Pop Screen

We all understand the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, so long as nobody has any follow-up questions. But did you know that the son of the guy who came up with it has several songs on the Shrek franchise soundtracks? This is Mark Oliver Everett, frontman of the band Eels, and this week's film, Parallel Worlds Parallel Lives, sees him untangle his strange quantum inheritance.

Join Graham and Jeff, long-term Ee...

You can't stop the music, although a lot of people wanted to when The Village People's 1980 movie musical came out. Released in the wake of the infamous "Disco Demolition Night" in which rock fans burned disco albums, its appeal to its natural constituency was blunted by its strange tone. A film that is extremely squeamish around sexuality yet far freer with the drugs and nudity than a PG-certificate film ought to...

What better time for a crossover than a comic book adaptation? This week, Graham is joined by Andrew and Mick, the two hosts of Behold!, to examine the 2024 remake of James O'Barr's cult comic The Crow. Famously the source for a 1994 film starring Brandon Lee, that star's on-set death sparked rumours that the property was cursed, rumours that can only have increased once people saw this.

Entering Pop Screen's air...

Look at our [stuff]! Yes, it's time for Pop Screen to don its neon balaclava and tackle one of the most iconic and divisive pop movies of the 2010s - Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers. With Selena Gomez and Gucci Mane in the cast, Skrillex on the soundtrack and James Franco playing a character who is legally distinct from Riff Raff, it has more showbiz connections than you'd expect from a director whose previous movie wa...

You know you're dealing with a slightly classier type of pop star movie when the director has a knighthood, and Sir Steve McQueen's Blitz is no exception. Despite getting no love at this year's Oscars - it's no Emilia Perez, eh, the Academy? - it's still an ambitious, multi-stranded tale of one boy's adventure through the underworld of World War II-era Britain. It tackles racial prejudice, community organisi...

One year ago, a very good boi and a steel-drum cover of 50 Cent became the most unexpected Oscar-season obsessions this side of Karla Sofia Gascon's tweets. It's Anatomy of a Fall, of course, and if you're thinking "Where's the Pop Screen connection?", look closer - you've got former Savages frontwoman turned "personal album"-maker and prolific collaborator Jehnny Beth playing the nanny, the ...

As soon as we heard the tragic news about David Lynch's death, we knew we had to do one of his films on Pop Screen. But which one? Most of Lynch's films feature some sort of musician cameo - and, to answer your next question, we've already done his version of Dune. But there's only one that caught the industrial, trip-hopping, nihilistic zeitgeist of the late '90s, and that's Lost Highway.

Join Graham an...

It's suppertime! Yes, after our review of 2024 Pop Screen is back to its old tricks with a look back at 1986's Little Shop of Horrors, the horror-comedy-musical powered by an unforgettable voice performance from none other than The Four Tops's Levi Stubbs. As the "mean green. mother from outer space" Audrey II, Stubbs made Academy Awards history - but you'll have to listen to find out how...

Join Graha...

You've heard the first half of our retrospective of 2024's cinema on The Uncut Network, now Pop Screen takes over for an even more epic second half - and that's just the bit where we all argue about The Substance. Join Graham, Robyn, Rob, Kat, Simon, Mike, Faye, Aidan, Andy and - in spirit if not in person - Ygraine as they run down their favourite UK releases from July to September. Which one reminds Aidan of Robert Altman? Which ...

Marvin Gaye! Originator of conscious soul, Motown legend and surely the coolest man ever to be called "Marvin", he had the kind of raw charisma that you'd think the movies couldn't get enough of. In fact, his acting roles were few and far between, with this curious Vietnam-vets-versus-bikers B-movie the most prominent of them.

In Pop Screen's last show of 2024, Aidan returns to discuss with Graham the legacy of Roger Corman, the bi...

Last Christmas, we gave you a Christmas special, and this year we're doing the same because we're not very imaginative. This year, to save you from tears, we're doing Paul Feig's Wham-inspired romantic comedy Last Christmas. It was poorly received on its 2019 release, but as was generally the case with 2019 we didn't know how good we all had it. Now, it's settling in to become a Christmas favourite, with all the cheesy appeal of a ...

The 1990s! A time when Hollywood's brightest minds were trying to solve the impossible problem of how to make a whole movie from those comic book thingies. Nowadays, they're trying to work out how to stop doing that, but that hasn't decreased the charm of things like Rachel Talalay's Tank Girl, a post-apocalyptic slice of pop feminism in which Lori Petty's titular antihero fights a scenery-chewing Malcolm McDowell while also - and ...

In all the annals of Hollywood flops, Heaven's Gate stands tall. Michael Cimino's follow-up to The Deep Hunter, a film beloved by seemingly everyone other than Jane Fonda at the time, it bankrupted its studio and became a byword for commercial failure. But what if we told you... it was good?

Admittedly you might not be as surprised as people once were. Since its 1980 release, Heaven's Gate has been restored and reassessed, and now ...

Bow before the mighty Thor! That's Jon Mikl Thor, obviously, the musclebound Canadian hard rocker whose mix of riffs and strongman stunts never quite led him to rock Valhalla. Not that it stopped him trying, and Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare was his biggest swing at the big leagues. On paper, it's a canonical hard rock horror movie, right down to the not-exactly-a-stretch casting of Thor as the frontman of a rock band. In practice, it is...

Phoebe Bridgers! Snail Mail! Fred Durst?! The list of Pop Screen-qualifying cast members is only the beginning of the weirdness in Jane Schoenbrun's sophomore film I Saw the TV Glow. Released in the UK after a wait almost as punishing as the film's devastating time-jumps, it's the story of two kids who really, really like a TV show. That is, if you're satisfied with a surface-level reading.

If you're not, allow Graham and Robyn to ...

It's time for Pop Screen's Halloween month, and as luck would have it one of the biggest new horror films of the year has plenty of pop connections. The final instalment in a trilogy which started with X, MaXXXine takes the story of Maxine Minx through to the '80s, and finds Halsey and Moses Sumney waiting for her there.

Join Graham and Andrew from Behold! podcast as they dive into the film's period detail, which of its supporting ...

On 13th September 1996, Tupac Shakur died in a still-unexplained killing (well, unless Eminem just blew the case wide open). It left a lot of things in limbo, including Vondie Curtis-Hall's spiky, charming directorial debut. Nobody wanted to see a crime comedy starring someone who'd just been the victim of a horrific crime, even if - as Graham and Mark unpack on this week's episode - the crime in Gridlock'd is rathe...

Outside of documentaries and one unforgettable appearance on The Simpsons, The Ramones only made one film appearance - but what an appearance! Allan Arkush's chaotic, Joe Dante-scripted Rock 'n' Roll High School wasn't even meant to star da brudders, with Todd Rundgren and Cheap Trick considered for the film's musical guests. Then, one of the film's stars told producer Roger Corman there was a much hipper ba...

When David and Graham are on the show together, you should be on high alert for a camp catastrophe, and lord do we get it in the form of Ken Hughes's Sextette. An innuendo-stuffed sex farce starring Mae West, it could have been a smash hit if it was made in the 1930s, when she was in her forties. Instead, it was made in the 1970s, when she was 84, and the result is the vanity project to end all vanity projects.

Join us as ...