Benny Safdie's The Smashing Machine — a biopic about MMA legend Mark Kerr, starring Dwayne Johnson — received a fifteen-minute standing ovation at Venice. Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom want to know why. The episode also celebrates the 40th anniversary of Back to the Future — a film whose internal logic holds up rather better than some of us remember — and closes with It Was Just an Accident: a quieter film that rewards exactly the kind of patience we usually reserve for Hollywood's louder proclamations.
Few filmmakers translate longing into texture the way Luca Guadagnino does — the specific warmth of sunlight on skin, the tactility of a meal, the charge between people who haven't touched yet. With After the Hunt in cinemas, Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms trace how desire functions across Guadagnino's filmography: from the peach scene of Call Me by Your Name to the sensory overload of Challengers. Tom pushes back on the aestheticism; Laura revels in it. Between them, they locate exactly what Guadagnino is doing — and why it works.
One Battle After Another — recently crowned film of the year — has stumbled at the box office: what does that tell us about the gap between critical enthusiasm and audience appetite? Meanwhile, Dutch cinema makes international headlines for AI actors. New films arrive demanding attention: Ari Aster's Eddington, an unhinged attempt to dramatise the Covid era that Laura and Elliot find both infuriating and fascinating; Sven Bresser's Rietland — quiet, precise, important; and Tilly Norwood, a film that sneaks up on you when you least expect it.
Paul Thomas Anderson's $130 million satirical blockbuster might be the film of the year — and Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom dive into its pleasures while sitting with the discomfort of Leonardo DiCaprio's off-screen conduct. Meanwhile, Yi Yi — Edward Yang's masterpiece, newly restored by Odyssey Classics — returns to exactly the screen it deserves, and they ask why it took this long. The episode rounds out with Jordan Peele-produced thriller Him, which prompts a debate about whether a name can carry a film further than the film itself is willing to go.
In honour of Jaws's 50th anniversary, Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms dissect Spielberg's masterstroke — from its thrilling mechanics to the happy accidents that made it an instant classic. The film that invented the summer blockbuster also happened to launch one of cinema's great careers, and this episode asks what it actually takes to make an audience afraid of something they cannot see. The episode also explores the wider history of the creature feature: the films that gave us our most primal cinematic fears, and why we keep going back for more.
Back from a summer hiatus, Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom reunite to trade notes on the hot new releases. Zach Cregger's Weapons has horror fans buzzing — though producer Elliot can only manage to watch it through his fingers. They also dive into Sorry, Baby, Eva Victor's quietly devastating debut: a tender comedy-drama about how life insists on moving forward no matter what it asks you to leave behind. An episode that finds Celebrating Cinema back in its rhythm, arguing about films it genuinely cares about.
With 28 Years Later lurching toward the screen, Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms revisit the undead legacy of the zombie in cinema — a genre that, much like its subject, refuses to stay buried. From its roots in early 20th-century depictions of Haitian slavery to its reinvention as a metaphor for mass consumption, pandemic anxiety, and societal collapse, the zombie has shuffled through countless cultural moments and kept finding new things to mean. An episode about a genre that is always, somehow, about right now.
On the 30th anniversary of Dogme 95 — the movement that stripped cinema back to handheld cameras, natural light, and no genre conventions — Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom ask what the manifesto was actually for, and what its legacy has been. The occasion is also the release of Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme, which only reinforces the all style, no substance critique. And David Lynch's Twin Peaks is coming to LAB111 — an episode that asks what happens when television is invaded by cinema's most committed formalist.
To coincide with LAB111's full Wes Anderson retrospective, Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms rank every film in his filmography — from Bottle Rocket to Asteroid City — asking what distinguishes the best Wes Anderson from the most easily caricatured version. Is it all style and no substance, or is there something genuinely felt beneath the symmetrical compositions? Elliot, established sceptic, adds his perspective from offscreen. Laura argues that one of Anderson's most celebrated films doesn't have enough colour. Tom disagrees.
In this Review Roundup, Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom dive into the re-release of Persepolis — Marjane Satrapi's searing, stylish memoir of growing up in Iran through revolution, repression, and rebellion, newly restored by Odyssey Classics. They also take on Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag, a spy thriller that trades action for dry wit and quiet unease. An episode about animation as autobiography, genre as pleasure, and the specific delight of a Soderbergh film that knows exactly what it wants to be.
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