Avatar: Fire and Ash (The Lobby Bonus Episode)

Due to the confluence of holiday and flu seasons, our Best of 2025 episode is delayed a week, so in its place we're sharing a recent episode of The Lobby, our Patreon-exclusive series focusing on movies we don't cover on the main feed. If you'd like to become a Patreon supporter and get ad-free versions of the show, as well as more bonus content like this, you can head over to patreon.com/nextpictureshow to sign up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whether he’s playing billiards or table tennis, a successful hustler requires no small amount of charisma, something Timothée Chalamet’s ping-pong pro undeniably has in Marty Supreme, though it’s of a decidedly different flavor than that of Paul Newman in The Hustler. Whether that charisma translates to a character we want to root for as he makes a mess of his own life, as well as those of the people (and one unfortunate dog) around him, is up for debate in our discussion of Josh Safdie’s new anxiety attack in movie form. Then we pit Marty’s game against Fast Eddie’s as we move into Connections to discuss the magic and morality of hustling, charismatic liars and the women who are drawn to them — even when they can see right through them — and whether these men chasing victory on their own terms, and at the cost of everything else, is inspirational or pitiful. Then in Your Next Picture Show, Scott sticks up for The Color of Money, Scorsese's Hustler sequel that can’t quite best its predecessor, but still has plenty of swagger all its own.  Please share your thoughts about The Hustler, Marty Supreme, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The new Marty Supreme follows a table-tennis phenom with the talent necessary to beat the best players in the world, if only he can keep his self-destructive tendencies from getting in the way. Swap out “table tennis” for “pool” in that description and you more or less have Robert Rossen’s 1961 drama The Hustler, which we revisit this week not only to bask in the incomparable onscreen charisma of Paul Newman, but also to consider the film’s ideas about what makes a winner — and a loser — and its noir-adjacent portrait of the gambling underworld. Then, in place of Feedback this week, we’re reflecting on the late Rob Reiner’s legacy on screens both big and small, and within an industry he helped shape in countless ways.  Please share your thoughts about The Hustler, Marty Supreme, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Freyne’s new Eternity shoves a thematically rich afterlife scenario into a romcom-shaped container, resulting in an above-average example of the genre that nonetheless feels like it’s only scratching the surface of its narrative potential. That leaves us with a lot of logistical questions to mull in our discussion of the film — several of which Tasha addressed in her pair of conversations with Freyne over at Polygon — and also a lot of points of contrast when we bring Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life back in for Connections. After Life and Eternity look and feel very different as they navigate the ins and outs of their respective postmortem bureaucracies, but both are ultimately concerned with characters being forced to make a single choice that will define their afterlives, what that choice says about what truly matters, and what the things we most value say about us.  Those ideas pop up again in Your Next Picture Show, where Tasha offers an enthusiastic recommendation for the 2020 Edson Oda film Nine Days as an unofficial companion piece to After Life. Please share your thoughts about After Life, Eternity, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730. Next Pairing: Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme and Robert Rossen's The Hustler Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The new fantasy romcom Eternity turns on a scenario familiar from any number of films that imagine life after death as a bureaucratic process, but its focus on characters forced to make big, symbolic choices for big, symbolic reasons is particularly reminiscent of After Life, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 1998 movie in which the recently departed are given one week to select a memory to take with them into the great beyond. While the functional logistics of After Life’s post-life waystation are ultimately secondary to its heady ideas about memory and filmmaking, that doesn’t stop us from talking through the ways this specific setting informs those ideas, and the various questions that arise from it. Then in Feedback, we tackle a listener’s consternation with some of the choices Train Dreams makes in adapting its source material.  