Episodes

We're kicking off season 2 with a sci-fi film month, starting with one of our all-time favorites, fake Star Trek masterpiece Galaxy Quest! We welcome Katherine Pyeatt to discuss Star Trek fandom, the majestic Alan Rickman, celebrity restroom encounters, Galaxy Quest's influence on the Kelvin timeline, our love for the Thermians whether in human or octopus form, and the awesome intersection of fantasy and reality that makes this movie so great. By Grabthar's hammer, what an episode!

To wrap up our Christmas series and our first season of Comfort Films, we revisit the nostalgic Christmas special, A Charlie Brown Christmas. We have both been watching this annually since we were kids in front of our giant console TVs with networks coming in over antenna, and we love the Peanuts gang so much that most of our Christmas-season decor is Peanuts-based. In this episode, we discuss depression around the holidays, male pattern baldness in children, Snoopy as an agent of chaos, the Mea...

For this third episode of our second annual holiday series, we finally decided to tackle the most ubiquitous Christmas season film of all time, It's A Wonderful Life. Welcoming Georgia's mom, Jean Hughes, as our guest, we discuss our nostalgia around annual rewatches of this amazing movie, Jimmy Stewart's simultaneously emotionally devastating and uplifting performance, pre-corporate bank lending (yes, really!), how being able to gain a different perspective can be more important than actually c...

For this week's episode, we discuss the new Christmas film Spirited and two other Christmas favorites starring its leads, Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. John and Georgia talk about the heartwarming and hilarious Elf, and then welcome Sarah from Two Chicks Talkin Flicks to chat about one of her top comfort movies, Just Friends, and how no matter how much you change your life, when you go home for the holidays, it's easy to fall right back into your same old behaviors. We also talk about the hila...

Welcome to the second annual Comfort Films Christmas series, ya filthy animals! We kick it off this year with a nostalgic look back at 1990's Home Alone, discussing Macaulay Culkin's star-making turn as Kevin McCallister, kids' competing excitement and fear of being alone, the case for Home Alone as a kid version of Die Hard, and the slapstick/Rube Goldberg device-filled showdown between Kevin and the Wet Bandits, played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, which looms large over the film despite the ...

For this last episode of our mystery month, we welcome special guest Jenn Riedell to discuss the cult classic murder mystery farce, Clue. It's the best board game movie we can think of, commanding a huge nostalgic piece of real estate in all our hearts. We talk about the stellar ensemble cast (including standout Tim Curry), the philosophy and meta-ness of the multiple endings, rewriting the movie into many different settings, and we do our best not to spend the entire 90 minutes just quoting lin...

It's week 3 of our mystery series, and we're searching every warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse looking for the one-armed man to exonerate Harrison Ford's Dr. Richard Kimble. In this discussion of the 1993 film The Fugitive, we talk about the use of the Hitchcockian archetypal "wronged man" hero, unexpected comedic moments in this otherwise deadly serious film, crashing trains for art, if Jeroen Krabbe can ever be trusted, and whether it's okay to fall in love anew while you'r...

It's week 2 of our mystery series, and we're revisiting a directing team that we haven't discussed since way back in episode 1! The Coen Brothers's comic twist on the noir detective story, The Big Lebowski, is one of the most quotable films of all time and one of our most rewatched (even if Georgia wasn't convinced the first time she saw it). We discuss the abiding appeal of The Dude, whether this movie actually qualifies as a mystery, Philip Seymour Hoffman's glorious portrayal of the toady Bra...

This week, we're kicking off a month-long mystery series with the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock! We discuss Hitchcock's comprehensive approach to filmmaking, his fruitful collaboration with Jimmy Stewart (whose wholesome image Hitchcock expertly exploited), the line between simple curiosity and voyeurism, and when a telephoto lens is not just a telephoto lens. Grab your binoculars, step into the shadows, and join us!

To close out our four weeks of John Carpenter horror, we decided to watch him end the world not once, but twice! Both of these films (two and three in Carpenter's apocalypse trilogy, which started out with The Thing, our film from last week) involve questioning reality as we know it. In Prince of Darkness, we go way below the surface of this evil-takes-over film to explore the intersection of religion and science, theoretical physics, and if it's possible to prove the existence of objective real...

For this third week of our John Carpenter horror month, we decided to take inspiration from our episode number and go to Area 51 for an alien adventure with The Thing, Carpenter's 1982 alien invasion movie starring Kurt Russell in a Yosemite Sam hat. We talk isolation and paranoia in the frozen underbelly of the world, Rob Bottin's genius (and gruesome) creature creations (with an assist from Stan Winston), nontraditional westerns, the Oscar-worthy performance of Jed the wolfdog, and saving the ...

