Celebrating Cinema
A podcast for the love of cinema. Amsterdam's LAB111 film podcast on the cinema that matters — debates, rankings, and director deep dives, every Thursday. From cult classics to today's most-talked-about releases, Laura Gommans (film journalist), Hugo Emmerzael (film critic), Kiriko Mechanicus (filmmaker) and Tom Ooms (film programmer) take turns asking what films tell us about ourselves, our culture, and the times we live in. Show notes and the CC newsletter at celebratingcinema.com. You can get in touch at celebratingcinema@lab111.nl
Afleveringen
Cine Of The Times | Walk Hard Should Have Killed The Musical Biopic
In 2007, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story tore the music biopic apart so thoroughly that Hollywood should never have been able to make one with a straight face again. It flopped. Since then, we’ve had Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, Elvis and, this year, Michael. So what went wrong?For the latest Cine of the Times, film critic Hugo Emmerzael and media scholar Dan Hassler-Forest revisit Jake Kasdan’s m
Digger: Can Tom Cruise Ever Stop Being Tom Cruise?
For forty years, Tom Cruise has sold us one thing: a man who will not stop running. In Digger (2026), Alejandro G. Iñárritu casts him as an oil tycoon in prosthetics, only for the trailer to remind us of every Tom Cruise who came before. What happens when the ultimate movie star tries to disappear into a role?Laura Gommans and producer Elliot Bloom take Digger as a starting point to ask whether a
Why Is Dutch Cinema Struggling to Find Its Audience?
From Paul Verhoeven to Hoyte van Hoytema to Halina Reijn, Dutch filmmakers have made a mark far beyond the Netherlands. But why doesn’t Dutch cinema travel as far as the talent it produces?For this Nederlands Film Festival special, Celebrating Cinema host Elliot Bloom speaks with actor Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing, director Mees Peijnenburg and producer Leontine Petit, who co-produced the Oscar-nominated
Can Cinema Show Us What We Can’t See? — NFF Special w/ Amanda van Hesteren & Emma Lesuis
For this Nederlands Film Festival special, Kiriko Mechanicus meets two rising Dutch filmmakers who use cinema to get closer to people and histories — and to find out what lies beyond what they already know.Amanda van Hesteren's Dagen met Blue is built around the trust between filmmaker and subject. Kiriko chats to Amanda about her fascination with people in all their colours, how she creates t
Manufacturing Consent: How 9/11 Changed Hollywood
How did 9/11 change Hollywood and when does entertainment become propaganda?Marking 25 years since 9/11 and coinciding with LAB111’s Manufacturing Consent programme, Elliot Bloom and film critic Hugo Emmerzael trace cinema’s long relationship with propaganda and political power. From revolutionary montage and The Battle of Algiers to Black Hawk Down, Zero Dark Thirty and Iron Man, they look at how
Did Terminator 2 Ruin How We Imagine The End Of The World?
Thirty-five years after Terminator 2: Judgment Day, cinema is still imagining the end of the world through killer machines, nuclear war, viruses and alien invasions. But did one of the greatest blockbusters ever made teach us to imagine the apocalypse all wrong?With Terminator 2 returning to our screens in 4K, producer Elliot Bloom and filmmaker Kiriko Mechanicus ask why cinema is so obsessed with
Why Is Cinema Just Like My Mother?
“My mother and cinema are my two teachers in life, each in their own peculiar ways.”Filmmaker Kiriko Mechanicus and producer Elliot Bloom explore the parallels between these two teachers: the women who raise us, and the films that show us how to live, love and understand the world.Coinciding with the 50th anniversary and re-release of Cría Cuervos, they look at a series of films from the 1970s — i
Cine Of The Times: Did No Country For Old Men Predict Trump’s America?
