Podcast
The Pacific Northwest Insurance Corporation Moviefilm Podcast
A Podcast about movies from the fine folks at the Pacific Northwest Insurance Corporation, with Corbin Smith (The Famous Writer) and Dr. Movies, Matt Ellis (A Professor of Movies)
- Episodes
- 128
- Releases
- Weekly
- Typical length
- 1 hr 48 min
- On air since
- 2023
- Latest episode
- 2 months ago
Episodes
128 episodes, newest first
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2 hr 18 min
"Seven Samurai" (1954, Dir: Akira Kurosawa)
Show notes
Last episode. Solidarity forever.
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1 hr 48 min
"Safe" (1995, Dir: Todd Haynes)
Show notes
Are you allergic to the 20th century? Matt and Corbin discuss. Penultimate episode.
Next episode, the last one, is about Seven Samurai.
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1 hr 48 min
"Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981, Dir: Steven Spielberg)
Show notes
Raiders of the Lost Ark sits us at the intersection of everything we've been talking about in this show, so we talked about it for our pen-penultimate episode (There are two more episodes). Somehow, Corbin hasn't seen it before this.
Our next episode is about 'Safe,' from 1995, the Todd Haynes one. I think it's on TUBi? Not the Statham one. Not that we don't like Jason Statham.
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2 hr 3 min
The Bridge on the River Kawi (1957, Dir: David Lean)
Show notes
What does the rapid end of an empire feel like? One movie has two answers. Ryder joins us.
Features an announcement! Next episode is about Raiders of the Lost Ark! It's on DISNEY PLUS!!!
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2 hr 15 min
"THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN" (2011, Dir: Steven Spielberg) (w/ Andy Morse)
Show notes
Tintin, boy reporter. Snowy, his dog. Captain Haddock, his best friend. Matt Ellis and Andy Morse and Steven Spielberg all grew up with these wonnderful comic books, but only one of them made a movie based on them. Is it any good? We discuss.
Andy's podcast regarding the topic of James Bond pictures is "Rekindling our Bonds," listen to it here.
Next week's episode is about The Bridge on the River Kwai. It's a very famous movie you can find it somewhere.
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1 hr 47 min
HIGH HOPES (1988, Dir: Mike Leigh)
Show notes
Corbin has been intending on doing an episode about High Hopes since the show started. Why? You'll find out when you listen to the episode!!! Topics: Thatcher, the bitterness of leftists living in capital, some suprising facts about the actress who plays the mother, and the role of acting in Cinema.
Next week's show is about "THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN!" You can watch it on Kanopy.
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1 hr 58 min
"L'Eclisse" (1962, Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni)
Show notes
Corbin in has never quite understood what is going on in Antonioni's movies. Matt, on the other hand, is an an enthusiast. Can Dr. Movies use his teaching skills to enlighten his ignorant friend? Listen and learn!
Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing. Matt is also on there. And we got a Bluesky going.
Next episode is about "High Hopes." watch here.
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1 hr 55 min
"Magellan" (2026, Dir: Lav Diaz) w/ Ryder
Show notes
Slow cinema movie about colonialism shot on a middle grade DSLR? That's like all the topics we're interested in, you know we had to crack this one open!!!! Ryder joins us. Watch it here, it's great.
Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing. Matt is also on there. And we got a Bluesky going.
Next episode: L'Eclisse! Watch it here.
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1 hr 42 min
Johnny Guitar (1954, Dir: Nicholas Ray)
Show notes
In 1954, Hollywood legend and almost blacklisted Nicholas Ray and on-the-outs-movie-star Joan Crawford got together to make a bonkers paella western melodrama for a Poverty Row studio about the terror of desire and American reaction with TruColor. it's really quite something. we discuss!
Read Jennifer Peterson's analysis of Johnny Guitar's particular brew of gender studies and politics here. Our next episode is about "Magellan," which you can watch on Criterion.
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1 hr 25 min
"The White Ribbon" (2009, Dir: Michael Haneke) w/ Ryder C.
Show notes
Third chair Ryder Canepa joins us to talk about "The White Ribbon," Michael Haneke's exporation of the world's worst town, the horrible adults who live there, and the ways their misery warps their children. Nazi origin story, anti-patriarchal tract, or something entirely more upsetting? We discuss.
Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing. Matt is also on there. And we got a Bluesky going.
Next episode: Undetirmined!
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2 hr 17 min
"Lessons of Darkness" (1992, Dir: Werner Herzog) w/ Dom Sinacola (Portland Mercury)
Show notes
This week, Matt and Corbin are joined by DOM SINACOLA (Film Critic at The Portland Mercury, The Werner Hertzblog) to talk about LESSONS OF DARKNESS, Werner Herzog's impressionistic non fiction essay movie about the burning oilfields of Kuwait in the wake of the first Gulf War. Topics include: is this movie responsible? Germany in the post war, Herzog and truth and lies, and other stuff. Honestly it's been a while since we recorded it, so it's possible I'm missing something.
Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing. Matt is also on there. And we got a Bluesky going.
Next episode is about "The White Ribbon," which is streaming somewhere, probably.
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1 hr 35 min
"Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" (2018, Dir: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman)
Show notes
Do you remember that when Jean-Luc Godard took psychedelics and made a Spider-Man Movie? We talk about it!
Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing. Matt is also on there. And we got a Bluesky going.
