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Critical Darlings

Critical Darlings

By: Blank Check Productions
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Welcome to Critical Darlings: a podcast about the movies everyone is talking about, one new release after another. Every week, critics Richard Lawson and Alison Willmore cover the latest film driving the conversation—from big summer blockbusters to festival favorites, buzzy streamers, and major awards contenders. New episodes every Thursday. We’re a Blank Check Production! To catch up on our first miniseries covering the 2026 Oscars season, check out Blank Check on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Stick around on this feed for new episodes going forward. Produced by Benjamin Frisch Subscribe to Richard's newsletter, ⁠⁠Premiere Party,⁠⁠ and read Alison's work ⁠⁠at Vulture. Follow @blankcheckpod on ⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠! Art Social Sciences
Episodes
  • "You Can See Everything" Bares It All (With Jia Tolentino)

    "You Can See Everything" Bares It All (With Jia Tolentino)
    Oct 22 2026
    Critical Darlings is going LIVE at The Savannah Film Festival! In our first live podcast recording, we’re doing an awards season kickoff at 2pm on Tuesday October 29th at The Gutstein Gallery in Savannah Georgia. We’ll be talking about the year’s awards narratives, the big races, and more. For more information and tickets, visit: ⁠https://filmfest.scad.edu/schedule/critical-darlings-awards-season-kickoff-live⁠ This week we’re joined by the brilliant Jia Tolentino to build monuments to our love…for this movie! It’s You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s meta-doc about Elizabeth Holmes, her family, and her reality. It's a mesmerizing journey into the world of Holmes and her partner, the Billy Evans, in the month before Holmes imprisonment for fraud as CEO of Theranos. In classic Fielder style, the movie takes a turn, and becomes something else entirely, but is no less interesting. Email us! CriticalDarlingsMailbag@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 37 mins
  • “The Social Reckoning” Misses The Mark (With George Civeris)

    “The Social Reckoning” Misses The Mark (With George Civeris)
    Oct 15 2026
    Critical Darlings is going LIVE at The Savannah Film Festival! In our first live podcast recording, we’re doing an awards season kickoff at 2pm on Tuesday October 29th at The Gutstein Gallery in Savannah Georgia. We’ll be talking about the year’s awards narratives, the big races, and more. For more information and tickets, visit: ⁠https://filmfest.scad.edu/schedule/critical-darlings-awards-season-kickoff-live⁠ The Social Reckoning is Aaron Sorkin's semi-sequel to the Oscar-winning The Social Network. It updates the story of Silicon Valley boy-king Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook to the near-present. Despite a more tech-skeptical public, critics and audiences seem to have rejected the film. Thankfully, we have an expert to help unpack it: former Facebook employee George Civeris of Straightiolab! Despite much of the press and promotional focus around the movie, Zuckerberg, now embodied by Jeremy Strong, ends up playing a supporting role to Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White's characters, Frances Haugen, a whistleblower, and Jeff Horwitz a journalist trying to expose Facebook's growth-at-any-cost mindset. We get into the inevitable comparisons to The Social Network, the lead performances (plus Betty Gilpin), and the mythology of Mark Zuckerberg as portrayed in both films. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 26 mins
  • "Digger" ??? (With Dana Stevens)

    "Digger" ??? (With Dana Stevens)
    Oct 8 2026
    🚨🚨🚨 Big News! 🚨🚨🚨 Critical Darlings is going LIVE at The Savannah Film Festival! In our first live podcast recording, we’re doing an awards season kickoff at 2pm on Tuesday October 29th at The Gutstein Gallery in Savannah Georgia. We’ll be talking about the year’s awards narratives, the big races, and more. For more information and tickets, visit: https://filmfest.scad.edu/schedule/critical-darlings-awards-season-kickoff-live ————— Digger may be exhausting to watch, but it sure is fun to talk about! This week, we’re joined by Dana Stevens, Slate critic and author of Camera Man, to discuss Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s big-budget, big-swing meta-satire about climate, gerontocracy, art, and who knows what else. It may have flopped at the box office, but we’re (sort of) split on what to make of the movie and its knotty, sometimes gorgeous, sometimes clumsy presentation. Next week, we’re reckoning with The Social Reckoning. Email us! CriticalDarlingsMailbag@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 26 mins
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