Watch With Jen™

Sheila O'Malley is one of our greatest film writers, historians, & critics of screen acting. Her essays and reviews on The Sheila Variations blog and Roger Ebert's site are always must-reads, & I've been incredibly fortunate to have had her on the pod a few times to discuss some of cinema history's best and brightest performers. This time, she's back to share her thoughts on the vulnerable, intelligent, and understated character actor Dana Andrews, who to Sheila's mind is the recipient of many "10-second Oscars," wherein the smallest choices he makes in a scene or a given line-read change the temperature...

You're in for a treat this week! Queue up Watch With Jen's long-overdue reunion of covering iconic action superstars with my dear friends (& frequent guests) Jed Ayres, Jordan Harper, & Priscilla Page. In '24, we gathered to dig deep into Jean-Claude Van Damme's life & career. And in '25, Jordan & Priscilla logged in for a celebration of all things Jackie Chan.

This time, we're going back to our Gen X & Millennial childhoods watching Arnold Schwarzenegger save the day. From PUMPING IRON to T2 & beyond, we compare/contrast Arnold with his fellow Planet Hollywood investors & action megastars Bruce Willis & Sylvester...

Delightful Mary Higgins Clark award-winning mystery writer Lina Chern drops by the podcast once again for a perfectly summery, vacation-and-sunscreen-season-worthy tour of Island Movies, such as SEND HELP, SHUTTER ISLAND, FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, KING KONG, CAST AWAY, SIX DAYS SEVEN NIGHTS, & beyond.

Lina's Bio: "Hi. I'm Lina. My debut novel Play the Fool won the 2024 Mary Higgins Clark Award and was a 2024 Lefty and Anthony Award nominee. A sequel, Tricks of Fortune, is expected in 2025. Other work has appeared in The Marlboro Review, The Bellingham Review, Rhino, The Collagist, and Black Fox Literary Magazine. I have also...

Encyclopedic cinephile, writer, and pal Jed Ayres joins us once again to discuss the action-horror subgenre Games of Death. Taking us on a journey from THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, we touch on some of the biggest, rarest, & best films in the genre before exploring THE HUNGER GAMES, READY OR NOT, & SELF-RELIANCE.

Originally Posted on Patreon (7/15/26) here: https://www.patreon.com/FilmIntuition/posts/163902834

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Earlier this year, I had a blast revisiting five of my favorite Joan Cusack performances for RogerEbert.com's Women Writers Week celebration. My friend, the prolific MovieMom.com critic Nell Minow, who also writes and edits for Ebert's site, was my editor for the article, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring her back to Watch With Jen to explore a handful of our favorite Cusack roles that I wasn't able to cover in the piece. Touching on almost her entire filmography in this briskly energetic conversation, we pay close attention to WORKING GIRL, TOY STORY 2 (& 5), SCHOOL...

This week, film scholar and author Mike Miley returns to the podcast to discuss one of his favorite directors, Jonathan Demme. Intriguingly, Mike opted to focus on Demme's earliest movies before his most successful era of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and PHILADELPHIA. Although we touch on the unsung filmmaker's entire career, in this fast-paced, well-researched conversation, Mike and I cover Demme's background, recurring themes, collaborators (especially David Byrne), contemporaries, and those he influenced (most notably Paul Thomas Anderson), plus the films STOP MAKING SENSE, SOMETHING WILD, and MARRIED TO THE MOB. One of my favorite episodes of the season...

My good friend, Black List Senior Vice President Kate Hagen, returns to Watch With Jen for this throwback summer celebration of 1996 films written, directed, and starring women. A diverse cross-section of independent and commercial offerings that we highlight throughout the hour, Kate and I discuss WALKING & TALKING, A VERY BRADY SEQUEL, HARRIET THE SPY, THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS & DOGS, plus one of the summer's biggest headline getters, STRIPTEASE with Demi Moore, who made history that year as the highest paid studio actress of all-time. While the film itself isn't great, Moore's success paved the way for women such as...

It was a joy to bring on a fellow Arizona critic & film scholar, the brilliant & funny Barbara VanDenburgh, to discuss the masterful Arizona-raised filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Barbara's favorite director and her greatest area of film knowledge; it's wild to realize that we haven't done an official Spielberg episode of the pod before this one. I know you'll love it! Covering the filmmaker's life, career, major themes, techniques, collaborators, and more, we touch on most of his pictures in this fast-paced conversation, and pay special attention to three of his summer releases, JAWS, JURASSIC PARK, and A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.<...

The brilliant and soulful Roxana Hadadi returns with this episode devoted to one of her current favorite actors, the great Riz Ahmed. Similar to past conversations focused on terrific character actors like Tom Wilkinson and Edward Norton, this week, we explore Ahmed's filmography at large, discuss his evolution as an actor, and what sets him apart in the films THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST, NIGHTCRAWLER, and SOUND OF METAL.

Guest Bio: A TV critic with Vulture, who also writes about film & pop culture, Roxana was previously the film editor & a critic with Pajiba, & her reviews, essays, recaps, and other...

Every time Leslie Byron Pitt is on the podcast, we go deep, & this episode is no exception. A film blogger and hobbyist photographer, Leslie is also a fellow podcaster, co-hosting the shows Fatal Attractions and Hustlers of Culture. In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss the way that photography and the role of the photographer are used in a variety of films, and zero in on REAR WINDOW, ONE HOUR PHOTO, and CITY OF GOD in particular.

Originally posted on Patreon (5/31/26) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/159733813

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CITY OF MARGINS, SHOOT THE MOONLIGHT OUT, & SAINT OF THE NARROWS STREET author William Boyle returns to the show to discuss Old Hollywood icon Joan Crawford's incredible career from silent movies through the 1970s. Digging deep to share biographical insights and shout out films that are often overlooked, in this fast-paced chat, we cover HUMORESQUE (1946), SUDDEN FEAR (1952), and JOHNNY GUITAR (1954).

Originally Posted on Patreon (5/23/26) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/159040535

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Hot off the news that he's just sold one million copies of his books, my wonderfully talented friend, KING OF ASHES and ALL THE SINNERS BLEED novelist S.A. Cosby returns to the pod this week for a delightful episode Gen Xers in particular will love. Listen in as we wax nostalgic, nerdy, & philosophical about the American independent film scene, video stores, actors with faces, Sundance, the New Queer Cinema movement, & iconoclastic filmmakers of the 1990s. We started with groundbreaking director Gregg Araki's TEEN APOCALYPSE TRILOGY, then went everywhere, & obviously, fittingly, NOWHERE. The three main films in the trilogy...

The charming and inventive B-Side pod boys return to the show to discuss a trio of films that seem like they could be unofficial sequels to other movies telling the same story or starring the same lead. Films discussed include MY BLUE HEAVEN (after GOODFELLAS), AIR FORCE ONE (which plays like a continuation of Jack Ryan's adventures), and ENEMY OF THE STATE (which acknowledges its debt to THE CONVERSATION).

Originally Posted on Patreon (5/3/26) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/157259020

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Straight from the pages of today's New York Times, Watch With Jen's first podcast guest, author Jordan Harper, returns ahead of the release of his fittingly titled new thriller, A VIOLENT MASTERPIECE. A devotee of Japanese cinema, food, and culture, Jordan gives me a crash course in the cinema of director Juzo Itami.

An all-time "wife guy," who began making movies in his early fifties and made 11, which starred his incredibly expressive wife, Nobuko Miyamoto, Juzo Itami's life and career are discussed, along with the movies SUPERMARKET WOMAN, TAMPOPO, and MINBO: THE GENTLE ART OF JAPANESE EXTORTION.<...

Current and aspiring writers of all backgrounds will love this episode, devoted to storytelling, humanism, empathy, and creativity. Horror author Laurel Hightower makes her Watch With Jen pod debut, exploring some of Disney's magic-minded movies of the past few decades, particularly ENCHANTED, ENCANTO, and WISH. A sprawling, soulful chat with a woman who instantly felt like an old friend, I can't recommend this conversation enough.

Bio: Laurel Hightower is a bourbon-loving, pitbull-snuggling native of Lexington, Kentucky. She is the Bram Stoker-nominated author of WHISPERS IN THE DARK, CROSSROADS, BELOW, EVERY WOMAN KNOWS THIS, SILENT KEY, SPIRIT COVEN...

