Shows / The Family Pictures Podcast
The Family Pictures Podcast
A podcast exploring the best and worst family dynamics on screen – the cinematic highs and lows of family behavior, from heartwarming moments to unforgettable dysfunction. Hosted by Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith
Episodes
The Family Pictures PodcastLet It Turn To Something Else – Red Dawn
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith talk Red Dawn, boyhood war games, frontier fathers, and what happens when children are taught to turn grief into violence.
The Family Pictures PodcastTake Us Away – The Stolen Children
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith follow Rosetta and Luciano across Italy as institutions reject them and a reluctant escort begins to take responsibility…
The Family Pictures PodcastI Don't Want To Forget You – Central Station
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith travel across Brazil with Dora and Josué as an unwanted obligation slowly becomes a family neither wants to lose.
The Family Pictures PodcastIt's All Playacting – Raise The Red Lantern
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith consider how Raise the Red Lantern turns marriage, ritual, and family tradition into a system of control.
The Family Pictures PodcastAh Well There You Go – Life Is Sweet
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith discuss unfinished dreams, family strain, and the humor that keeps everyone together in Mike Leigh’s Life Is Sweet.
The Family Pictures PodcastTo See What's Not Good For Me – The White Balloon
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith follow Razieh into the streets of Tehran, where a lost banknote turns a simple trip for a goldfish into a child’s journey…
The Family Pictures PodcastMy Life Is as Good as an ABBA Song – Muriel’s Wedding
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith discuss Muriel’s Wedding, the humiliations of home and the difference between running away from your life and leaving to…
The Family Pictures PodcastYou’ve Been Putting It Up Your Whole Life – No Country for Old Men
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith consider the stories families pass down, ordinary lives, and ask whether the past was ever safer, kinder, or easier to…
The Family Pictures PodcastThe Only One That Was a Friend to Me – The Gift
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith explore how grief, abuse, and loneliness leave Annie Wilson carrying the emotional weight of an entire community.
The Family Pictures PodcastSounds Wonderful Doesn't It – A Simple Plan
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith discuss how four million dollars exposes the rising anxiety of the disappearing middle class in Sam Raimi's bleak American…
The Family Pictures PodcastI'll fix ya some eggs – Fargo
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith follow the snow covered trail of debt, kidnapping, and suburban collapse in Fargo.
The Family Pictures PodcastIf you let me, I can help you become a better person – The Housemaid
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith descend into the glossy nightmare of The Housemaid, where fake-perfect kitchens, mommy’s boys, and cream-cheese-frosted…
The Family Pictures Podcast"Crossing Lines – Parasite"
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith descend into the hidden levels of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, where wealth performs sophistication while poverty fights for…
The Family Pictures PodcastNot Everybody Is As Lucky As We Are – One Hour Photo
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith explore how family life becomes a curated image in One Hour Photo, and what happens when someone tries to live inside that…
The Family Pictures PodcastIt's My Family – The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith explore how The Hand That Rocks the Cradle turns the role of mother into something that can be learned, performed, and…
The Family Pictures PodcastPlaying Happy Family – Fatal Attraction
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith examine how a single act of infidelity fractures the illusion of stability in an upper middle class family in Adrian Lyne’s…
The Family Pictures PodcastThe Roles That Wouldn’t Hold – The Birds
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith trace the transformation of Melanie Daniels in The Birds, as she moves from carefree socialite to something like a…
The Family Pictures PodcastA Boy's Best Friend is his Mother – Psycho
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith unpack how Hitchcock stages the collapse of respectability in a world where sex is visible but not yet accepted.
The Family Pictures PodcastWhatever Will Be – The Man Who Knew Too Much
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith discuss how a vacationing American family stumbles into international intrigue in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too…
The Family Pictures PodcastCrisscrossed Households – Strangers on a Train
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith consider how the film’s famous “crisscross” murder plot mirrors a deeper structural collision between two families: the…
The Family Pictures PodcastNo Ordinary Family – Shadow of a Doubt
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith examine Hitchcock’s favorite film, where the myth of the average family becomes both shield and blindfold, and menace…
The Family Pictures PodcastDamn It I Want This Family To Love Me – The Royal Tenenbaums
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith unpack Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums as a story about adult children trapped inside the myth of their own childhood…
The Family Pictures PodcastThis Is For Your Own Good – The Savages
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith take on caregiving, cold winters, and fluorescent-lit reckoning in Tamara Jenkins' The Savages, where estranged children…
The Family Pictures PodcastJust in the Nick of Time – On Golden Pond
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith explore On Golden Pond (1981), a film about identity at the end of life, the persistence of childhood hurt, and the…
The Family Pictures PodcastThe Wish to be Free – Tokyo Story
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith unpack Tokyo Story as a quiet reckoning with aging parents, drifting children, and the emotional cost of modern life moving…
The Family Pictures PodcastEveryone Is Doing Their Best – Make Way For Tomorrow
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith discuss Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) and how ordinary decency, practicality, and exhaustion slowly erode responsibility…
The Family Pictures PodcastThe Lie of Simple Answers – Weapons Reloaded
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith return to Weapons, correcting a rushed first recording and unpacking its abuse allegory, generational parasitism, and the…
The Family Pictures Podcast2025 Family Pictures Podcast Awards
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith recap the year with their first ever awards show.
The Family Pictures PodcastA Home Between Cliff and River – Jeremiah Johnson
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith trace Jeremiah Johnson’s journey from escape into solitude, through an accidental gathering of strangers that becomes a…
The Family Pictures PodcastDon't Think You Ain't Wagering – Meek's Cutoff
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith explore how the quiet persistence of women’s work—and a single act of moral courage—reshapes a frontier story built on male…
The Family Pictures PodcastSlow Time Family Labor – The New Land
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith explore how The New Land reveals the frontier not as mythic violence but as decades of labor, loss, and quiet perseverance.
