With the exception of those of us who no longer welcome birthdays, most people love anniversaries. But when it comes to movies, anniversaries give us the opportunity to remember great cinema and the directors who make it. On this week’s show, Dan Webster, Nathan Weinbender, and Mary Pat Treuthart discuss two such directors, Akira Kurosawa, whose film “Ran” is enjoying the 40th anniversary of its release this month, and Steven Spielberg, whose 1975 film “Jaws” is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

From time to time we all encounter difficult people. And while they may have reasons for their troubled temperaments, that doesn’t make them any easier to deal with. On this week’s show, Dan Webster, Nathan Weinbender, and Mary Pat Treuthart discuss two films that feature problematic characters. First up is “Bring Her Back,” a horror offering starring Sally Hawkins, followed by “Mountainhead,” a streaming feature focusing on badly behaved billionaires.

Stephen King once declared that: “Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.” On this week’s show, Dan Webster, Nathan Weinbender, and Mary Pat Treuthart discuss the very nature of comedy as they talk about two productions, one being the biographical 2-part streaming series on the late Paul Reubens titled “Pee-wee as Himself,” and the big-screen dark comedy “Friendship.”

For those at Movies 101 headquarters, it’s good to be back together. Dan Webster and co-host Mary Pat Treuthart have been out of the country for the past few weeks, and the third member of the team, co-host Nathan Weinbender, has been lurking in dark Seattle theaters watching as many Seattle International Film Festival movies as he could. So for this week’s show, Dan, Nathan, and Mary Pat first discuss Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Following that, however, Nathan regales everyone with thrilling tales of his SIFF 2025 shenanigans.

In the past, we’ve referred to them as "buried treasures" among other descriptors, but by whatever name, we mean movies—and sometimes streaming miniseries—that we consider well worth checking out. On this week’s show, Dan Webster, Nathan Weinbender, and Mary Pat Treuthart discuss a selection of movies—and the writer-directors who made them—that they’ve enjoyed over the years, and that they think our listeners might enjoy as well.

It’s been a tough 2025 for movie fans, what with the passing of some of cinema’s great talents. On this week’s show, Dan Webster, Nathan Weinbender, and Mary Pat Treuthart offer their thoughts on two of those lost talents, the visionary director David Lynch and the Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman.

If one of the points of art is to explore all facets of life, then it follows that art must explore the nature of death as well. On this week’s show, Dan Webster, Nathan Weinbender, and Mary Pat Treuthart discuss three movies that tell stories involving death. The first is “The Shrouds,” David Cronenberg’s latest delving into death and dying. The second is “Havoc,” a Netflix crime saga written and directed by Gareth Edwards. And lastly “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,” an African streaming feature written and directed by the Zambian-Welsh filmmaker Rungano Nyoni.

Sometimes you go to the movies to be challenged. Sometimes you go to be educated. Mostly, though, you go to be entertained. On this week’s show, Dan Webster, Nathan Weinbender, and Mary Pat Treuthart discuss two films that are, each in its own way, examples of pure entertainment—while, at the same time, offering up other qualities as well. Specifically “The Wedding Banquet,” writer-director Andrew Ahn’s remake of the 1993 Ang Lee film, and the streaming baseball feature “Eephus.”

Nothing gives a movie narrative more energy than a plot involving conflict. And it doesn’t matter whether that conflict involves real people or fictional characters. On this week’s show, Dan Webster, Nathan Weinbender, and Mary Pat Treuthart discuss two films that represent the two sides of that equation: "Warfare" is a film based on an actual U.S. military operation in 2006, while "Sinners" features a face-off between twin brothers and a supernatural evil.

On this week’s show, co-host Nathan Weinbender regales Dan Webster, Mary Pat Treuthart, and anyone else willing to listen with tales of his recent trek to New Orleans to snack on beignets and feast on a menu of horror films at the Overlook Film Festival. They also discuss the independent film “Sacramento,” which opened in Spokane last week.