Recently on the pod, I reunited with the gifted arts journalist Candice Frederick, one of my oldest friends from the early days of Film Twitter. Candice was one of the first guests I ever had on Watch With Jen, and we had a ball logging on to discuss some of the best and most under-discussed coming-of-age movies of the past 40+ years, including those we first saw as adults in our early 40s. While initially we were going to focus on RUNNING ON EMPTY, PARIAH, and JUNO, we wound up having a breezy, sunny, nostalgic, and introspective chat about a...

In honor of that time I went on an Easter Egg Hunt as a toddler in 1984 and had no luck, I'm giving everyone this Easter egg of an episode a day early. Hope you and yours have a safe, happy, healthy, and lovely weekend full of good movies and great memories.

This week, I'm honored to bring back one of my oldest Film Twitter buddies, the great Brian Saur, who I've known and collaborated with on various projects for over sixteen years, from the blog Rupert Pupkin Speaks to DVD Netflix to pods. Gifting us with an...

It's always such a joy when I can bring on a friend I know IRL who lives in my home state, so it is with great pleasure that I scheduled a Zoom hang with the critically acclaimed, wondrously creative, and darkly comedic journalist-turned-author Amina Akhtar. More of a breezy, nostalgic chat about life, Gen X, print journalism, and the '90s, than a traditional episode devoted to the movies, with the release of Devil Wears Prada 2 right around the corner, it was the perfect time to talk to Amina about the twenty years she spent working in the fashion...

Two of my favorite buddies, New York Times bestselling, award-winning KING OF ASHES author S.A. Cosby and WBUR and Spliced Personality film critic Sean Burns, return to the podcast to celebrate the career of the great character actor Delroy Lindo. Originally conceived at the end of last season before life and scheduling got in the way, with Lindo's recent Oscar nomination for SINNERS, this winter/spring was the perfect time to discuss one of our favorite scene-stealers of the last 35+ years on Watch With Jen.

Referencing everything, including our favorites like HEIST and GET SHORTY, in...

We're back with the first episode of our seventh season! CALIFORNIA BEAR author Duane Swierczynski returns to the podcast to discuss his brand new graphic novel DEAD FLOWERS for John and Sandy Carpenter's Storm King Comics, digs into the way that filmmaker and composer John Carpenter's work has inspired him, and introduces Jen to THE FOG, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, & IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS.

Originally Posted on Patreon (3/15/26) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/153124788

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Sharply intelligent, dazzlingly analytical, & a genuinely kind soul, my gifted friend, freelance writer and Letterboxd editor Mitchell Beaupre is one of my favorite guests for a reason. Returning to the pod for the first time in a year, this episode kicks off the start of a new Watch With Jen miniseries covering some of our favorite westerns of the twenty-first century. Beginning with 2020-2025, Mitchell and I take a deeper look at Kelly Reichardt's FIRST COW, Jane Campion's THE POWER OF THE DOG, & Kevin Costner's HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA - CHAPTER 1.

Note: Unless a wild burst of...

Lina Chern, the Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author of Play the Fool, is here this week to discuss psychics solving crime, predestination and tarot onscreen, and the beauty of free will on film in Minority Report, The Dead Zone, The Gift, and Three Colors: Red. Her delightful sequel to Fool, Tricks of Fortune, was released over the summer, and we did a full-length video interview about the book, her writing, and our taste in pop culture, which you can see on the Poisoned Pen Bookstore YouTube Channel.

Originally Posted on Patreon (12/20/25) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/145545464<...

Happy Thanksgiving! There's nothing like curling up under quilts and blankets by the fire with your loved ones and watching lush period movies in the winter. The delightfully knowledgeable Jane Austen expert, bestselling Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls author Natalie Jenner, returns to the podcast to discuss the life, work, and history of Jane Austen, and the film adaptations of Sense and Sensibility (1995), Pride & Prejudice (2005), and Emma (2020).

Originally Posted on Patreon (11/24/25) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/144314852

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When we wrapped last year's wonderful fan favorite Watch With Jen episode on Jean-Claude Van Damme, my guests Jordan Harper, Priscilla Page, Jed Ayres, & I knew that we needed to have another martial arts movie chat in Season 6. Although Jed bowed out of this conversation (but did recently appear on a cool installment devoted to Andy Garcia you need to check out), Jordan and Priscilla returned to discuss the filmography, history, skills, range, & persona of the once-in-a-generation talent Jackie Chan.

Covering several of the superstar's films in our overview & referencing his smash American crossover success with RUMBLE...

