‘The Man In My Basement’: Nadia Latif & Willem Dafoe On Their Visceral and Poignant Thriller, Powerful Themes Staying with You, Robert Eggers’ ‘Werewolf’ & More [The Discourse Podcast]

Crime, corruption, and a phoenix-like comeback collide in the heart of Amsterdam’s weed underworld. Netflix’s “Amsterdam Empire” is a pulpy, fun new crime series set in Amsterdam’s glamorous and dangerous weed industry, where revenge and reinvention go hand in hand. The show follows Betty, a former pop star played by Famke Janssen, whose crumbling marriage to the owner of a Marijuana shop empire known as “The Jackal” sparks a battle that pulls in gangsters, police, and lovers. Weed may be legal to smoke in the Netherlands, but growing it is not, and the family’s illegal grow operations soon attract unwanted attention from rival factions and law enforcement alike.Joining Bingeworthy for this episode is Famke Janssen, who not only stars as Betty but also serves as executive producer and co-costume designer. The series also marks her first time performing in her native Dutch language. She describes the experience as both nerve-wracking and exhilarating.

In Alaska’s endless white, a small town sheriff hunts escaped convicts through blizzards and betrayal, only to uncover a web of CIA secrets and buried love that refuses to stay frozen. Yes, the ’90s action vibes are strong with Apple TV+’s “The Last Frontier,, a wintry chase thriller where a quiet Alaskan town becomes a pressure cooker. Planes fall out of the sky, fugitives scatter into the wild, and a local deputy with a past shoulders more than his share of the storm. It’s lean, charged, and undoubtedly built to binge. The series stars Jason Clarke, Haley Bennett, Dominic Cooper, Alfre Woodard, and more.Joining Bingeworthy for this episode covering “The Last Frontier” are Jason Clarke (star and executive producer) and Jon Bokenkamp (writer, producer, and showrunner). Throughout our conversations, they delve into throwback influences, the human heartbeat beneath the chaos, and why the show’s most memorable moments aren’t always the loudest ones.During the interviews, Jon Bokenkamp is quick to openly call the series a love letter to high-concept ’90s summer action thrillers, the kind you can pitch in one sentence and feel in your bones like “Con Air” and “Point Break.” “It’s really a high-concept idea,” Jon said. “Most of those films that inspired it, you can say in one sentence, ‘here’s the elevator version,’ and you go, ‘I get it.’ A little action heavy, slightly heightened, maybe turned up to 11 or 12.”

What would you do with 18 minutes left before the end of the world? That question ignites "A House of Dynamite," a pulse-pounding new thriller from director Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Noah Oppenheim that dramatizes the unthinkable: the countdown between nuclear launch and annihilation. Told in real time, the film locks viewers inside the corridors of power as a U.S. president, military advisors, and intelligence officials face the impossible decision to retaliate or die trying. The result is an unbearably tense and disturbingly plausible experience that plays less like Hollywood fiction and more like a documentary from the edge of civilization. The film hits Netflix on October 24.On this episode of The Discourse, host Mike DeAngelo sits down with Noah Oppenheim, who discusses crafting the film’s chilling realism, his creative partnership with Kathryn Bigelow, and how his background as a journalist and former NBC News president informed his approach to humanizing institutions we normally only see as faceless power structures.READ MORE: ‘A House Of Dynamite’ Review: Kathryn Bigelow Returns With Another Explosive Political Thriller [Venice]

Everyone knows Rodgers and Hammerstein and the legacy that comes with their collaborations, but many forget the brilliance and heartbreak of Rodgers and Hart. The applause roars for one man while another slips quietly into the shadows. Fame and failure share the same stage tonight, divided only by a curtain call. That’s the haunting pulse of “Blue Moon,” a story of creative partners colliding at the peak of one’s success and the edge of the other’s undoing. Over one fateful Broadway night, a composer stands in the light of his newest triumph while his lyricist drowns in the darkness just beyond the spotlight. It’s a breakup told in music, memory, and smoke.On this episode of The Discourse, host Mike DeAngelo pairs conversations with Ethan Hawke & Richard Linklater and Andrew Scott, weaving their perspectives together on collaboration, rehearsal, and the human math of loving someone you can’t fix.READ MORE: ‘Blue Moon’ Review: Another Precious Pearl In Richard Linklater’s Chronicles Of The Human Condition [Berlin]Nine collaborations deep, Hawke and Linklater’s shorthand remains less code than continuum. Hawke said, "The changes are pretty invisible to me. It feels like one long collaboration, one long conversation." Linklater added, "I met Ethan in 1992. We went out later that night, we were at a bar, and we talked all night. We’re still talking. That's what it feels like." Scott, reflecting on their dynamic, noted that the film itself “is about two people who’ve been through so much together that their chemistry almost becomes a language.”

You don’t have to know a damn thing about football to get swept up in “Chad Powers.” The new Hulu comedy from Michael Waldron and Glen Powell takes an absurd premise, a fallen quarterback disguising himself as a walk-on to reclaim his dream, and builds it into one of the funniest, sharpest, and most heartfelt sports stories of the year. Adapted from Eli Manning’s viral sketch, the show follows Russell, a disgraced, washed-up pretty-boy QB who reinvents himself as the mustachioed, mulleted Chad Powers to chase glory once more. It’s “Mrs. Doubtfire” meets “Rudy” meets "Ted Lasso," with Powell delivering a tour-de-force of charm, cringe, and full-body commitment.Joining the Bingeworthy podcast, Michael Waldron, the writer and co-creator behind “Loki,” “Heels,” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” discussed shaping the series, collaborating with Powell, and finding its balance between satire and sincerity.

