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PODCAST

The Movies

I"m Daniel Berrios. This is my journey to learn about the movies - the art form I adore - one review, interview, editorial at a time. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Take care of the movies.

tv & film film reviews

All Episodes

00:34:53

S4E23. Best Picture Showcase - EMILIA PEREZ dir....

The Movies ·

2025/03/01

EMILIA PEREZ, Jacques Audiard's audacious trilingual crime musical, is our next stop on the Best Picture Showcase! The most critically divisive of the nominees tells the story of a Mexican drug kingpin (Karla Sofia Gascon) who enlists a junior lawyer (Zoe Saldana) to help her transition into living life as a woman via securing gender-affirming surgery, faking her death, moving her wife (Selena Gomez) and kids to Switzerland. It's...a lot.And it's weirdly not a spoiler to say this is only

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00:30:45

S4E22. Best Picture Showcase - ANORA dir. Sean Baker

The Movies ·

2025/03/01

The next stop for the Best Picture Showcase leads us to the nominee widely considered the frontrunner for this year's Best Picture Oscar, ANORA.This movie, produced, edited, written and directed by Sean Baker, follows the whirlwind romance of a Brooklyn sex worker named Anora (a hot-headed Mikey Madison, and by the way, it's Ani, not Anora, she doesn't like her full name) and her wealthy patron-turned-lover Vanya (an impulsive Mark Eydelshteyn whose face appears fixed in an eternal sheepish,

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00:22:16

S4E21. Interview | COLD WALLET Director Cutter...

The Movies ·

2025/02/28

Today on The Movies, I got a double-interview episode! I interviewed the director and actors from COLD WALLET, a new crypto thriller about a group of Redditors looking for revenge against the influencer responsible for scamming them out of a "life savings" level of money. They break into the influencer's home in pursuit of his cold wallet, a USB drive that holds millions of dollars in crypto, with a goal to return the funds back to every fellow victim.First round goes to actors Raul

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00:28:03

S4E20. COLD WALLET (2025) dir. Cutter Hodierne

The Movies ·

2025/02/28

In COLD WALLET, a trio of Redditors (Raul Castillo, Tony Cavalaro, Melonie Diaz) take it upon themselves to make a crypto influencer (Josh Brener) pay for tanking the coin, freezing user assets and suddenly demanding they owe the app almost double what they paid to get to said position. Their plan? Find the influencer, steal his cold wallet drives that store ALL his crypto balances and let them loose into the wild for any victim to reclaim. It's a Robin Hood deal.But the mind games have only

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00:27:23

S4E19. Best Picture Showcase - CONCLAVE dir. Edward...

The Movies ·

2025/02/26

The Best Picture Showcase rolls on with Edward Berger's CONCLAVE, a drama about the election of a new Pope after the sudden death of the old Holy Father. Left with the responsibilities of wrangling every cardinal from 'round the world, along with their egos and ideologies, is a soon-to-be-exhausted Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes). As the days and rounds of voting wear on, Lawrence fears, especially after the muckraking dredges up personal and professional drama, a wealth of spiritual doubts

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00:24:40

S4E18. ARMAND (2025) dir. Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel

The Movies ·

2025/02/20

ARMAND follows Elisabeth (Renate Reinsve), a single mother of the titular 6-year-old. She's called into Armand's school for a parent-teacher conference alongside Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Anders (Endre Hellestveit) the parents of Armand's best friend, Jon.To say it's bad news is the most severe understatement. Jon has accused Armand of sexual assault, the violent and dehumanizing kind one would expect from someone with a high-schooler's understanding of

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00:32:15

S4E17. Interview | LIFELINE Director Feras Alfuqaha

The Movies ·

2025/02/20

Feras Alfuqaha loves to gab about moviemaking. His directorial debut, LIFELINE, premieres in select theatres and VOD on February 21st. It's the story of a suicide hotline volunteer (Josh Stewart) who receives a call from someone he believes to be his younger self (Judah Lewis). The caller says they're at a motel with gun in hand; they'll kill themselves at midnight. Clock's ticking.Based on my interview with Alfuqaha, if I had to associate a word with him, it'd be preparation. He

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00:16:14

S4E16. LIFELINE (2025) dir. Feras Alfuqaha

The Movies ·

2025/02/20

Feras Alfuqaha's LIFELINE stars Josh Stewart as Steven Thomas. Steven's spending his New Year's Eve volunteering at a suicide hotline during the graveyard shift. He's the only guy in the office during a time of year in which folks tend to really feel their pain. The holidays can be rough on some of us.Steven handles a series of calls but one stands out: a college-aged kid who says he's gone to a motel with a gun with plans to kill himself at midnight. The kid's name? Steven

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00:28:53

S4E15. Interview | WE BEAT THE DREAM TEAM Director...

The Movies ·

2025/02/16

I interview Michael Tolajian, the director of the new basketball documentary WE BEAT THE DREAM TEAM, premiering on Max February 17. We talk the personal impact the 1992 Dream Team had on Tolajian, the process of establishing relationships with his documentary subjects, which of his favorite directors could stand a chance in the NBA and a whole. lot. more.---Rate, review and subscribe to The Movies wherever you listen to podcasts!Follow The Movies on social media: linktr.ee/themovies_pod

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00:22:58

S4E14. WE BEAT THE DREAM TEAM (2025) dir. Michael...

The Movies ·

2025/02/16

A name like the Dream Team understandably comes with baggage. Who could make up a roster so great, the result can only be described as a dream? In the basketball world, guys like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, Karl Malon-shall I go on?These men were recruited to represent the United States in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the first year in which NBA players would be allowed to play as Olympians. No pressure.But as Michael Tolajian's new documentary WE

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00:24:03

S4E13. I LOVE YOU FOREVER (2025) dir. Cazzie David &...