Los Angeles based Variety & Fresh Fiction film critic Courtney Howard returns to the podcast for a breezy, nostalgic, spirited, & informal chat about everyone's favorite Peruvian bear. You'll hear us celebrate the imaginative & talented cast & crew of PADDINGTON, PADDINGTON 2, & the most recent installment, PADDINGTON IN PERU, as well as the way its overall themes resonate especially well today. A shorter installment of Watch With Jen that's just an easy chat among friends, it's the perfect thing to take with you on your next marmalade run to the grocery store.

Originally Posted on Jen's Patreon (11/4/25) here: https...

Happy Halloween! We don't dedicate too many episodes of Watch With Jen to television shows, mostly because of the time & effort involved in rewatching several seasons over a long period of time. But if a TV series touches us enough, if it's beloved, created & executed with a true original vision, raises & sets the bar, has been unfairly overlooked, or if it's something that has impacted an entire generation of fans, then we want to be sure to celebrate its greatness.

After all, in every generation, a slayer is born, & in our second of two Halloween episodes, past...

Watch With Jen is releasing two Halloween episodes this year for your listening pleasure & we're starting with an appreciation of a man who is synonymous with spooky season! New York Times bestselling author S.A. Cosby (All the Sinners Bleed, King of Ashes) & award-winning novelist William Boyle (City of Margins, Saint of the Narrows Street) return to the podcast to discuss their decades long affection for the written & filmed work of prolific horror master Stephen King.

A fast-paced conversation filled with nostalgia, confessions, & stories of a few screenings gone wrong, while we touch on a wide variety...

It's such a joy to introduce everyone to my delightfully knowledgeable work buddy Pat King (aka PK), who's a veteran bookseller at Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, AZ. One of our most beloved employees with decades of experience, PK is a Book Ninja, in that you can walk in, tell him what you're interested in or the kind of stuff you like & he'll find you your new favorite read. This week, I brought him on to discuss another one of his passions beyond Science Fiction & Horror. As a video game enthusiast & collector, PK is the perfect person to inject...

We're back from our mid-season hiatus! My great pal, author Jed Ayres returns to the podcast once again to explore one of his favorite topics: the hair of Andy Garcia! Lol, no, seriously, while he is admittedly "fascinated" & somewhat obsessed with the man's gorgeous head of hair, over the years, the two of us bonded over our love of Garcia calling Michael Douglas "babe" in Ridley Scott's wild homoerotic action movie BLACK RAIN, having a snowcone fight in 8 MILLION WAYS TO DIE, & so much more. In this rollicking episode, we tackle a trio of the actor's lesser known &/or...

Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down over Zoom & chatting with one of my favorite couples, Chris & Elizabeth Cantwell. An L.A.-based television & comic book writer, listeners first heard Chris discuss his work on the brilliant series he co-created HALT & CATCH FIRE in one of Watch With Jen's most popular episodes. His wife is the ever-insightful, poet, teacher, scholar, & Bright Wall/Dark Room essayist & editor Elizabeth Cantwell, who has taught me so much about horror movies over the years.

Originally recorded just to cut together into a larger episode alongside other chats about recent Criterion 4...

Welcome to the fourth installment in our Summer '25 suite of episodes devoted to recent Physical Media releases from The Criterion Collection. This will be the last new episode of Watch With Jen before I go on a brief summer hiatus but I'm hoping to return with more wonderful shows & conversations you'll love in mid to late August. SAINT OF THE NARROWS STREET novelist William Boyle returns this week to discuss Claude Berri's lush, tragic masterpieces JEAN DE FLORETTE & MANON OF THE SPRING, my hilarious & brilliant Boston buddy Sean Burns joins me for Bruce Robinson's cult classic WITHNAIL AND...

I've been pre-scheduling podcast episodes this summer &, forgetting that we are now living in a time of anything goes chaos in the U.S., last week's conversation wound up publishing in the hours after the news involving Iran. Hopefully anyone who knows me knows that I wouldn't normally pivot from major world news to self-promotion but I still wanted to take this opportunity to apologize for any confusion or insensitivity that the accidentally ill-timed new episode caused. To make up for that gaffe, I thought I'd deliver this third conversation in our summer suite of episodes devoted to Physical...

