Podcast Like It's ...

The Black Dahlia (2006) is one of Hollywood's most infamous true crime stories brought to screen a labyrinthine noir that refuses easy answers. Directed by Brian De Palma, the film weaves the 1947 unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short through the lives of two LAPD detectives, tangling glamour with corruption, obsession with justice, and the cold machinery of Los Angeles ambition. Starring Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, and Scarlett Johansson, it's a film that asks: How many layers of deception can you peel back before you lose the truth?

Host Phil Iscove and guests Emily St. James and Joe Reid dig into whether this adaptation of James Ellroy's novel holds up and whether its byzantine plot and moral fog land as intended or collapse under the weight of their own complexity. They explore how De Palma's stylistic flourishes, the ensemble's commitment to the murk, and the film's refusal to absolve anyone of blame read in 2026.

Follow the show & guest:

Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits
Phil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
Joe Reid - https://www.instagram.com/joereid21

💜 Patreon (bonus episodes & video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Phil and Emily are joined by film critic and historian Kristen Lopez to break down Karyn Kusama's Æon Flux (2005). Charlize Theron plays the title assassin, sent by the rebel Monicans to kill the ruling Chairman of the last walled city on Earth (Marton Csokas), only to find a conspiracy about cloning and memory that goes back generations (Frances McDormand, Sophie Okonedo, Jonny Lee Miller). What starts as a straightforward hit spirals into questions about who's actually still human under all that latex.

The three dig into adapting a cult MTV animated series for a studio tentpole, the mid-2000s dystopian sci-fi boom, and how much style a blockbuster can get away with before critics turn on it. There's a real case here for reading Æon Flux as a genuinely strange studio experiment that got buried by its own rushed release. Sleek, weird, and a little sad, same as the movie.

Follow the show & guest:

Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits
Phil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
Kristen Lopez - https://www.instagram.com/kristenlopez88

💜 Patreon (bonus episodes & video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Phil and Emily are joined by Emmy-winning Hacks creator Lucia Aniello for Lars von Trier's Dogville (2003). Nicole Kidman's fugitive Grace hides out in a Depression-era Rocky Mountain town staged entirely with chalk outlines on a bare soundstage, and the townsfolk's charity slowly curdles into something monstrous. Paul Bettany, Lauren Bacall, Chloë Sevigny, Patricia Clarkson, and James Caan fill out von Trier's three-hour moral experiment, narrated with dry glee by John Hurt.

The three dig into the chalk-outline staging as both radical theater and pure provocation, Kidman spending her post-Hours Oscar heat on the least commercial project imaginable, and where the film's brutal final turn lands two decades on. There's a real case here for reading Dogville as the most savage thing ever built to look like a filmed stage play. Cruel, funny, and unlike anything else same as the movie.

Follow the show & guest:

Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits
Phil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
Lucia Aniello - https://www.instagram.com/luciaaniellosetfits

💜 Patreon (bonus episodes & video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Phil and Emily are joined by Brooke Solomon and Jordan Gustafson, hosts of The Queer Quadrant, for Lee Tamahori's Die Another Day (2002). Pierce Brosnan's last outing as James Bond runs from a North Korean prison to an Icelandic ice palace, with Halle Berry surfacing as NSA agent Giacinta "Jinx" Johnson in the follow-up to her Monster's Ball Best Actress win. Rosamund Pike (in her screen debut), Toby Stephens, a Madonna theme song, and a famously invisible Aston Martin fill out the most gadget-drunk Bond of the early CGI era.

The four dig into Jinx as the almost-spinoff that never happened, how a 40th-anniversary Bond tips all the way into digital excess, and why this particular entry burned itself so vividly into their childhood memories. There's a real case here for reading Die Another Day as the exact moment the Brosnan era buckles under its own kitesurfing, para-sailing weight. Gaudy, campy, and gloriously overblown same as the movie.

Follow the show & guests:

Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits
Phil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
Brooke Solomon - https://www.instagram.com/brookebsolomon
Jordan Gustafson - https://www.instagram.com/jordan_gustafson
The Queer Quadrant - https://www.instagram.com/queerquadrant

💜 Patreon (bonus episodes & video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Phil and Emily are joined by writer and podcaster Katharine LaRonde to dig into Joe Roth's America's Sweethearts (2001). Julia Roberts plays the overlooked assistant stuck managing the press junket for her superstar sister (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and her sister's washed-up, soon-to-be-ex-husband (John Cusack), whose divorce turns out to be the only story the reporters actually want. It spirals into a movie that can't decide if it's mocking the junket circus or just running one.

The three dig into the film's Hollywood-satire instincts that never quite land a punch, John Cusack playing a guy who's spent a year and a half hiding from his own life at Alan Arkin's wellness retreat, and Roger Ebert's read on the movie as a watered-down Singin' in the Rain. There's a real case here for reading America's Sweethearts as the movie that wanted to skewer Hollywood but fell in love with it instead. Promising, self-conscious, and never quite committed, same as the movie.

Follow the show & guest:

Podcast Like It's... - https://www.instagram.com/podcastlikeits
Phil Iscove - https://www.instagram.com/pmiscove
Emily St. James - https://www.instagram.com/emilystjams
Katharine LaRonde - https://www.instagram.com/katlaronde/

💜 Patreon (bonus episodes & video): http://patreon.com/Podcastlikeits
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.