We're carrying on our tribute to Rob Reiner this month with the one of the first (and certainly funniest) rockumentaries of all time: This is Spinal Tap, starring Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer as Britain's loudest and most punctual rock band. This is Spinal Tap was also Reiner's first feature film as a director.

Next week, we'll be chatting Stephen King and Stand By Me!

It's a brand new year and we're starting off with a tribute to director Rob Reiner. And what better way to kick off both than with his enduring, perfect romantic comedy, When Harry Met Sally. Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan star as two strangers who gradually become friends and then eventually fall in love. Written by Nora Ephron and co-starring Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby, this classic had a successful box office run in 1989 and is still just as beloved nearly 40 years later

For our last episode of 2025, we talk about one of the best movies released in 2025: Wake Up Dead Man, the third film in Rian Johnson's Knives Out series. Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is back to take on a locked-room mystery in the depths (literally and figuratively) of the Catholic Church. Come for the twisty plot, stay for the thematic grappling with faith and humanism, stay even longer for Josh O'Connor in a clerical collar.

Thank you so much for joining us and for supporting us this year! We'll be on break for the holidays, but will return in January in a month-long tribute to Rob Reiner, starting with When Harry Met Sally. See you in 2026!

This week, Lauren picks the movie and it's the 2011 New Zealand rom com Love Birds, starring Rhys Darby and Sally Hawkins.

After Doug's girlfriend leaves him, an injured paradise shelduck named Pierre helps him heal and to find new love with Holly, a veterinarian single mom.

Featuring a soundtrack entirely by Queen, Love Birds also stars Bryan Brown, Craig Hall, David Fane, and Emily Barclay.

We wind down the year with some grab-bag faves that we just really want to watch, beginning with a Thanksgiving holiday classic: John Hughes's Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987), in which Neal (Steve Martin) is trapped on a holiday road trip from hell with the friendly, lovable, and disaster-prone Del (John Candy). A forty-five-minute flight to Chicago can sometimes take three days, it seems.

Next week, Rhys Darby, Sally Hawkins, and a duck cause Lauren to have an existential crisis! We're talking Love Birds!

This week we finish out our LA neo-noir series with the revolutionary Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Robert Zemeckis directed this adaptation of Gary K. Wolf's 1981 novel, Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, a hilariously smart satire that leads hard-boiled private detective Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) on a journey to prove one of Toon Town's biggest stars, Roger Rabbit (voice of Charles Fleischer) is not guilty of murder. Together they must clear Roger's name and save him from the dreadful Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd).

Nominated for 6 Academy Awards and winning 3, the film was an astonishing blend of live-action and animation, creating new technology along the way. It is also the only film to include characters from both Disney and Warner Bros. together onscreen.

We're off next week, but we'll be back with some holiday cheer in December!

This week we grapple with the problematics of Chinatown (1974), arguably one of the greatest neo-noirs, with a fraught and complicated history thanks to its director, Roman Polanski. Starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, Chinatown represents the bleakness of noir amid the sunniness of LA, with a hefty dose of political and sexual corruption. Oof.

TW for discussions of sexual assault and incest. Next week, we conclude Noirvember with a far happier entry: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

We continue our look at Los Angeles-set neo-noir films, this time with the 1997 Academy Award-winning L.A. Confidential.

Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, and Kevin Spacey star as three very different LAPD detectives in a changing city where some cops embrace the corruption, some look the other way, and some are determined to root it out. An investigation into a series of murders in 1950s Los Angeles threatens to expose what's really going on beneath the sunny, shiny surface.

Based on the novel by James Ellroy, L.A. Confidential was directed by Curtis Hanson and also stars Kim Basinger, James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, David Strathairn, and Ron Rifkin. It was nominated for 9 Oscars including Best Picture, winning two: Best Supporting Actress, Kim Basinger; and Best Adapted Screenplay, Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson.