Could it, though? Could it indeed happen to you? Well, yes, it could, if by “it” you mean “watching a mid-tier 90s romantic comedy that sort of holds up.” If you mean “have a rando split a multi-million dollar lottery ticket with you,” then sadly the answer is no, it’s probably pretty unlikely to happen to you. Listen in with Leigh, Brendan, and Ch…

We’ve got a movie coming up next week that focuses pretty heavily on a diner, so why not do a food-centric mini episode accordingly? Except it’s not really about diners or coffee shops, it’s about chain restaurants, so things kinda fall apart from there but hey it’s hard coming up with mini topics so pipe down maybe! We do another one of our li’l g…

What do you get when America’s sweetheart teams up with Ferris Bueller for a comic revenge scheme against their exes and then end up falling for each other? Well, maybe surprisingly you’d mostly get a black comedy that struggles with its own identity despite the admirable efforts of its cast. In other words, you’d get Griffin Dunne’s 1997 directori…

Our television trilogy of terror miniseries comes to an end (for now, anyway) with this mini episode, in which we finally do what we’re been musing about doing for ages and do that thing we do with movies but with a TV series instead. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris all choose a TV series they find interesting but poorly executed and discuss how it could…

Your television is a box. Your phone is a box. You listen to podcasts on it. You sit in your home, listening to Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss Richard Kelly’s 2009 movie The Box. The movie erodes your ability to comprehend it, while the box that is your body eventually gets so confused and frustrated by questions like “what’s with the water coff…

Our TV-themed mini episode trilogy spins merrily along as we shift from our favorite couples to our favorite supporting characters- characters who may not show up every week, but once in a season or two they’ll get a fun recurring bit to do or pop up with some quippy zingers. Look, we could all use more of this television archetype in our daily liv…

It’s always an interesting choice when a movie’s title is a question- indeed, the unspoken contract entered into is “at some point, this question will be answered and the answer will be relevant.” But what happens when your movie title poses a question that is both largely irrelevant and not even really a question that matters? Well, you’d end up w…

Valentine’s Day may be several days behind us, but we’ve never been too slavishly faithful to how calendars work before and dammit we’re not about to start now. Celebrate love in all of its forms (albeit mostly romantic) as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris talk about their favorite television pairings and why they work. This also prompts a lot of talk abo…

What better way to prepare for Valentine’s Day than by watching a romantic comedy that has aged like a fine milk? Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they view 1999’s Three to Tango, a stale piece of dated cinematic nonsense covering all of our favorite 1990s hallmarks- television actors from your favorite prime time programming, neurotic straight me…

Look, we’re all very tired and we don’t really have a good discussion topic in mind, so it’s a game! Just go with it and have fun! Chris gives us a list of “cozy mystery” television episode titles and Leigh and Brendan have to guess what ones are made up. It’s one of those things! Please try to also feel cozy! And we have our February Month of Love…

Several years ago, a group of filmmakers gathered together to address a problem: kids today simply don’t want to go to the opera as much as their great-great-great-grandparents possibly did. The solution to this conundrum? The Magic Flute, a 2022 quasi-adaptation of the famed Mozart work that takes about 30% of said opera and then burdens it with a…

It’s the end of December and per our usual custom, we are closing that year, baby! Please remember to indicate that you have closed your year by listening to this on your tax forms come January. Anyway, please enjoy our traditional end of year low-key review session where we reminisce about our past movies and drinks and also talk about how there’s…

At long last, the prophecy has come true- we’re finally discussing that Christmas white whale, that rotten chestnut, that ho ho holy hell what a piece of crap movie we’ve been threatening to do for years. That’s right, for our annual Holiday Spectacular, listen in as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss Robert Zemeckis’s 2004 motion-capture abominatio…

‘Tis the Christmas season (because Thanksgiving is boring and who cares, let’s just skip over that whole bit) and what better way to celebrate it than by a third session of our patented Hallmark Christmas Movie Generator Game (patent not real)? Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they spin wheels of prompts to incorporate various holiday phrases into…

One must give credit to Michael Crichton, the man who created works of fiction that asked questions such as “what if Disneyland had dinosaurs” and “what if apes were jerks” and “what if Beowulf was boring and also laced with my historical fanfic.” Then of course, John McTiernan popped up to ask in turn “what if I did your book no favors by directin…

A mini episode in which Leigh, Brendan, and Chris start out discussing original fantasy movies, then muse about why there are so few good original fantasy movies, then play an impromptu and unplanned game of Kevin Degrees of Seven Bacon (an invented game based on something Leigh has dealt with from her parents where you have to determine what movie…

October is back and so is our annual Halloween Spooktacular! We’ve previously dealt with a murder AND a death, so it only makes sense that a haunting should follow suit- and this haunting is in VENICE, baby! Kenneth Branagh returns as his version of Hercule Poirot as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris return with the third (and presumably final based on the…

