It was David Cronenberg’s birthday on Tuesday, and Seth Smith’s new film Tin Can drops on VOD today, so what better time for another bonus episode of Someone Else’s Movie, I ask you.

That’s because Seth picked Cronenberg’s 1986 breakthrough remake of The Fly, which cast real-life partners Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis as a scientist and a journalist whose budding relationship turns into operatic tragedy when a lab accident splices his DNA with that of a common housefly, mutating him into something new and terrifying before her eyes. 

Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web. And then enjoy what looks to be the first warm weekend in months!

… seriously, we’ve all earned it.

Seven years ago today, I dropped the first episode of Someone Else’s Movie. Today, I’m releasing the podcast’s 384th episode, which is ridiculous and wonderful in equal measure. I had no idea where this thing would go, or even if anyone would listen to it, and it’s turned into the thing that I most enjoy doing.

If you’re a subscriber, thank you so much for indulging me. And if you’re a relative newcomer to the podcast but want to become a completist, it might interest you to learn that the first year of the show can be yours to download for just twenty Canadian dollars at payhip.com/semcast, ad-free and in glorious monaural sound. That’s 52 episodes in all, 46 of them no longer available to stream thanks to last year’s Simplecast server migration, featuring guests like Natalie Merchant, Nelson George, Scott Thompson, Faith Erin Hicks, Aaron Abrams, Ennis Esmer, Katie Boland, Kristian Bruun, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead and many, many more. (The full track listing is available on the site; go see who else you might have missed!)

And if you want to stick to the regular, free podcast, check out today’s episode features filmmaker Igor Drlja?a — whose new film The White Fortress screens tomorrow night at TIFF Bell Lightbox as part of the Canada’s Top Ten program — on Peter Watkins’ nightmarish and eerily prescient 1971 thriler Punishment Park, which imagines an America sliding gleefully towards fascism in a way that feels awfully convincing.

Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web. And really, think about catching up to the earlier episodes. There’s some great stuff in there, and you can also hear me figure out the best version of the podcast from one week to the next. That’s cool, right? I mean, I think it’s cool.

But really, thanks for listening.

Hey, look! A bonus Friday episode of Someone Else’s Movie!

I felt a little guilty about the shortness of Kogonada’s episode — though, again, it totally worked — so I’m making it up to you with actor and filmmaker Agam Darshi, whose first feature Donkeyhead opens theatrically today in Toronto, Regina and Saskatoon. It’s been streaming on international Netflix for a few weeks now, but this is the first time most Canadian audiences will have a chance to see it. And they should! It’s quite good, an empathetic story of a blocked writer struggling with being swarmed by her more successful siblings as their father’s death draws near.

Agam wanted to talk about William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Baz Luhrmann’s hot-blooded 1996 breakout — the movie that spun Shakespearean romantic tragedy into a fantasia of gangster pictures, pop-culture riffing and teen-dream fantasy. Totally holds up, by the way, and Luhrmann’s feel for casting may never have been better applied. Revisiting it after a quarter of a century was a lot of fun, and I think you’ll enjoy the experience as well.

You know this bit, right? Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web at your convenience. But don’t sleep on it. There’s another episode coming on Tuesday, after all.

Also, while I wasn’t able to review any of them because I’m taking some time off, Turning Red, After Yang, Donkeyhead and Wildhood are all well worth watching this weekend. It’s a great week for the movies!

This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie is one of the shortest,  but in a weird way that kind of works for the guest and his choice.

See, Kogonada was only available on the press day for his brilliant new film After Yang, and that meant we had a tight fifteen-minute window to dive into Hirokazo Kore-eda’s wistful, endlessly moving celestial 1998 drama After Life,

But there’s something about having a time limit that really works for a movie that ponders eternity in the context of how short an earthly life can be — and that ties into something about Kogonada’s own film as well, a gentle SF-infused drama about life and death and memory that intersects with Kore-eda’s film on a couple of key levels. Anyway, listen to this episode, and then see After Yang. You’ll get it.

Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web. And then … well, then things are about to get a little quieter. I’m taking some vacation time, so there’ll be nothing to post in terms of reviews.

But it’s the seventh anniversary of SEMcast next week, and I’ve got something nifty planned for that, so … I dunno, come back next week and find out what it is. I’ll be waiting.

Hey, look! It’s a special weekend post, because yesterday’s episode of NOW What deserves your immediate attention: It’s a conversation between Rad and our mutual friend Sarah Polley about her new book of essays, Run Towards the Danger, which hit stores this week.

A couple of excerpts aside, I haven’t yet read the book — only got my copy today! — but the episode stands just fine on its own. And honestly, any opportunity to listen to Sarah Polley is time well spent, if I do say so myself.

So listen to that! It’s on podcast platforms everywhere, and also right here on the NOW site. And then you can check out this week’s What to Watch page, which features my reviews of Bootlegger and Fresh, among others; you might also want to check out my stand-alone web review of Pieces of Her and save yourself a few hours of misery.

See? I’m helpful!

