Watch With Jen™

Pull up a chair, plug in your headphones & settle in for 5 film recommendations & 40 minutes of quarantine fun. Topics discussed this week include: the wisdom of Martin Scorsese & Roger Ebert, writer-directors Jay & Mark Duplass, hospital in-room movie selections, women kicking ass on film (whether people buy tickets or not), action movie franchises, Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise, why you should never trust Billy Zane in the water, Robert Elswit's relationship with Paul Thomas Anderson, paranoid thrillers, driving through southern Minnesota & winding up at Winona Ryder's place of birth, Kevin Bacon: good at being bad, collecting screenplays as a teen, the ever-evolving musical genre, & that time Jen Johans accidentally hung up on Rachael Leigh Cook.Originally Published on Patreon (3/23/20): https://www.patreon.com/posts/35204345Theme Music: The Guitarist by Jahzzar, Free Music Archive

In addition to sharing 5 new titles that just might help liven things up around your house, topics discussed this week include: The Cadillac of microphones, Michelle Pfeiffer using & fighting against her beauty, Neil Simon, an imaginary Michael Haneke film festival, Howard Hawks: Hawksian Women & Men in Love, & digging the flawed side of Denzel Washington. Stay safe and stream on!Originally published on Patreon (3/16/20): https://www.patreon.com/posts/34958634Theme Music: The Guitarist by Jahzzar, Free Music Archive

The training wheels have started to come off in the second episode of Watch With Jen & our host begins to talk. After news and notes on Episode 1, you'll find 5 stellar film streaming picks that Jen Johans would undoubtedly make you watch if you were hanging out in real life.She serves up spicy anecdotes about how Scorsese's lasagna ruined Quentin Tarantino's dating life, why dating fellow creatives is tough in general, Bon Jovi and 1960s records, plays filmography detective, chats about eastern westerns, fesses up about that time she accidentally snubbed Bobby Cannavale, gives a couple of shout-outs to friends, and talks about Stockholm Noir and Swedish crime.Originally published on Patreon (3/10/20): https://www.patreon.com/posts/watch-with-jen-2-34770104Theme Music: The Guitarist by Jahzzar, Free Music Archive

After 14 years and 2,500 reviews published on FilmIntuition.com (and thousands of odes to movies on Twitter @FilmIntuition), Jen Johans has kicks off her first podcast - Watch With Jen - where she recommends 5 great streaming movie recommendations each week for you to enjoy.Originally uploaded on Patreon (3/3/20): https://www.patreon.com/posts/34563654Theme Music: The Guitarist by Jahzzar, Free Music Archive

A staff writer at WBUR's The ARTery and a contributing writer at North Shore Movies, Sean Burns was Philadelphia Weekly's lead film critic from 1999-2013 and worked as the movie section contributing editor at The Improper Bostonian from 2006-2014.Having graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and received an award for excellence in criticism from The Greater Philadelphia Society of Professional Journalists in 2002, Sean's reviews, interviews, and essays have also appeared in Metro, The Village Voice, The Boston Herald, Nashville Scene, Time Out New York, Philadelphia City Paper, Movie Mezzanine, The House Next Door, and RogerEbert.com. Sean's writing has been called "jocular but serious, more like a 1940's daily reporter pounding out columns on a manual typewriter than a typical 21st-century novel gazing critic," but if you ask Sean's sisters, they'll just tell you that he swears too much and drives like an old lady.Very funny and imaginative, Jen once had the misfortune of sharing a podcast episode of Blake Howard's THE LAST (12 Minutes) OF THE MOHICANS with Sean and it's safe to say that everyone that had been laughing and marveling along with Sean was undoubtedly disappointed by the time they reached her half of the conversation.Today's episode starts out pretty traditionally as she asked Sean questions about his life and career but after about fifteen minutes or so, they loosened up, latched onto some tangents, and just went with it. Riffing on the most random of topics (apologies to Michael Douglas!), the last thirty minutes flew by in a fit of laughter.Originally Posted on Patreon (9/28/20) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/42116374Theme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music Archive

A positive, sunny, and earnest spirit on social media, where she's known as The Film Bee (or @TheFilmB on Twitter), Bee Garner is the founder and editor of the website In Their Own League, which is dedicated to promoting diversity on film and shining a light on the roles that women have played in cinema throughout history.Additionally, a freelance writer who contributes to such outlets as Next Big Picture, InSession Film, Vodzilla, All the Right Movies, Zavvi, and more, Bee is a film studies program graduate whose favorite movies include American Psycho, Phantom Thread, Days of Heaven, The Piano, and Shoplifters.Theme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music Archive

