I Used To Go Here is deeply personal for anybody who has struggled with defining and redefining their personal success

[Interview with director Kris Rey]

You know when you watch a movie and you can just tell that the mind behind it is super cool?  I Used To Go Here is smart and funny and relatable, in sort of an unnerving way.  We could tell right out of the gate that Kris Rey was going to be so much hipper than us.  To level the playing field a bit, I took extensive notes titled "Carrie's list of uncool things to not say."  I also wore a dress from my Grandma's funeral last year to add balance my enthusiasm that can sometimes be hard for me to contain.

All of these things seem silly now.  Kris was just so pleasant and approachable, albeit still WAY out of our league on the cool-scale.

Writer/Director Kris Rey

A bit about the movie:

Following the launch of her new novel, 35-year-old writer Kate (Gillian Jacobs, most known for her role in Life of the Party ) is invited to speak at her alma matter by her former professor David (played by Jemaine Clement). After accepting the invitation, Kate finds herself deeply engrained in the lives of a group of super fun college students.  The film is about navigating the complexities of finding and embracing success.

Gillian Jacobs in 'I Used to Go Here'

It's an empathy trip to be sure for anybody who is a bit (or a lot) removed from their wild college days.  Beyond that, the movie explores how we seek adoration and the physical/emotional trap that can be.  What we loved was the character arch, of finding empowerment in whatever way serves you best.

Jemaine Clement plays the long-time admired professor in 'I Used to Go Here'

We hope you enjoy listening to Kris Rey as much as we did.  I Used to Go Here is available August 7th on Amazon and iTunes.

1BR Probably Shouldn't Have Been Made

[Interview with writer/director/cast]

If we're being honest, Rob and I were really nervous for the 1BR interview.  We've done a few interviews over the years, but this was going to be the first time we sat down using video. What if I had stuff on my face? Or what if Rob accidentally picked his nose, like he sometimes does? Or what if I mispronounced somebodies name (which I did, g-damnit)?

So, the good news is, they were really nice, guys... and not scary at all. Rob did the thing that he does where he was all polished and prepared and asked great questions.  Meanwhile, I did the thing that I do where I laugh awkwardly and veer off from talking about the movie, to instead focus on things like hair and drugs. They totally rolled with it (I think).

We talk about everything from 1BR, to Northwestern, to COVID, to eating hallucinogenic worms to how they lost their original female lead days before filming.

A bit about Naomi Grossman:

You probably know Naomi Grossman best as the fan-favorite "Pepper" on FX’s American Horror Story: Asylum & Freak Show. Naomi was also was a Primetime Emmy nominee for her role in Ctrl Alt Delete. And gosh darnit if she wasn't sweet and funny with the best smile (picture below does not represent her actual smile).

A bit about David Marmor 

A San Francisco native, David Marmor studied computer science at Harvard and directing at USC.  Don't worry, I made sure to point out that I went to Augustana College, to level the playing field.  His award-winning short films have screened at more than 60 festivals worldwide and aired on television on IFC and CBC. 1BR is his first feature, and it is a strong debut.

A bit about 1BR:

A young woman named Sarah leaves behind a painful past to follow her dreams and ends up scoring the perfect Hollywood apartment. But something is not right. Unable to sleep, tormented by strange noises and threatening notes, her new life quickly starts to unravel. By the time she learns the horrifying truth, it's too late. Caught in a waking nightmare, Sarah must find the strength to hold onto her crumbling sanity...or be trapped forever in an existential hell.

1BR premiered at Fantasia Fest in Montreal and had a terrific festival run.  It was later picked up for distribution by Dark Sky Films.

Check out the interview and more importantly check out 1BR, on whichever streaming service you use!

For all you aspiring filmmakers out there, here is the Joe Bob Briggs video Alok mentioned where he talks about making a film no matter what.

Acting is very hard work even for people who've spent their whole lives honing their craft; it must be unimaginably hard when the whole life in question doesn't span an entire decade. That's why we're using our next episode to celebrate our favorite performances by children: the young actors who go on to become great stars, the one who fizzle out once they hit the ugly part of puberty, the ones who just showed up that one time and blew us all away with a talent that never had a chance to develop.

In Worth Mentioning, we cover Greyhound, 1BR and Strasbourg 1518!

There are some movies that are so great that you make them treasured friends, revisiting them every now and then to appreciate once again how special they are. There are some movies that you obsessively watch over and over again, trying to absorb them right into your soul. And then there are the movies so great that you simply can't go back: one time is all the more you dare risk watching them - maybe to preserve the surprise, maybe to avoid the heartache, or for any other reason that one time simply had to be enough. We're devoting a whole episode to these last films, the ones that we love so much that there's no chance in hell of our ever revisiting them.

