Mashley at the Movies

Our review of older films during the time of pandemic continues this week with a soap opera theme! Matt, Ashley and Aaron discuss Soapdish , a satire of the daytime soap opera industry, and Tootsie, about a man who pretends to be a woman so he can get a job on a daytime soap. Fun times!

This week should have been the 22nd Annual Roger Ebert Film Festival , but it has been canceled due to the global pandemic. Ashley & Matt have been regular attendees of Ebertfest since 2001, enjoying our time in the darkened walls of the Virginia Theatre as we are introduced to glorious new worlds in the realm of cinema each April, with  screening schedule curated by Roger Ebert, Chaz Ebert, and festival director Nate Kohn. Since there isn't a festival to attend this year, we thought we'd bring a little bit of Ebertfest to you. To that end, Matt & Ashley have conducted an interview with festival director Nate Kohn , and in our other new podcasts we discuss some Ebertfest-related offerings. There's the 2013 documentary Bayou Maharajah , about the talented and troubled New Orleans musician James Booker, and the 2001 indie film Kwik Stop , written & directed by, and co-starring, Michael Gilio. Both of these subjects played at  Roger Ebert Film Festivals o

It's week 570 of the global pandemic, and we review an old and a new movie, both of which features Nicolas Cage. We discuss a 1987 classic that has Cher, opera, amore and a big, bright moon. There's also a 2020 adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story about an alien meteorite that lands in the woods and terrorizes a family. It's an interesting week here at Mashley at the Movies . Hope you're all doing well!

We begin a (hopefully) regular series, where we discuss movies that are available as part of the Criterion Collection. First up is a slow, meditative, wistful and uncomfortable film about aging, sadness, longing and death in Venice.

Quarantine continues this week as we review three films that are all very, very mildly connected! First up is a new release that's straight-to-streaming, Banana Split , about two teenage girls who bond during the summer before they go off to college. Oh, and one of them is dating the other's ex-boyfriend. Next, we talk about a horror movie that takes place on the set of a children's TV show, and it's called The Banana Splits Movie (see what we did there?). Finally, we review last year's Five Feet Apart , about teenagers on a ward for cystic fibrosis patients. Among its stars is Cole Sprouse, whose brother Dylan co-stars in Banana Split . We hope everyone is staying healthy and well, is practicing social distancing, and is able to enjoy some movies at home, while we all get through this together (but apart).