The Movies

Daniel Berrios
The Movies

I'm Daniel Berrios. This is my journey to learn about the art form I adore, one review, interview, editorial at a time. Take care of yourselves and each other, because we, all of us, keep the movies alive.

  1. 5 DAYS AGO

    S4E12. Best Picture Showcase - THE SUBSTANCE dir. Coralie Fargeat

    Continuing the Best Picture Showcase, in which I cover this year's Oscars nominees for Best Picture, the road takes us to a tour-de-force of an original, pulse-pounding, "sickly entertaining" movie, Coralie Fargeat's THE SUBSTANCE. This is an audacious, whip-smart body horror movie that's bound to break your heart as much as it'll force you to recoil in disgust...and maybe even make you laugh along the way? Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is an aging actress who, after being dropped by her network, doesn't know how to function without the kind of shallow, yet plentiful adoration show business provides. What remains are the painful reminders of her age, her beauty, her desirability, none of which are bolstered by her self-esteem. What is it that people say: We are our own worst critics? An opportunity presents itself in the form of The Substance, an injectable drug that promises the user the ability to live in a new body, derived by the user's own DNA. Spend 7 days in the new and improved body, switch back to the old body for 7 days. Elisabeth jumps at the chance, and after a revolting transformation sequence, out emerges the effervescent Sue (Margaret Qualley). As long as the balance is respected and all the rules followed, everything will work out fine. But if anyone ever followed the rules in these movies, we wouldn't have a movie, then would we? --- Follow The Movies on social media: linktr.ee/themovies_pod

    44 min
  2. 3 FEB

    S4E9. Best Picture Showcase - THE BRUTALIST dir. Brady Corbet

    Welcome to the Best Picture Showcase, a miniseries on THE MOVIES where I review each nominee for this year's Academy Award for Best Picture. With each installment, I hope to answer the following: 1) What's the movie about? 2) What's it feel like to sit through the movie? 3) Did I like it? 4) Should it and will it win Best Picture? What's my current ranking of the nominees? 5) How can you catch this movie? I hope to make this list feel more accessible for folx intimidated or turned off by what they might derisively consider "Oscar Bait." So a 3.5 hour drama about a Hungarian refugee escaping the Holocaust to 1950s Pennsylvania is a great place to start, right? Brady Corbet's THE BRUTALIST works that artist's magic of making hyper-specific circumstances feel universal. This is a movie about a man who feels his life is robbed from him. In many ways, it was, and yet, that struggle between accepting his difficult realities of working back up from the bottom rung of the ladder & confidently striding with the experience and value earned over years of work designing buildings that stand the test of fascist regimes and war feels almost insurmountable. This is a story peeling back the layers of the American Dream, the reality behind the promise; it's hard not to feel, sometimes, as though we live in hopeful delusion regarding that journey to make our dreams into truth. It's a movie about the person made into the other, never acceptable to the dominant class outside of the immediate value they can provide. And it's all shot in breathtaking Vistavision film, capturing these grand moments in ways both timeless and timely. This is the kind of story we go to the theaters to experience: an epic that our HDTVs will, simply, never do justice. Closing Song: "Library" - Daniel Blumberg, THE BRUTALIST (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) --- Follow The Movies on social media: linktr.ee/themovies_pod

    33 min
  3. 26 JAN

    S4E6. Listener Request | DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) dir. George A. Romero

    On this episode of The Movies, I fulfill another listener request! My buddy Jarrett Barnard sent me a stone-cold classic to cover: 1978's DAWN OF THE DEAD, directed by George A. Romero. Widely regarded as the best of Romero's DEAD franchise, this film about a group of survivors waiting out the zombie apocalypse inside a shopping mall is a hallmark moment for horror fans, beautifully blending slapstick and viscera before Sam Raimi & Peter Jackson took their proverbial batons and ran their legs of the race. This movie's marked as a critique on mindless consumerism but I don't think Romero solely leaves the blame on the living dead. For as much as these folks rejoice in having a safe place to stay (relatively) zombie-free, the dopamine of having the world at one's disposal rapidly wears off. Even during the end of the world, we're rarely satisfied. And in a post-COVID world, the way this society responds to a global threat rings eerily and depressingly familiar. We are fickle, stupid beasts, one mere bite, one bad day away from a blue face and a lust for flesh. But hey, it's not all bad. Have you ever pied a zombie in the face? That shit's hilarious! --- Please assist animal shelters working to reunite pets with owners, treat injuries and take in evacuated animals due to the recent wildfires in L.A. County. Two lists of places you can support are down below: https://animalcare.lacounty.gov/emergency-animal-shelter-information-los-angeles-county-fires/ - (This is the list I read from in the episode, which by the time of its publishing, has drastically reduced in size. I leave the audio as is because all the places I mention still need help. As of January 24, the Castaic Animal Care center is temporarily closed due to the Hughes Fire.) https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2025/1/7/palisades-fire/updates/36cabf7c-1843-4bea-bc99-851d9a6296d4#:~:text=Animal%20Evacuation%20Shelters&text=Agoura%20Animal%20Care%20Center%2C%2029525,216%20W%20Victoria%20St%2C%20Gardena --- Follow The Movies on social media: linktr.ee/themovies_pod

    37 min

About

I'm Daniel Berrios. This is my journey to learn about the art form I adore, one review, interview, editorial at a time. Take care of yourselves and each other, because we, all of us, keep the movies alive.

You Might Also Like

To listen to explicit episodes, sign in.

Stay up to date with this show

Sign-in or sign-up to follow shows, save episodes and get the latest updates.

Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada