Quentin B.
Podcast HostBeyond the Spine is a bi-weekly film podcast exploring the essential works of the Criterion Collection.
Each episode examines one film in depth, not reviewing it, but understanding it. The images that refuse to fade. The directors who had no choice but to make them. The stories behind the screen that you've never heard.
This isn't film criticism. It's film discovery.
I fell in love with movies when I was nine years old.
Cool Hand Luke. Paul Newman with those blue eyes, refusing to break. There's a moment near the end of the first act where Luke pushes the chain gang to finish their work faster than humanly possible—just so they can have two hours belonging to themselves. I didn't understand it all at nine, but I felt it. That moment of rebellion disguised as obedience. That smile that says you can cage a man but you can't break him.
I've been chasing that feeling ever since.
Years later, after moving from France to the United States, I discovered the Criterion Collection. I started collecting the spine numbers—DVDs, then Blu-rays, then 4K. My shelves filled with hundreds of essential films, each one restored, preserved, treated with care. But somewhere in that collecting, I realized: these aren't just movies I own. They're films that own me. That won't let go. And each one has a story—not just what's on screen, but what it took to exist.
That's what this podcast is about.
The Story Behind It
What the director was battling. What the world looked like. What it cost to make. The context that turns a great film into an essential one.
The Film
What makes it essential. The images, the craft, the vision. Deep analysis of the cinematography, compositions, and choices that define it.
The Experience
Every episode includes a companion playlist on Spotify and Apple Music—not the soundtrack, but songs that echo the film's themes and keep you in that world after the credits.
A Scene I Could Watch On Loop Forever:
The Final duel scene in Barry Lyndon.
One Of My Favorite Line Of Dialogue:
“Sometimes I'd tell them the truth and they still wouldn't believe me, so I prefer to lie.”
My Most Prized Criterion Collection Movie
The third man (1949)
The movie that hurt to watch—in the best way:
IKIRU (1952)
(The 400 Blows)
Guilty Pleasure:
Robocop (1987)
The Playlist
Every episode includes a companion playlist on Spotify and Apple Music. Not the film's soundtrack—songs that echo the themes, capture the mood, and keep you in that world after the credits roll. Music that resonates with the film's emotional core.
listen on:
Apple Music
Your voice shapes the show. Through polls and community discussions, you help decide which films we explore next. Sometimes we do director deep dives. Sometimes we bring in guest scholars, filmmakers, and critics. This is cinema as discovery, built together.