In Worth Mentioning, we cover Palm Springs and Bedevil.

We're turning our attention to movie stars for our next episode - specifically, to movie stars right at the beginning of their stardom. We're looking at our all-time favorite acting debuts, the very best performances by new actors who manage to prove in their very first time in front of a camera that they have what it takes to hold our attention, to make us cry, to make us laugh, and to stick around for years to come.

In Worth Mentioning we cover Irresistible and Homecoming.

Some movies become big, beloved successes right off the bat, celebrated by one and all. Some movies need to fight for it: they're overlooked, undervalued, and just plain dismissed, treasured only by a tiny audience biding the day that might never come when the object of their affection finally gets its moment in the sun. For this episode, we're celebrating our favorite examples of these wonderful, idiosyncratic little gems, with our picks for the best cult movies of all time, no matter how big or small the cult. 

In Worth Mentioning we cover: Da 5 Bloods, You Should Have Left and The King of Staten Island.

We've looked at our favorite movie moms. And we've looked at our favorite example of movies about daddy issues, that most reliable crutch for lazy screenwriters. But with Father's Day coming up, we decided it was long since time that we gave good dads their time in the sun, which is why our next episode is going to be all about our very favorite dads in the movies. Maybe they're kind sources of wisdom, maybe they're fun buddies who teach their children the importance of getting out there and living life, and maybe they're the heads of powerful mafia families manipulating the lifes of dozens of people just to give their sons a good chance at a better future. We love 'em all, and we're excited to share with you our picks for the best movie dads.

In Worth Mentioning we cover The Half of It, Barefoot Gen, The Message thank to Patreon, Gavin.

Sometimes - when you're feeling a bit gloomy, for example, or when you've locked your doors against the onslaught of a global pandemic - you just need to have fun. And sometimes, that fun is pretty disreputable and embarrassing, but do you care? No! Well... maybe just a little. And that's what makes a guilty pleasure: a film that you're almost not ashamed to love, and certainly the love more than beats out the shame, though you would, perhaps, not want to admit that love to God, the world, and everybody on a podcast. And yet, that's just exactly what we're going to do on our next episode: reveal the mortifying (but gratifying!) truth about our very favorite guilty pleasure movies, be they corny romances, racist action movies, dumb musicals, or Swedish nudism documentaries.

In Worth Mentioning, we cover Scoob!, The Lovebirds and A Separation by request of Patreon, Jaiden Vanmali.

We had such a good time re-watching Back to the Future that we've decided to keep the fun going with a whole episode dedicated to our favorite examples of time travel in the movie. Whether it's killer robots from the future, accidentally screwing up the past, or just going on a tour of whatever costume drama sets the producer could get for cheap, we'll be hopping back and forth across the decades.

In Worth Mentioning we cover The Willoughby's, Emma and The Rhythm Section.

It's time for one of our favorite annual traditions, the summer preview episode! We always love to try to predict what upcoming releases we're going to enjoy the most, out of all the big summer tentpoles and smaller counter-programming. Unfortunately, with no movies coming out until July (at best!), it would be a pretty thin episode.

But just because summer 2020 is shot to hell, doesn't mean we can't still have fun thinking about summer blockbusters! So instead of looking ahead, we're going to look backwards, to our favorite blockbuster movies of summers past. Butter up some popcorn and throw on the AC, and join us for a celebration of all the best big budget razzle-dazzle that Hollywood has thrown at us for the past few decades.

In Worth Mentioning, we cover Extraction, Sonic the Hedgehog, and A Brighter Summer Day.

Looking at the world outside our windows - certainly not visiting it- what could be better than watching a movie about the swirling paranoia of a world that is on the brink of collapse and there's nothing you can do about it? Certainly nothing we can think of which is why this episode is about the 2001 cult classic Donnie Darko, by request of Patreon subscriber Gavin. We look at not just at the original version of Richard Kelly's dreamy and nightmarish fantasy about teenage suburban angst, but also the controversial 2004 director's cut.

There are a lot of ways you can ride out a pandemic. You can gather all of your beautiful rich friends, hole up in a villa outside of Florence, and tell dirty stories to each other for ten straight days. Or you can throw a lavish party with several color-coded rooms that represent the decaying, corrupted soul of the age. Maybe you can keep a diary that will be treasured centuries from now as an irreplaceable historical document. Or maybe you can just masturbate a lot.

Here at Alternate Ending, we're going to spend our time watching movies, naturally enough. And since the world is scary out there right now, our next episode is celebrating our favorite pick-me-up movies, the ones we watch when we're tired and achy and just generally feeling crummy, curled up on the couch in a blanket. These are the cinematic equivalent of a big bowl of chicken soup, the movies we watch when we need to feel warm and protected and cozy. Because whether you're sick with a virus or just sick of being stuck in the house, you're probably sick of something right now, and there's nothing like a good familiar movie to help you feel better.