In 2007, the Coen Brothers made a thriller set in 1980 that somehow captured an American dread that hadn't fully arrived yet. Critic Hugo Emmerzael and academic Dan Hassler-Forest return to No Country for Old Men — the coin toss, the deaths that happen offscreen, the sheriff who solves nothing — to ask how a film everybody already loves quietly called the next twenty years.Hugo and Dan get int
Can Cinema Teach Us How to Pay Attention? — What Playtime, Ikiru & After Hours Asks Of Us
We’re constantly told to slow down and be present, but what does it actually mean to pay attention when so much of modern life is designed to scatter it?This summer, French auteur Jacques Tati returns to LAB111 in six newly restored 4K classics, including his magnum opus PlayTime. Few filmmakers have looked at modern life with Tati’s comic precision: traffic becomes choreography, bureaucracy becom
When Does A Film Become Camp?
What makes a film camp? Is it something filmmakers create, or something audiences discover?To celebrate Pride Month and LAB111's Camp, Cult & Queer programme, filmmaker Kiriko Mechanicus is joined by film programmer Alicia Bergamelli to unpack one of cinema's most elusive ideas. Drawing on Susan Sontag's famous essay Notes on "Camp", they explore where camp came from, why
Why Black Girl Still Matters 60 Years Later w/ Djeneba Saccoh
Who gets to tell a story? And who gets to see themselves reflected on screen?Sixty years after its release, Ousmane Sembène's Black Girl (La Noire de..., 1966) remains one of the defining works of African cinema. Restored in 4K and re-released by Odyssey Classics for its anniversary, Sembène's groundbreaking debut follows Diouana, a young Senegalese woman who travels to France believing sh
Who Really Was the Father Of African Cinema? — Ousmane Sembène, By His Son Alain
Some filmmakers don't just make great films, they change who cinema is for.60 years ago, Ousmane Sembène's Black Girl (La Noire de...) announced a new cinematic voice to the world. Through the story of a young Senegalese woman working for a French family, Sembène exposed the brutal realities of colonialism while proving that African stories could—and should—be told on their own terms.To mark the f
Is Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey Just 6 Great Scenes?
Why are journeys one of cinema's defining storytelling forms? Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey brings one of literature's greatest journeys to the screen. Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms discuss whether the film succeeds as an epic, why Nolan's obsession with IMAX shapes the experience as much as the storytelling, and whether a cast this famous ever lets the world of the film feel fully inhabited. They
Has Letterboxd Changed The Way We Watch Films?
Do ratings help us discover great films or have they quietly changed the way we watch?Before you've even bought a ticket, you probably know the Letterboxd average, the IMDb score or the Rotten Tomatoes percentage. Somewhere between the opening scene and the closing credits, many of us are already deciding on a number of our own.Laura Gommans is joined by producer Elliot Bloom to discuss what r
The Watermelon Woman at 30: Cheryl Dunye's Queer Cinema Landmark
The Watermelon Woman (1996) was Cheryl Dunye's debut and the first American feature directed by a Black lesbian. A film that slips between video-store romance and a forged archive, asking who gets recorded by cinema and who gets written out of it. Thirty years on, it has been restored, added to the Criterion Collection, and, for the very first time, released in Dutch cinemas.Filmmaker Kiriko M
Did Movies Invent Alien Encounters?
Nobody has ever filmed a real alien, so why do they all look the same? The grey skin, the black almond eyes, sixty years running. This week Laura Gommans is joined by historian Alexander Bartels, who curated LAB111's We Are Not Alone season, for a conversation about the gap between the aliens cinema gives us and the things people actually report seeing. On screen: greys, flying saucers, humano
Is Disclosure Day Spielberg's Most Hopeful Film Or His Most Naive?
