Description: Tiffany Vazquez joins to talk about Barry Jenkins, who is arguably the most impactful individual who has worked with A24. Moonlight famously won the Best Picture Academy Award, and he’s been putting out great work ever since. We briefly touch on If Beale Street Could Talk, The Underground Railroad, Mufasa, and we get into his influence…

Description: Christian Gutierrez joins Aaron for the first time. He has a podcast called Reel Latinos, and is an expert in Latino cinema. He has tastes for world cinema and classic Hollywood. We talked about the July 2025 Criterion announcements, and we went through the TCM Film Festival schedule to look at conflicts and which films for him to prio…

Description: Ali Khamseh joins Aaron from Tehran, Iran. It was the first time podcasting with someone anywhere close to that region, and it was a delight! Ali talked about his projects, the state of cinema in Iran, many of the Iranian masters like Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi, and how some filmmakers have become internationally known while pac…

Description: David Blakeslee joins Aaron. Jill is absent for the near future, and while she can’t be replaced, David is a terrific co-host. We start by talking about Killers of the Flower Moon and some viral news that Criterion had allegedly approached Apple to put out a release, and Apple refused. We dig into the source and have some questions. Wh…

Description: Alex Mell-Taylor from Alex Has Opinions joins to talk about A24 and representation. We talk about some of the recent examples of positive representation and compare it with some not so great examples. We also talk about how someone who is not part of a particular group benefits from seeing what their life is like when representative ac…

Description: Chris Haskell from They Live by Film and Punk Vacation joins to talk about Miramax. Covering a film company is not easy, and it’s saying a lot to credit A24 as being solely responsible for a modern new wave movement. There were many independent movements throughout film history, and the independent film was truly embraced in the 1990s.…

Description: Jill and Aaron talk about Flow, which appears to be the first Janus Contemporary that will get a Criterion spine release. We then talk about the May 2025 Announcements, and the new trend of increasing the number of new titles with upgrades. We speculate whether this has to do with the Steven Rales and Indian Paintbrush acquisition. Lin…

Description: Imogen Sara Smith joins to talk about her plans regarding the upcoming Powell & Pressburger Online Class she is teaching. She also touches on some exciting topics she wants to cover later, and what types of film topics she finds interesting. Links: Video of this episode Matters of Life and Death: The Cinema of Powell and Pressburger – …

Description: Becky D’Anna joins to talk about Alex Garland, and specifically the films that have been released by A24 — Ex Machina, Men, and Civil War. We talk about the sense of dread that he creates and how he’s such an excellent writer. Becky compares his work to Ingmar Bergman. He uses sound and photography to accomplish this, and there are par…

Description: Zach Bryant from They Live By Film joins to talk about Osgood Perkins, who has one film with A24 — The Blackcoat’s Daughter. He has since achieved acclaim thanks to Longlegs and has an upcoming film called The Monkey that looks to be yet another breakthrough in his career. We get into his other films, and also Bryan Bertino’s The Monst…

Description: Derek Smith talks about his film experience and the Online Classes he plans to teach, beginning with Japanese New Wave and eventually David Lynch. Links: Video of this episode Japanese New Wave 1965 – 1970s – Details and Registration Japanese New Wave 1956 – 1964 – Details and Registration Derek Smith’s Guide Page Slant Magazine – Dere…

Description: Jill and Aaron are back after a little bit of an unintentional break. We talk about Aaron’s upcoming new book. We pay tribute to the loss of one of our favorite filmmakers, David Lynch. Finally we talk about the April 2025 Announcements, which include seven titles, with two from Sean Baker. We have a brief digression about Gerard Depar…

Description: Aaron is writing an A24 book with Jill Blake editing. There is a Kickstarter campaign that is in progress right now, and this is the second episode of the accompanying podcast. Jill and Aaron talk about David Lynch first and foremost, as he is omnipresent with any conversation about modern cinema. We then get into the book and how we a…

Description: Aaron is writing an A24 book. There is a Kickstarter campaign that is in progress right now, and this is the first episode of the accompanying podcast. This episode will appear in all podcast player apps soon, and is always available here on the website and on our YouTube channel. We are very excited about the book and looking forward …

Description: We visited with Daniela Taplin Lundberg, the owner of Stay Gold Productions and host of the Hollywood Gold Podcast. She has produced films such as Harriet, Honey Boy, Beasts of No Nation, The Kids Are All Right, Under the Silver Lake, Nanny, and several more. Her podcast is focused on showcasing producers with stories of the blood, swe…

