Nicolas Cage has been on a run of making several movies a year for decades now, and Sympathy for the Devil is one of his latest experiments, a pulpy chamber piece road trip mystery suspense film co-starring Joel Kinnaman. We sit down the film's director Yuval Adler (who also happened to get his PhD in philosophy from Columbia in the 90s!) and welcome back Matt Strohl (Philosophy, U. Montana) to discuss the film's inception, what it is like to work with Cage, how the film holds us in suspense despite withholding so much narrative material, and some of the film's themes surrounding guilt, revenge, and moving on from the past. We can't wait for you to hear about Nic Cage's process and his dedication to his craft, so tune in and be sure to check out Sympathy for the Devil, streaming everywhere now!

Today we explore the dark recesses of the human soul with Agnes Callard (Chicago). We discuss von Trier's minimalist staging, the movie's parable, the duality of human nature, the lies we tell ourselves and others, the film's political angle, and the role of anger in response to true evil.

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John Milius's 1984 film Red Dawn has a reputation as being a jingoistic conservative fever dream, but we talk with Nat Hansen, who argues that its political outlook is more complex and more interesting. Along the way, we also discuss the film's portrayal of masculinity, the toll of war, the film's many references, from The Battle of Algiers to Alexander Nevsky.

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