Steven Spielberg spent fifty years teaching us to look up. When the Pentagon released its real alien files, nobody blinked. His new film Disclosure Day marks the day the truth finally lands — this time his aliens look back at us, but the question is whether anyone still believes him.Fresh from the Tuschinski premiere, Laura Gommans and producer Elliot Bloom get into late Spielberg — shortcuts, or
Fast & Furious: How the Franchise Remade Hollywood (w/ Dan Hassler-Forest)
The Fast and the Furious (Rob Cohen, 2001) was a small film about Los Angeles street racers, immigrant car culture, and a cop who didn't want to be one. Twenty-five years on it's a seven-billion-dollar franchise where cars get launched into space and "family" is a marketing strategy. From Echo Park to outer space — what does that arc tell us about Hollywood?This is the first part of Cine of the Ti
The Backrooms, Explained: Kane Parsons & the A24 Feature
Kane Parsons made the Backrooms on YouTube when he was only sixteen. Over 200 million views later, A24 has handed him his feature debut, making him the studio's youngest director ever at 20. But the yellow walls still don't end.This week Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom go into the maze and come back with an answer that has very little to do with what's actually inside. The Backrooms, they argue, is
Cannes 2026 Dispatch With Peter Bradshaw
The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw has been sending dispatches from Cannes since 1999. If you ask him what's changed in 27 years, he claims: nothing. He means it as a compliment.Hugo Emmerzael sits down with the legendary film critic on the Croisette mapping out Peter's journey through film, from his first memory of cinema through the strange, accidental route into one of the most-read crit
Autobiographical Cinema: Why We Love to Film Ourselves
Long before phones turned every life into footage, a small line of filmmakers was already pointing the camera at themselves — not to perform, but to work out what a life was. This week, producer Elliot Bloom sits down with co-host Kiriko Mechanicus to talk about her new short documentary How To Catch A Butterfly — a first-person essay film that traces how ethnic fetishisation has shaped her relati
Cinema Obsession: Why Films Grip Us (Vertigo, Peeping Tom)
Cinema's dirtiest little secret is that it's designed to make you want something you can never have.In this episode of Celebrating Cinema, host Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms — LAB111's Head of Cinema — talk about what cinema's fixations have done to them. Laura learned to write in Elvish because of The Lord of the Rings. Tom is still working out how much of his idea of relationships comes from Hitchc
Amadeus: Is It Really About Mediocrity?
Amadeus (1984, Miloš Forman) is not really about Mozart. It's a film about the rest of us — the ones who can recognise genius but will never possess it. Salieri is the true protagonist of this musical biopic. His tragedy isn't jealousy, it's clarity.Now back in cinemas in a new 4K restoration, Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms get into mediocrity, and what it means to be desperate to be a genius and know
The Devil Wears Prada 2: Is Miranda Priestly A Feminist Icon Or A Toxic Boss?
Miranda once told Andy she was the greatest disappointment of her career. Twenty years on, the question isn't whether she was right — it's what Andy did with it.Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom chat about The Devil Wears Prada and the new sequel and what they have to say about ambition, high fashion, and the specific cruelty of wanting things that cost more than you can reasonably pay. We di
Truly Naked: Can a Film Be More Intimate Than Porn?
Can a film be more intimate than pornography? Can a film be more intimate than pornography? In Truly Naked (2026), BAFTA-nominated writer-director Muriel D'Ansembourg tells the story of Alec — a teenager raised by two parents in the adult industry, who's seen everything about sex except real intimacy. A school project on porn addiction, and a feminist classmate, force him to confront how his gener
Musical Biopics: Can You Still Make a Good One? (Re-Release)
A note from us: we spent the past two weeks going through your survey responses — thank you to everyone who filled it in. Winners will be contacted this week. We're working on what comes next, but we didn't want to leave you hanging.Last year it was A Complete Unknown, Better Man, Maria, this year it's now Michael Jackson. The musical biopic is back again, with all its cliches.We recorded this con
A-List Actors Gone Weird (Borgli's The Drama)
What is the worst thing you've ever done?This week, hosts Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom watched Kristoffer Borgli's The Drama — and neither of them could stop thinking about it. No spoilers, just their honest reaction to Zendaya and Robert Pattinson's wedding spiralling wonderfully out of control, and what it says about how quickly we judge other people's secrets while sitting on a few of our own