Please share your thoughts about After Life, Eternity, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams uses gorgeous imagery of the natural world, combined with an omniscient narrator quoting from the Denis Johnson novella the film adapts, to speak for a taciturn protagonist who struggles to understand, much less articulate, his place in the world. That approach has earned it the Terrence Malick comparisons that informed this pairing, but Train Dreams uses its own distinct lens to contemplate the ineffable and ephemeral nature of human existence. So after talking through our responses to the film’s big-picture ideas and small, telling details, we place Train Dreams alongside Days of Heaven to discuss the two films’ contrasting approaches to their overlapping elements, from persistent voiceover and big beautiful vistas, to man’s presumed dominion over nature and the biblical infernos that suggest otherwise. Then for Your Next Picture Show, Keith offers a Days of Heaven-inspired recommendation for very different film featuring a similarly memorable performance from Linda Manz, 1980’s Out of the Blue Please share your thoughts about Days of Heaven, Train Dreams, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Clint Bentley’s new Train Dreams uses the vast canvas of the natural world to frame a relatively tiny story of a single human life, a juxtaposition of story and visuals that’s reminiscent of the work of Terrence Malick, in particular 1978’s Days of Heaven. Set, like Train Dreams, in the midst of America’s Industrial Revolution, Days of Heaven takes an elliptical approach to a fairly straightforward narrative that is pure Malick, leaving us with much to discuss in terms of whose story this is, and what the film’s sparse dialogue and unusual narration leaves unsaid. Then in Feedback, we share some quick reactions to a handful on new releases we won’t be covering on the show, and address a listener suggestion for an alternate One Battle After Another pairing.  Please share your thoughts about Days of Heaven, Train Dreams, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Don’t be alarmed by the title of this week’s movie selection, this is not our final episode — in fact, it’s our 500th, a milestone none of us expected to hit when we started this podcast a decade ago. So in honor of all our past pairings, we’re devoting this one-off episode to a film we’ve never managed to find an excuse to cover on this show, despite naming ourselves after it: THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. You may think it counterintuitive, even perverse, to devote our anniversary celebration to a somber film about a dying town whose only movie theater shuts down — even one as great as Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 coming-of-age drama — but as our discussion reveals, there are deeper connections between the film and this podcast than just a name. After that, we lighten the mood considerably with a very special game devoted to this podcast’s history and our collective inability to remember it, especially when points are on the line. Please share your thoughts about THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, The Next Picture Show, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730. Intro: 00:00:00-00:07:48 The Last Picture Show Keynote: 00:07:48-00:13:04 The Last Picture Show Discussion: 00:13:04 - 00:44:02 The Next Picture Quiz Show: 00:44:02-01:22:07 Next episode announcement and goodbyes: 01:22:07-end Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From its nearly three-hour runtime to its deployment of some of the most deranged CGI you’ve ever seen committed to screen, Radu Jude’s DRACULA often feels like an extended act of trolling, but is it art? The answer to that question is inextricable from the film’s presentation of AI-derived art as grotesque, inhuman, and unsatisfying, and it makes DRACULA arguably more entertaining to discuss than it is to watch. So after attempting to pull some meaning out of what the critic in 8 1/2 might describe as DRACULA’s “series of gratuitous episodes,” we move into Connections for a study in contrasts between Fellini’s portrait of an artist struggling to make a personal work, and Jude’s evisceration of a charlatan trying to outsource artistry to a machine. Then in Your Next Picture Show, we discuss another film we considered as a DRACULA pairing that may not be quite as celebrated as 8 1/2, but we nonetheless recommend as another depiction of a filmmaker in creative crisis: Christopher Guest’s debut feature, THE BIG PICTURE. Please share your thoughts about 8 1/2, DRACULA, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730. Next episode: A celebration of Peter Bogdanovich’s THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, and 500 episodes of a niche film podcast named after it. Intro: 00:00:00-00:01:57 Dracula discussion: 00:01:57 - 00:27:20 Dracula/8 1/2 Connections: 00:27:20 - 00: 48:11 Your Next Picture Show and goodbyes: 00:48:11-end Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Radu Jude’s DRACULA is, technically speaking, yet another movie about one of the most depicted antagonists in all of cinema, but in actuality it’s about a different beast that has fascinated filmmakers for nearly as long: filmmaking. Within the grand tradition of “movies about moviemaking,” DRACULA’s surreal humor, combined with its focus on a struggling filmmaker fantasizing about the film he might make, gave us an excuse to revisit an all-time classic of the form, Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2. So this week we search for meaning within 8 1/2’s reveries of a blocked creative mind, interrogate the “semi” part of Fellini’s semi-autobiographical approach, and touch on some of the other films that exist in the shadow of this one. Then in Feedback, our recent pairing of RUNNING ON EMPTY and ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER inspires a supplementary-listening suggestion for the former, and a head canon explanation for one of our questions about the latter.Please share your thoughts about 8 1/2, DRACULA, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730.Intro: 00:00:00-00:05:128 1/2 Keynote: 00:05:12-00:11:398 1/2 Discussion: 00:11:39-48:26Feedback/outro: 00:48:26-end Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices