It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

You believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to the next picture show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film

and the way it's shaped our thoughts on a recent release. I'm Keith Phipps, here again with

Scott Tobias, Tasha Robinson, and Genevieve Koski. Last week we discussed the American president.

This week, we're returning again to the world of American politics via long shot.

It's a familiar film in several respects. For starters, it plays like a closer than usual

pairing for us as a romantic comedy in which a politician, played here by Charlize Seraan,

struggles to hold on to her ideals while also falling in love with the character who embodies

those ideals, here an out-of-work left-wing journalist played by Seth Rogen. It's familiar in other ways as well. Since stocked up,

Seth Rogen has come to embody a strand of contemporary comedy featuring underachieving,

or at least out of step, protagonists in films that mix often moving insights about growing up

with some unapologetically broad comedy. All that's in evidence

here in this unfailingly pleasant and sneakily sophisticated film directed by Jonathan Levine

from a script by Dan Sterling and Liz Hannah. Rogan plays Fred Flarsky, a crusading New York

all-weekly reporter who, early in the film, loses his job due to the precarious state of 21st century journalism.

Who can imagine such a thing happening?

Attending a party, by chance, he reconnects with Charlotte Field.

He is long ago babysitter who's since become the Secretary of State,

serving under the fatuous actor-turned-pilitation President Chambers, played by Bob Odenkirk.

When Chambers tells Field he has no plans to run for a second term,

...