ep. 42
It’s still February in our souls. This month, we’re joined by writer and Letterboxd Senior Editor Mitchell Beaupre to revisit Mira Nair’s recently 4k-restored romance, Mississippi Masala (1991), starring Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury. We get into the film’s ever-timely exploration of diasporic longing, when talking on the phone looks like phone sex, first-gen trauma, a particularly memorable prelude to a kiss, romanticizing physical media, and the finer points of Mitchell’s insightful A...
Mar 03, 2024•51 min•Ep. 41
The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25 is a series in conversation with, and sponsored by, our friends at Galerie . Every month, we pick a title from Galerie’s curated library and zoom in on a single moment to better see the whole. This month we're chatting about expressive sound and slow motion in John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood (1991), a pick by curator Reinaldo Marcus Green. To see the rest of Green’s hit picks, sign up at https://join.galerie.com/bwdr . * This episode is co-hosted by Veronica Fitz...
Feb 19, 2024•19 min•Ep. 40
This month we’re joined by writer, critic, and editor Nicholas Russell to chat about Bradley Cooper’s Maestro (2023). We get into: what makes a Bradley Cooper Film (thanks Fran ), when weird voices work, that epigraph, tension as structure and provocation, what’s going on with the ending, getting moved by Mahler, and more. -- The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman , and produced & edited by Eli Sands . Our theme music is composed by Chad. You c...
Feb 01, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 39
