Are You Screening? Podcast

In a wildly rare move... sort of, we are only covering one film this week, Poor Things. As usual for the pre-award rush, we've been hyping the fact that we would need to share several movies per episode, but this week... accidentally, we are laser-focused on Yorgos Lanthimos' latest, and this treat with Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, and Willem Defoe is certainly worthy of our attention... even if it isn't quite the 10/10 I was expecting. It is close though.

This week we are really gearing up for awards season, which seems crazy. Before we get too close to four or five films a week territory, we have a couple of big titles to tackle, and neither of them impressed us much. The Marvels is getting a wild world of pro and con commentary, but where does it really land, and why? The Killer, which is weirdly, The K__.ller, owing to the graphic novel, is a lot of potential that doesn't really amount to anything as cool as it should have been.

This week we are taking a look at what turns out to be a truly special movie, Five Nights at Freddy's, at least in terms of messing with our ratings. We're also covering a couple of other films, including Totally Killer. As much as it may seem absolutely crazy, because we are very serious film critics, Five Nights played havoc with our thoughts about rating movies. So much so that we have been inspired to revisit our show from ages ago where we dive deep into how we come to our ratings. Look for that somewhere around the new year with our yearly lists and awards.

We're avoiding a lot of Halloween this week, but there's still "Haunting" in the title. While horror, or at least horror-ish, titles are moving around the box office rankings, we're looking at A Haunting in Venice, the third effort of a semi-vanity project.... just like in our last show. Is this one worth your time, or has this gone on too long?

This week, as we move from stellar box office, to the curious case of a winning holiday weekend... to the box office black hole, we're looking at the third installment in the increasingly curious Equalizer franchise. This one is a vanity project that won't die, and while the first one was... fair enough, it's becoming hard to tell why we ever picked the name in the first place. Does this one hold up? Is it worth your time? We'll let you know, and we're going to jump into a few other things as well.

The shocking blockbuster that is Barbie has taken the year's box office by storm, and it is at the center of intense debate and... unusual awards talk. So where does the film land when not merely analyzing the feminist debate within, and how does the film showcase Margot Robbie, Greta Gerwig, and Ryan Gosling, apart from making a lot of money? We'll let you know how well this one delivers. Apologies for the a massive technical failure throwing things off a bit in the episode.

The Impossible team is at it again, sort of, and this time they find themselves up against a whole new kind of enemy. The cultural boogeyman of the decade is AI and there's no reason our Impossible heroes shouldn't jump on the bandwagon. It's no secret that Cruise uses the franchise to... work out some fantasies, and the question has long been whether or not it all comes together to deliver something that holds up to the first couple of films. We'll let you know where this one lands. We've also got some bonuses for you, running you through some of your other screening options.

After a bit of a break we are running full steam into massive, tentpole season, although many of them don't seem to be doing quite as well as we might hope.  There was a time that Indiana Jones might have made twice as many movies and the all would have killed, but we aren't exactly in those times, and the question of whether or not a new Indy adventure is worth it is... well, a fairly live question. We'll let you know if this one is worth your time, and we have some bonuses to discuss as well.

As we start to hit the big-money releases, we're going to look at the new, animated Spider-Man effort. The first one smashed into the cultural awareness in a way we haven't seen in a while, and there are high hopes for this one, but will it live up to the fascination? With the potential to become an epic sub-franchise of the superhero genre, this one could be the key. We'll let you know if this one has what it takes.

As we approach some really big titles hitting theaters, we're taking on Sisu and looking at some other titles that may easily get overlooked. The box office ahead looks to be dominated by a few titles, but the numbers aren't quite reaching expectations and we're going to continue to try to showcase other options... in case Barbie isn't for everyone.

As we move into the summer, and some truly big releases, Fast X hits the scene and the potential puns abound.  Is this one the charm? Do the high revving thrills and surefire excitement have surprises in store? Is this worth watching at all? Even if you haven't seen any of the others? We will dodge a lot of these questions and many more as we try to wrap our heads around reviewing this one. Or, we'll let you know where we stand after less than positive reviews of the 9th installment.

It's time for more Marvel adventure, but Guardians of the Galaxy isn't quite the same beast after two previous movies and appearances in several other features. This one may focus on a character, giving us our villain, but it seems not to focus on anything. We'll let you know if you need to get this one and we'll hit up one or two other things as well.

This week we're trying to catch up with three titles - Super Mario Bros, Renfield & Cocaine Bear. It's a wild mix to cover all at once and spans a lot of potential tastes, and unfortunately none of them really wowed us. We'll let you know if you need to seek any of these out and give you some quick takes on a few other things, like Picard, and the strange way a lot of these titles seem to connect.

As the theatrical window slows a bit, we're looking at some streaming release titles before getting into the late April/May black hole. A couple of surprises here, odd as they turned out to be, as Tetris and Murder Mystery 2 didn't really turn out the way we thought they would, for good or ill.

This week finds us borderline astonished with Dungeons & Dragons, though I liked it even more than Shane. This may well survive the entire year as the most surprising film of the year. Screwy fun, not too serious, and solid characters turned what could have been a "fan only" snooze into a popcorn hit.

This week we're reviewing John Wick 4 and looking at how it connects (or doesn't) with the entire franchise.  Can Keanu's neverending endurance and ability to take punishment spawn a movie on its own? Is a stunning stung/FX highlight reel a story? Is there something wrong with the financial situation worldwide in John Wick's universe? We'll look at all these questions and more, plus we've got mail!

There's finally a fair number of decent possibilities in (or approaching) theaters, but something about 65 drew us in. Tune in and we'll let you know if this somewhat screwy idea can be made into something exciting, and if Driver can carry things when he's mostly on his own. Here's a hint, this worked a lot better for one of us than the other.

It's our awards show time again as we give you our picks for the "Can't Win" awards. Our picks to help highlight performances and films that just have no chance of winning "real" awards. A very interesting selection of movies this year, although I couldn't quite follow my own guidelines and ended up giving a few nods to the same movie, which doesn't spread as much love as I want from this whole idea. Tune in and find out where we think the underappreciation was felt most strongly last year.

Some technical difficulties pushed us back with this episode, but the wait is over for the Worst Movies of 2022, which I know everyone was looking forward to. It was an easy year for picking bad movies, but we also give some insights on other worst lists, which confuse us greatly. We also give our quick take on Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which didn't win us over.

It's finally time and despite our best efforts there are still a couple of films that made our lists that we didn't have time to cover throughout the year. Find out what blew us away and let me tell you, there are some surprises. As usual, we will also call out those movies that are on everyone else's lists that just aren't actually worthy.