Drat Pack

As summer finally technically begins, our summer miniseries follow suit, and what better way to kick off our Summer of Games than with a video game adaptation? Enter 2010’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, a very very long and trite would-be magical epic starring a bunch of noted white people amidst some fairly rote sandy scenery. Leigh leads the discussion as someone who is very much a fan of the source material, with Chris lending his support, and Brendan in third place trying to figure out what came from the video game and what was just tossed in as an attempt to make this whole thing feel like a movie. Listen in as we discuss the origins of the story, the weird sidelining of any fun aspects of the video game, and the needlessly complicated evil plan the movie tries to keep effectively spinning. Also, there’s some FIFA-flavored potato chip chat and a suitably refreshing cocktail that’s easier to take than this movie.

Summer has started, and with it one of customary themed mini-series! As the sun mercilessly beats down on humanity, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris retreat indoors to kick off our Summer of Games. That’s right, we’re going to be talking about three crappy movies based on games of various natures, but to combat that, we’re also trying to seek out some games adapted into movies that are (supposedly) good. With that in mind, our first discussion topic is 2021’s Werewolves Within, a cinematic adaptation of a video game that is a video game adaptation of a party game. Got it? Werewolves Within was received fairly favorably by critics and viewers upon its release, but is it actually good or is the bar just that low? Listen along, won’t you, as we try to direct just what exactly this movie is and how well it manages to function. Also, gird your loins as we reveal our first bad cinematic adaptation of a game to follow two weeks from now, and the drink that will mercifully keep us inebriated as we view it.

In the year of our Lord 2026, it feels like not only are we getting fewer romcoms, we’re getting far fewer insanely unhinged romcoms. Enter 1999’s Simply Irresistible, a real fever dream of a romantic comedy about a magic crab who awakens a woman’s dormant ancestral baking skills while helping her get some, except apparently it’s not really about any of those things apparently. Listen in as Leigh, Brendan, Chris and returning special guest Faith pick apart this bizarre piece of 90s nonsense like so much goo-filled dessert fruit. Is it possible for two leads to have negative chemistry? Is constantly referencing better movies enough to sustain your crappy one? And seriously, what the hell is this movie supposed to actually be about? All this chatter and an equally misbegotten cocktail, too!

Hey look, this game we played twice before is back! That’s right, it’s Haven’t Seen It, where one (or more) of us tries to describe the plot of a movie we’ve never seen before based off just what we’ve gathered by context while someone who has seen said movie feels a smug sense of superiority for knowing how it actually goes. Unsurprisingly, it gets harder and harder to find viable movies for this, so we don’t get to do it all that often (or we end up accidentally repeating ourselves, as we did previously). But THIS time it’s different! THIS time, we made a list! And we limited ourselves to three movies per person. Er, wait, two. But we got to do a game we liked again, so we’re glad anyway. We also briefly discuss the upcoming romantic comedy we’ll be discussing two weeks from now, and it’s, uh, weird.

The only thing that can make an unseasonably chilly April even more unsettling is throwing Helen Mirren and a CGI mansion full of grumpy ghosts into it. Commence your midnight seance to listen in as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris watch the 2018 horror half-effort Winchester, a movie about the fictionalized version of the fictionalized version of a rich old lady who decided to have fun building a big ol’ house. We discuss the various versions of the “true story” of the Winchester house, the perils of trying to take cinematic advantage of a house that you can neither film in nor adequately recreate, and the endless edging that is 90 plus minutes of attempted jump scares. We also have an herbal California-style gimlet, designed to be almost as effective as large quantities of laudanum at messing you up.

What better time to completely disassociate and imagine you’re in a whole other world than right now? Leigh, Brendan, and Chris return to a variation on a theme of an older mini episode about fictional worlds they’d like to visit or live in and instead talk about the ones they’d actually like to participate in narratively. Perhaps you too have always wished you could live as a playwright’s wife in 1950s New York City and sling gin-soaked barbs with the best of them! We also cover the movie we’ll be doing next (a horror film for the SPOOOOOOKIEST season, late April) and the herbal / sunshine cocktail that will hopefully make it go down easier.

Hey darling. Are you worried? Well don’t! Unless you’re Leigh, Brendan, and Chris, because we’re rightfully worried about sitting through Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling (drop the comma, it’s cleaner), an attempt to stretch a 22 minute Twilight Zone premise into an interminable 2 hours plus. Listen along as we discuss the frustrations of spending two hours watching a movie that you’re already ahead of after ten minutes, the confusing world of the story (both “real” and SHOCKING SPOILERS virtual), and trying to make sense of who knows what and why they’re doing what and how shitty that makes them. Thankfully, we have a period-appropriate cocktail (in so much as anything can be period appropriate here) to make us slightly drunk as we watch the movie. Again, this is somehow over two hours. Do worry darlings.

For our latest mini episode, we turn our attention to media that we think is unfairly ignored or maligned. Be it something so indie or low-budget that it can’t afford to get a foothold in pop culture or something wrongly slandered, we’ve got a lot of stuff to advocate for. Listen as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss media that runs the gamut from video games to movies to television. Naturally, we also discuss something that’s probably more accurately disparaged- namely, our next ill-fated movie to view and discuss. Don’t worry, darling, we also have a drink to make it go down smoother.

If there’s a lesson that adapting books to movies has taught us time and time again, it’s that it’s hard! Sometimes what works effectively in a novel simply doesn’t translate to the visual medium of film. And sometimes someone just makes a mess of the whole thing and creates a cinematic example of missing the point. Such is 2008’s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, a passion project of its writer / director that still manages to strip away almost everything that makes the source material interesting. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they discuss this mercifully short yet incredibly meandering misfire and discuss topics such as “would a department store mannequin have given a more compelling lead performance?” and “why did Nick Nolte eat a bowl of gravel before filming his scenes?” and “what exactly are the titular mysteries of Pittsburgh anyway?” On the bright side, we got a really good coffee cocktail out of this whole mess!

Sometimes we have a lot of thoughts about a movie that’s simply not bad enough to consider as part of our regular podcast. And sometimes we have a lot of thoughts about TWO movies, one of which is a remake of the other. And sometimes it’s improbably both the original and remake of a movie that came out years ago. That’s right, this week we’re spending a LOT of time discussing the movies Sabrina, both the classic 1954 Billy Wilder original starring Audrey Hepburn and the 1995 Sydney Pollack remake starring Julia Ormond. What would possess someone to remake a beloved classic starring one of the most iconic actors of all time? Could the remake possibly be the better movie despite NOT having Audrey Hepburn or Billy Wilder? Why would someone be infatuated with Greg Kinnear when Harrison Ford is right there? Listen in as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris exorcise their thoughts on this subject while briefly introducing next episode’s movie and the accompanying cocktail. Yes, we know it’s an ironically long mini episode, but hey, it’s close to Valentine’s Day so why not have some romantic comedy pleasantness?