The Family Pictures PodcastThere's No Living with a Killing – Shane
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith trace how Shane creates a double image of masculinity: the domestic father who builds a home, and the gunfighter who…
The Family Pictures PodcastBlood, Kin, and the Frontier Father – The Searchers
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith take a journey into the West’s darkest myth—where family, race, and vengeance shape the American imagination.
The Family Pictures PodcastI Don't Get Mad Anymore – One Battle After Another
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith dive into Paul Thomas Anderson’s absurdist epic One Battle After Another, tracing how a botched revolution, an absent…
The Family Pictures PodcastThe Human Project Lives – Children of Men
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith look at Children of Men as a story about the memory of family at the end of time—a world where nostalgia replaces birth…
The Family Pictures PodcastFixing God's Owner's Handbook – The Mosquito Coast
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith trace the collapse of a patriarch’s paradise, where the dream of self-sufficiency turns into a theology of madness.
The Family Pictures PodcastI Always Thought That I'd See You Again – Running on Empty
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith explore Running on Empty as a portrait of the revolutionary 1960s ideals colliding with 1980s family life — a story about…
The Family Pictures PodcastYou Didn't Prepare Me For This – Hanna
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith explore Hanna as a story of overprotection and isolation—a father so intent on keeping his daughter safe that he leaves her…
The Family Pictures PodcastHer Breasts, Family Business – Slums of Beverly Hills
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith unpack Tamara Jenkins’s semi-autobiographical tale of a family chasing stability in the fringes of 90210.
The Family Pictures PodcastKey Parties and Crumbling Ideals – The Ice Storm
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith dig into Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm (1997), where suburban Connecticut families freeze under the pressures of shifting social…
The Family Pictures PodcastAn Ode to Awkwardness – Welcome to the Dollhouse
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith discuss Todd Solondz’s 1996 indie darling Welcome to the Dollhouse. Dawn Wiener faces the brutality of junior high, the…
The Family Pictures PodcastChosen Family, Stolen Story – Kids
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith frame a new lens on Kids (1995): how the real “kids” built a family in the absence of parents, and how that story was…
The Family Pictures PodcastEat Your Fruit, Post Your Status – Didi
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith discuss Nai Nai’s proverbs to AIM slang, as Dìdi reveals how families and friends communicate expectations and escape them.
The Family Pictures PodcastThoughts, Prayers, and Witches – Weapons
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith talk Weapons as it confronts America’s cycle of denial — from Sandy Hook to generational rot — asking if the real horror is…
The Family Pictures PodcastEvicted by Evil – The Amityville Horror
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith dive into the house that bleeds, locks its doors, and bankrupts the Lutzes—turning the American Dream into an American…
The Family Pictures PodcastGenerational Trauma, Rage Begets Rage – The Brood
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith discuss snowsuits, pajamas, and psychoplasmics—Cronenberg’s rage babies embody the horror of childhood shaped by parental…
The Family Pictures PodcastWhen Society Fails, Families Turn Monster – The Hills Have Eyes
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith discover when the American Dream breaks down, even the family dog learns to kill.
The Family Pictures PodcastBeneath the Surface: Fear, Family, and Jaws
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith dive into Jaws, the 1975 blockbuster that emptied beaches and flooded minds with nightmares. At the center is Chief Brody —…
The Family Pictures PodcastHorror's First Family – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith cover Hooper's nightmare of when the nuclear family collapses and the cannibal family takes its place.
The Family Pictures PodcastMy God Are We Going To Be Like Our Parents? – The Breakfast Club
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith revist how John Hughes turned detention into confessional, capturing how teens both resent and crave their parents’…
The Family Pictures PodcastIt's 10 O'Clock Do You Know Where You're Children Are? – Fast Times At Ridgemont High
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith look at the generational blind spots in Fast Times, where both parents and producers underestimated what teens could handle…
The Family Pictures PodcastGrowing Up, Looking Back – Sixteen Candles
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith unpack how Sixteen Candles balances teenage independence with the lingering need for parental affirmation.
The Family Pictures PodcastClocking Hours to Cover the Cost – The Wild Life
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smithrevisit The Wild Life, a film about kids chasing parties and independence, but always punching the clock to afford it.
The Family Pictures PodcastPaint it Any Color You Want – Some Kind of Wonderful
It’s still you using me — and a father trying to steer a son’s life. JIm Groom and Michael Branson Smith dive into Some Kind of Wonderful's confrontations…
The Family Pictures PodcastThe Sharing Makes It Real – Say Anything...
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith unpack Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything…, examining the complicated ties between Diane, her father, and Lloyd — and what…
The Family Pictures PodcastThe Games Adults Play – Pauline at the Beach
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith unpack Eric Rohmer’s sly and sun-drenched Pauline at the Beach, a film where love is a game, truth is optional, and every…
The Family Pictures PodcastDads are for Fixing Things – Taken
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith dive into Taken (2008), the ultimate dad fantasy: what if you had a very particular set of skills and would burn a country…
The Family Pictures PodcastHostage Family, Savage OTHER – Not Without My Daughter
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith dig into the 1991 Sally Field vehicle Not Without My Daughter — a film that’s half thriller, half imperialist fever dream…
The Family Pictures PodcastThe Things You Do For Your Kids – The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith untangle the world of Texas cheerleading ambition, suburban pecking orders, and one mom’s deadly plan to climb the social…
The Family Pictures PodcastCha Cha Heels and Broken Homes – Female Trouble
Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith unspool John Waters’ trash masterpiece, where delinquent desires, crumbling families, and gaudy kitsch rule.