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 true 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 in the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release. I'm Scott Tobias here again with... Genevieve Koski. And... Tosh Robinson. Keith Phipps is busy campaigning for Alderman of the 40th Ward, but we'll bribe him back on board next time. In fact, we get a GoFundMe going for a bribe, a nice bribe.

In our last episode, we discussed Michael Mann's debut feature Thief about a professional safecracker looking for one last big score in Chicago.

In this episode, we returned to the Windy City with Steve McQueen's new film Widows, about a group of women picking up where their thieving husbands left off.

At first glance, Widow seems to be a huge departure for British director Steve McQueen,

whose previous films could hardly be described as crowd-pleasing genre entertainments.

2008's hunger is about a hunger strike in an Irish prison in 1981.

2011's shame is about a man suffering from sex addiction, and his best picture winner,

2013's 12 years of slave, is about a free African American abducted and sold into slavery

in the 1840s.

All immensely accomplished, but austere to the extreme.

On the surface, at least, widows is a welcome change

of pace, opening with a whiz-bang chase sequence shot from the back of a getaway van, where a team

of professional thieves are fleeing from the authorities. But after a shootout and a huge explosion,

all four of the men are gone, along with two million belonging to Jamal Manning, a crime

boss from Chicago's south side.

Manning, who also happens to be running for an open alderman seat against Jack Mulligan,

a legacy politician played by Colin Farrell, wants his money back.

So Manning threatens Veronica Rawlings, the widow of the robber's ringleader,

and orders her to pay him back for his losses or else.

When Veronica,

...