As we slowly crawl to the end of another excruciating year, the Hallo-Thanks-Mas holiday corridor creeps up along with it. As is often the case with these periods, we sometimes fall back on tried-and-true movies to rewatch (or music to listen, or games to play, or whatever, do what works for you). Leigh, Brendan, and Chris have a short chat about t…

Rita Mae Brown’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. On an unrelated note, in this episode Leigh, Brendan, and Chris return to the filmography of Kenneth Branagh just to see how we feel about perhaps his most unusual and unique movie, his 2000 Shakespeare adaptation Love’s Labour’s Lost. Yes, t…

Remember a few weeks ago when the Borderlands movie came out and no one liked it and it flopped and we all agreed that there was no reason to talk about it ever again? Well, we’re talking about it briefly. Or to be more specific, we’re talking broadly about movies adapted from video games, a much-maligned niche that has only rarely ever resulted in…

Our Summer of Failed Franchises (mercifully?) comes to an end with perhaps the most flagrant franchise bait yet, Stephen Sommer’s 2004 monster mash up Van Helsing. That’s right, at long last you can be chilled by terrifying imagery such as Dracula cosplaying as Gerard Way, Hugh Jackman with nightmarishly bad extensions, and a Frankenstein’s monster…

Obviously we’ve got some general movie spoilers to contend with in this episode, so be forewarned! Stemming from a brief digression in our last episode, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris kick around some thoughts on the state of modern movie trailers. How much information is too much information to reveal? What should a movie trailer ideally cover? How are…

Our summer miniseries of Failed Franchises continues unabated with a look at an adaptation of a pretty popular children’s book that stagnated for years in development hell, had a wildly troubled production period, was unceremoniously dumped on a streaming service because of a plague, and was then taken off again in exchange for a tax write-off. Alm…

Whether it’s a husky-voiced puppet master creeping on his unrequited love’s daughter or a charming ’60s romantic comedy that also happens to periodically feature a ghoulish yellow-face caricature of a Japanese man, we’ve all got faves that simultaneously have some deep-seated issues. Listen in with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we discuss some of ou…

It’s humid and hot and wildly unpleasant to be outdoors, meaning that summer is thusly upon us and more importantly, that we’re starting yet another mini-series for the summer months. Our theme this year is Failed Franchises, where we focus on movies that were supposed to launch a wildly successful franchise but then just sort of embarrassingly fiz…

Remember how back in January we made some resolutions for the new year involving media (movies, books, video games, television) of some kind? Well, we did. Go back and check if you doubt us, you Doubting Thomas, you. Anyways, we’re now halfway through 2024 so we figured we’d check in and see how all those empty promises were going. In addition, we’…

What better way to celebrate 100 years of existence as an entertainment corporate entity than by making a film so crammed full of back-patting references to your own history that you forget to actually make a compelling movie? According to The Walt Disney Company, there is apparently no better way. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they watch the 2…

It’s been a week or so since The Idea of You has premiered on Prime, and the world has not been the same since (or maybe it has, we do this stuff in advance). But since only one of our hosts has seen it, we didn’t want to spend a whole episode talking about that. Instead, we’re talking about the something related to it- the concept of age gaps in r…

At long last, a movie that seeks to answer the age-old question, “what if doors were towels?” Listen in with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we go down under to knock on 2023’s comic fantasy The Portable Door, an Australian adaptation of the first book in a long-running British series about what if magicians used their magical powers for mundane purpo…

It’s a game! Look, we like things with less pressure, so games are fun for us to do. This time, we turn our slightly-drunken eyes to that beloved cinephile website, Letterboxd. Fans as we are of its sometimes intelligent, sometimes glibly entertaining user reviews, Brendan has assembled a list of short, pithy reviews for movies we have covered on t…

Alors! What do you get when you take the bones of the 1963 comedy / romance / thriller Charade and filter them through a Nouvelle Vague sensibility? Well, you certainly get something worth talking about, one way or another. Listen in as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris crack open The Truth About Charlie, Jonathan Demme’s 2002 attempt at doing just that. W…

So a few weeks back we had a brief rumination about if a rom-com has failed if it’s not actually very funny, and so we decided to speak on that for a bit. For example, are there rom-coms that are actually funny? Of our favorites, which ones fall closer to rom than com (or manage to skillfully split the difference)? Is Scott Pilgrim vs. the World by…

What happens when you toss Tony Scott, Richard Kelly, the true story of a model-turned-bounty hunter, and an eclectic mess of talent into a blender with a heaping helping of meth? Well… nothing conventional, that’s for sure. Team up with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they are pummeled into submission by 2005’s Domino, starring Keira Knightley and di…

It’s a game! We play another game! Leigh takes slightly-vague top comments from trailers of recent movies on YouTube and Brendan and Chris try to guess what movie the trailer in question is for. It’s fun! We like games! Also as always, our next movie is mentioned and we share a recipe for an appropriately spicy and yellow cocktail to accompany it. …

