With his delightful feature debut Sketch opening across the US and Canada tomorrow, writer-director Seth Worley gets geared up by dissecting the sci-fi surprises of Barry Sonnenfeld’s box-office champion Men in Black. Your genial host Norm Wilner thinks you should see Sketch with a crowd this weekend, by the way.

With her first feature Foreigner having its world premiere at Montreal’s Fantasia festival this week, director Ava Maria Safai is here to talk about Mohammad Rasoulof’s recent allegorical Iran drama The Seed of the Sacred Fig. Your genial host Norm Wilner is really excited to be digging into such a rich text.

Having just premiered their first feature Lucid at Montreal’s Fantasia festival, filmmakers Ramsey Fendall and Deanna Milligan dive into Daughters of Darkness, Harry Kumel’s 1971 cult classic about newlyweds who stumble into the clutches of a very aristocratic lady and her devoted companion. Your genial host Norm Wilner is delighted by the notion that Jeanne Dielman was once Elizabeth Bathory … and may still be.

With his new documentary Parade: Queer Acts of Love and Resistance streaming on NFB.ca and opening in Winnipeg on July 30th, filmmaker Noam Gonick takes a moment to celebrate Uli Edel’s 1989 adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr’s landmark novel Last Exit to Brooklyn. Your genial host Norm Wilner is always happy to help someone drag a great movie back into the world.

With his timely new thriller 40 Acres now playing in theaters across the US and Canada, writer-director RT Thorne takes a moment to throw some love at Blood Simple, the bravura neo-noir that introduced the world to Joel and Ethan Coen – and to Frances McDormand, and Carter Burwell, and Barry Sonnenfeld. Your genial host Norm Wilner is always happy to dig into a classic, and this is certainly that.

It’s Canada Day, so writer-director Nik Sexton – whose new East Coast drama Skeet is heading to the Galway International Film Festival on July 11th – stops in to talk about Incendies, the Oscar-nominated 2010 drama that put Denis Villeneuve on the map. Your genial host Norm Wilner would like you to know he recorded this episode well before Villeneuve landed the Bond gig.

With her splendid first feature Do I Know You from Somewhere? arriving on VOD this Friday, New Brunswick director Arianna Martinez steps up for Gore Verbinski’s Gothic creeper A Cure for Wellness – the one with Dane DeHaan and the eels. Your genial host Norm Wilner is willing to hear her out.

With his darkly comic Self Driver now available on digital and on demand, writer-director Michael Pierro is here to celebrate Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 masterwork The Conversation – and pay tribute to its incredible star, Gene Hackman. Your genial host Norm Wilner has some thoughts about that too.

Director Rob Michaels – whose charming Canadian culture-clash comedy Please, After You is now available on digital and on demand – is here to share his favorite comedy: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the 2008 comedy where Jason Segel proved he had the goods to be a romcom leading man. He just had to write it first. Your genial host Norm Wilner also gets to talk about Muppets this week.

This week, director Chloe Robichaud – whose charming, spiky new comedy Two Women is now playing in Toronto and Montreal, and expandng to Vancouver on Friday – celebrates Jean-Marc Vallee’s 2011 masterwork Cafe de Flore, in which the late director shuffled and remixed two different love stories in two different time periods like the brilliant DJ he was. Your genial host Norm Wilner got a little choked up on this one.

This week, director Kourtney Roy – whose creepy first feature Kryptic is now available on digital and on demand – shares her thoughts on District 9, Neill Blomkamp’s breakout 2009 sci-fi action social satire starring Sharlto Copley as a spineless government functionary who gets dragged into an alien uprising in Johannesburg. Your genial host Norm Wilner is willing to get a little messy on this.

This week, director Daniel Robbins – whose new comedy Bad Shabbos is now playing in the US and opening this Thursday in Toronto and Vancouver – steps up for Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, the pitch-black 1942 farce starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard as married actors in occupied Warsaw who take on the Nazis … and still manage to get laughs. Your genial host Norm Wilner has been waiting forever talk about this one.

This week, actor Keeya King – currently starring in the new thriller Guess Who, on Hollywood Suite in Canada and Tubi in the US – shares her love for Greta Gerwig’s solo directorial debut Lady Bird, which found comedy and pathos in the everyday drama of Saoirse Ronan’s Sacramento teenager. Your genial host Norm Wilner knows a thing or two about being an obnoxious teen, so this should be fun.

This week, Sharp Corner writer-director Jason Buxton steps up for the aching sadness of The Ice Storm, Ang Lee’s all-star 1997 adaptation of Rick Moody’s novel about parents and children struggling with the cultural upheavals of Nixon’s America over the 1973 Thanksgiving weekend. Your genial host Norm Wilner was five at the time, so don’t expect any deep insights.

This week, writer-directors Austin Andrews and Andrew Holmes – whose new film The Island Between Tides is playing at the Carlton Cinemas in Toronto and the Mayfair in Ottawa through May 1st – are here to talk about their fascination with The Sixth Sense, and how M. Night Shyamalan’s 1999 breakthrough is still a great picture even after you know the twist. Your genial host Norm Wilner has been saying this forever.

This week, editor Sam Rice-Edwards – who cut and co-directed the new documentary One to One: John & Yoko, in theaters now – unpacks the entangled structure and mounting dread of Don’t Look Now, Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 masterwork starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as an English couple, haunted by the loss of a child, who encounter something even more awful in Venice. Your genial host Norm Wilner definitely saw this one at too early an age.

Ten years after writer-director Ingrid Veninger brought A Woman Under the Influence to the podcast, she’s back with a new movie - Crocodile Eyes, screening this Thursday at Vancouver’s VIFF Centre for Canadian Film Week - and talking about Inland Empire, David Lynch’s three-hour 2006 digital experiment with Laura Dern as “a woman in trouble” that now stands as his last feature. Your genial host Norm Wilner has a great story about this one.

With his stranger-than-fiction drama The Luckiest Man in America now in theaters across North America, director Samir Oliveros is here to celebrate a film most of you won’t have seen: Ildikó Enyedi’s On Body and Soul, a magic-realist tale of two Hungarian slaughterhouse workers connected by inexplicable circumstances. Your genial host Norm Wilner never thought he’d have the chance to talk about this one here, so that’s a nice surprise.

With her first feature Bob Trevino Likes It now in theaters across North America, writer-director Tracie Laymon is here to discuss Tim Burton’s 1990 suburban fable Edward Scissorhands, and how its earnest weirdness went straight to her heart. Your genial host Norm Wilner had forgotten how much he still loves this one.

With her second feature Darkest Miriam having just kicked off the Canadian Film Fest and opening in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Sudbury on Friday the 28th, with more theatres to come, writer-director Naomi Jaye joins us to celebrate Three Colors: Red, which now stands as Krzysztof Kieślowski’s defining artistic work. Your genial host Norm Wilner is so glad to be diving back into the trilogy a year and a half after M.H. Murray’s episode on Blue.