Episodes

We're back, comfort fans! To kick off season 4, we're welcoming back guest Katherine Pyeatt to talk nerdy about a movie that collects many of our old favorite conventions into one awesome package, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves! It's got action & adventure, a ragtag team of found family, a tremendous sense of humor, complex special makeup effects, tons of pop culture references, and one wonderfully thicc dragon. We talk about the fabulous fight choreography, the detailed weapon-crafting...

For the last of our offbeat holiday selections this year, we're talking about an instant new classic for us, The Holdovers! This film bridges the no-man's-land time between Christmas and New Year's Day, when time stretches, everything seems a little foggy, and it's easy to forget what day it is. We're thrilled to welcome first-time guest, long-time friend, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sanjay Salomon to discuss this film, which has many personal connections to his own youth growing up in...

It's the most wonderful time of the year again, and that means it's time for our holiday special episode! This Christmas season, we decided to revisit a nostalgic animated favorite from childhood, the Rankin-Bass Frosty the Snowman holiday special. We discuss the origins of the song that inspired the cartoon, Jimmy Durante's excellent voiceover, Frosty's place within the Rankin-Bass holiday lineup, and our reactions to rewatching this special after many years. Hop a train to the North Pole with ...

This week, our holiday episode is about an obscure little offbeat Christmas film that means a lot to us personally, A Midwinter's Tale - or In the Bleak Midwinter, if you're outside the US. Kenneth Branagh wrote and directed (but uncharacteristically, did not act in) this film about Joe Harper, an out-of-work actor who decides that an independent Christmas production of Hamlet is just the thing to somehow pull him out of his depression and get back on track. Fortunately, the magic of Shakespeare...

We're kicking off a month of non-traditional holiday films with Bridget Jones's Diary, welcoming back guests Kate Duffy and Danny Zeliger to discuss this Sex and the City meets Pride and Prejudice chick flick classic. We talk about the scandal of casting Texas-born Renee Zellweger as a definitively British character, Colin Firth's re-envisioning of his BBC Mr. Darcy as the modern Mark Darcy, Hugh Grant's pitch-perfect though (at the time) against-type portrayal of sleazy Daniel Cleaver, Helen Fi...

To cap off our Friendsgiving month, we welcome back Christina and Mac from World of Horror Podcast to talk about a feel-good family film that is as sweet as a delicious piece of pecan pie a la mode -- Paddington 2! We discuss the movie's heartfelt themes of family, being yourself, and building community; how Paddington's perspective as an immigrant makes his contributions to society even more unique and valuable; the brilliant use of CGI and visual storytelling that enhances the film rather than...

For the third installment of our Friendsgiving series, we welcome first-time guest and professional singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Zev Marx-Kahn to discuss Pitch Perfect (2012), which Zev first saw at age 11. It greatly inspired him to join an a capella group once he went to college a few years later, and he's able to share his first-hand experience to give some serious street cred to our movie discussion. We talk about the absolute perfection of Rebel Wilson's Fat Amy, the differ...

For this second episode of our Friendsgiving series, we welcome back Etta Goodridge (of previous episodes 35: Legally Blonde and 79: Wet Hot American Summer) to travel back in time to the Middle Ages to solve a monastery mystery with Sean Connery and Christian Slater in The Name of the Rose! We discuss the connections between Connery's William of Baskerville and greatest of all literary detectives Sherlock Holmes, references to the seven deadly sins, F. Murray Abraham's chilling performance as e...

For the month of November, we're throwing a four-episode Friendsgiving celebration and inviting friends old and new to talk about some of their favorite films! We start with welcoming returning guest Frank Bonanno to discuss the Steve Martin/Rick Moranis mob movie My Blue Heaven, a de facto comedic sequel to Goodfellas (which came out a few weeks later). Writer Nora Ephron was married to Henry Hill biographer Nicholas Pileggi during the writing of Wiseguy and took real stories of Hill's time in ...

For the second of our DisComfort Films episodes for Halloween month, we’re joined by special guest and real life pal Cathleen Mortensen Bittner to discuss the one and only Stephen King adaptation directed by the man himself, Maximum Overdrive! Though this gory, darkly humorous film has never received its due from critics, all three of us consider it a masterpiece of cartoonish, near-slapstick horror. We discuss King’s director influences from Hitchcock to Romero, the hard-hitting AC/DC-dominated...

It's October again--that time of year when comfort gives way to DIScomfort, the fog rolls in, the slashers sharpen their blades, and we gleefully indulge in rewatching some of our spooky season favorites! First up, we're talking about Shaun of the Dead, an Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg collaboration and the first of the Cornetto trilogy, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. This horror comedy has a Ph.D. in zombie movie trivia, and as zombie aficionados ourselves, that puts it right up our alle...

Have you ever had one of the those days when you just wanted to stop the world and have an adventure with your best friends? We know that we sure have! Along with special guest Jessica Sandidge we dive back in time to reminisce about the blissful freedom of high school skip days as we discuss the John Hughes classic Ferris Bueller's Day Off. We ask the important questions, like if Ferris is a good friend, how do you know when a prank has gone too far, is Ferris just Duckie from Pretty in Pink wi...