It's week two of our John Carpenter horror movies month, and since we're also hitting the big 5-0 in our episode count, we decided to do a double feature! We talk about Halloween and The Fog, two Carpenter classics that are very different but share some strong common bonds too. We discuss both films' Hitchcock roots, the many contributions of the brilliant writer/producer Debra Hill, Dean Cundey's stellar cinematography, babysitters in peril, keeping your pants on for safety, what Michael Myers ...

It's scary season, and this year, we've decided to focus on a series of horror films from a director we love in the genre, John Carpenter. For the first in the series, we're taking a closer look at They Live, the 1988 sci-fi action horror film about our evil alien overlords and the drifter hero who brings them down. We discuss the handling of serious themes like homelessness and rampant consumerism, Carpenter's DIY filmmaking style, pro wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper's surprisingly nuanced performan...

In this final episode of the "straight to the sequel" series, John and Georgia revisit Indiana Jones in the third film of the original trilogy, The Last Crusade. What can we say, we love a grail story! (See episode 23, The Fisher King.) We talk about the many Indiana Jones/James Bond links (not limited to the Sean Connery connection), stupid guys who are easily dazzled by shiny things, Henry and Indy's troubled relationship, creepy-crawly phobias, what could have been with River Phoenix, and Els...

For our third in the straight to the sequel September series, we're talking about Christopher Nolan's 2008 film, The Dark Knight. We discuss the dark/light motif that weaves through every aspect of the film, the significant overlap between good guys and bad guys, the mysterious background of the Joker and Heath Ledger's incredible performance, the technical innovations Nolan's team made shooting narrative film on IMAX for the first time, and whether "honest politician" is an oxymoron. This isn't...

In this super-sized episode, we discuss one of our most beloved movie sequels, The Empire Strikes Back! For this second episode in our "straight to the sequel" September series, we talk about all the things that make this a major favorite, including the appearance of Yoda (aka "The Bunny"), Luke's growth, Leia's continuing transition from rebel princess to military leader, Han Solo's development from lone wolf to full-fledged pack member, Lando's tough decision, Darth Vader's workplace woes, sou...

For the first episode in our "straight to the sequel" September series, we're talking Terminator 2: Judgment Day. We love this movie so much, we can watch it as a standalone film without needing to start at the beginning of the series (although we like watching it that way too). We discuss the T-1000, the most terrifying liquid metal entity we've ever encountered, John Connor's daddy issues, Sarah Connor's transformation from sweetheart to murderous badass, the importance of Guns N' Roses to the...

For the big finish to our sun and sand series, we doubled up on the sandiest movie we could find--Dune! Not only did we watch both movies and hours of special features, but we also listened to the audiobook. We basically ARE sandworms now. We talk about the influence of Dune on the last 50 years of sci-fi, religious and philosophical themes, and of course, the spice melange, which is a symbol used to discuss the world's dependence on oil, but somehow also an analog for tripping on shrooms. We al...

At Comfort Films HQ, we choose a lot of our picks based on nostalgia, but every so often a new movie comes along that instantly makes a mark on us as a future comfort film. For our penultimate summer selection, we chose a movie that has only been around since May of this year, but we've already marked it a classic for us--The Bob's Burgers Movie. Bob's Burgers is Georgia's number one favorite show, and much to her relief, the movie takes everything that is great about the show and builds on it. ...

For the next entry in our summer series, we have the great fortune to be joined by the awesome Claire White from the (equally awesome) Why the Flick? podcast to discuss her favorite comfort film, Jurassic Park! We talk Spielberg, special effects, the ethics of cloning, and of course anything and everything dinosaur-related. We were so preoccupied with whether or not we could, that we didn't stop to think if we should, but then we did anyway, and it turned out good. Get your hands out of that tri...

In this episode from our continuing summer movies series, we discuss the 1991 Kathryn Bigelow-helmed surfing bank robbers movie Point Break. We talk mixed religious symbolism, Bigelow's innovative action filming techniques, and whether Bodhi is actually cool or if it's all an illusion. (Patrick Swayze's coolness is not, however, in question; it's unimpeachable.)

This week for our 40th episode, we're discussing the classic 80s action/adventure/archaeology film Raiders of the Lost Ark. We talk about the similarities and differences between Han Solo and Indy, the perfect team-up of Harrison Ford and Karen Allen, the continuing exploitation of William Hootkins's size, and the relative non-merits of snakes and spiders. Pack up your hat, pistol, and whip (that's all you need) and join us!

We're kicking off a series of sun & sand movies with the 1999 Brendan Fraser action/adventure film The Mummy! We talk Egyptian mythology, Beni the frenemy, the finer points of archaeology versus grave robbery, and how Imhotep kind of got a bad rap when he was really just trying to hang out with his girl.

For our much delayed final episode of the pink-themed film quartet, we revisit the 1995 Amy Heckerling teen rom-com "Clueless." We discuss its roots in Jane Austen's Emma, the awesome 90s-ness of it all, and we riff on the many iterations of the great Paul Rudd, whose career has rightfully skyrocketed since his memorable early appearance as Josh in this film.