Ah, the early 2000s! A special time in the history of cinema that spawned a plethora of high-concept romantic comedies. One need only look to Mark Water’s 2005 effort Just Like Heaven, in which Mark Ruffalo must deal with that bane of all apartment subletters, being haunted by the ghost of Reese Witherspoon (except she’s maybe not actually dead, it…

With January 2024 now well underway, we decide to discuss those lies we all tell ourselves we’ll commit to in the new year- that’s right, it’s time for resolution chat, babyyyyyy! But what with this being a podcast ostensibly about movies and other media, we’ve all made some specifically entertainment-related resolutions. Also like, those will prob…

As a snowstorm hits the northeastern United States, we prophetically chose to watch a movie that deals with a freak blizzard that keeps two twenty-somethings snowed in after initially looking for a quick hook up. That’s right, as you surely can guess, it’s 2014’s Two Night Stand, a low-stakes sort-of rom-com directed by Mike Nichols’s son. Get snow…

Look, we’ve done this seven times now, so we don’t need to mince words. We talk about our favorite movie of the year, our least favorite movie of the year, and then do it again but with the drinks we made. Look, it’s the end of the year! We’re trying to relax! Also our first movie of (shudder) 2024 is thrown into the ether along with a hot wintery …

If nothing captures the true spirit of the holidays like being stuck in an elevator for an extended period of time, then 2015’s Christmas Eve is sure the holly jolliest piece of bland seasonal ephemera we’ve encountered yet! Sadly, there’s very little of said holiday spirit actually to be found here, unless you count “Patrick Stewart does a one-man…

What better way to kick off the holiday season than with a mini-episode-in-name-only that involves ranking all the TV Christmas shlock we’ve watched over the last few years? THERE IS NO BETTER WAY. DO NOT SUGGEST OTHERWISE. Anyway, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris spend a long time mulling over a list of festive made-for-TV ephemera to decide once and for…

For our latest episode, we dust off an old chestnut that’s based on an even older chestnut, both of which cumulatively are such moldy old chestnuts that you’ve probably never heard of either. We dug deep, baby! This time, we go way back to 1951’s The Law and the Lady, a very loose adaptation of a 1925 play starring Greer Garson, Fernando Lamas, and…

Nothing is more spine-chillingly terrifying than a look back at the past! SPOOOOOOKY!!! To commemorate doing one hundred movies (yeesh) for this podcast, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris look back on their favorites and least favorites. Everyone has different definitions of these things and some people chose more than one because, you know, we like to sha…

Like a full moon occurring on Halloween, this year our annual Spooktacular episode coincides with our 100th episode. How exhausting to think about! To commemorate this occasion, we dust off a movie we’ve kicked around covering for years, dunked in a vat of eels and amniotic fluid, and brought it to horrible, horrible life. That’s right, it’s Mary S…

At long last, closure! Our jukebox musical mini-episode miniseries comes to a manic conclusion with the ultimate theatrical cop out- a jukebox musical based on a movie. That’s right, for Brendan’s turn he’s taken the Great American Songbook-esque tunes peppered throughout the 1972 Peter Bogdanovich screwball throwback What’s Up, Doc? and attempted …

In today’s increasingly fragmented society, one fact is sadly becoming more and more evident: you are either with Lucy or against Lucy. To get to the bottom of this hot-button issue we decided to watch Jon Sherman’s 2002 romantic comedy, I’m with Lucy, a fairly simple movie bogged down by multiple gimmicks designed to make everything more intriguin…

As our summer murder mystery miniseries has ended, our entirely different mini-episode miniseries is still well underway, and in this episode there’s a lot of ancient drama served up with it. This time, we continue our individual jukebox musical pitches with Chris stepping up to bat. Get ready for a lot of 80s alternative / pop / punk mixed in with…

As with all good mysteries, our murder mystery-themed summer is drawing to its natural conclusion with a not-good mystery. In this episode, we’re going back in time to both the 1980s and the 1870s with Barry Levinson’s Young Sherlock Holmes, a prequel featuring the famous detective but younger and with a less involved mystery. Enroll in a Victorian…

As summer draws to its unbearably hot closure, we dust off an old mini episode topic chestnut, Pitcher’s Mound! That’s right, that thing where we pitch a movie, or in this case, a MUUUUUUSICAL! A jukebox musical, point of fact. The first of three (!) mini episodes kicks off with Leigh pitching her very specifically-focused punk rock jukebox musical…

Much like Kenneth Branagh’s recently-discovered passion project of making Sad Boi adaptations of Hercule Poirot mysteries, our Summer of Murder Mystery continues unabated with 2022’s Death on the Nile, a limp effort starring a cast that couldn’t be more cursed if they desecrated a pharaoh’s tomb. Hope aboard the S.S. Karnak with Leigh, Brendan, and…

Hey, did you hear about how the UK publisher of the Roald Dahl books did some weird overcorrections that no one seems to have asked for and removed words like “fat” or the mystery of why women might wear wigs from their most recent editions? Or how Disney apparently is censoring language from the streaming version of The French Connection, lest you…