Batman, Wolverine, and Black Widow star in Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Prestige. It has the hallmarks of a Nolan classic; a mind-bending plot, science fiction, and Michael Caine. Packed with detail, nuance, and hints, it’ll have you guessing until the very end. Join Jim and A.Ron as they comb over the details and hints in this brain-teaser of a film.
Deep Water is a British documentary about a boat race in the late 1960s so maybe you can understand why I thought this pick from commissioner Aaron might be a little dry. I expected a lot of coxswain this, and bosun that. Thankfully, it turned out to be nothing like I expected. Check out the documentary, then join us for a podcast about isolation and the delicate mechanism of the mind.
The Departed is one of the Scorsese movies that A.Ron and I most overlooked on first viewing. I had some inkling that it was good, but I couldn’t say why. After watching it 15 years later, we both got it. There’s a complex game of cat and mouse hidden under all those Boston accents and, despite clocking in at over 2.5 hours, it maintains the tension throughout. Join us on the podcast for a discussion of The Departed.
Welcome to the 15th anniversary podcast for The Devil Wears Prada. It’s not exactly my kind of movie but we missed the 10th anniversary and we know that a lot of our audience loves this movie so we checked it out. 15 years on, it seems like a bit of a mixed bag. The personal story of escaping a life that you never wanted in the first place is inspiring, but the way the movie treats the fashion industry at large left us fairly consternated.
A.Ron can’t get enough of The Holiday, so he recruits two all-star Christmas rom-com veterans for this important discourse. Kim Renfro from Insider and Joanna Robinson from Vanity Fair join the podcast to discuss The Holiday’s place in romantic comedy history, gumption, fantasy kitchens, healthy levels of “scroodily-doo”, and dream of a Nancy Meyers theme park.
Premium
Welcome to the first Christmas movie of the 2020 holiday season, The Holiday! It features some major starpower, the likes of Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Cameron Diaz, and Jack Black. Yes, it’s a romantic comedy but you knew we had to do one eventually. There are just SO MANY rom-com Christmas movies out there and we can’t cover JUST the badass classics like Die Hard and Rocky IV! And if there was ever a season for variety, this is the one. COVID has been hard on all of us, so join us for this mostly-wholesome, very sappy, but also highly-enjoyable holiday treat.
Nicholas Ragovis / AKA Doctor_Nick, victor of the Bald Move Fantasy Football League, has come to claim his spoils; a commissioned podcast! He has a great film for us, the 2006 German film The Lives of Others. Written and directed by Henckel von Donnersmarck, the movie offers a look into the brutal repression and paranoia of the East German State Police during the 80s, and the effects it had on the lives of those that had to live under it. But there is hope in the form of a Stasi captain that has to confront his own conscious and humanity during an assignment to monitor an esteemed playwright. This movie has us thinking about totalitarian regimes past, current, and future, the strength of the human spirit, and how we as citizens need to keep the hands of the joyless off the levers of state power.
Special thanks to David Pavlicko and the ProjectorPeople.com for commissioning this very “special” movie, the Nicolas Cage remake of The Wicker Man. This movie is perhaps the epitome of the genre of “crazy ass Nick Cage movies”. It makes no sense, it gives Mr. Cage an excuse to act progressively more and more insane, leading up to the incredible third act which sees him reduced to screaming at Maximum Cage levels, while, for example, having thousands of bees poured down his throat. It’s breathtaking, really.