This month, we're looking at James Gray's Two Lovers , exploring its intimacy, specificity, complexity—and a fantastic Joaquin Phoenix dance scene . --- The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25 is a series of bite-sized episodes in conversation with, and sponsored by, our friends at Galerie . Each month, we pick a title from Galerie’s curated library and zoom in on a single moment to better see the whole. BW/DR readers & listeners can use this special link to get two months of free access to Galerie,...
Jan 18, 2024•16 min•Ep. 38
Merry Cruisemas, from our home to yours! For our 3rd annual celebration, we sit down with bosom buddy, film critic, and podcast extraordinaire Blake Howard to discuss Doug Liman’s 2014 film, Edge of Tomorrow . We get into: time loops, Emily Blunt's triceps, Cruise's determined pathos, Liman's blockbuster craftmanship, McQuarrie's calibrations, repetition and rewatchability, three-beers-in movies, and more. -- Cruisemas 2022: Vanilla Sky Cruisemas 2021: Eyes Wide Shut Blake's podcast empire: One ...
Dec 25, 2023•54 min•Ep. 37
This holiday season, a very special holiday podcast treat: an audio version of one of our most popular essays of all time, 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 music by Ryan Pollie and art by Brianna Ashby . Happy Holidays from Bright Wall/Dark Room ! -- This episode is sponsored by Galerie , a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can sign up using this link to get two free month...
Dec 17, 2023•41 min
On this special episode, co-host Veronica sits down with critic Fran Hoepfner to talk high/lowlights of the 61st New York Film Festival . We get into: looking in vain for the element of surprise ( All of Us Strangers ), Bradley Cooper as crazy guy ( Maestro ), the Sunday-night-on-HBO vibes of Anatomy of a Fall , Elordi charisma ( Priscilla ), the biggest laughs in Last Summer , Janet Planet ’s perfect execution of kid perspective, why Wiseman’s Menu-Plaisirs Les Troisgros is not The Bear , what ...
Nov 29, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 36
This is The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25, a series of bite-sized episodes in conversation with, and sponsored by, our friends at Galerie . Each month, we pick a title from Galerie’s curated library and zoom in on a single moment to better see the whole. Privacy, intimacy, and conspiracy are all at play in this month’s moment from George Stevens’ 1951 tragedy, A Place in the Sun . --- The BW/DR Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands . ...
Nov 19, 2023•16 min•Ep. 35
This month, author and Cinephile: A Card Game creator Cory Everett joins us to talk about Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). We get into the elasticity of the western, what constitutes pure cinéma, Claudia Cardinale thirst, Big Screen Movies and the garages that screen them, Leone the minimalist and maximalist, and more. -- 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 compos...
Oct 30, 2023•51 min•Ep. 34
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 chat about a musical moment in Charles Laughton’s spellbinding Appalachian noir The Night of the Hunter , a pick by curator Duke Johnson . And we’ll be hosting a live discussion on the film on Saturday, October 28, at 2:00 pm ET/11:00 am PT . To join the conversati...
Oct 16, 2023•15 min•Ep. 33
It’s nearly spooky season and we’re waxing nostalgic for The Craft (Andrew Fleming, 1996) with Los Angeles film critic and podcaster extraordinaire Katie Walsh . We get into crushing on Robin Tunney, the 90s, the death of subculture, slow-motion hallway walks, where are their parents—and stay tuned for Katie’s on-air pull from the Rachel True tarot deck . -- The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands . Our theme mus...
Sep 30, 2023•50 min•Ep. 32
This is The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25, a series of bite-sized episodes in conversation with, and sponsored by, our friends at Galerie . Each 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 bid goodbye to summer with Robert Altman’s hallucinatory 3 Women (1977), a Palm Springs take on Persona . For info on upcoming live movie discussions hosted by Galerie, and to read Emma Cline’s languid essay on 3 Women , sign up at https...
Sep 16, 2023•15 min•Ep. 31
This is The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25, a series in conversation with, and sponsored by, our friends at Galerie . Each month, we pick a title from Galerie’s curated library and zoom in on a single moment to better see the whole. This month, in concert with Mike Mills' curated list , Chad and Veronica look at The Cameraman (1928), reflecting on the impossible beauty and precision of Buster Keaton, bodies in motion, and the pantomime scene at Yankees Stadium that makes Chad smile from ear to ear ever...
Sep 01, 2023•15 min•Ep. 30
Your mission, if you choose to accept it: in concert with this month's “Heists” issue, we’re talking across Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018), and Mission: Impossible (1996) with brilliant Vulture and New York Magazine critic—and platinum-tier BWDR supporter!— Bilge Ebiri . We get into the [redacted] of Ilsa Faust, when plot makes no sense, Tom Cruise playing himself, lyricism in action films, Fallout = sex , what the M:I franchise is sayi...