In Worth Mentioning, we cover The Hunt, Bloodshot and Lady and the Tramp.

Between A Quiet Place: Part II depicting how humanity might look after civilization has been destroyed by blind, man-eating aliens, and COVID-19 preventing us from going out to the movie theaters to see it (EDIT: In a much more direct way than I had initially meant, as it turns out), it's an exciting time for fans of apocalypses. To celebrate - or prepare? - we're taking a look at our favorite films about what happens after the end of everything.  We share our top five apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic movies, all those merry and uplifting tales of how nuclear war, environmental collapse, zombies, or, yes, pandemics have destroyed the world and left behind only the abandoned ruins for scavengers to pick over.

In Worth Mentioning we cover Onward, Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made and Hook.

We intended to start the year off on a positive note, with our most favorite films of the 2010's, and leave it at that.  But we would be completely remiss if we didn't slip into the deep, dark, cinematic sadness of the last decade, to look at the worst films of the last 10 years, too.  Hearts are already breaking at the mention of Orson Welles and Fred Rogers' names, but we won't get ahead of ourselves here.

We'll be taking a look at our Bottom 10 of the 2010's and we think you should join us!

In Worth Mentioning, we discuss The Invisible Man, Ride Your Wave and Jacob's Ladder, thanks to Patreon Jason Dohla.

With Tim away partying it up with other cinephiles, Carrie and Rob recap the 2020 Oscars.

From the musical performances, to the speeches to the upsets, we cover it all.

We also announce the winners of our Oscar Ballot contest.

It's our first-ever Top 10 episode, as we look at our very favorite films of the 2010s: the films that best embody a whole decade's worth of cinema. From game-changing popcorn epics like 2012's The Avengers to delicate art films like 2019's Honeyland; from the austerity of 2011's The Deep Blue Sea to the maximalism of 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road; from the cynicism of 2010's The Social Network to the coziness of 2018's Won't You Be My Neighbor -  it's been a wide-ranging and full decade, and we're celebrating it in all its variety.

In Worth Mentioning we cover The Gentlemen.

We're back! And for our first podcast of the new decade, we're looking at all the films of the year that's just wrapped up. From the big Disney blockbusters to the other big Disney blockbusters to the modestly successful films that Disney had nothing to do with; from the most impenetrable art films to the most warmly satisfying crowd-pleasers; from lighthouse keepers' semen to Mr. Rogers' cardigans, we're sharing our picks for the top 5 films of 2019. Plus, we'll be talking about the nominations for the 92nd Academy Awards, reflecting on our predictions for the films of fall 2019, and maybe even making some new predictions for the unsullied expanse of 2020 stretching out in front of us.

In Worth Mentioning, we cover Cats, Underwater and Light of My Life.

To help fill the void in your weekly listening, Carrie and Rob are bringing you Weeklies - a review of the last 7-days of movie new...with a twist! Rob has gathered all the 10 best pieces of movie news and Carrie will only be able to pick 5

1. The New Mutants Trailer
2. 'Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness' Loses Director Scott Derrickson
3. Next 'Mission: Impossible' Movies Cast Nicholas Hoult
4. Oscars to Go Hostless Again for 2020 Ceremony on ABC
5. Gretel & Hansel Trailer
6. Who Will Christian Bale Play in 'Thor: Love and Thunder'?
7. Timothee Chalamet to Play Bob Dylan in Biopic From James Mangold
8. Warner Bros. Will Use Artificial Intelligence to Help Decide Which Movies to Greenlight
9. ‘McMillions’ Trailer: Documentary Explains the Wild Story of Why You Never Won Those McDonald’s Monopoly Games
10. Matt Reeves Confirms Colin Farrell as The Penguin in ‘The Batman’ [Updated]

To help fill the void in your weekly listening, Carrie and Rob are bringing you Weeklies - a review of the last 7-days of movie new...with a twist! Rob has gathered all the 10 best pieces of movie news and Carrie will only be able to pick 5

1. A Quiet Place 2 Trailer
2. Women Directed Record 12% of Top 100-Grossing Films in 2019, Study Finds
3. The Climb Trailer
4. Golden Globes 2020 Predictions: Expect Wins for Scorsese, Tarantino and Bong Joon Ho
5. Hollywood Reporter Reader Poll: What Is the Most Anticipated Movie of 2020?
6. 'Murder Mystery' Is Most Popular Netflix Title in 2019, Company Says
7. Tenent Trailer
8. Barack Obama Loves ‘Fleabag’ Just as Much as You Do: See His Favorite Films and TV of 2019
9. Downhill Trailer
10. ‘Uncut Gems’ Has the Seventh Most F-Bombs in Cinema History