Welcome friends (and enemies! We know you’re out there) to Episode 400 of Destroy All Culture. For this episode, we forgo our usual focus on a single movie to talk about our history with movies and media in general, from Star Wars and Wizard of Oz to the beclowned state of the current blockbuster. We try - oh, how we try - to sum up a life lived immersed in film, and we wonder what makes a great movie. Where do we split the difference between Andrei Rublev and Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter? And now that I write those words, I wish we’d answered that specific question. But you get the idea! Listen below or find us on your pod circulator of choice.

when he’s raised hell you’ll know it, sister.

If you’ve listened to our previous episode on Rian Johnson’s Brick, you’ll already be aware of thematic and artistic touchpoints between Brick’s highschoolers-in-a-Hammett-novel premise and Miller’s Crossing, which could fairly be described as the Coen Brothers’ attempt at a Hammett pastiche.

The question is, how do you like your pastiche? Period-appropriate or -agnostic? Quietly sincere or extremely arch? Hey, do you want to see Sam Raimi get shot at? Whatever direction your tastes may lean, you could do worse than spend time with Adam and Aidan as they take Miller’s Crossing out for a walk in the woods. Listen below or find us your podplayer of choice.

he wants to see the ‘pin.

A cynical teenager in scuffed shoes gets a mysterious phone call. An enigmatic message is left in a locker. A blonde girl lies dead in a culvert. Oh, and everyone talks in the argot of a ‘40s noir film. After all, doesn’t high school feel like an unending crime scene for a monstrous act that is always about to happen?

Brick! It’s the hidden foundational text of Destroy All Culture! It’s the invisible yardstick by which all other movies on this podcast are measured! It’s also a pretty good film. Check it out some time. And then come back here and listen to Adam and Aidan talk about it.

a live dog beset by dead lion (maternal superego located in a doll).

It seems bizarre that it’s taken so long for this podcast to get around to Lucky McKee’s May, the 2002 cult favourite about a young woman who, faced with relentless imperfection in the world around her, decides to make something whole and perfect. Results are mixed. Are Adam and Aidan mixed on May? Listen below to find out, or come visit us on your podcaster of choice, murder us and sew us together into your perfect companion! We’re not busy.

White Nights! The nights are white. The country is red. The politics are red, white and blue. The lives are separate and ongoing. The saying is you and me. The pirouettes are plentiful (11 in total). The Baryshnikov is Mikhail, the Hines is Gregory. The meet is cute. The couple is odd. The dances are amazing. The music is kind of lousy, tbh.

The Russian is restless. The American is regretful. The Soviets are sneaky. The Americans are cynical. The Mirren is magnificent. The Rossellini is righteous. The escape is tension-free. The resolution is strange. The picture could be better.

sky dog and the lion of tomorrow

When Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow came out in 2004, much was made of the fact that director Kerry Conran had landed the job on the strength of a short film painstakingly made on his computer. The feature length film, starring a staggeringly audience-enticing combo of Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, arrived on a wave of hype and positive reviews (Roger Ebert loved it) that few movies could reasonably bear.

We may not have known it in 2004, but Sky Captain does grant a vision of the future - not one of mid-century retrofuturism with a blast of steampunk and a sprig of Hollow Earth-style pulp - but a world of green screens and artificial backgrounds. The Star Wars prequels had already demonstrated what it looked like when actors interfaced with tennis balls on empty, green-draped sets (like crap), but Sky Captain threw its A-list stars into a sepia-toned digital landscape and let them suffer there.

Their suffering is not completely fruitless. Jolie is particularly fun as the crisply accented Frankie, and Paltrow and Law do a good job of delivering some screwball banter amidst the giant robots and dinosaurs. The weak spot here is Conran, who is incapable of maintaining the tone or coaxing a grounded reality out of the digital backlot. It’s probably too much to ask of a first-time director, no matter how talented.

But what did Adam and Aidan think? Find out below or listen on your podcatcher of choice.

the definition of live dogs.

you know, i’m something of a huckleberry myself.

Sometimes a great performance turns an average movie into a classic. It’s hard to imagine Tombstone without Kilmer’s grand and tragic take on Doc Holliday, a man whose vanity seems to be consuming him from the inside throughout the film. Tombstone may be Kilmer’s crowning achievement. Listen to us talk about it below, or find us on your podhuckleberry of choice.

you know what, pain actually does hurt. Unless you’re dalton.

Never mind the remakes, here’s the original in all its glory. Adam and Aidan get a little rapturous about the bizarre Road House world of bar bouncers and the cooler so legendary that his name evokes hushed awe. A dirtbag John Wick. A bar brawl bodhisattva. A small town saviour. A man who really doesn’t want to rip your throat out, but he will if he has to. The name… is Dalton. Listen below or find us on your podthing of choice.

dig if you will this picture.

Prince Rogers Nelson was a brilliant musician, a stylish-as-hell dresser and a singular person. He was not a great filmmaker or screen presence, but Purple Rain mostly functions as a concert film with a plot and some conflict strung between the numbers. And for that alone, this one is worth your time. Listen to Adam and Aidan make sense of the whole thing below, or find us on your purple podcycle of choice.