We're back with part two of our ongoing summer series devoted to the newest physical media releases from The Criterion Collection & today's episode is a must for neo-noir fans everywhere. First up, you'll hear from bestselling award-winning authors S.A. Cosby (whose newest novel KING OF ASHES just hit shelves last week) & Jordan Harper (SHE RIDES SHOTGUN & EVERYBODY KNOWS) on director Stephen Frears' outstanding adaptation of author Jim Thompson's THE GRIFTERS. Then we leave the '90s behind & go further back in time to catch up with the brilliant film essayist & historian Priscilla Page on two of her all-time...

It's cowboys, & truckers, & samurai, oh my! In the first part of a summer suite of Season 6 episodes devoted to Physical Media released this year by The Criterion Collection, you'll hear conversations with some of my dearest friends (& your favorite guests). Just in time for Father's Day, we're embracing Dudes Rock (or at times, ironically, "Dudes Don't Rock") Energy for the first quartet of classic film favorites. I kick things off here in the West with THE GET-OFF author Christa Faust on WINCHESTER '73, & then check in with my B-Side Podcast buddies Dan Mecca & Conor O'Donnell out in the East...

Welcome to the unofficial second half of a delightful extended conversation about actor James Gandolfini that started at the end of April with me interviewing film critic, historian, & author Jason Bailey about his new outstanding biography GANDOLFINI: JIM, TONY, & THE LIFE OF A LEGEND for Poisoned Pen Bookstore. While I highly recommend you check out that earlier discussion on the Poisoned Pen's YouTube or FB Live channels (&/or wherever you get your podcasts), this episode of Watch With Jen works just as well on its own. Celebrating the beloved performer's diverse filmography & decades-spanning career as a character actor, in...

Since the kind souls at The Criterion Collection generously sent both myself & my dear friend (& kid brother from an Oz mother) Blake Howard the same brand new pristine 4K edition of director Norman Jewison's Academy Award winning 1967 masterpiece IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, we decided to team up to cover it together. Although you'll still hear several traditional Watch With Jen: Physical Media episodes in the future as Season 6 of my podcast continues, this time, we felt like kicking off the summer with a little HEAT c/o an episode of Blake's One Heat Minute Productions' Criterion Sessions...

This week, I'm pleased to bring you a cheery conversation with my delightful friend, fellow podcaster, and animation expert Rachel Wagner. Incredibly hardworking and prolific as the woman behind both the website Rachel's Reviews and the popular Hallmarkies podcast, in this breezy, fast paced, nostalgic, well researched discussion, we celebrate the films of the always inventive Aardman Animation, including the Wallace & Gromit claymation stop-motion shorts that first brought them international fame, CHICKEN RUN, ARTHUR CHRISTMAS, the SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE, & more. Long live the creativity of stop-motion clay animation.

Originally Posted on Patreon (5/31/25) here: https://www.patreon...

Earlier in the year, I met the terrific & very prolific author Erica Ruth Neubauer at Poisoned Pen Bookstore when she was in town to promote her newest Jane Wunderly mystery series novel HOMICIDE IN THE INDIAN HILLS. From the moment that I discovered that she had a very cool, intricate tattoo of the game board & weapons from CLUE, I knew she'd be a great guest on Watch With Jen & I was delighted that she said yes. Delving not only into her background falling in love with old movies & books as a child, but also the path that led her...

I always learn so much in my conversations with Canadian cinephile, critic, & author Adam Nayman & this episode - devoted to a quartet of big screen adaptations of Ira Levin's buzzy bestselling novels that captivated a generation of readers - is no exception. Listen in as we take you through his career as a master storyteller of what Stephen King deemed "Swiss watch" worthy plots while exploring the films A KISS BEFORE DYING (1956), ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968), THE STEPFORD WIVES (1975), & THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (1978).

Bio: Adam Nayman is a critic, lecturer, and author based in Toronto. He writes for the...

It was such a pleasure to reunite with WHAT LIES WEST writer-director Jessica Ellis for this thoughtful, breezy, good-hearted celebration of three films about women's sexuality onscreen. Diving into two very different, boldly inquisitive bright lights of '90s cinema in CHASING AMY & ANTONIA'S LINE, which bookend this conversation, we also explore 2024's lovely, compassionate, surprisingly bittersweet, highly recommended indie MY OLD ASS, which feels like a throwback to the coming-of-age indie films made in that same era.

Originally Posted on Patreon (4/21/25) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/127082687

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