Mees Peijnenburg On A Family, Dutch Cinema, And The Emotional Architecture of Divorce
Divorce is rarely one story. It's four, or five — each told from a different room in the same house. In his new film A Family, Mees Peijnenburg's puts the camera with the children, and what he finds there is something most films about broken homes don't often reach: not blame, not sides, but the bewildered love of people too young to know they're supposed to pick one.Producer Ellio
The Skarsgårds' Year: Pillion, Dead Man's Wire & The History of Sound
Is this the year of the Skarsgårds? Hosts Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom kick things off with Pillion, Alexander Skarsgård's domcom about a BDSM relationship that keeps flipping the script on who's actually holding the power. Funnier and sharper than you'd expect, and a lot more honest about relationships.Then brother Bill Skarsgård shows up in Gus Van Sant's Dead Man's Wire, an offbeat thriller b
Il Conformista: Why Bertolucci's Fascist Aesthetic Still Matters
When the White House posts a montage of Hollywood blockbusters cut against US drone strikes on Iran, it raises a question Italian cinema has spent seventy years wrestling with: can cinema ever truly resist power — or does it always end up serving it?In this episode, hosts Hugo Emmerzael and Elliot Bloom take Bernardo Bertolucci's newly restored masterpiece Il Conformista (1970) as their guide. Mov
David Bowie's Life in Cinema: The Man Who Fell to Screen
From the alien drifter of The Man Who Fell to Earth to the unforgettable Goblin King of Labyrinth, David Bowie built one of the strangest and most fascinating film careers in pop history.In this episode, hosts Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms dive into David Bowie’s acting career, exploring how the musician moved through cinema across four decades. They chat about what drew Bowie to the silver screen, w
Frankenstein's Monster: Why Is It Always Ugly? (Shelley to The Bride)
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at nineteen. Cinema has been retelling it ever since - and mainly getting it wrong.Hosts Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms dig into the big question: is Frankenstein the story of a misunderstood outcast, an abandoned child who never asked to exist, or a cautionary tale about scientists who should really know better? More importantly, why is Frankenstein always so ugly?They
Wim Wenders Says Cinema Isn't Political. These Films Disagree.
At this year's Berlinale Film Festival, Wim Wenders declared that cinema is not political — so hosts Elliot Bloom and Kiriko Mechanicus, both speaking from their own diasporic experiences, decided to put that to the test. Moving through Persepolis, Incendies, Bend It Like Beckham, Girlhood, and Chantal Akerman's News from Home, they explore how diaspora cinema transforms the politics of bo
Sirāt as a Rave: Kangding Ray on Scoring the Film
Hugo Emmerzael speaks with DJ and composer Kangding Ray about Sirat — a punishing, bass-driven plunge into the borderlands of rave culture. The film follows a father searching for his missing daughter amid sound systems and stateless horizons, unfolding less as conventional narrative than as sensory immersion.Kangding Ray reflects on his journey from underground club DJ to film composer, and on wh
Are Marty Supreme and Wuthering Heights Worth The Hype?
With social media hype swirling around Marty Supreme and Wuthering Heights, hosts Laura Gommans and Hugo Emmerzael unpack the marketing machinery behind both releases—and whether the films can live up to the discourse they’ve generated.Hugo questions whether the outrage over Emerald Fennell’s reimagining of Heathcliff is worth our energy, suggesting we might be better off taking the film at face v
How Brokeback Mountain Changed Queer Storytelling—and Should Straight Actors Still Play Queer Roles? w/ Esje Seigfried
Host Laura Gommans chats with cultural critic Esje Seigfried about the lasting impact of Brokeback Mountain 20 years on, and how queer cinema has expanded since. They dig into the genre’s history of tragedy and grief—and ask: can queer stories also be fun, messy and steamy, like Heated Rivalry and Heartstopper? From the melancholia of Happy Together to the risks queer filmmakers take today, they e
Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice Is A Brutal Take On Capitalism
In this episode, Laura Gommans and Hugo Emmerzael dive into what might be Park Chan-wook’s masterpiece, No Other Choice, breaking down how it tackles capitalism and the fragile middle-class experience in ways that feel all too real.They also chat about the recent Oscar nominations and the 45th anniversary of Kubrick’s The Shining—exploring why the true horror of this classic, how it clashed with S
Films by Bad People: Can We Still Watch Them?
