Is Soapdish  Still Funny? Yes! Daytime television has never looked quite as gloriously unhinged as it does in Soapdish (1991) . This week on Forgotten Cinema, we dive into the fast-paced backstage comedy and come out the other side thoroughly entertained. This is a film that earns its laughs through a stacked cast, sharp writing, and a genuine affection for the genre it's skewering. What Makes Soapdish Work: A Cast Firing on All Cylinders The secret weapon of Soapdish  is its ensemble. We both single out Kevin Kline and Sally Field as particular standouts. Kline is doing what Kline does best, finding the absurdity in every scene without winking at the camera, and Sally Field anchors the chaos with a performance that's as grounded as it is funny. Around them, the supporting cast (Elisabeth Shue, Robert Downey Jr., Whoopi Goldberg, Cathy Moriarty) keeps pace, making this a rare comedy where no one feels like they're working harder than anyone else. A Soap Opera Inside a Soap Opera What elevates Soapdish beyond straightforward parody is its layered premise. The film is set behind the scenes of a fictional daytime drama, but the off-screen lives of its cast are every bit as melodramatic as the show they're making. That self-awareness gives the comedy real depth. It's not just poking fun at soap operas; it's using the format to comment on itself, and doing so with enough affection that it never feels mean-spirited. Does Soapdish Hold Up for Modern Audiences? As many of us already know, soap operas are no longer the cultural juggernaut they once were. The genre that once dominated American afternoons has somewhat faded from the mainstream. Some of the satire in Soapdish lands differently as a result, and viewers with no frame of reference for the genre may find certain jokes less resonant than they would have in the early 90s. And yet the humor, performances, and sheer momentum of the storytelling carry it through. The specifics of soap opera culture may be dated; the comedy of ego, ambition, and workplace chaos absolutely is not. A Sharp, Joyful Comedy Worth Rediscovering We both come away from Soapdish  with a clear verdict: this one is a great time. It's fast, funny, and anchored by performances that make it easy to understand why the film deserved a bigger legacy than it got. If you've never seen it, this episode is a good place to start. If it's been a while, it holds up better than you might expect.   Spotify  | Apple Podcasts  | Amazon Music  | More Links

Field returns for Last Four: Episode 3 to share with you his thoughts on the last four movies he's watched. This tight ten-minute episode takes you on a journey through few different genres. We've got: Ella McCay | A James Brooks comedy-drama that can't quite figure out what it's about Shelter | Jason Statham doing exactly what Jason Statham does (and delivering) Nuremberg | A drama with Russell Crowe chewing scenary and Rami Malek in a completely different movie Les Misérables | Because sometimes you just end up watching Les Misérables. Enjoy the show! Spotify  | Apple Podcasts  | Amazon Music  | More Links

Welcome to the Time Loop Tourney! We've got 16 movies vying for the title of the ultimate Time-Loop movie. If you haven't figured it out, these films have a time-loop in its premise. Okay, that's out of the way. Here we go! The rules are as follows: Seedings (and rankings) were determined by the movie's ratings on IMDb . Any ties were broken by the ratings over at The Movie Database . As you see below (TMD ratings in parenthesis): Groundhog Day 8.0 Edge of Tomorrow 7.9 About Time 7.8 Source Code 7.5 Predestination 7.4 (74/100) Palm Springs 7.4 (73/100) Looper 7.4 (69/100) Deja Vu 7.1 Boss Level 6.8 Happy Death Day 6.6 Final Girls 6.5 Before I Fall 6.4 Arq 6.3 Until Dawn 5.7 (63/100) Repeaters 5.7 (58/100) 16. Christmas Do-Over 5.6 The matchups are below. Voting will be Mondays and Thursdays for Round 1 for the next four weeks. Voting will begin on our #1 vs. #16 matchup this voting Monday, March 23rd. Voting will take place on Instagram , TikTok , YouTube and Patreon .

