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. Tha...
Jul 01, 2025•1 hr 42 min
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 ou...
Jun 27, 2025•1 hr 26 min
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 Has...
Jun 20, 2025•2 hr 1 min
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 tr...
Jun 14, 2025•1 hr 28 min
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 Interna...
Jun 05, 2025•1 hr 42 min
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 ...
May 29, 2025•1 hr 43 min
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...
May 20, 2025•1 hr 25 min
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...
May 13, 2025•1 hr 40 min
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! ...
May 11, 2025•2 hr 9 min
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...
May 02, 2025•1 hr 28 min
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 fir...
Apr 25, 2025•2 hr 2 min
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 Pictu...
Apr 17, 2025•1 hr 26 min
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 supportin...
Apr 11, 2025•56 min
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 o...
Apr 03, 2025•1 hr 10 min
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 call ed 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 ...
Mar 28, 2025•1 hr 13 min
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. Wi...
Mar 21, 2025•1 hr 42 min
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 f...
Mar 13, 2025•55 min
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 ...
Mar 05, 2025•1 hr 40 min
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 ...
Feb 28, 2025•1 hr 22 min
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 thr...
Feb 27, 2025•3 hr 36 min
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 p...
Feb 20, 2025•1 hr 31 min
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...
Feb 18, 2025•2 hr 40 min
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...
Feb 12, 2025•1 hr 17 min
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 off...
Feb 04, 2025•1 hr 31 min
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,...
Jan 24, 2025•1 hr 43 min
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...
Jan 22, 2025•2 hr 13 min
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, emotiona...
Jan 13, 2025•2 hr 27 min
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. Wou...
Jan 06, 2025•1 hr 34 min
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 ...
Dec 24, 2024•1 hr 29 min
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 previou...
Dec 21, 2024•1 hr 26 min