The death of French cinema icon Brigitte Bardot has reignited a familiar and uncomfortable question: can we separate art from the artist? Long celebrated as a screen legend, Bardot’s legacy is also inseparable from her openly expressed far-right views—forcing a renewed reckoning with how we engage with culturally significant work made by morally compromised figures.In this episode of Celebrating C
Hamnet and Movies That Are Secret Shakespeare Plays
Hosts Laura Gommans and Hugo Emmerzael explore Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet (yes, a movie about Shakespeare and his family), alongside a range of movies that are, in one way or another, really just adaptations of Shakespeare's plays.Laura and Hugo also discuss Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, a film that may have slipped under the radar this awards season, though Ethan Hawke’s magnetic performance is not to
2000 Metres To Andriivka And Why We Need Documentary Films
2000 Metres to Andriivka is an extraordinary and deeply immersive war documentary. The latest film from Ukrainian director Mstyslav Chernov gets hosts Kiriko and Hugo thinking about why we watch documentaries in the first place and what makes them so powerful right now.They talk about how documentary cinema can respond to the urgency of the world around us, while also finding beauty in raw, unfilt
Children of Men: The Most Realistic Dystopian Film?
This week, Laura and Hugo dive into films chosen by you. Drawing from our LAB Suggestions programme, where audiences select their favourite films to be shown on the big screen in Amsterdam, they share their standout picks. From the chilling plausibility of Children of Men to a friendly (but pointed) debate over whether Christopher Nolan’s Inception owes more than a little to Satoshi Kon’s Paprika.
Ranking the Most Talked About Films of 2025
As the year comes to a close, hosts Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom look back on the films that defined 2025. They revisit their standout favourites, unexpected discoveries, and the releases that missed the mark. They also explore why so many films from major directors felt surprisingly average this year and spotlight a handful of remarkable titles that never reached Dutch cinemas but deserve far m
Sentimental Value: Why It Should Win Big at the Oscars
In this final review roundup before the festive season, hosts Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom take a look at some new releases that should be on your radar this winter. Joachim Trier returns with Sentimental Value, a film about filmmaking and a tender companion to his celebrated feature The Worst Person in the World. Harris Dickerson steps behind the camera for the first time with Urchin, a strikin
Christmas Movies: What Makes a Film Festive?
Host Laura Gommans, an unabashed devotee of festive films, teams up with Kiriko, who prefers her Christmas viewing a little more Eyes Wide Shut than Love Actually. Together they unpack what truly makes a film “festive,” trade beloved classics and oddball alternatives, and dream up which directors should (or absolutely shouldn’t) make a holiday movie. As they share how cinema shapes their own festi
How Sex And The City Maps The Rise And Fall Of The American Empire
Sex and the City may not be canonical cinema, but as a cultural artefact it charts America’s imperial confidence, and its slow, chaotic unravelling, with uncanny precision. After finally submitting to the franchise this year, host Hugo Emmerzael became obsessed, culminating in his Little White Lies piece “Sex and the City 2 and the End of America.”In this episode, Hugo and Kiriko Mechanicus revisi
Die My Love, Splitsville, Nouvelle Vague + The World Of Schmutz Cinema
In this review roundup, hosts Laura Gommans and producer Elliot Bloom find themselves divided on Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love, a fierce, unflinching portrait of postpartum collapse starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson. Laura and Elliot are also split on Splitsville, a buoyant physical comedy about the messiness of opening up a marriage. But both are fully won over by Richard Linklater’s N
Jack Nicholson: How He Became a Cinema Icon
To mark the 50th-anniversary rerelease of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, hosts Hugo Emmerzael and Tom Ooms revisit the career of the man at the center of its enduring power: Jack Nicholson. In this episode, they explore how Nicholson’s performances, volatile and mischievous yet remarkably controlled, forged a style of American screen acting entirely his own.From his countercultural rise in the l
The Smashing Machine, Back To The Future & It Was Just An Accident
