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Episodes Monday Rundown December 22 2025–January 4 2026
This week: Hamnet, 2Topia, and more Little Women than you can even imagine.
How to make risotto
The cis recipe blogger version of Emily St. James from another timeline greets another year.
Episodes Monday Rundown December 15–21
This week: Wicked's unsolvable second act, Train Dreams' hallucinatory magic, and a whole bunch of Christmas stuff.
December mailbag!
This month: Rob Reiner favorites, new Oscar categories, and holiday stories crying out for the Rankin-Bass treatment.
Always winter, never Christmas: 21 snowy entertainments without a Santa in sight
Celebrate winter - and NOTHING ELSE - with our list of recommendations.
Episodes Monday Rundown December 8–14 2025
This week: Pluribus and the trauma plot, Disney and the YA-ification of everything, and 1985's strangest Christmas movie.
Submit your December mailbag questions!
It's that time again!
It takes an ex-believer to make a film as holy as Wake Up Dead Man (preview)
A preview of Emily St. James's essay on the third Benoit Blanc film
It takes an ex-believer to make a film as holy as Wake Up Dead Man
The latest Benoit Blanc mystery offers a bracing look at what makes faith so necessary and so dangerous, writes Emily St. James.
Episodes Monday Rundown December 1–7 2025
This week: a somewhat lopsided Joachim Trier fan club meeting, a messy and interesting novel, and a nice helping of Christmas melancholy.
Will Byers, queer power fantasies, and me
If it really wants to pull off its latest twist, Stranger Things needs to remember what keeps its characters grounded, writes Lily Osler.
rundown
Episodes Monday Rundown November 24–30 2025
This week: holiday classics, webs of lies, and a game designed to irritate your friends and loved ones.
open thread
What's the best movie from the year you were born?
Discuss amongst yourselves! (And/or, read our answers below.)
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Episodes Monday Rundown November 17–23 2025
In this week's Monday Rundown: summer blockbusters, feel-bad Bible cinema, and a cake.
mailbag
November mailbag!
This month: Food! So many questions about food! Also, the Criterion Closet, stage plays, and Pluribus.
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Episodes Monday Rundown November 10–16 2025
This week: a better-late-than-never binge watch, Emily's favorite romance author, and two plays of wildly varying quality.
mailbag
Submit your November mailbag questions!
It's that time again!
frankenstein
On Gothic sincerity and del Toro's Frankenstein
Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein wears its themes on its sleeve. Lily Osler writes on how that works – and how it doesn't.
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Episodes Monday Rundown November 3–9 2025
This week: a great concert, a new obsession, and a mildly frustrating romance read.
Yorgos Lanthimos
In Bugonia, power always says "please"
Yorgos Lanthimos' latest movie is a psychedelic nightmare about the ways the powerful use social niceties to pacify their own consciences, writes Lily Osler.
newsletter
A November hiatus
An announcement
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Episodes Monday Rundown October 27–November 2 2025
This week: KPop Demon Hunters, del Toro's Frankenstein, and two different Paranormal Activities
horror
Shelby Oaks, Bring Her Back, and the context collapse of YouTube horror
The video platform has been influencing films for years. That's only going to happen more, writes Emily St. James.