Welcome to Your Movie Rocks, an Alternate Ending podcast hosted by Mandy Albert. For every episode, Mandy will watch a movie assigned by her guest host, followed by a lively discussion. There's only one rule: no matter what the movie does to her, Mandy is only allowed to love it.

The first year of Your Movie Rocks ends on a very special episode, in which Mandy is joined by her former student Ali Roberts (@deranged_hands on Instagram), now a film student and filmmaker. And, it turns out, a tough player of the YMR game, assigning Mandy the appalling-looking direct-to-video animated feature Life's a Jungle: Africa's Most Wanted. But by God, Mandy will find the good and the beautiful about this ungainly piece of Madagascar-sploitation, and have a great time doing it.

As 2025 winds down, the cold and bitter specter of a January that's unusually barren of even the usual kind of January new releases rears its icy head. To help weather this winter storm, Brennan Klein is joined by Brian Fowler and Caleb Wimble as they find whatever they can to sustain themselves until the spring. Plus, they've decided to forego the usual movie roundtable in lieu of a tribute to the late Rob Reiner, whose passing earlier in December came as such a shock to the film world. Join us in celebrating an estimable filmmaking career on this year-ending episode of Alternate Ending!

Tim and Brennan fill one of Tim's 2025 horror blind spots by discussing the long-awaited sequel 28 YEARS LATER!

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Support Alternate Ending and check out our member perks, including voting for the films we cover on this program, via the Alternate Ending Patreon page!

This week sees the release of Avatar: Fire and Ash, the tenth narrative feature directed by James Cameron, and that seemed like an auspicious enough number to use it as an excuse to celebrate. Alternate Ending's resident Avatar maniac, Tim Brayton, is joined by a trio of fellow Cameron-heads: Zev Burrows, Andrew Milne, and Caleb Wimble. And the four of them dilly-dally for as much time as Ol' Jim himself might do in going over his directorial career, and some of his other interests, culminating in our picks for the best films of his slender but massively popular filmography. As a warm up, the team has an all-2020s movie roundtable this time: Caleb sees Oscar hopeful tearjerker Hamnet, Andrew raises and then crushes our hopes with the samurai drama Tornado, Zev puzzles around with Yorgos Lanthimos's newest weird fiction, Bugonia, and Tim deals with one of the decade's most confusing distribution platforms to see Kurosawa Kiyoshi's 45 minute filmlet Chime, by request of Patreon subscriber... Caleb Wimble. Well how about that.

'Tis the season for an viewing diet unhealthily dominated by ugly sweaters, fake snow, and immaculately trimmed prop Christmas trees, and the Alternate Ending gang is celebrating by bringing Tim and Brennan together to discuss something other than horror cinema for a change. They're joined by terrible Christmas movie expert Cameron, and the three of them are sharing their thoughts - or in Tim's cases, confusions - on the omnipresent modern holiday movie genre, slick and cheesy romantic comedies made by Netflix, Hallmark, Lifetime, and other fine purveyors of shameless cinematic comfort food. It's a holly jolly time on this very special episode of Alternate Ending!

For our extremely special December episode, Mandy is joined once again by Andrew Milne, who has assigned her the horror-scifi-absurdist-quasi-Dante-epic Despiser (2003), a movie that is so very many things all at once that it trying to describe it can leave one flailing and floundering like a starving artist who just woke up in purgatory. Fortunately, Mandy and Andrew have brought another guest along on this wild ride through the digital effects of the late 1990s, and he is probably the most qualified man in the world to talk about Despiser, because he's Philip J. Cook, the writer/director/producer of Despiser.

Join Mandy, Andrew, and Phil as they discuss Phil's roller coaster of a filmmaking career, the relative merits of different approaches to special effects, why Phil has a vendetta against troll dolls, and what kinds of magic can happen when filmmakers refuse to be hindered by little inconveniences like having no money.

You can back Phil's new project, Echoes of Dread, here.

You can snag a copy of Andrew's novel White Scar Across the Firmament here.

Mandy Letterboxd - Andrew Letterboxd

To wrap up November, as is customary, we're looking ahead a month, as Brennan is joined by Cameron Shaw and Brian Fowler for our preview of the films coming out in December 2025. The wintry fun begins with the current and former Midwesterner joining forces to explain to Brennan the hellish phenomenon of "lake-effect snow". And then it's time to look at the very strange offerings of the last month of the year, such as a meta-remake of Anaconda and a Neil Diamond singalong that isn't actually about Neil Diamond. They also try to give the absent editor Tim a heart attack by saying some very mean things about Avatar: Fire and Ash, but there's plenty of other potentially interesting things to dig into. Prior to popping open the release calendar, the team has a movie roundtable, with Brian finally catching up to 2017's The Babysitter, Cameron visiting the highly-anticipated new Frankenstein by Gullermo Del Toro, and Brennan check out the second big Stephen King film of the fall, with the new adaptation of The Running Man.

Tim and Brennan conclude the Autumn of Blood by making an appointment with 1992's DR. GIGGLES!

Love the Podcast? Leave us a review! Follow Brennan on Twitter, Instagram, and Letterboxd Follow Tim on Letterboxd

Support Alternate Ending and check out our member perks, including voting for the films we cover on this program, via the Alternate Ending Patreon page!

We've been sitting on this idea for a while, but with Chloe Zhao's Oscar hopeful Hamnet opening this month, it seemed like as good a time as any to finally move forward with one of the biggest topics a film podcast can tackle: big-screen adaptations of the work of Elizabethen/Jacobean playwright William Shakespeare, the most-adapted writer in film history on top of being the most famous name in the history of both English drama and English literature. Such a grand subject deserves a bigger crowd, so this week, Tim is joined by no fewer than three Alternate Ending regulars: Gavin McDowell, Brian Fowler, and Caleb Wimble. Together they discuss what makes a good Shakespeare movie, what we should do with adaptations that discard the original text, and why there are such a disproportionately high number of good Macbeths. Before the main event, our regular movie roundtable covers a wide range of movies, as wide as the number of genres good old Billy S. touched on his career: Brian has caught up with Black Phone 2, Gavin celebrates Armistice Day with nice, pleasant WWI/Armenian genocide movie, 2016's The Promise, Caleb has checked out the brand-new Predator: Badlands, and thanks to Patreon supporter Robin Zimmerman, Tim is here to discuss 2015 cult film Turbo Kid.

We've been sitting on this idea for a while, but with Chloe Zhao's Oscar hopeful Hamnet opening this month, it seemed like as good a time as any to finally move forward with one of the biggest topics a film podcast can tackle: big-screen adaptations of the work of Elizabethen/Jacobean playwright William Shakespeare, the most-adapted writer in film history on top of being the most famous name in the history of both English drama and English literature. Such a grand subject deserves a bigger crowd, so this week, Tim is joined by no fewer than three Alternate Ending regulars: Gavin McDowell, Brian Fowler, and Caleb Wimble. Together they discuss what makes a good Shakespeare movie, what we should do with adaptations that discard the original text, and why there are such a disproportionately high number of good Macbeths. Before the main event, our regular movie roundtable covers a wide range of movies, as wide as the number of genres good old Billy S. touched on his career: Brian has caught up with Black Phone 2, Gavin celebrates Armistice Day with nice, pleasant WWI/Armenian genocide movie, 2016's The Promise, Caleb has checked out the brand-new Predator: Badlands, and thanks to Patreon supporter Robin Zimmerman, Tim is here to discuss 2015 cult film Turbo Kid.