This week, hosts Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom take on three standout releases. Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, a quirky biopic starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as MMA legend Mark Kerr, prompts the question: did it really deserve a fifteen-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival?To celebrate its 40th anniversary, Robert Zemeckis’s blockbuster classic Back to the Future returns,
The American New Wave: How It Took Over Hollywood
The American New Wave, or New Hollywood, launched the careers of some of the United States’ most iconic filmmakers, from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. But what was this era, when studios granted directors unprecedented creative freedom, really about, and what did it reveal about 1970s America?Hosts Elliot Bloom and Tom Ooms dive into this transforma
What Bugonia Gets Wrong About Conspiracy Theorists + Kelly Reichardt On The Mastermind
Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia follows two conspiracy-obsessed men who kidnap a powerful CEO, convinced she’s an alien bent on destroying Earth. Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons shine, but while host Laura Gommans revels in their performances, Elliot Bloom questions whether Lanthimos’s satire lands in the world we live in today.Plus, Kelly Reichardt joins Hugo Emmerzael to discuss The Mastermind — a strip
Mark Cousins On Tilda Swinton And His Story Of A Life In Film
In collaboration with Eye Filmmuseum’s exhibition Ongoing, celebrating the singular career of Tilda Swinton, Hugo Emmerzael sits down with filmmaker, writer, and lifelong cinephile Mark Cousins — Swinton’s longtime collaborator and one of cinema’s great chroniclers. Best known for The Story of Film and Women Make Film, which he created alongside Swinton, Cousins reflects on his wild years as a cri
Luca Guadagnino: The Master of Desire
Few filmmakers explore desire with as much curiosity and elegance as Luca Guadagnino. His cinema doesn’t just show yearning, it makes us feel it. With After the Hunt now in cinemas, Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms trace how the great films of desire have shaped Guadagnino’s work, from the charged glances to the slow unraveling of restraint. But while Laura revels in the sensuality of his worlds, Tom qu
How Rietland Put Dutch Cinema Back on the Map w/ Director Sven Bresser
Sven Bresser’s debut feature Rietland marks a striking moment for Dutch cinema — the first film in nearly 30 years to be selected for Cannes. This eerie, quietly devastating story follows a reed cutter whose discovery of a murdered girl’s body sets off an introspective search for truth, asking where violence really comes from — the world outside or something buried within. Set against the haunting
Eddington, Rietland and Tilly Norwood
A lot can change in a week at the movies. One Battle After Another—the film we crowned as the year’s best—has stumbled at the box office, but does that tell the full story? Meanwhile, Dutch cinema is making international headlines, though for all the wrong reasons: AI actors. Alongside all this, new films demand our attention: Ari Aster returns with Eddington, a chaotic, unhinged attempt to wrestl
One Battle After Another, Yi Yi and Him
Paul Thomas Anderson’s $130 million blockbuster might just be the film of the year. In this episode, Laura and Elliot dive into the action-packed, satirical drama while lamenting Leonardo DiCaprio’s phenomenal performance—brilliant on screen, morally dubious off it. They also revel in the timeless elegance of Yi Yi, recently restored and returned to the big screen by Odyssey Classics, and ask why
Chick Flicks: Can the Genre Come Back?
What ever happened to the chick flick? At the turn of the millennium, this fizzy, unabashedly feminine genre ruled the box office and sleepovers alike, but somewhere along the way, it slipped out of fashion. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Clueless, now screening at LAB111, Kiriko Mechanicus and Tom Ooms revisit their favorite titles and try to define what a chick flick really is. From iconic
Agnès Varda: Why She's a Cinema Icon
Coinciding with our Viva Varda retrospective now playing at LAB111 in Amsterdam, Elliot and Kiriko celebrate the life and cinema of French filmmaker and feminist icon Agnès Varda. They discuss why Varda is Kiriko’s ultimate cinematic hero and how her films mirror the warmth, curiosity, and humour of the woman herself. Varda's approach to filmmaking is more than craft, it’s a way of seeing the worl
The Deadly Reality of Filming in Gaza: Fatima Hassouna’s Story w/ Sepideh Farsi
Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is a film made in the urgency of the present. Composed through a series of video calls with Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, it documents a life confined in Gaza during the current phase of Israel’s genocide. Speaking with producer Elliot Bloom, Sepideh reflects on why the film is essential at a moment when Palestinian voices are bein
Jaws: The Birth of the Summer Blockbuster & the History of Creature Features
In honor of its 50th anniversary, Jaws emerges from the depths of the cinematic sea to remind us why it remains the archetype of the summer blockbuster, forever shaping our fear of the ocean and giving sharks a bad rep. Join Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms as they dissect Spielberg’s masterstroke, from its thrilling mechanics to the happy accidents that made it an instant classic.This episode also expl
Weapons & Sorry, Baby: The Films Everyone's Talking About
Back from a summer hiatus, Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom reunite to trade notes on the hot new releases. Zach Cregger’s hotly anticipated Weapons has horror fans buzzing—though for producer Elliot, he 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 wha
Morgan Knibbe on The Garden of Earthly Delights and the Silence Around It
In this episode, Kiriko sits down with Dutch filmmaker Morgan Knibbe to discuss his blistering debut fictional feature The Garden of Earthly Delights—a formally audacious, emotionally harrowing portrait of the post-colonial legacy in the Philippines. Through a fictional lens, Knibbe confronts the ongoing violence of Western capitalism, power, and desire, exposing the devastating asymmetry between
Plein Soleil and the Art of the Summer Movie
This week on Review Roundup, host Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom head south for the summer with a sun-drenched revisit of Plein Soleil—René Clément’s slow-burning 1960 thriller that introduced the world to a dangerously magnetic Alain Delon, as we dip our toes into the Mr. Ripley universe.Alongside Clément’s shimmering noir, they spotlight more scorchers from LAB111’s Heatwave program—including Af
Akira Kurosawa: What He Taught Us About Movies & Morality
This week, Elliot and Kiriko dive into the legendary world of Akira Kurosawa—Japan’s master filmmaker and, let’s be honest, probably your favorite director’s favorite director. From samurai epics like Seven Samurai and Rashomon to powerful character dramas like Ikiru and High and Low, Kurosawa knew how to tell a story that hits you in the heart and keeps you on the edge of your seat.They unpack th
Zombie Movies: Why the Genre Refuses to Die (28 Years Later)
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 racist 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 c
Dogme 95, The Phoenician Scheme, Twin Peaks: Why Wes Anderson Should Try Dogme-Style Filmmaking
With Dogme 95 turning 30 this year, hosts Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom reflect on the radical movement that dared to strip cinema down to its bare bones—and what that legacy means today. Returning to last episode's ranking of Wes Anderson's films, the duo discuss The Phoenician Scheme, the American director's latest film that only seems to reinforce the “all style, no substance” label. Rounding
Dispatch from Cannes (2025)
Reporting from the Croisette, host Hugo Emmerzael is joined by fellow film critic Savina Petkova who together reflect on two unforgettable selections from the 2025 Cannes Film Festival—films that stood apart amid a blur of screenings and industry spectacle.Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, led by a luminous Renate Reinsve, is a quietly devastating meditation on memory, loss, and emotional inherit
Wes Anderson: Every Movie Ranked
To mark LAB111’s full Wes Anderson retrospective, hosts Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms rank every film in his colorful, quirky career. They dive into what makes his work so distinct—asking whether it’s all style and no substance, or if there’s real emotional depth beneath the surface. Along the way, they share which actors they’d love to see in the Wes Anderson universe, and Laura makes the surprising
Persepolis: Growing Up in a Revolution
In this edition of Review Roundup, host Laura Gommans is joined by Elliot Bloom to 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 . And with Showgirl
Hiroshima Mon Amour: How Do You Film the Atomic Bomb?
Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) returns to cinemas—a quiet revolution in filmmaking that blends love, loss, and the long shadow of human destruction. In this episode, hosts Kiriko Mechanicus and Elliot Bloom unpack why this haunting classic still matters today. Why did Resnais turn to fiction after his devastating Holocaust documentary Night and Fog? And what does the film reveal about
Is Alex Garland's Warfare an Anti-War Movie?
