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PODCAST

The Long Take Review

Jen Sopchockchai Bankard

Four college professors talk film — providing insight, not assigning homework. thelongtake.substack.com

tv & film film reviews

All Episodes

86:28

The Materialists Review

The Long Take Review ·

2025/06/27

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 our

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120:36

Jaws 50th Anniversary with Sarah Hastings on the LTR...

The Long Take Review ·

2025/06/20

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

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87:51

The Phoenician Scheme Review

The Long Take Review ·

2025/06/14

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

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101:32

The Life of Chuck Review

The Long Take Review ·

2025/06/05

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 International

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102:32

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Review

The Long Take Review ·

2025/05/29

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 his

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84:47

Thunderbolts Review*

The Long Take Review ·

2025/05/20

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

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100:22

Conclave with Karl LaClair is on the (brand new!) LTR...

The Long Take Review ·

2025/05/13

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 Star

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128:50

Revenge of the Sith 20th Anniversary Special

The Long Take Review ·

2025/05/11

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

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87:32

Sinners Review

The Long Take Review ·

2025/05/02

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 of

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121:49

2025 Movie Hype Draft

The Long Take Review ·

2025/04/25

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 first

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85:41

2017 Oscar Fairy Flashback

The Long Take Review ·

2025/04/17

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 Picture

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55:45

Electric State Review

The Long Take Review ·

2025/04/11

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 supporting

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70:10

Captain America: Brave New World Review

The Long Take Review ·

2025/04/03

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 of all

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73:23

Black Bag Review

The Long Take Review ·

2025/03/28

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 called 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 give

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102:12

Mickey 17 Review

The Long Take Review ·

2025/03/21

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. With a

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54:56

Flow Review

The Long Take Review ·

2025/03/13

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 film

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100:04

Oscar Reactions 2025

The Long Take Review ·

2025/03/05

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 more

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81:56

I'm Still Here Review

The Long Take Review ·

2025/02/28

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

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215:41

Final Oscar Predictions 2025

The Long Take Review ·

2025/02/27

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 three of

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91:16

Nickel Boys Review

The Long Take Review ·

2025/02/20

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 person

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140 results

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