The Playlist Podcast Network

Before the DM or chatroom, if you wanted to connect with a stranger pseudo-anonymously, you bought a personal ad. This week, Be Reel seeks three films with classified ads as inciting incidents: “Desperately Seeking Susan” (1985), “Single White Female (1992) and the now 20-year-old “Ghost World” (2001). Romance, murder and vicarious living abound, plus the story of Chance and Noah once answering an ad.

On this episode of The Playlist Podcast, we talk about the recent news about the big box office drop from "Black Widow" and a theory that perhaps Marvel Studios is its own worst enemy when it comes to the poor box office showing. Is NATO correct in blaming Disney+ Premier Access for taking away from box office earnings? Is COVID the reason that the recent Scarlett Johansson-led superhero film is underperforming? Or maybe Marvel Studios is teaching fans bad lessons thanks to “WandaVision,” “Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” and “Loki,” leading to a new trend where the event films aren’t all that exciting anymore?

On this episode of The Playlist Podcast, actor Alex Wolff joins us to chat about his roles in “Old” and “Pig” – both movies dropping within a week of one another this summer. During the conversation, we talked about how "Old" director M. Night Shyamalan gets a bad rap for being dark and mysterious, what it's like working with Nicolas Cage for "Pig," and the legacy of "Hereditary."

In the long, storied history of TV hosts, Anthony Bourdain is an iconic figure, as he basically redefined the idea of what a celebrity chef could be and what a travel series should look and sound like. Of course, that all came to a tragic end in 2018, after Bourdain died by suicide. And in this episode of The Playlist Podcast, Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville talks about the legacy of Anthony Bourdain as we discuss his latest documentary, “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain.”

Though she hasn't been around for 50 years, the filmography of actress Alexandra Daddario is quite extensive. She's done everything from prestige TV ("True Detective") to franchise films ("Percy Jackson") to action blockbusters ("San Andreas") and much more. Her latest project is a new dramedy series for HBO, "The White Lotus." For this episode of The Playlist Podcast, we're joined by Daddario as we talk about her new series.

Netflix's “Gunpowder Milkshake” harkens back to the classic assassin films of yore while also throwing a little Tarantino flavor and color in the mix to create a fun, ultraviolent adventure with a feminist spin. Director Navot Papushado joined The Playlist Podcast for a discussion on the film and his other previous and upcoming projects.

It’s July 2021 and instead of talking about “F9,” “Black Widow,” or any of the summer blockbusters from this year, The Playlist Podcast is going back to the ‘80s to talk about two cult classic summer films, “Escape From New York” and “Big Trouble in Little China.” Why? Because they’re both celebrating big anniversaries. Oh, and because John Carpenter is one of the best filmmakers of all time and Kurt Russell is a national treasure. 

R. L. Stine is back on our screens in top form with Netflix's “Fear Street” trilogy, based on the author’s massive and iconic book series of the same name. The trilogy comes after years of will-they-won’t-they development rumors, the collapse of an original distribution deal with 20th Century Fox, and are respectively set in three distinctive years: 1994, 1978, and 1666. Leigh Janiak is the director and co-writer of all three films and comes to the project with a deep-seated love of, and experience with, horror and a captivating ability to command an audience's attention and investment. Janiak is most well-known for her 2014 directorial feature debut “Honeymoon,” as well as for directing episodes of “Outcast” and MTV’s “Scream” television series. Off of these experiences with dramatic, harder-edged horror stories, Janiak found herself faced with the opportunity to helm “Fear Street,” crafting the loosely bespoke adaptations from the ground up. Set in the town of Shadyside across the three time periods, and told largely from the perspective of teenage lead characters, “Fear Street” shows us the town first as a Gen X utopia in the throes of grunge and neon, then during a "Friday the 13th"-esque summer camp escapade at the end of the 70s, and finally as a colonial village in the time of witch trials and bloodletting. A curse 300 years in the making, Shadeyside continues to fall victim to a history of violent trauma. Having been a fan of the books when she herself was a teen, Janiak looked for the nuances of that period of life in order to create an authentic and relatable experience. The effort to create authenticity extends beyond the characters, however, into every aspect of capturing each movie’s unique time period. “One of the things I thought about a lot was, ‘how do we hit the sweet spot of nostalgia without it becoming parody,’” said Janiak. “We were lucky because the 90s, the 70s, and the 1600s folklore, have clear tropes that can be revisited and used, [but] telling it now in 2021, I could tell a story about characters that didn’t exist in [past] movies because that just wasn’t the lens that was embraced by film of the time.” Another source of Janiak’s inspiration for the trilogy comes from an unexpected source for a horror film: Terrence Malick, and more specifically his 2005 film “The New World.” “[There’s also] ‘The Village,’ ‘The Crucible,’ ‘The VVitch,’” said Janiak, “but I’m a huge Malick fan, I love ‘The New World’ probably more than anyone else. I watch it at least once a year. I feel like it does this amazing thing where you see pre-Colonial America, this beautiful space and organic, alive world, with characters that are living. And then these settlers come and they just destroy it, and it’s so gross. I thought it was this beautiful depiction of how something pure can become rotten.” The first film in the “Fear Street” trilogy, “Fear Street Part One: 1994,” is currently streaming on Netflix. “Part Two: 1978” drops this Friday, July 9th, and “Part Three: 1666” will arrive on the platform one week later on July 16th. Check out our interview with Leigh Janiak below, where the director also discusses crafting the ideal “Fear Street” soundtrack, embracing and acknowledging the diversity of horror audiences, the possibility of letting the “Fear Street” trilogy loose in cinemas to create an epic murder movie marathon and much more. Additional Reporting by Jenny Nulf

In honor of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" turning 50, Be Reel has constructed a podcast category about bizarro adults and their puzzling worlds. After unpacking the general discomfort of watching candymen, goblin kings and world-builders covet innocent children for mysterious ends, we plunge into the alternate realities of “Willy Wonka” (1971), “Labyrinth” (1986) and “Tomorrowland” (2015).

On today’s episode of The Playlist Podcast, we got to sit down with director Chris McKay and actress Yvonne Strahovski to discuss Amazon’s latest acquired action blockbuster, “The Tomorrow War,” which stars Chris Pratt as a science teacher drafted into an alien war in the future.