Aug 17, 2023•58 min•Ep. 29
This is The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25, a new series in conversation with, and sponsored by, our friends at Galerie. Every month, we’ll pick a title from Galerie’s curated library and zoom in on a single moment to better see the whole. This month: in concert with Karyn Kusama’s library, we chat about how Todd Haynes’s Safe (1995) transposes the female ennui of Antonioni’s Red Desert to the sherbet interiors of Sherman Oaks, CA. For info on upcoming live movie discussions (with you, for you!) hosted...
Jul 24, 2023•22 min•Ep. 28
We’re proud to feature our June issue’s guest editor, poet and PhD student Spencer Williams , in conversation about a pair of films that hearken to our theme of trans cinema: Canadian Billy Tipton doc No Ordinary Man (Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt, Canada, 2020, now streaming on Criterion Channel) and the incendiary short American Reflexxx (Alli Coates, 2015, on YouTube ). We get into: why this double feature, the perils and profits of visibility, improv as queer praxis, did MoMA’s audience g...
Jun 28, 2023•54 min•Ep. 27
This is The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25, a new series in conversation with, and sponsored by, our friends at Galerie. Every month, we’ll pick a title from Galerie’s curated library and zoom in on a single moment to better see the whole. This month: in concert with actor Taylor Russell’s library, we look at the relentlessness and romance of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love (2002). A movie so pretty, we just want to smash it. For info on upcoming live discussions (with you, for you!) hosted by ...
Jun 19, 2023•18 min•Ep. 26
Joining us this month to wax rhapsodic about Katharine Hepburn is film professor, author ( Mike Nichols: Sex, Language, and the Reinvention of Psychological Realism ), and Hepburn devotee Kyle Stevens . Listen as we get into George Cukor’s 1940 film adaptation of The Philadelphia Story : the oppositional coherence of the love “square,” getting radicalized by late night TCM, why Hepburn wasn’t hot on Meryl Streep, wishing Mike and Dex would kiss, the remoteness of worship versus the proximity of ...
Jun 02, 2023•53 min•Ep. 25
Welcome to The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25, a new series in conversation with, and sponsored by, our friends at Galerie . Every month, we’ll pick a title from Galerie’s curated library and zoom in on a single moment to better see the whole. This month: in concert with director Mike Mills’s library, we look at Daisies ( Sedmikrásky , 1966), directed by Věra Chytilová and co-written by Ester Krumbachová. Like a surreal Czechoslovak precursor to the music video for Aerosmith’s “Cryin’.” For info on our...
May 31, 2023•16 min•Ep. 24
It’s been a minute but we’re back! With writer and Bright Wall OG—literally, she wrote the first essay for our first issue back in 2013— Karina Wolf to discuss Wim Wenders’s iconic Wings of Desire (1987), a film that bridges “road movies” and “siblings” (trust us). We get into: the essential decency of Bruno Ganz, Peter Falk’s warmth, transformative romance, whether angels have grandmas, Henri Alekan’s dignifying vision, Wim Wenders’s lack of strategy, how particulars turn universal, and more. H...
May 01, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 23
This month for our sports issue we’re joined by ace writer and admitted baseball enthusiast Frank Falisi to run the numbers on Bennett Miller’s Oscar-nominated ode to analytics, Moneyball (2011). We touch on romance versus data, the fractious appeal(?) of Billy Beane, how Miller replaced Soderbergh in this case of life imitating art, 2010s’ signature “slick cinema” and baseball’s televisuality, where are the women, decent single dads, and the difference between a big win and a dodged loss. Read ...
Feb 28, 2023•55 min•Ep. 22
For our annual fashionably late “Best Of” issue , we’re looking at a 2022 highlight: Charlotte Wells’s staggering debut feature Aftersun , featuring 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 Whale stumbles precisely where Aftersun soars. For more ...
Jan 30, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 21
December means one thing: Happy Cruisemas, from our home to yours. This month we welcome back special Cruise correspondent and BWDR torchbearer Elizabeth Cantwell to discuss Cameron Crowe’s 2001 Vanilla Sky . Surrealist rom com or indulgent puzzle film? Flop or parable? We get into needle drops, Crowe’s self-referentiality, whether Cruise is always more or less wearing a mask, is Brian real, what got lost in translation (from Alejandro Amenábar’s Abre los ojos ), the Citizen Kane of it all, are ...