Did audiences jump the gun on Alex Garland’s Warfare? Before it's release, the brutally realist portrait of America’s war in Iraq was deemed just another army recruitment movie, but Hugo Emmerzael and Laura Gommans definitely don't see it that way. Also: Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl gives Pamela Anderson a tender, neon-lit comeback, but did it warrant the awards hype it got? Plus, an in
Hollywood Comebacks: The Substance, The Last Showgirl & Why We Love Them
In a moment when Hollywood is once again embracing the comeback—think Demi Moore’s return in The Substance or Pamela Anderson’s reinvention in The Last Showgirl—we turn our attention to the art of the revival. In this episode, hosts Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms explore the enduring appeal of the Hollywood comeback: why the industry—and its audiences—love to see actors return, transformed and triumph
De Propagandist: Dutch History's Most Controversial Filmmaker (Luuk Bouwman)
Dutch Nazi propagandist Jan Teunissen was once one of the most powerful—and now largely forgotten—figures in Dutch cinema. Rising to prominence during World War II, he seized the opportunity to shape ideology through film, aligning himself with the Nazi regime to fulfil his artistic ambitions. In De Propagandist (2025), director Luuk Bouwman unearths Teunissen’s unsettling legacy, tracing his traj
Why Short Films Matter w/ Go Short Film Festival
In collaboration with Go Short, the Netherlands’ premier short film festival (April 1–6 in Nijmegen), we explore the power of short-form cinema. Host Hugo Emmerzael sits down with artistic director Mathieu Jansen to explore why short films aren’t just stepping stones but playgrounds for experimentation, bold storytelling, and pushing cinematic boundaries. From urgent reflections on war and occupat
The Room: The Best Worst Movie Ever Made?
Hailed as the Citizen Kane of bad movies, The Room (Tommy Wiseau, 2003) has transcended its origins as an enigmatic vanity project to become a bona fide cult phenomenon. But how did it achieve such status, and what, beneath its layers of unintentional surrealism, is it really about? Hosts Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms unravel the film’s bizarre legacy, offering an essential guide to its chaotic produ
Bong Joon-ho's Bloody Brilliance and the Rise of Korean Cinema
When Parasite won Best Picture, it put Korean cinema in the global spotlight, but it was the result of decades of bold filmmaking. With Mickey 17 now out, it’s the perfect time to dive into the bloody brilliance of the Korean New Wave. Hosts Laura Gommans and Kiriko Mechanicus explore Korea’s obsession with vengeance, shaped by its turbulent history and uncensored filmmaking. They also examine why
Mickey 17: Do Two Pattinsons Make It Twice the Fun?
In our latest review round-up, Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 has Laura and Hugo at odds, Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths steals their hearts, and Brazilian awards darling I’m Still Here sparks a heated debate between our two hosts—is it Oscar bait or a worthy contender? Tune in and have your say on this month’s biggest releases!Book tickets to Mickey 17 @ LAB111Book tickets to Hard Truths @ LAB111Book tickets
Is 'The Monkey' Better Than 'Longlegs'?
In this review roundup, hosts Laura Gommans and Hugo Emmerzael dive into three films that have caught their attention. Oz Perkins’ latest offbeat horror, The Monkey, leaves them both questioning if the American director knows how to land an ending. Hugo shares insights from his Cannes conversation with Jia Zhang-ke about his latest work, Caught by the Tides. But while Hugo sees something transcend
Musical Biopics: Can You Still Make a Good One?
With a new wave of nostalgia-driven musical biopics—A Complete Unknown, Better Man, Maria—flooding theaters, hosts Laura Gommans and Hugo Emmerzael ask: what does it take to make a great musical biopic these days? A genre weighed down by formulaic storytelling and its own well-worn bingo card of narrative beats, the musical biopic too often settles for a greatest-hits retelling rather than embraci
Does AI in The Brutalist Even Matter?
In our first edition of the Review Roundup, a new biweekly cinematic dispatch, Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom get into the latest films everyone's talking about. From the swirling controversies surrounding Brady Corbet’s Academy-nominated The Brutalist to the unexpected Marvel-like crossover in Pablo Larraín’s Maria, Laura and Elliot share their reactions. Also in focus: the enduring allure of
How Ernest R. Dickerson Discovered Tupac For Juice
Legendary filmmaker Ernest Dickerson joins host Elliot Bloom for a compelling journey through his remarkable career. From his early love of sci-fi and fascination with the practical elements of filmmaking to meeting long-time collaborator Spike Lee on his first day of film school, Dickerson reflects on the defining moments that have influenced his work. With an encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema, h
