Drat Pack

Snow hides a lot. It’s like the Spanx of weather. And ironically, no amount of snow (and there ain’t much) can hide the problems of Netflix’s 2019 holiday ephemera offering, Let It Snow. Yes, friends, it’s yet another direct-to-streaming Christmas movie, this time a baby Love Actually set in a midwestern town that seems to shut down in a panic upon receiving two inches of snow. Cozy up with a mulled cider cocktail as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris take an in-depth look at every segment of the movie, the differences between the film and the book (and oh are they many), and a character who may have finally usurped the place in our hearts Prom‘s Rolo once held. All this and Joan Cusack covered in tinfoil, too!

At what point is a mini episode no longer a mini episode? Probably at this point. This point, when you have what is ostensibly a “mini” episode that’s longer than some of our actual episodes. In our defense, there’s a lot to cover here! With the Christmas season upon us, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris gather in front of a roaring fire to discuss the glut of direct-to-streaming-service holiday movies available at your fingertips. From the twisting supernatural romantic thriller The Spirit of Christmas to the sack of garbage topped with a festive bow that is Santa Girl to some movie Disney dumped on their new streaming service when it became apparent no one would pay to see it, we run the gamut of these Christmas flicks of questionable quality. Also we talk a lot about Netflix’s attempt to horn in on this racket by use of Vanessa Hudgens and movies where everyone is horny AF for the holidays. Aptly, we also announce the movie we’ll be doing for our impending 50th episode and wouldn’t you know it it’s also a Netflix Christmas movie. WE SIMPLY CANNOT GET ENOUGH OF THE HOLIDAYS.

For this episode, we take you back to the halcyon days of 2014, when it seemed like a novel idea to make a live-action adaptation of a Disney animated movie but a slightly more stale idea to make it like Wicked but Sleeping Beauty. That’s right, we’re talking about Maleficent, Disney’s revisionist fairy tale starring Angelina Jolie’s prosthetic cheekbones and that guy from District 9 who we were all kinda into for a brief period. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris all find out that despite what they initially thought and believed, it’s not that bad of a movie! Well, aside from some of the weird choices made regarding the non-Maleficent parts, and so as usual fixes are offered over a round of Princess Aurora-level sweet cocktails. So you see, the movie is not quite as you remember, and we should know, for we are the ones who are doing this podcast called Why Did We Watch This.

In our latest mini-episode, we we cover the sequel to a movie we’ll be doing for our next full-length episode. It’s like Memento, but instead of your favorite Christopher Nolan trappings it’s got Angelina Jolie and her prosthetic cheekbones. That’s right, we paid money to see Maleficent: Mistress of Evil in theaters, which is more than most of America is doing. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we discuss a whole secret island full of Maleficents, Michelle Pfeiffer’s underdeveloped and vague motivations, and also how we can pretty much wave away genocide attempts once the person responsible is turned into a goat.

For our Halloween spooktacular this year, we’re not going to be a ghost movie podcast, but a podcast with ghost movies in it. And if that means anything to you, you may be familiar with Crimson Peak, Guillermo del Toro’s 2015 half-written love letter to gothic fiction that Universal Studios would really rather prefer you to think was a horror movie. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris whip up a tea cocktail that is certainly NOT poison and an accompanying tray of high tea terrors while they discuss the movie’s uneven tone, total lack of surprises, and the multiple red flags that Jessica Chastain displays throughout the movie that REALLY should have tipped everyone off much earlier. Also Charlie Hunnam just won’t stop being in del Toro movies for some reason. Happy Halloween!

It’s finally happened. We’ve run out of things to say about scary movies for Halloween. It’s a real kick to the shins, it is! Anyhow, in lieu of that and springing from a tangent about horror films, we all talk about the things in film that make us not want to see a movie with no further information needed. No matter how open minded we try to be about these things, there’s always a genre, director, or actor who will stop us in our tracks and make us cry to the heavens “WILL NOT WATCH!” Also we’re planning a creepy high tea for our October episode spooktacular, so check out our latest mini and get ready to be immersed in a movie that has so much atmosphere the gravity eventually crushes the plot and character into a Gothic singularity.

For our extra special forty-seventh episode (sure, why not?), we’re trying something no podcast has surely ever tried before- having two special returning guests to total FIVE white people talking over each other about a movie. It’s okay, though, since three are women and that’s still more than any other podcast has ever had on together at the same time. And what a movie for us all to discuss! We tackle Leigh and special guest Meg’s nostalgic fave, Danny Boyle’s 1997 romantic (?) screwball (??) dark comedy (?!?), A Life Less Ordinary. There’s a lot to chew on here, from Holly Hunter’s boundless enthusiasm for a bizarre role, Cameron Diaz’s questionable character traits, and Ewan McGregor’s, uh, general weird British late 90s mod nonsense. To wash this movie and our suggestions for improving it down, we also made a pretty tart cocktail. And pretty soon, we’ll be spooning it down and asking for more like all the other kids.

Friends, nostalgia is the most dangerous drug and none of us can get enough of it! But, for about forty minutes anyway, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris will doff their nostalgia goggles and discuss times they revisited a movie they loved growing up and later revisited. Will it hold up like so many movies broadcasted incessantly on Comedy Central in the early 90s? Or will it be more like rewatching the 1995 classic Mighty Morphing Power Rangers: The Movie, a feat so deeply upsetting that all you can do is call your parents after and apologize for making them take you to see it? Either way, we get another blast from the past next episode where we tackle a movie from Leigh’s formative years with some friends from our own yesteryears. Rest assured, the goggles will be off for that one.

Nothing says instant chemistry like the classic pairing of a heterosexual woman and a gay man, the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of our modern complicated times. And nothing makes a more compelling case for why this premise alone is not enough to hang a story on than 2015’s Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List, a movie that’s as wildly unlikable and messy as the millennial burdens at its peanut butter center. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris play an equally juvenile drinking game while discussing the movie’s incomprehensible structure, the gaping black holes of charisma that anchor the story, and how odd it is to call your movie Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List and then not really focus too much on Ely or the No Kiss List. Also there’s a weird public domain rip-off of “Pour Some Sugar on Me” that truly can’t be adequately explained without hearing it.

Finally, an entire episode dedicated to the songs and performances of Tone Loc! Whether it’s “Funky Cold Medina” or showing up for one scene in FernGully: The Last Rainforest, Tone Loc has- oh, wait, never mind. It’s about tone. Tone in cinema. Like movies feeling “big” or “intimate” and the cultural and critical baggage that entails, that kind of thing. Also our upcoming back-to-school movie and a game we’re playing with various nips and mixers to make it a lot more watchable (because boy is it not watchable).