Description: Celeste de la Cabra is a horror expert, at least in Aaron’s opinion. They spent some time going through Aaron’s Top 100 Horror Films of the 21st century. Celeste had not looked at the list beforehand, and it turned out she had seen 63 of the films. She had some great takes, as expected. Links: Video of this episode Aaron’s Top Horror F…

Description: Derek Smith joins Aaron to talk about the Slant list for best horror films of the 21st century. Derek writes for Slant and is going to be a guide for CineJourneys, so he had some great insights. Of course we quibbled about some of the results, but that’s kind of the point with lists. Links: Video of this Conversation Slant Magazine – T…

Description: Jill and Aaron review the Variety 100 Best Horror films, film by film. Somehow Jill was possessed and we aren’t sure why, but good news, she’s fine now. Overall we thought this list was okay. We have some quibbles and there were a couple of films we thought were too high, some too low. There were a couple that we thought were egregious…

Description: Brad McDermott joins to talk about the Japanese Horror Journey that is in progress, including Onibaba, Hausu, and the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa. We also get into discussions about The Substance and just generally spooky season films. Links: Video of this Conversation Japanese Horror Journey Details Follow Us: Cinejourneys – YouTube Cha…

Description: Kristina Dijan joins to talk about the upcoming Japanese Horror Journey and also talks Spooky Season movie watching in October, with recommendations. Aaron talks about The Substance and how it is a must see, preferably in theaters. Links: Video Version of this Discussion CineJourneys – October Japanese Horror Details and Registration O…

Description: The second chapter of our Classic Suspense Journey is called “Buckle Up.” We watched Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (1953), which is widely considered to be among the best suspense films of all time. We followed it with William Friedkin’s Sorcerer (1977), which had some distribution challenges (mostly due to being released c…

Description: Jill and Aaron welcome Keith Enright, The Completionist. Keith is a longtime friend of both Criterion Now and CineJourneys, and he was primarily the motivator for us to schedule a Coen Brothers Screwball Comedy Journey. This episode is a brief conversation after the conclusion of the journey, and we talk some about the Coen Brothers be…

Description: This is the first episode of Read Her to Heaven, which is our new Journey where we look at film related books. We were delighted to have Erica Shultz as our inaugural guest. She is the author of The Sweetest Taboo: An Unapologetic Guide to Child Kills in Film. which is as crazy and also hilarious as it sounds. We released our YouTube C…

Description: This is the third chapter of our Coming of Age Journey, and we really dived deep into Dazed and Confused. We also discussed Rohmer’s The Green Ray, and the pairing worked well because there’s a clear connection between the work of Rohmer and Linklater. The Green Ray is cited as a direct influence. As for Dazed and Confused, we shared a…

Description: Ryan Verrill joins the podcast to announce that we are joining Someone’s Favorite Productions network. We also get into the November 2024 announcements on the heels of having already reacted (somewhat critically) to the CC40 boxset. We are pleased with this month, and we show a different side of Mifune to show our gratitude. Links: Cri…

Description: Jill and Aaron take a look at the recently announced Criterion Collection 40 box set, which was based on the selections of guests who have visited their closet and recorded a video. We think this was a bad idea and strays from their vision, and we are not exactly sure who this is for. Links: Criterion Now – Episode 151 – Video Criterio…

Description: Imogen Sara Smith joins for our special episode 150, which we recorded without interruptions. We talk about a number of subjects including the thrill and rarity of seeing a repertory nitrate screening. She talks about her craft process, and how she approaches writing about film. We talk about modern French film and specifically how Cel…

Description: Jill and Aaron return the Criterion Now podcast with a long overdue episode. We get into the ownership situation with Criterion Collection and Indian Paintbrush, and what we expect from it. We also look at the recent and upcoming releases, and what we are looking forward to seeing as new or for the first time. Links: Criterion Septembe…

Description: Jill and Aaron welcome Joe Petrucelli. Joe is a founding member and listener of the Criterion Now podcast, but we didn’t get to meet him until he joined CineJourneys. He has been here since the beginning and watched this begin with no website, then barely a website, and now a full website, so we reflect on that experience with him. We …

Description: Jill and Aaron welcome Caitlin Kuhwald. We had the great pleasure of working with Caitlin on the art for CineJourneys, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. Usually when people see the website, the art is what they compliment. We also talk about Screwball Comedies and her Criterion covers. Links: Caitlin Kuhwald Illustration Fol…

Description: Jill and Aaron welcome Andrew Pierce from The Curb. He is also co-chair of the Australian Film Critics Association, and has written books on Australian Cinema. This past year he started voting for the Golden Globe Awards, which was really intriguing to hear about. Andrew takes his credibility serious and the Globes have a checkered pas…