Is Changing Lanes  Worth Revisiting? One bad day. Two men on a collision course. That's the deceptively simple premise at the heart of Changing Lanes  (2002) , and on this week's episode of Forgotten Cinema, we find a film that's more thoughtful, and more complicated, than its premise might suggest. Does the Setup Still Work? The film follows two men, a high-powered attorney and a recovering alcoholic, whose lives collide after a minor car accident spirals into a full-scale war of escalation. What makes it work structurally is the dual protagonist setup: each man functions as both hero of his own story and antagonist of the other's. It's a morally ambiguous premise that most studio dramas of the era weren't willing to sit with. Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Affleck Deliver Under Pressure We agree the performances are a genuine strength. Samuel L. Jackson brings intensity and real humanity to his role, grounding a character who could easily have become a simple victim archetype. Affleck matches him well, navigating the moral deterioration of a man who starts compromising his ethics and finds it disturbingly easy. Butler came into the rewatch already fond of the film and found the performances held up. Field appreciates that the filmmakers treated the material as genuine drama rather than pushing it toward conventional thriller territory, a restraint that pays dividends. Where Changing Lanes Falls Short The film isn't without its problems. There are noticeable contrivances that strain credibility, and the resolution tips a little too conveniently toward tidiness for a story that otherwise earns its messiness. Butler felt Affleck's character needed more development, a clearer window into what pushes him toward the darker choices he begins making. Without that groundwork, parts of his arc feel rushed rather than earned. Field found the dual protagonist structure more distracting than rewarding, a genuinely interesting concept that still made it harder to fully invest in either man's journey. The film asks a lot of its audience in terms of split emotional investment, and doesn't always deliver the payoff that would justify it. A Flawed But Compelling Early-2000s Drama Even with its flaws, Changing Lanes  holds up as a compelling, thoughtful drama anchored by two strong lead performances and a premise that still resonates. It's the kind of film that trusts its audience to sit with moral discomfort, and for the most part, that trust is earned.   New episodes of Forgotten Cinema drop every week. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Spotify  | Apple Podcasts  | Amazon Music  | More Links

We're doing something different in this episode of Forgotten Cinema. We're reading! We interview author Nicholas Keating Casbarro about his sci-fi epic "Vitalerium: Descent into the Void". We may love movies, but we alos love storytelling in any form. The first chapter of a huge new series set in the far future. A novel filled with action, mystery, political intrigue, and more. Casbarro discusses what goes into creating his first story, planning out a universe, writing theory, and other light topics such as predictions on the future of humanity. The book has also inspired a comic book/graphic novel series (see image to the right) This is only the beginning of the Vitalerium universe, and we encourage you to give it a shot. Enjoy the moment when Field suddenly must leave the interview as he was recording while having no heat in his house, and the technician had just showed up to fix it. (Side Note: This was the first of 5 techs over the span of two weeks, all attempting to fix the furnace. Fun times.) Interested in checking out Vitalerium: Descent into the Void for yourself, Follow these links! Website | Amazon | Audible | BAM! | Patreon

