The Brattle Film Podcast

We kick off Season Six with our typically epic Reunion Week show, highlighting films celebrating their 75th, 50th, and 25th anniversary of release.

Author Marya E. Gates joins us on the occasion of her new book, Cinema Her Way: Visionary Female Directors in Their Own Words, as a prelude to a series of screenings at the Brattle introduced by Marya. Two of the directors from her book will join her for these screenings: Bette Gordon on April 17 and Mira Nair on May 10th.

Ned, Alissa, and Ivt attempt to explain March Madness to non-sports fan Ian, and we engage in a freewheeling conversation about the many films going head-to-head in this year's March Madness movie brackets.

With the Oscars just days away, we conclude our annual deep dive into more of our favorites from the past year, including most of the films nominated for Academy Awards, alongside many more smaller films that may not have caught the attention of our listeners, and numerous favorite 2024 movies suggested by our audience through voice messages.

In our annual deep dive into some of our favorite, mostly lesser-known titles of the past year, we touch on 50 films recommended by at least two, if not all four hosts. If you think 2024 was not a great year for movies, this might change your mind. We also pay tribute to friend of the Brattle and personal hero to us all, David Lynch, who passed away the day we recorded.

Every January 1st, The Brattle kicks off the new year with a Marx Brothers marathon. 2025 seemed an ideal year to dive deep into the history and films of the legendary comedic team of siblings whose films and distinctive humor have endured for nearly a century and still have as much to say about contemporary times as they did in the 1920s, '30s and '40's

In November, The Brattle invited bestselling author, cinephile, and Brattle regular Rebbeca Kuang to program a day of movies in conjunction with the release of a special collector's edition of her first novel, The Poppy War. That whole day of screenings sold out rapidly, so we invited her onto the podcast to share her thoughts on watching movies, how movies differ from novels, how movies impact an artist working in a different medium, and other topics with our listeners.

For this year's "spooky season" episode, we take a look at some outside-the-box options for October viewing. From those lesser-known or under-celebrated horror movies to counter-programing options to comedies and thrillers with a cozy, Halloweeny vibe, Ian, Ivy, Ned, Alissa, and our listeners have suggestions for you.

We pay tribute to one of our favorite movie stars on the occasion of what would have been her 100th birthday. Lauren Bacall's early films played a major role in the history of the Brattle Theatre, and she's a figure all four of us have long admired. We take a deep dive into some of Bacall's most revered pictures as well as some of her lesser-known films, discuss her life and work, and Ned shares the story of his brief encounter with the screen legend. 

As the dog days of summer approach, we take a look at the sweatiest movies we can think of.  Many of these films artfully showcase how oppressive heat leads to conflict. 

We welcome Susan Seidelman to the podcast in celebration of her new memoir and her upcoming live appearance at the Brattle on July 18th. In addition to listening to stories about her life in film, we talk about what her films have meant to us and what it was like revisiting many of them while reading her book. We also dive into the past couple of months of listener mail.

We kick off Season 5 with our annual Reunion Week show, talking about films celebrating their 75th, 50th, and 25th anniversaries. This year, that's 1949, the year of the first televised Oscar ceremony; 1974, one of the greatest movie years of all time; and 1999, a pivotal, trendsetting year for cinema. While our discussion is tied to the series running at the Brattle, we touch on all sorts of films from each year in this extra-long episode.

We close out our 4th season with a show about needle drops, those brilliant and sometimes lazy pop music choices filmmakers employ to set a tone, evoke an era, express a character's unspoken emotions, or just give the film a burst of energy. 

Boston Underground Film Festival programmers Kevin Monahan and Nicole McControversy join us to discuss the history of this unique fest and their 2024 lineup.

We wrap up awards season with more thoughts on the terrific year in film that was 2023, including discussions about the 10 Best Picture nominees, the documentary and international feature nominees, the idiocy of this year's Oscar controversies as well as other internet hot takes that surrounded the big movies before and after their releases, and we shine our appreciation on the big swings taken by actors and filmmakers this year. 

We begin our deep dive into the abundance of excellent films of 2023, a year that still saw fewer new releases than is typical of pre-pandemic cinema but gave us far more exciting, risky, and unusual movies of quality than we've gotten used to. It was a year of big swings by filmmakers, actors, and studios—most of which paid off, and familiar "comfort fair" from old favorites that still delivered excellence, as well as a fairly resounding rejection of the same-old-same-old corporate franchise product. It was a year that gave us Barbenheimer, the best Godzilla movie since the original, some terrific biographical documentaries, a slew of memorable dance sequences, two Hirokazu Kore-eda features, and six Nicholas Cage pictures! In this show, we focus on the smaller films that might have flown under people's radar, and we'll return next month to talk about the big awards movies.

For our last episode of 2023, we wrap up the Brattle's yearlong look back on 100 years of Warner Brothers by diving into how the studio reacted to the blockbuster era. Examining Warner's overt attempts to capitalize on its "franchise" intellectual properties like Superman and Batman, to its unexpected '80s blockbusters like Private Benjamin, Gremlins, and Beetlejuice, to the risks that paid off like Purple Rain, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and The Lost Boys, to some lesser-known gems like Crossing Delancey, Stand and Deliver, and True Stories.

For this year's Noirvember, we look at crime and caper pictures that center on technology as well as dark dramas that deal with noirish themes of identity and mistrust. Film Noir and Science Fiction are two great cinematic genres that taste great together, and we have a grand old time discussing how the tropes, subtexts, and visual styles of each criss cross and complement each other.

We discuss our love of documentary features and the Brattle's legacy of screening non-fiction, sometimes in conjunction with one of our series partners. We're then joined by the programmer of one of those series: GlobeDocs Film Festival Director of Programming Lisa Viola, who gives us a history of that series and a preview of 2023's line-up.

Diving deep into the ‘80s filmography of one of our favorite actors, we discuss the unique performance style of Christopher Walken; his sense of humor, sense of menace, skills as a dancer, the many commercial failures he made as a leading man during this decade, and why we think all his '80s movies are all worthy of revisiting. Along the way, we get into many cultural aspects of the decade: Madonna power ballads, the Roger Moore era of James Bond, Golan-Globus fairly tale musicals, pre-CGI special effects, actors who say "yes" to every role, and real-life alien abductions.

We pay tribute to the late great Paul Reubens and his iconic film Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Then we take a deep drive into some of the lesser-known works of New Hollywood legend, Billy Friedkin.

For the dog days of summer, we strap in for an episode that asks, if there is such a thing as "elevated horror," then what the devil is unelevated horror? We try to answer that question with a summer series of Thrill Rides featuring giant monsters, killer AI, and demons from hell.

In this rerun, we revisit an early episode that highlighted some small movies (and a couple of big ones) that are very much worth checking out.

We embark on our annual journey into movies celebrating their 25th, 50th, and 75th anniversaries in conjunction with our annual Reunion Week series. (Actually 10 days not a week this year, so this is a double episode!) With our upcoming Noir City Boston program entirely comprised of 75th-anniversary crime pictures, we spend some time on those as well.

We welcome Brian Tamm and Nancy Campbell back to the podcast to talk about the twenty-year history of the Independent Film Festival Boston and the line up for the 2023 fest.

To celebrate "Reel Film Day" and in honor of the Brattle's commitment to screening 35mm prints, we dive deep into why we love showing films on film and why Boston is such a unique and abundant city for repertory cinema. We talk with our fellow programs and projectionists at some of the other five cinemas in Boston and beyond that continue this rich tradition. And we chat with some of our patrons, visitors, and fellow podcaster as to why they love the celluloid experience.

We continue looking back on 2022's best films via some listener suggestions for their favorite films of the year. We then discuss the Oscars nominations, the Best Actress “controversy,” the various rules and non-rules of the Academy's nomination process, the pros and cons of digital color grading, and many other Oscar-adjacent topics we have strong opinions about. There's never a dull moment around awards season.

We look back on the ups and downs of 2022, a year that saw some huge successes and some huge disappointments and some disturbing trends. This episode focuses mostly on the smaller films that people may have missed, but we start out with Top Gun Maverick and Everything Everywhere All at Once because we can't talk about 2022 in film without going deep on the two films that got people back to the cinemas.

We take a look at the Antoine Doinel cycle of five films made about the same character over a twenty year period by director François Truffaut and actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. We're then joined by Truffaut scholar Annette Insdorf for some detail on the iconic French New Wave filmmaker and her insights into these particular films.

Andrew Dominik's contentious new film Blonde, an ahistorical biopic anti-fantasy about Marilyn Monroe provides plenty of fodder for a lively discussion about the film and the legendary actress at its center. We take a deep dive into many of Marilyn's movies, her status as an icon of cinema and of womanhood, and why so many people still feel so passionately about her after all these years.

We herald the return of co-host Alissa Darsa with this spirited, all over the place conversation about alien invasion movies: sci-fi/horror settings, practical vs digital creature effects, blending sci-fi and horror with comedy, and squiggly little wormlike creatures that can take over human beings if we're not careful!

Ian, Ned, and Ivy dive deep into Mark Cousins' own deep dive into that last decade of cinema. We explore Cousins new documentary The Story of Film: A New Generation as well as some of the films it highlights.

We drop our first rerun, both to celebrate the summer session and to bring back the voice of our co-host Alissa Darsa, who is still on hiatus. But first we play some more listener voicemail about favorite movie theaters, and Ned, Ivy, and Ian share some Brattle updates and news.

After listening to some listener voicemails, Ned, Ivy, and Ian talk about Road Movies and the Brattle's July 2022 series "Lost in America: the joys and terrors of being lost on the road in the United States."

For our epic 50th episode Ian, Ivy, and Ned are joined by the Brattle's head manager Alex Kittle for a deep dive into movies celebrating their 25th, 50th, and 75th anniversaries. 

Ian, Ned, and Ivy are joined by writer/director Jane Schoenbrun to talk about their debut feature, inspirations, and early years falling in love with cinema at the Brattle.

We welcome writer and critic Scott Meslow for a rollicking conversation about one of the most love and most maligned film genres, and we discuss his new book "From Hollywood with Love: The Rise, and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy."

After lamenting the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences latest attempt at making the Oscars more appealing to people who hate the Oscars, we dive deep into many of the nominated movies.  

Ian, Ivy, Ned, and Alissa discuss the wide-ranging Best of 2021's lesser known titles. We touch on over 35 small (and not so small) releases from this strange year that gave us COVID variants, an intensifying "streaming vs theaters" debate, the mixed return of the blockbuster, the embrace of modern Black and White cinematography, and the vast number of terrific directorial debuts (from actors, a playwright, a novelist, and a composer)!

We close out the year with a deep dive into the career of Hong Kong film director, screenwriter, and producer Wong Kar-wai. The early films of the arthouse fav are now available in new 4K restorations, which the Brattle is running between Christmas and New Years. We discuss the various waves of Wong's popularity, the Brattle's history of programing his work, and our takes on eight of his films.

On the occasion of the Brattle's 2021 Thanksgiving program of Film Noir and Noir-adjacent movies celebrating their 75th anniversary, we dive deep into the genre most closely associated with The Brattle. We explore the history of Film Noir, what we each think constitutes a true Noir picture, and why there is so much debate about this distinctive style of filmmaking through a number of movies released in 1946, the year the term "Film Noir" was coined.

We're joined by film writer, programmer, producer, founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, and now documentarian Kier-La Janisse to talk about her new film Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, as well as the Oct/Nov Brattle series inspired by it - Folk Horror Beyond the Wicker Man.

Are silent movies homework? That's the question we wrestle with as we look forward to the first annual National Silent Movie Day on Sept. 29th. We explore our preconceptions about silent films, the barriers that prevent many audiences from embracing silent films, and some of our favorite silent films (as well as a few new discoveries). But first we spend the first 12 minutes looking ahead to this years Toronto International Film Festival.

We spend the first 20 min of this month's show discussing the Scarlett Johansson vs. Disney lawsuit and its potential ramifications on film exhibition, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the future of movie stars playing fictional characters with pre-existing fanbases. Then we dive deep into a topic Ian, Ivy, Ned and Alissa all agree on—the love of Jim Henson and films he produced, directed, and contributed to; as well as how the craft of cinematic puppetry has lived on long beyond Henson's death.

We kick off Season Three by revisiting the years 1946, 1971, and 1996 on the occasion of their 75th, 50th, and 25th anniversaries. Ian, Ivy, Ned, and Alissa choose one film from each year to discuss along with the three official "Reunion Week" films that were screened as part of the Brattle's first week back open to the public after the long COVID-19 shut down.

We dive deep into the commonalities, tropes, joys, and contrivances in iconic movies about summer jobs.

We announce our plan for reopening the cinema to the public after 14 months of darkness, and then we return to our 20th anniversary celebration by highlighting some of the 400 films the Brattle has premiered during the past 20 years. 

We're joined by Brian Tamm and Nancy Campbell of the IFFBoston to talk about this year's line-up, doing the festival virtually for the first time, and how excited we all are that cinemas are finally reopening.

After lamenting the loss of The ArcLight Cinema chain, Ned, Ivy, Alissa and Ian return to discussing the Oscars, the Brattle's Oscar Party, the nominated shorts of 2020, and the nominated the animation, documentary, and international features.

Ned, Ivy, Alissa, and Ian discuss their individual histories and feelings about the Academy Awards, and dive deep into this year's nominated films and performances. 

We take a look back on the 20 years of our theatre's history as a thriving non-profit institution. Looking at the highs and lows, the film's we premiered, and the decisions Ned and Ivy made when they took on running the Brattle. And we address a listener question about the "cinema as church" analogy we made during our Movies About Going to the Movies episode, and consider the difference between the way films depict movie-going vs TV-watching: https://vimeo.com/showcase/5148645/video/317138170