The streets of Tulsa have never looked meaner. With Season 3 of "Tulsa King" now streaming on Paramount+, Sylvester Stallone’s Dwight Manfredi faces more than just turf wars. He’s surrounded by chaos on all sides, from the FBI and old New York enemies to a new local threat who feels pulled from another century. The scale is bigger, the danger sharper, and the humor darker than ever before."It’s one of the darker ones," Stallone said. "But, you know, the humor comes through. It gets heavy." He admitted that the new season’s grind reflects a changing creative rhythm. "It’s very, very big because you have three forces coming at me. You got the FBI, you got the New York mob, and then you have this maniac from Tulsa who looks like he’s from a hundred years in the past. And then all the other intrigue about the elections and so on. And then we deal, oh, I forgot, the domestic terrorists. So we have a lot going on this year."

The hum in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, isn’t sirens so much as the grind of a garbage truck at dawn and the scrape of a window after dark. “Task” lives there, in a neighborhood that knows its people by what they throw away, where they go or don’t go to church, then shoves them onto a collision course. One side is a scuffed-up task force working out of a seized row house, and the other is a desperate crew that’s invisible until it isn’t. The engine isn’t a whodunit. It’s the slow, sick feeling of when. The series follows an FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo) who heads a task force to put an end to a string of violent robberies led by an unsuspected family man (Tom Pelphrey).Joining Bingeworthy are creator Brad Ingelsby (“Mare of Easttown”), and stars Emilia Jones (“Coda,” “Locke & Key”), Tom Pelphrey (“Ozark,” “Outer Range”), and Sylvia Dionicio (“FBI: Most Wanted”). During the interviews, Ingelsby smiles at the comparison some fans have been making from the start with Michael Mann’s heist epic, “Heat.” “That’s what we say. It’s like a blue-collar ‘Heat.’ This is very Delco, garbage collectors robbing kind of scuzzy houses, and Tom Brandis is not a very skilled investigator,” Ingelsby says. “The tension is, you want one to get away and you want the other to catch him. Those things can’t coexist. This is a collision-course show.”

They say dogs can sense death, staring at something just beyond our perception. In “Good Boy,” that instinct becomes the engine for an entire film. Directed by Ben Leonberg and produced by Kari Fischer, the story unfolds entirely from the perspective of a golden retriever named Indy, who seems to be the only one aware that a house carries a sinister presence. What begins as a simple “what if” idea blossoms into a chilling, 73-minute haunted-house thriller told through a dog’s eyes.The concept is both ingenious and risky. Leonberg and Fischer spent years refining it, drawing inspiration from Jack London’s animal adventures and the horror tradition of films like “Poltergeist.” Without dialogue to rely on, the filmmakers built the narrative through images, sound, and Indy’s natural behavior, creating a cinematic language where panting, footsteps, and a thousand-yard stare become the keys to suspense. The result is eerie, playful, and surprisingly emotional, inviting viewers to see a ghost story through the gaze of man’s best friend.For Leonberg, the idea had been percolating for over a decade. “I came up with the idea by watching ‘Poltergeist’ and thinking, man, somebody should tell a story entirely from the golden retriever’s perspective,” he explained. “I worked with a co-writer for years, really trying to crack the story…because we’re not using dialogue to tell the story. So how do you have all the narrative plot points that still feel like a story with a beginning, a middle and end and rising tension and conflict?”READ MORE: ‘Play Dirty’: Shane Black On Reinventing Parker, Mark Wahlberg Stepping In For Robert Downey Jr. & Much More [The Discourse Podcast]

The underworld is crowded with thieves, but Parker has always stood apart. Created by Donald Westlake in the early 1960s, the character has been portrayed on screen by actors including Lee Marvin, Mel Gibson, and Jason Statham. He's a blunt-force professional who isn’t Bond, isn’t Batman, but something rougher, hungrier, and coded by his own ruthless blue-collar sense of order. With "Play Dirty," filmmaker Shane Black takes his own crack at Parker, bringing the character to Prime Video on October 1 and casting Mark Wahlberg in the role. The film follows Parker, a ruthless thief, and his expert crew who stumble onto the heist of a lifetime that pits them against the New York mob. The film also stars LaKeith Stanfield, Rosa Salazar, Keegan-Michael Key, Nat Wolff, and more. This version doesn’t come with gadgets or acrobatics. Black describes a Parker who thinks fast, hits harder, and feels closer to the blue-collar world than to the spy fantasy. It’s the kind of material that lets him indulge his taste for pulp grit, sly humor, and the holiday backdrop he’s made famous. But it also opens the door to some bigger questions: what draws audiences to men this uncompromising? How do you make crime fun without sanding off the edges? And what happens when you cast Wahlberg instead of Robert Downey Jr.?READ MORE: ‘All Of You’: Brett Goldstein On Love, The Science of Soulmates, ‘Shrinking’ Surprises, & ‘Ted Lasso’ [The Discourse Podcast]Writer/Director Shane Black joins The Discourse to talk about the journey of bringing his Parker film to the screen, which started all the way back during the making of Black’s first film, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” in 2005. When asked what itch hadn’t been scratched by earlier adaptations, Black pointed to Parker’s uniqueness. “Each one represents the era in which it was produced. 'Point Blank' with Lee Marvin is a very specific film for that time period. And each actor who’s played Parker from there on, like Robert Duvall, Jason Statham, and Mel Gibson in "Payback." There has been a history of incarnations of this powerful, relentless character. But he’s not James Bond, which is why I liked him. He’s sort of blue collar. It’s almost like an American entrepreneur's story. But he happens to be a really awful, bad person and a criminal anti-hero.”

‘The Man In My Basement’: Nadia Latif & Willem Dafoe On Their Visceral and Poignant Thriller, Powerful Themes Staying with You, Robert Eggers’ ‘Werewolf’ & More [The Discourse Podcast]