Some movies arrive fully formed. Others feel like they're still figuring themselves out even as the credits roll. Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride!  falls somewhere in the middle. It's ambitious, visually arresting, and deeply strange in ways that will stick with you, even if you leave the theater unsure of how you feel about it. And honestly? That uncertainty is kind of the point of our conversation this week. What The Bride!  Gets Undeniably Right The film is Gyllenhaal's first major studio production, and as a showcase for her directorial voice, it's genuinely impressive. The visual design is lush, the filmmaking is confident, and the craft on display throughout is hard to argue with. Jessie Buckley is extraordinary as the Bride. It's the kind of performance that carries a film on its shoulders and makes you forget the machinery behind it. Christian Bale, playing the tortured and obsessive Frank, is equally compelling, and the film closes on one of the best end credit songs either of us has heard in recent memory. Butler left the theater singing it. So why does the whole thing feel just slightly out of reach? Does the Script Let The Bride!  Down? Butler came away disappointed, and his case is a strong one. Despite everything working on a technical and performance level, the screenplay simply doesn't hold up its end of the bargain. The story meanders in ways that feel less like deliberate ambiguity and more like genuine indecision as if the script never quite settled on what it wanted to say or what kind of film it wanted to be. For a story rooted in creation, identity, and autonomy, The Bride!  can feel surprisingly directionless. The foundation is there. The house just isn't fully built. Field walked out of the theater largely agreeing with that read. But after sitting with it for a day, something shifted. Not a reversal. He's not going to pretend the script problems aren't real, but more of a recalibration. What started to win him over was how fundamentally different  the film is from the kind of blockbuster entertainment we've grown accustomed to. There's no algorithmic fingerprint here, no focus-grouped safety net. Gyllenhaal made exactly the movie she wanted to make, and in an era when that kind of creative stubbornness is increasingly rare in big-budget filmmaking, that counts for something. Is Being Different Enough to Make a Film Good? That's the question that drove most of our conversation this week, and it's a genuinely tricky one. We don't think "different" should be a free pass. Plenty of films are odd or unconventional in ways that don't serve the story. But we also think there's real value in a film that refuses to look like everything else, even when it stumbles. The Bride!  stumbles. It stumbles noticeably. But it stumbles while swinging for something bigger than most films bother to attempt, and that has to mean something. Our Verdict on The Bride! Where you land on this one will probably say something about what you go to the movies for. If you need a script that earns every moment it asks of you, Butler's reservations will likely be your reservations. If you're willing to meet a film halfway when its ambitions outpace its execution, Field's experience might be closer to yours. Either way, The Bride!  is the rare studio film that actually sparks a conversation, and for us, that's never nothing. Now Showing is our ongoing series covering new theatrical releases. New episodes drop on YouTube and wherever you listen to podcasts. Spotify  | Apple Podcasts  | Amazon Music  | More Links

Not every horror movie needs a skyscraper-sized monster. Sometimes all it takes is something small enough to fit in your shoe and that's exactly what makes Arachnophobia (1990) so enduringly effective. This week on the Forgotten Cinema podcast, we revisit the Frank Marshall horror-comedy and find a film that holds up beautifully: creepy, funny, and far smarter than its creature-feature premise might suggest. Why Arachnophobia Is Basically "Spider Jaws" Butler's shorthand for the film is hard to beat: it's spider Jaws . Like Spielberg's classic, Arachnophobia  earns its scares through atmosphere and patience rather than spectacle. A deadly strain of spider quietly works its way through a small California town, and the film takes its time letting the dread build. It's methodical, grounded, and genuinely unsettling. A creature feature that trusts its audience enough not to show its hand too early. Jeff Daniels Delivers a Surprisingly Relatable Horror Lead As Dr. Ross Jennings, a small-town doctor who is genuinely, deeply afraid of spiders, Jeff Daniels brings an everyman quality that keeps the film anchored. It's a smart casting choice: watching a hero confront something he's truly terrified of creates a different kind of tension, one rooted in empathy rather than bravado. Daniels never lets the character become a punchline, but mines real comedy from his predicament without undercutting the stakes. John Goodman Steals the Movie Then there's John Goodman, who arrives as exterminator Delbert McClintock and promptly steals every scene he's in. Goodman plays it broad but never unbelievable, he's having a great time, and that energy is contagious. Around him, the film fills its world with precisely drawn character actors who feel like real people rather than spider fodder, delivering memorable lines and making the town feel genuinely lived-in. How Arachnophobia Balances Horror and Comedy Without Losing Either Horror-comedy is one of the hardest tonal balancing acts in genre filmmaking, and Arachnophobia pulls it off with real confidence. The laughs land without deflating the tension, and the film has the discipline to stay grounded throughout. There's no bombastic third-act chaos, no winking self-awareness. It trusts that small, patient threats are scarier than loud, oversized ones, and it's right. A Smart, Rewatchable Creature Feature Both of us came away genuinely enthusiastic, and it's easy to see why. Arachnophobia is confident genre filmmaking that respects its audience and delivers real thrills without needing to go big for the sake of it. You don't need giant monsters to make an audience squirm. Sometimes you just need something small, quiet, and impossible to spot until it's already too late. Spotify  | Apple Podcasts  | Amazon Music  | More Links

