The Good, The True, and The Cinema

Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord won this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes. It’s his second win, after 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days in 2007. Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan play a conservative Christian couple who move their five children from Romania to the small Norwegian town where she grew up. When a teacher finds bruises on one of the children, Child Welfare Services steps in. In this episode, Joshua Johnson, John Dougherty, and Craig Detweiler review Fjord and what it has to say about parental righ...

It took Laika 1,155 days, 142,000 3D-printed faces and more than 715 miles of brass wire to build the woods outside Portland, Oregon, one frame at a time. The result is Wildwood, a stop-motion fantasy about a girl who follows a murder of crows into an enchanted forest to bring her baby brother home. In this episode, Joshua Johnson and John Dougherty review Travis Knight’s adaptation of Colin Meloy’s novel, while Craig Detweiler is away traveling. They talk about grief that refuses to let go, ...

Thirty-five days before Elizabeth Holmes reported to federal prison, she let Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim into the rented house outside San Diego that she shared with her partner, Billy Evans, and their two children. The result is You Can See Everything, a documentary about a woman the world had already made up its mind about, and about whether a camera can show anyone as they really are. In this episode, Joshua, John, and Craig review You Can See Everything. They talk about truth and p...

A Facebook data scientist has the files to prove the company knew its algorithm was feeding outrage, and a Wall Street Journal reporter wants the story. Sixteen years after The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin returns to Facebook with The Social Reckoning. In this episode, Joshua Johnson, John Dougherty, and Craig Detweiler review Sorkin’s whistleblower thriller, starring Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, and Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg. Then each host brings a double feature in conversatio...

It's the near future. Methane under a new Greenland drilling field ignites, and an ice shelf the size of Maryland breaks loose and drifts toward Norway. Oil magnate Digger Rockwell and his friends in the White House have three days to warn the world, and they choose silence. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Digger turns it up to 11 and never lets up. In this episode, Joshua Johnson, John Dougherty, and Craig Detweiler review Iñárritu's big swing of a satire: Tom Cruise in prosthetics, foaming at...