Maltin on Movies

Maltin on Movies is a conversational film show with a long memory. Its best moments feel less like promotion than oral history, with guests using credits as landmarks through a life in movies and television. Corbin Bernsen’s episode circles L.A. Law, sudden visibility, family work, marriage, editing, and the way success can distort a person’s sense of scale. Lou Taylor Pucci’s conversation moves from names and early films into Boba Fett anecdotes, risky roles, dark comedy, psychological horror, and the actors willing to follow a strange script all the way out. Stephanie Laing brings the craft side forward. Her discussion turns on tone, focal length, dailies, collaboration, covering a season, and learning what a show wants before stepping onto set. Caroline Goodall offers the texture of period work, from medieval landholding assumptions to elaborate headpieces, Bruges shoots, aging across scripts, and the improvisational logic of asking props for a stick. C. Thomas Howell’s episode sits with early fame, horses, responsibility, wrinkles, old-school screen faces, and the tension between image and believable character work. J.K. Simmons opens a door into voiceovers, animation, video games, Billy West, and the long-running yellow M&M role. Chapin Cutler shifts the show toward projection, festivals, Boston Light and Sound, and the care involved in creating theatrical spaces where none existed. Haley Joel Osment’s appearance shows the lighter side, with family-name jokes, siblings in show business, and easy conversational play. Across these episodes, the show favors affection over interrogation. It knows names, titles, side roads, and deep cuts. It also leaves room for guests to ramble productively. The tone is warm, informed, and loosely guided. For movie fans, that looseness is the point: the conversation keeps finding the lived experience behind the credit.