Field watched four more movies and that triggers Last Four: Episode 2 , a new spin-off...or should we say off-shoot series? Whatever it is, Field explains it below... Welcome to Last Four! My new solo series where I break down the last four movies I watched. I discuss what works, what doesn't work, and who each film is for. No ranking. No hot takes for the sake of hot takes. Just my honest reaction. The second episode features the following movies: Sentimental Value | A multiple Oscar nominated drama about family and the healing power of art. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues | A sequel that mines your love of nostalgia. Bugonia | A movie about a kidnapping gone wrong...or right? Highest 2 Lowest | A Spike Lee joint about a media mogul fighting a moral dilemma. Check out what Field thought of each movie... Spotify  | Apple Podcasts  | Amazon Music  | More Links

It’s all come to this...again...until the next time. This week on Forgotten Cinema: Now Showing , we've finally arrived at Scream 7 , the destination after our long Scream Lead Up  journey through the entire franchise. And unlike many critics, we had a great time with this one. Scream 7: Still Better Than Most Slashers Is Scream 7  the best entry in the series? No. Is it the worst? Also no. But as we point out during the episode, even the weakest Scream  film is still leagues above most modern slashers and generic horror fare. The franchise has always had a higher bar thanks to its blend of sharp meta commentary, clever mysteries, and characters audiences actually care about. That formula continues here. Sidney Still Anchors the Franchise One of the film’s biggest strengths remains Sidney Prescott, (Now...Sidney Evans) who continues to serve as the emotional center of the series. Her presence helps ground the chaos of another Ghostface killing spree while reminding audiences why the franchise has endured for nearly three decades. The film also delivers where it counts: the kills. Several sequences stand out as inventive and brutal enough to keep longtime fans satisfied. The Big Talking Points Of course, a Scream  movie isn’t just about the body count, it’s about the conversation around it. We dig into some of the film’s biggest discussion points, including: The return of Stu Macher and whether the story earns it Whether audiences can fully buy Joel McHale as a serious action presence after years of comedy roles How the film handles its Ghostface reveal and whether the mystery ultimately lands Like any Scream  installment, the fun is in debating how well the puzzle pieces fit together. Ranking the Franchise With Scream 7  now in the books, we also revisit our full franchise rankings  after completing our journey through every entry in the series. For anyone jumping into Now Showing  with this episode, we encourage you to go back and check out the entire Scream Lead Up series , where we revisited each film step-by-step before arriving at the newest installment. Spotify  | Apple Podcasts  | Amazon Music  | More Links

This week on Forgotten Cinema, we sit down at the poker table with Rounders , the cult-favorite gambling drama starring Matt Damon, Edward Norton, John Malkovich, Famke Janssen, and John Turturro. The film has built a strong reputation over the years, especially among poker fans, but on this revisit we came away a lot less impressed than its legacy might suggest. The biggest stumbling block for us is Damon’s character, Mike. The movie positions him as a talented player trying to navigate the dangerous world of underground poker, but the reality is that he spends most of the film behaving like a reckless gambler running purely on ego and bravado. Time after time he makes terrible decisions, especially when it comes to helping his unreliable friend Worm. The Worm Problem in Rounders Edward Norton is undeniably entertaining as Worm, bringing his usual charisma and unpredictability to the role. The problem is that the film expects us to buy into the loyalty between these two characters, even as Worm repeatedly drags Mike deeper into bad situations. Their friendship never quite makes emotional sense, and the story keeps asking the audience to sympathize with choices that grow more frustrating as the movie goes on. A World That Feels Closed Off Another hurdle is how heavily the film leans on poker terminology and insider lingo. Instead of guiding viewers into the tension of high-stakes poker, the movie often assumes the audience already understands the mechanics of the game. Rather than immersing us in that world, the constant jargon can create distance from what should be the film’s central hook. A Lucky Break, Not a Real Arc By the time the story reaches its conclusion, Mike’s journey feels hollow. His reckless behavior doesn’t really lead to meaningful reflection or growth. Instead, things fall into place largely thanks to a lucky break, which makes the ending feel less like a hard-earned victory and more like a narrative convenience. While Rounders clearly has its fans, and its influence on the late-90s and early-2000s poker boom can’t be ignored, this rewatch left us questioning whether the film’s cult reputation has more to do with timing than with the strength of the movie itself. . What do you think? Cult classic or a bluff that somehow convinced everyone to go all in? Spotify  | Apple Podcasts  | Amazon Music  | More Links