The Next Picture Show

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