Description: Jill and Aaron are ready and excited for the imminent launch of the CineJourneys website. In this call we give a preview of what’s to come, and we share a call where the remainder of the 2024 Journeys are unveiled. Current subscribers are excited and we think you will be too. Once the site launches, we will have registration open for a…

Description: Jill and Aaron catch up a bit on exciting topics such as David Zaslav, Dune 2, Naked Attraction, and we give a tribute to David Bordwell who is responsible for a lot of people’s journeys into cinephilia. We also wrap up Modern Classics by discussing two of the films that resonated the most, Marie Antoinette and There Will be Blood. We …

Description: Michael Schulman, New Yorker staff writer and author, joined us to discuss the Oscar experience. Michael recently wrote the wonderful book, Oscar Wars. We talk about this year’s Oscars and a couple of the controversies, and then we dive into one of his book chapters. This was when Gregory Peck was President of the Oscars and with his a…

Description: Derek Smith from Slant Magazine joins Aaron and Mark Hurne to dig into Awards Season. He has seen pretty much everything and then some, and he just recently participated in Virtual Sundance and shares some highlights. We also talk about Modern Classics and how he inadvertently suggested a 14-hour film, and also whether any films from 2…

Description: We had a great time hosting Rodney Wade, who was one of the more active participants in our first ever Journey, Noirvember. We talk about the films, the overall experience, and what we learned from it going forward. Follow Us: Cinejourneys – Substack, Facebook Group Jill Blake – BlueSky Aaron West – Letterboxd Rodney Wade – Letterboxd…

Description: Welcome back! We have another episode. This time it’s a deep dive into true crime documentaries, and how they’ve changed throughout the years from informational to entertainment (or info-tainment) and how the seeds were there within classic documentaries. Since we’ve been watching Noir films in November, true crime files like a worthwh…

Description: We are joined by Marya E. Gates, the “professional cinephile” who has worked with TCM, FilmStruck, Netflix, Criterion, and many others. She famously coined Noirvember 14 years ago. It was a way to further her cinephile journey, and has grown to become a phenomenon in the years that followed. She talks about that in detail during our di…

Description: Noirvember is our first Journey. As of today, we’ll be spending the month soft-launching our platform and enjoying noir films with friends. In this episode we discuss what Noirvember is going to look like for us, including the film list and how we’ll unpack these films. In response to some questions, we discuss how the CineJourneys pla…

Description: Drew Morton is our first guest to CineJourneys, but he’s someone we’ve talked to plenty in the past. We get into 31 Days of Horror, and the near impossibility of completing it every day, and how we are watching horror films in October. Drew talks about his visit to the Stanley Hotel from The Shining (1980). We also talk about Jill’s av…

Description: Jill and Aaron return to podcasting with a brand new show and brand new project called CineJourneys. We give an intro to this new project and where we expect it to go. For the inaugural episode, we talk about Hayao Miyazaki. We have some fun with an Onion article about him having to resign his HVAC job. We then dive in deeper into Miya…

We are pleased to have Dave Eves back on the show. We talk best of 2022, February and March announcements, and the Sight & Sound list.By Aaron West and Jill Blake

Now that we’re back, we had some catching up to do. This week Drew Morton joined to go back through all of the months that we missed during hiatus — August 2022 through January 2023.By Aaron West and Jill Blake

Filmmaker Sean Baker and his co-director for Take Out and frequent collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou join to discuss Take Out, Criterion, and other topics.By Aaron West and Jill Blake

We took an unannounced hiatus for a lot of reasons. Jill and Aaron are now officially back and ready to resume the show. This one was just us “shooting the s**t” without an intro or anything. We just wanted to get back into the swing of podcasting, plus sharing what we’ve been up to, and what we’re looking forward to. As it happens we have two othe…

Jill and Aaron get into June announcements, a lot of David Lynch news, and speculate about François Truffaut.By Aaron West and Jill Blake

Marcus Pinn joins as we discuss announcements for June and other news. Some of the discussion was not Criterion related as we discussed the Indicator Columbia Noir set featuring Humphrey Bogart. We also discuss Kinuyo Tunaka, the release cycle of Janus Films, the NYC arthouse theater scene, and much more. Episode Links Classic Film Collective Hokut…

Drew Morton joins again, and we have a lot to talk about. Come for the Criterions, stay for his Jimmy Stewart impressions.By Aaron West and Jill Blake

Grady Hendrix and Chris Poggiali, authors of These Fists Break Bricks join to talk about all things martial arts.By Aaron West and Jill Blake

Celeste de la Cabra joins to discuss the April announcements and more possibly coming to Criterion.By Aaron West and Jill Blake