Fresh, knowledgeable, and funny, film critic Danielle Solzman remembers not only the first movie she saw on the big screen - which was The Land Before Time - but also recalls falling in love with film while watching Jurassic Park and Star Wars in the mid-1990s.A Kentucky native, Danielle initially relocated to Chicago to study improv and sketch comedy and although instead, she transitioned to becoming a film critic, she has never given up her love of comedy and tries her best to inject humor in film reviews when possible. Since 2018, she has traveled across the U.S. and Canada to cover Sundance, South By Southwest, Tribeca, and The Toronto International Film Festival.With quarantine keeping her stuck at home, she shifted from the feature film screenplay she'd been working on to write a short film instead. The first project that Danielle has made since she came out as transgender in 2015, Pandemic Therapy, which she not only wrote but also directed and starred in, made its online debut on September 15.In this freewheeling discussion, Danielle and Jen discuss her love of classic film books, plan an epic day of movies at Chicago's Music Box Theatre, discuss the epiphanies you get in the shower, lament the technical woes that come with screener trouble, and more.Originally Posted on Patreon (9/20/20) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/41822548Theme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music Archive

A prolific crime writer, Nikki Dolson's work has been published in such well-respected places as Shotgun Honey, Tough, Thuglit, and Bartleby Snopes. Additionally, the author of what she affectionately describes as "a novelish thing" called All Things Violent, Nikki has also released a short story collection entitled Love and Other Criminal Behavior.With outstanding taste in not only crime movies but all film, Jen's greatly enjoyed following her on Twitter and couldn't wait to bring her on the pod to discuss some of her favorite underrated heist movies.In this all-encompassing chat, they discuss the weird noises you hear in old desert homes, the polite British murderers of Hitchcock, three stellar heist movies where the real draw is everything besides the heist, finding movie treasure in clearance bins, & their love of Sam Rockwell as a dancer. In fact, Nikki and Jen were so in sync throughout that if you took a shot for every time Jen exclaimed, "I know" you'd be dead in roughly five minutes flat. (So maybe don't do that!) Just be sure to listen with a notepad as this episode feels like it doubles as a new installment of her solo film recommendation pod Watch With Jen.Originally Posted on Patreon on 9/17/20 here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/41714366Theme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music Archive

A well-respected veteran critic who is based in New York, Glenn Kenny has written for publications such as Premiere Magazine - which is where I first read his byline in the '90s - as well as Film Comment, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. He also contributes reviews to The New York Times and RogerEbert.com.Additionally, a film professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Glenn is the author of the books Robert De Niro: Anatomy of an Actor, along with today's brand new release Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas, and has appeared in such films as Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience and Ricky D'Angelo's The Sky is Clear and Blue Today.Looking back on his career writing about film, music, and video components, in this highly entertaining chat, Glenn shares his evolution as an entertainment writer and also gives us an amazing behind-the-scenes look at Scorsese, De Niro, Pileggi, Goodfellas, and what class is like with Professor Kenny at NYU.Originally Posted on Patreon (9/15/20) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/41636882Theme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music Archive

A gifted, in-demand composer of film, television, theater, and dance scores, Tony-nominated and Drama Desk award-winner Grant Olding is often brought onboard projects early on to help shape the narrative as well as craft the music.Impressed with his musical contributions to the animated 2013 musical Saving Santa with Tim Conway and Tim Curry, I first met Grant on Twitter after I reviewed the film and learned that he actually started his career as a child actor and dancer in the 1980s.Cast in Jim Henson and Frank Oz's The Dark Crystal at the age of seven, which was the same year that he appeared onstage in Danton's Death at the National Theatre in London, Grant continued acting and played a number of roles in high-profile West End productions, opposite such co-stars as Daniel Day-Lewis, Brian Cox, and Judi Dench. Leaving school at sixteen, he performed in the original West End production of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods and went on to study acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama.Always playing, writing, and working on music in the background (whether with a band or solo as a singer-songwriter), when he performed in his now frequent collaborator Nicholas Hytner's original production of Miss Saigon, he wrote his first musical and stopped acting to concentrate on composing full time.Most famous for the smash hit One Man, Two Guvnors - for director Nicholas Hytner and starring James Corden - that ran for over three years in the West End, on Broadway, and played internationally, Grant has written dozens of scores since for The Royal Shakespeare Company, the BBC, and others.As funny and personable as he is sincere, it was a joy and a privilege to speak with Grant about all of this and more - including some of his favorite composers and film scores - in this fascinating episode.Note: As September has proven to be exceptionally busy, I've had to delay new episodes of my solo film recommendation pod Watch With Jen for a moment but with such engaging and diverse guests, I know you'll enjoy these conversations on Watch With Jen & Friends as much as I have.Originally Posted on Patreon (9/12/20) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/41534060Theme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music Archive