INSTANT REACTION: Plagued by a recurring violent nightmare, a college student returns home to find the one person who can break the cycle and save her family from the horrific fate that inevitably awaits them.

INSTANT REACTION: A fading midwestern town in which Frendo the clown, a symbol of bygone success, reemerges as a terrifying scourge.

EP 196: 2008’s Box Office Countdown (5–1) – Jokers, Jones, and ABBA (ft. Phoenix Clouden)

Episode Description:

It's a strange mix of gritty realism, nostalgic absurdity, and pop musical euphoria

Films Discussed:

Mamma Mia! (5) – Meryl, ABBA, and summer dreams you can sorta almost sing along to.

Hancock (4) – A drunken antihero gets a redemption arc, and the movie continues.

Kung Fu Panda (3) – The animated surprise that kicks harder than anyone expects.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2) – Aliens? Fridges? And the first real internet backlash blockbuster.

The Dark Knight (1) – Ledger’s Joker, Nolan’s vision, and the box office juggernaut that changed the game. But is it...good?

IN THIS EPISODE:

Phoenix defends Kung Fu Panda as top-tier animation with real heart and craft.

Jason revisits Hancock and some tone deaf creative choices.

Can Mamma Mia! actually work as a movie?

Was Crystal Skull ever really that bad, or just a victim of overhype?

And does The Dark Knight still hold up as the superhero movie to beat?

EPISODE 195: 2008’s Box Office Countdown (10–6) – Iron, Espionage, Penguins, and Robots (ft. Robert Yaniz Jr. & DW Lundberg)

Episode Description:

This batch has it all: MCU beginnings, Pixar magic, Bond reboot blues, and a certain talking lion who just can't catch a break.

Films Discussed:

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (6) – The animals are back and... still trying to get home.

Quantum of Solace (7) – Bond is brooding, brutal, and possibly bored.

Iron Man (8) – The movie that launched a universe (and Robert Downey Jr. into legend).

WALL·E (9) – A near-silent ode to love, loneliness, and environmental collapse.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (10) – Slightly darker, slightly edgier, but did anyone notice?

IN THIS EPISODE:

Was Quantum of Solace an artistic casualty of the 2008 writers' strike?

How Iron Man became a bigger gamble than anyone remembers.

Why WALL·E might be Pixar’s boldest and most bittersweet gamble.

Robert, DW, and Jason try to answer the eternal question: "Who actually watched Prince Caspian?"

From Armored Avengers to existential robots, the back half of 2008’s top 10 is more influential than you might think.

EPISODE 195: An American Original! – No apologies, no half-measures, all fire. (ft. Joe Buttice)

Episode Description:

Strap in for manifest destiny, surfboard theology, Cimmerian steel, and teenage guerrilla warfare.

Films Ranked:

Dillinger (1973) – Milius’s directorial debut, mixing gangster cool with mythic Americana.

Big Wednesday (1978) – A lyrical, wave-soaked ode to brotherhood and the end of an era.

Conan the Barbarian (1982) – Barbarism, Nietzsche, and epic vengeance in the Hyborian Age.

Red Dawn (1984) – Wolverines! Teenage insurgents defend America in a Cold War fever dream.

IN THIS EPISODE:

Joe defends Red Dawn as both fantasy and prophecy

Jason meditates on Big Wednesday as the most personal of war films

The complicated politics, masculine myth-making, and the man behind the bombast

EPISODE 194: Elegant, epic, existential, and electric. Volume 2 goes to 11 (ft. Megan Kearns)

Episode Description:

Films Ranked:

Beauty and the Beast (1946) – Cocteau’s poetic dreamscape of love and transformation.

A Night to Remember (1958) – The definitive Titanic film, long before Leo and Kate.

Walkabout (1971) – A haunting vision of isolation, survival, and cultural collision.

The Seventh Seal (1957) – Bergman’s meditation on mortality, meaning, and the black plague.

This Is Spinal Tap (1984) – The rockumentary that turned it up to eleven... and never came back down.

Jason and Megan wrestle with the big questions: Could anyone make the Seventh Seal today? Does Spinal Tap still hit as hard in the age of memes? Is A Night to Remember secretly the most profound film of the bunch? And where does Walkabout fit into the pantheon of coming-of-age stories?

ALSO:

Cocteau’s magic mirrors and movie sorcery

The layers beneath the surface of A Night to Remember

Existential laughs in chain mail

Why the line between satire and reality might be thinner than we think

Episode Description:

Films Ranked:

Eraserhead (1977)

The Elephant Man (1980)

Blue Velvet (1986)

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Is Eraserhead a surreal masterpiece or an anxiety dream gone on too long? Is Fire Walk with Me the secret key to Twin Peaks? Does Mulholland Drive mark the apex of Lynch’s dream logic? And how many mysteries can be packed into one velvet curtain?

Molly brings razor-sharp insight, Jason brings existential dread, and together they attempt the impossible: ranking the unrankable.

PLUS:

The legacy of Lynchian dread

The fine art of being uncomfortable

Molly’s theory on Blue Velvet and American repression

A brief trip into the Black Lodge (we think)

INSTANT REACTION: Five original films hit theaters and failed to draw audiences. When we say we want more original movies who are "we" and do "we" mean it? 

Instant Reaction: Everybody dies. And that’s fucked up.