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 the week podcast devoted to a classic film on the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Scott Tobias here again with...

Genevieve Kosky.

Keith Phipps.

In our last episode, we followed a degenerate gambler who takes desperate measures to get himself out of Hawk and the killing of a Chinese bookie.

Today, we're talking about another screw-up in the same spot in Uncut Gems,

the new film by Josh and Benny Safty, the directors of Good Time and Heaven Knows What.

If you're familiar with the Safty brothers, you know they put a premium on intensity and

hyperaggression, from the performances to the soundtrack to the grimy street realism,

which recalls a different era in New York filmmaking.

Uncut Gems is by far their biggest production to date,

but their aesthetic hasn't changed a bit.

Adam Sandler stars as Howard Ratner,

the proprietor of a jewelry store in New York's Diamond District in 2012.

As the film opens, he already owes money to many shady lenders around town,

but he believes he's found the answer to pull himself out of debt. He's ordered an uncut

opal from an Ethiopian mine that he believes to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction.

When he shows off the rock to Kevin Garnett, who's playing himself, the starting center of the

Boston Celtics in the NBA playoffs,

...