The Movies ·

2025/02/15

I LOVE YOU FOREVER is an anti-romcom. I don't say this in a way that suggests a cheeky, defiant stance against Valentine's Day. I say this because it weaponizes romcom tropes against us in its telling of an abusive relationship.You can track the trajectory: lonely 20-something girl (Sofia Black D'Elia) meets accomplished 20-something guy (Ray Nicholson). He's thoughtful, attentive, hygienic. (Men, we can actually trip on the bar, it's so low.) They banter. They date. They kiss

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00:43:55

S4E11. Best Picture Showcase - THE SUBSTANCE dir....

The Movies ·

2025/02/08

Continuing the Best Picture Showcase, in which I cover this year's Oscars nominees for Best Picture, the road takes us to a tour-de-force of an original, pulse-pounding, "sickly entertaining" movie, Coralie Fargeat's THE SUBSTANCE.This is an audacious, whip-smart body horror movie that's bound to break your heart as much as it'll force you to recoil in disgust...and maybe even make you laugh along the way?Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is an aging actress who, after being

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00:25:37

S4E11. Best Picture Showcase - DUNE: PART 2 dir....

The Movies ·

2025/02/06

I continue covering this year's Oscars nominees for Best Picture with Denis Villeneuve's DUNE: PART 2, the continuation of Villeneuve's attempt to create high-minded blockbuster fantasy to a new generation. When I was a kid, I had LORD OF THE RINGS. As a 30-year-old, I have this.Think the darkness of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK with the expansive scale of THE TWO TOWERS and you'll have an idea of the second chapter of Paul Atreides' (Timothee Chalamet) journey from naive boy to insecure, megalomaniacal

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00:21:02

S4E10. The FANTASTIC FOUR Trailer Is Okay, But That's...

The Movies ·

2025/02/05

Marvel Studios released the first teaser for THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, premiering July 25th in theaters. After decades of attempts to try and get Marvel's "First Family" right, this movie, directed by Matt Shakman, looks to plant its flag as the first entry in the franchise to satisfy both fans and critics alike. What did I think of the trailer? It's okay. However, we're no longer in 2005. The superhero genre has grown, gained legitimacy through the Academy Awards, earned billions of

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00:32:33

S4E9. Best Picture Showcase - THE BRUTALIST dir....

The Movies ·

2025/02/03

Welcome to the Best Picture Showcase, a miniseries on THE MOVIES where I review each nominee for this year's Academy Award for Best Picture. With each installment, I hope to answer the following: 1) What's the movie about? 2) What's it feel like to sit through the movie? 3) Did I like it? 4) Should it and will it win Best Picture? What's my current ranking of the nominees? 5) How can you catch this movie? I hope to make this list feel more accessible for folx intimidated or turned

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00:16:44

S4E8. Interview | ART AND LIFE: THE STORY OF JIM...

The Movies ·

2025/01/30

I interview John Makens, the director of ART AND LIFE: THE STORY OF JIM PHILLIPS. The 81-year-old graphic designer Jim Phillips may not be instantly recognizable, his art - the "Screaming Hand," the "red dot" Santa Cruz Skateboards logo, the myriad of custom skateboarding full-board decals, the cartoonish California outdoor mosaics, the rock posters for the likes of The Beatles & Neil Young - absolutely is. His art spans decades, hobbies and generations, cultivating the

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00:22:02

S4E7. ART AND LIFE: THE STORY OF JIM PHILLIPS (2025)...

The Movies ·

2025/01/30

Jim Phillips is an artist whose cartoonish mosaics of California outdoor life have informed public understanding and appreciation of skateboarding, surfing, hot rod and rock music cultures. In ART AND LIFE: THE STORY OF JIM PHILLIPS, documentarian John Makens tells his story, from the times when Phillips sketched for fiberglas companies amidst a surfer party lifestyle to when Santa Cruz Skateboards & NHS brought him in to develop the first full-board designs that would first cement

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00:37:15

S4E6. Listener Request | DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) dir....

The Movies ·

2025/01/26

On this episode of The Movies, I fulfill another listener request! My buddy Jarrett Barnard sent me a stone-cold classic to cover: 1978's DAWN OF THE DEAD, directed by George A. Romero. Widely regarded as the best of Romero's DEAD franchise, this film about a group of survivors waiting out the zombie apocalypse inside a shopping mall is a hallmark moment for horror fans, beautifully blending slapstick and viscera before Sam Raimi & Peter Jackson took their proverbial batons and ran their

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00:27:19

S4E5. The 2025 Oscars Nominations

The Movies ·

2025/01/24

The nominations for the 97th Academy Awards dropped yesterday morning to the usual flurry of praise and disappointment. (No BABYGIRL? Academy, you will ROT.)Today, I list the Best Picture nominees along with their other nominations, discuss some other movies that jumped out at me and set the stage for the Best Picture Showcase. Before the ceremony on March 2nd, I'll be covering each of the 10 nominees on the show, ranking them along the way. You ready? We're over the hump of awards season

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00:34:33

S4E4. Interview | BIRDEATER directors Jack Clark &...

The Movies ·

2025/01/12

On this episode, I interview BIRDEATER directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir. The movie, about a bride-to-be invited to her fiance's unhinged bachelor party, has taken Australian audiences by storm since its Sydney Film Festival premiere in 2023. Featuring at Melbourne International Film Festival & SXSW, the movie's garnered audience and critical praise, culminating (as of the time I write this) in a nomination for Best Indie Film at the 2025 AACTA Awards (think Australia's combined Oscars and Emmy

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269 results

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