School just started, but we're already ready for a couple of skip days! First off, we're joining Riff Randell (PJ Soles) and The Ramones to take on Principal Togar (Mary Woronov) and her fascist high school administration in this cult classic midnight movie from executive producer and B-movie godfather Roger Corman. We discuss the surprisingly long and complex process of script development, director Allan Arkush's musical pedigree, high school rebellion, lots of behind-the-scenes stories, movie ...

We've got a golden ticket! For the second of our duo of kids' classics, we're indulging in a sweet treat - Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory! We discuss Roald Dahl's wildly imaginative source novel, art director Harper Goff's fantastical visual interpretations of Wonka's candy factory wonderland, the unforgettable soundtrack, the real-life candy bar tie-in to the film, and the incredible cast, including the absolutely incomparable Gene Wilder, who brought heart, soul, and just the right amount...

I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore... This month, we're talking about kids' classics, and it doesn't get much more classic and comforting than The Wizard of Oz! Claire from Why the Flick podcast joins us to discuss the (occasionally dark and dangerous) history of this landmark movie, the challenges of producing a Technicolor fantasy musical for children in early Hollywood, Judy Garland's megawatt star power, the immeasurable influence of Oz on the movie landscape, and our own personal ex...

For the second film in our war movies month, we're staying with WWII but heading over to the Pacific theater to discuss Terrence Malick's modern classic, The Thin Red Line. Unlike its film peer Saving Private Ryan, which came out the same year, The Thin Red Line has not always received universal acclaim, with mixed reactions from viewers and critics alike. It's a totally different type of war movie, realistic in some ways, but even more impressionistic, allegorical, symbolic, and philosophical. ...

Can a war film also be a comfort film? This month we're exploring that question. First up this week, special guest Martin Harries of Film Vs. Film Podcast joins us to discuss one of his favorite comfort picks and a perennial rewatch around the holidays with family, The Guns of Navarone. We talk about the paradox of comforting war films; Carl Foreman's script, which placed mythmaking far above historical fact; J. Lee Thompson's directing style, which balanced blockbuster action sequences with phi...

Have you ever wanted to go back in time to right a wrong? Whether it's correcting an injustice, avoiding a mistake, or preventing an accident, all of us would love to get a second chance to make things right. In Frequency, John Sullivan (Jim Caviezel) gets to live that fantasy, when a freak solar storm causes a disturbance in earth's magnetic field that allows him to communicate with his father Frank (Dennis Quaid) thirty years in the past. Messing with time does have its consequences though, an...

To celebrate Fathers' Day in June, we're turning our attention to a pair of films about dads and time travel. (It's a niche, but there are more options than you think!) For our first selection, we're going with Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, which combines complex theoretical physics concepts with a deeply emotional story of a father and daughter, whose bond crosses time and space to quite literally save the world. We do our best as liberal arts kids to discuss the work of physicist Kip Thorn...

What happens when Star Wars superfans make a Star Wars movie? Rogue One - the missing piece of the Star Wars saga we never knew we needed. It started as a pitch for a standalone Star Wars story from an ILM Visual Effects Supervisor, got a director who had vacationed in Tunisia to visit Star Wars sets and always wanted to be a member of the Rebel Alliance, and was cast with a diverse group of Star Wars fans from all around the world. As a prequel to Star Wars: A New Hope, Rogue One ties in perfec...

May the fourth be with you!! To celebrate Star Wars day, we're talking about the last film of the original trilogy (and the only one we haven't yet discussed), and we've brought back the brilliant Christopher Witty (previously on our Goodfellas and Mr. Nice Guy episodes) to help us break down Return of the Jedi. We talk Ewoks, Palpatine, the question of Luke Skywalker's loyalty, Darth Vader's big change of heart, Princess Leia's transformation from firebrand politician to rebel leader, Jabba the...

"WARRIORS, COME OUT TO PLAY-AY!" For the second of our juvenile delinquency duo of films, we cover Walter Hill's 1979 cult classic The Warriors. The film is adapted from Sol Yurick's 1965 novel of the same name, which itself is adapted from Xenophon's Anabasis. Walter Hill takes this classical text and filters it through youth gang culture, comic books, and classic film westerns, using a soundtrack from Barry De Vorzon that fuses synth and rock, imaginative costume choices from Bobbie Mannix fo...

April is John's birthday month, and this year, we're highlighting his adolescent penchant for juvenile delinquency with a couple of cult favorites. First up is Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of S.E. Hinton's novel, Rumble Fish, starring Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke. Conceived of as an art film for kids and an antidote to Coppola's previous Hinton adaption of The Outsiders, Rumble Fish brings together existential philosophy, German Expressionist film, and a percussion-forward score from Stewa...

It's showtime! The second film in our celebration of cinematic sandworms is Tim Burton's 1988 horror comedy Beetlejuice. John and Georgia hit the dunes of Saturn by way of East Corinth, Vermont, to dig up the ghost with the most. We talk about Michael Keaton's career-defining performance as the titular unhinged bioexorcist, the stellar on-camera practical effects and Oscar-winning makeup, the comedic talents of the all-star cast (including the incomparable Catherine O'Hara, whose Delia Deetz cou...