Look, it’s been a grim week and we all need something nice. So for this episode of Someone Else’s Movie, I am downright delighted to present one hour of Ennis Esmer and Aaron Abrams talking about the entire 007 franchise, which Ennis just discovered last Christmas and which Aaron loves inside and out.

It’s good. It’s fun. And most important, it’s in no way relevant to the current geopolitical moment, which makes it a form of self-care! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web. Sometimes it’s good to laugh.

Also: Other podcasts! Last Friday’s NOW What was so big we had to break it into two sub-episodes: First, there’s Rad’s conversation with TikTok star Akintoye, part of our Sound of Toronto Right Now package, and then there are my chats with BLK: An Origin Story producer-directors Jennifer Holness and Sudz Sutherland and Last One Laughing Canada contestants Colin Mochrie and Andrew Phung. Listen to ’em all! And then watch their stuff!

And after that, read. There’s last week’s What to Watch page, and the March lookaheads for Netflix, Disney+, CBC Gem, Amazon and Crave are all online, as is my review of Matt Reeves’ The Batman.

I wrote news blurbs about Sort Of getting a second season and the response of Toronto’s indie screens to today’s lifting of the proof-of-vaccination requirement in movie theatres.

And there’s more stuff coming, because I am nothing if not an optimist. Hang tight.

I don’t know that I can be critical of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I also don’t know that I need to. It’s pretty much perfect, as these things go — exhilarating in its action sequences, relaxed and mature in its quieter moments, and just carrying enough of the cynical 70s in its screenplay to be aware that through all rousing adventure, its heroes are still sliding towards another terrible war.

So when Studio 666 director BJ McDonnell said he wanted to discuss it, I was all ears. We didn’t have quite as much time as I would have liked, but you know how press tours are, and I think we made the most of our window.

Wanna listen? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web. It’s right there waiting for you!

And since I included all of last week’s work in Friday’s post, that’s pretty much it for this one. But any post that mentions Raiders is packed with goodness. Trust me.

Hey, look! A rare Friday blog post! But with good reason, since I have another NOW cover package to share with you.

That’d be my interview with Ronnie Rowe Jr. and Mouna Traore, two of the stars of The Porter, a new CBC drama that premieres on Monday and which is really very solid.

In fact, we liked it so much that we decided to put the entire creative team — creator and co-star Arnold Pinnock, showrunners Annmarie Morais and Marsha Greene and directors Charles Officer and RT Thorne — on today’s episode of NOW What, talking about the long road of development and production, So you should listen to that afterward.

Then you may feel free to check out this week’s What to Watch column, and read my longer reviews of Severance, which is excellent, and Uncharted, which is not. And that’s pretty much that, honestly. Enjoy the long weekend!

This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie came together really quickly, but boy oh boy was it worth the rush. I’ve been a fan of Josephine Decker since I saw her early films Butter on the Latch and Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, and that admiration went up considerably further when I saw Madeleine’s Madeleine, a riveting and almost painfully intimate look at a teenage actor disintegrating under the tutelage of a theatre director. Her next film, Shirley, was a less immediate but equally intense meditation on how authors use other people to spark their imagination; her new film, The Sky Is Everywhere goes back to the whirling emotions of the teenage heart for a story about a high-school senior trying to process the death of her older sister, and being pulled in two very different directions as a result.

So I was delighted to be able to snag Josephine for the podcast. and more delighted still when she chose Babe — Chris Noonan and George Miller’s pretty much perfect 1995 adaptation of Dick King-Smith’s The Sheep-Pig — as her film of choice. I love it too. How could anyone not.

You’ll want to join us for this. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web. And then you can get on to everything else I’ve produced in the last week, including a new episode of NOW What where Glenn and I talk to Colin Asuncion, Haley McGee and Bee Quammie about dating in Year II of a pandemic for this year’s Love & Sex Issue, or last week’s What to Watch page and my longer web reviews of Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi (yay!) and Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile (meh).

Oh, and I wrote some words about Ivan Reitman’s passing too, if you’re curious.  Have you watched Dave lately? You should watch Dave.

This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie is all about the sleaze, as writer-director Jefferson Moneo drops in to talk about his love for Brian De Palma’s Body Double — a seamy, seething mash-up of Rear Window and Vertigo set in the Los Angeles porn demimonde, with Craig Wasson as Jimmy Stewart, Melanie Griffith as Kim Novak and Frankie Goes to Hollywood as themselves, because it was 1984 and that’s how the world worked.

You get it, right? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web. And then you can check out my other podcast appearance today, as an expert witness to Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven and Terrence Malick’s The New World on Hollywood Suite’s 2005 episode of A Year in Film. We recorded this back in December, so I’m curious to hear it myself!

And of course the day wouldn’t be complete without my take on the Oscar nominations, which are once again about 75% worthwhile and 25% mind-boggling nonsense. Like, Don’t Look Up for Best Picture? Being the Ricardos for acting nods? Come the fuck on.

Anyway. Just in case I don’t get the chance to post on Friday, I’m hosting the next edition of Secret Movie Club on Sunday morning at the Lightbox. Tickets are still available, if you’re in town and comfortable with a 50% capacity crowd. See you there, maybe?