Next episode is about "Lessons of Darkness," watch it here.
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1 hr 40 min
"J'Accuse!" (1919, Dir: Abel Gance)
Show notes
Corbin and Matt talk about "J'accuse!," Abel Gance's nearly-three hour long French silent film epic about the horrors of the First World War and the generational crashout it evoked. Watch it here.
Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing. Matt is also on there. And got a Bluesky going.
Next episode is about "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse." It's on Disney+.
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2 hr 6 min
"Weapons" (2025, Dir: Zach Cregger) w/ Madeline Lane-McKinley
Show notes
Oh hey! Sorry for the delay, Matt was really busy for a few weeks so we had to take a break. But, hey: we've back, talking with Madeline Lane-McKinley, feminist writer, parent, teacher, and author of Solidarity with Children: an Essay Against Adult Supremacy (Haymarket, 2026). We discuss Weapons, Zach Cregger's recent 2025 horror comedy/suburban Brothers Grimm pastiche. Topics include: the figure of the witch in contemporary society, suburban life and Fortress Mindset, how cruddy the cops in this movie are, how the film wants us to process Gladys, and Julia Garner's incredible Madonna hair.
Madeline's book is available here at a fabulous price. Follow them here!
Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing. Matt is also on there. And got a Bluesky going.
Our next episode will be about J'Accuse, Abel Gance's first film about the horrors of WW1.
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1 hr 37 min
"RAN" (1985, Dir: Akira Kurosawa)
Show notes
The master is here, folks, and this time he wields the themes and some of the particulars of one WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S great work KING LEAR in service of a hypnotic nightmare about the horrors of war. It whips! We talk about that, about Kurosawa as a supremely 'Cinematic' figure trying on a 'Theatrical' hat in this movie, Lear as an eternal political fable, some of the hot shit sequences in here, and other stuff.
this is a weird way to deal with this bit theres a lot of interesting academic writing about RAN out there, in shakespeare journals and filmic ones. peek around if you wanna learn something.
Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing. Matt is also on there. We also got a Bluesky going.
Matt's rec is in theaters. Corbin's rec is mega off the done. We dont know what the next episode is, for reasons that would take too long to explin here. Thanks!
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1 hr 52 min
'The Secret Agent' (2025, Dir: Kleber Mendonça Filho) w/ Ryder C.
Show notes
Ryder C. joins Matt and Corbs to discuss "The Secret Agent," a drama film that uses the rythyms of historical research to tell a story about a man getting suqeezed by the military dictatorship in 1970's Brazil. It's a cool movie, scope it out.
Matt rec. Ryder's rec sounds cool but is hard to find on streaming. Perhaps you can take a journey and find it. Corbin reccomends a movie currently in theaters.
Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing. Matt is also on there. We also got a Bluesky going.
Our next episode is about RAN. Watch it here.
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1 hr 33 min
"The Turin Horse" (Dir: Béla Tarr, 2011)
Show notes
This week, Béla Tarr, a Hungarian art film director of note, passed away at the age of 70. Tarr's stark, highly idiosyncratic dramas about the dread in the heart of every man are favorites of Matt Ellis and many other philosphically inclined, hard thinking movie fans the world over.
'The Turin Horse,' Tarr's last film, released in 2011, tells a story so small you can drown it in a bathtub: A farmer and his daughter and their horse live a brutally meger lifetyle in a small farmhouse while the world around them devolves into... something? That's it, that's all he needs, folks. Art!
Corbin rec. Ellis rec. Our next episode is about THE SECERET AGENT which may or may not be in a theater near you right now.
Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing. Matt is also on there. We also got a Bluesky going.
Music: "Dark Space Low" - Angelo Badalamenti, from Twin Peaks: The Return, "The Closing of the Gates" - Luke Howard and the Budapest Art Orchestra
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1 hr 48 min
"The Mastermind" (2025, Dir: Kelly Reichardt)/Top Fives of 2025
Show notes
A Great American Film Artist made a movie about a liar trying to power through his banal midcentruy existence by grifting. It's not Marty Supreme, though, it's "The Mastermind" by Kelly Reichardt! We talk about it!
Listen to KR on the LARB Radio Hour here!
Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing. Matt is also on there. We also got a Bluesky going.
Our next episode will be about, uhh... how about Escape from New York? We've never done Carpenter before. Watch it here.
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1 hr 40 min
"Hail Mary" (1985, Dir: Jean-Luc Godard)
Show notes
Merry Christmas. In the mid-80's, Godard made a fascinating high art movie about the Virgin Mary and the Christmas story. It made some people extremely angry. Should they have been angry? We discuss.
Watch the movie here. Also check out these essays about the film, if you're inclined.
Corbin rec. Matt's rec is life management based. Next episode is about THE MASTERMIND. It's available on Mubi, a service Corbin does not have access to. Hope he figures that out!
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1 hr 39 min
"Racetrack" (1985, Dir: Frederick Wiseman)
Show notes
Frederick Wiseman made a movie about a horse racing track in New York State. That's all it is. But then what? We discuss.
Watch the movie here, it rocks. Interview with Wiseman here. You can also find hundreds of other interviews with him. He's very smart.
Check out the show on Letterboxd if you're into that thing. Matt is also on there. We also got a Bluesky going.
Our next episode is our Christmas Special, where we will be discussing "Hail Mary." Watch it here.
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