Dec 26, 2022•57 min•Ep. 20
Our November episode comes a little late, but in the continuous spirit of “recovery,” Chad and Veronica are joined by writer, editor, and Powell's Books managing editor Kelsey Ford to talk Pedro Almodóvar’s Dolor y Gloria ( Pain and Glory , 2019). We get into the film’s “wildly tender” exploration of autobiography and artistic process, Almodóvar’s aspirational apartments, that for-old-times’-sake kiss, melodrama’s coincidences, being in the mood for moms, and wanting Penelope Cruz to make you a ...
Dec 11, 2022•54 min•Ep. 19
On this very special episode, cohost Veronica sits down with beloved critic Fran Hoepfner to talk highlights of the 60th New York Film Festival–of which Fran’s omnibus review for BWDR is out now. In it, Fran describes the programming slate as offering, maybe, catharsis: “a healing that can only be done in a dark room, surrounded by others, but entirely viewed through your own eyes.” Listen as we break down what we saw with our own eyes, including: wanting to go on spooky vacation ( Eternal Daugh...
Nov 01, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 18
For October’s B-Movies issue–just in time for spooky season–we’re casting an eye back toward RKO darling Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (1942), one of the studio’s most successful forays into low-budget, low-runtime horror. Joining us is film critic and curator, and Artistic Director of Indie Memphis , Miriam Bale . Listen as we historicize our love for Cat People back to Martin Scorsese’s endorsement (“psychosexual!”) in A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through Ame...
Oct 25, 2022•54 min•Ep. 17
It’s a month of time travel at BW/DR . Right on the heels of the growing buzz for Rian Johnson’s new genre love letter Glass Onion , we’re discussing his 2012 sci-fi thriller, Looper . Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a young Bruce Willis (with the help of that infamous prosthetic nose), but we might be the first to ask: is it a metaphor for parenting? Meanwhile, Veronica interprets a symbolic reincarnation and Chad shares his love for the humanity within time travel movies. Plus, for the first time, ...
Sep 28, 2022•56 min•Ep. 16
We’ve traveled back to 1987 to wax ecstatic about Elaine May’s maligned box office failure, Ishtar. We match May’s compassion for the brashly stupid Chuck and Lyle (played by Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, respectively) as Chad explains his personal connection to the movie, Veronica wonders how (and if) the movie successfully balances its many threads, and guest Frank Falisi lays out his theory that this is a high musical à la Vincente Minnelli. Some further reading that we reference on the s...
Aug 30, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 15
For “Voyeur” July, we’re talking one-on-one about The Conversation (1974) 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 Francis Ford Coppola’s “personal” post- Godfather film and what it means to watch, fixate, deduce, mishear, and, despite everything, to long to be seen. Some stuff we reference: Walter Murch’s “Rule of Six” for editors, ...
Jul 25, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 14
The category is summertime sadness as we discuss Luca Guadagnino’s 2009 melodrama I Am Love. Chad and Veronica are joined by author, critic, and Wesleyan film professor Lisa Dombrowski to break down Guadagnino’s long standing collab with Tilda Swinton, the social necessity of melodrama, how DP Yorick Le Saux crafted two distinct worlds, the erotics of shellfish, radical haircuts, justice for Ida, and the power of envisioning private experience. Come for the suffering, stay for the liberation. So...
Jun 30, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 13
To salute our May theme of “Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll,” Chad sits down with deputy cohost Fran Hoepfner and our special guest, movie and music writer Sydney Urbanek , to discuss the greatest initially-PG-rated movie of all time(?): Miloš Forman’s 1984 Amadeus. They get into childhood piano lessons, reading love letters in Salzburg, which composers hated their wives, modern resonance in period films, and the surprising extent of the Mozart cinematic universe, from Fernando and Carolina to Mar...
May 29, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 12
Lock the door: for our April devotional to Paul Newman, we’re revisiting Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Richard Brooks, 1958) with BW/DR contributor and Vulture critic Roxana Hadadi . Join us as we get into the irrepressible chemistry of Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, the pitfalls and opportunities of stage-to-screen adaptation, where Tennessee Williams’s queer plot went, stormy weather indoors and out, and how Cat served as a fulcrum for both stars’ careers. Read Roxana’s 2019 essay on the film here , an...
Apr 24, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 11
Break out the tissues: for our tenth pod, we’ve got a revealing one-on-one episode with cohosts Chad and Veronica swapping a medley of their most memorable, formative movie moments, with a very special cameo by our producer and editor, Eli Sands . We chat about camera movement and transcendence, the power of misremembering, why melodrama rules, the terrible beauty of Cary Grant, the sun, the moon, and our limited time on earth. Deep. Watch along with the film moments we discuss: Notorious (Alfre...
Mar 19, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 10
