Drat Pack

In Hollywood, nothing is a more surefire hit than an adaptation of a book from the 1890s that the majority of your audience probably haven’t read but are maybe familiar with just from cultural osmosis. Once you’ve locked in this successful blockbuster, be sure to alienate fans of the source material by also removing any sort of subtext or metaphor that the original novel had so that no one ends up getting exactly that they want. Mix that all up with some bronze filters and you get 2002’s The Time Machine, directed by the great-grandson of H. G. Wells so you know it’s going to work out! Leigh, Brendan, and Chris drink some era-appropriate cocktails and discuss the plausibility of the time travel itself, the changes made for the movie, and why the Morlocks look so expensive yet so very mediocre. Remember, if you listen to our podcast, by the time you’ve finished you’ll be in THE FUTURE. Truly, there can be no more exciting hook.

Whether telling an impossible ad intellectually-stimulating tale using the realities available to us through science fiction or wringing jokes from a mom wanting to fuck her son who was sent back in time by his elderly scientist friend using wildly unsafe experiments funded by aiding international terrorists, time travel movies have been an important part of film history for decades. As a prelude to our upcoming episode with deals with a certain MACHINE that can travel through TIME, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss their favorite time travels movies, the different kinds of time travel movies, and what makes a compelling time travel movie. Also, we talk about Primer. Anyhow, join us next TIME for a science-fiction romp through the ages you won’t soon forget (not a guarantee).

With all the political turmoil that surrounds us every waking moment of our lives, what better way to forget your troubles than an action movie with Clive Owen and Naomi Watts where, uh, it turns out it’s not really an action movie but a windy conspiracy thriller about how a large untouchable bank is making the entire world miserable just for the sake of profits? Yes, it turns out The International is not the gun-shooting cross-country trip we were made to believe it was by the advertisements, but oh well, we’re committed to this thing now. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they discuss the at-times nebulous plot, the shifting stakes, and whether or not everything would have just ended the same had Clive Owen not done anything at all in the last act. Don’t worry, we’ll do something dumber next time around.

For this mini episode, we decided to do something a little different and play a game that would lead to discussion. Well, it’s kind of a game and kind of a discussion, but not like in the strict sense of either. Well, there are actually aspects of both to it, but- look, we work from a list of capital-I Important Films and ask those amongst us who have NOT seen the movie in question to try their best and guess what the movie is actually about based off what they do know of it. Look, why are you reading this anyway when you could just listen to it? We don’t deviate a WHOLE lot because we also do talk about our upcoming conspiracy thriller movie and what we hope is a sufficiently globe-trotting drink to accompany it. But we’ve never seen this movie, so uh… we’ll see how all that goes!

“I’m here to reap souls and eat peanut butter, and I’m all out of peanut butter!” says Brad Pitt as Death as he shows up at Anthony Hopkins’s door, shortly before macking on his vacant-eyed daughter and mocking old Jamaican ladies. Or something like that. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris pour some classy cocktails and sit through all three hours of this ponderous meditative slog, then discuss the source material, what exactly the movie is trying to say, and why the hell it’s so damned long. At the end of it all, the most important thing to remember is that this podcast is still only about 40% as long as the movie it discusses, and you can’t beat a bargain like that.

With the impending summer movie season upon us all, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris decide to kick it off with a mini episode about when movies make you cry and scared and feel stuff. Mostly the first one, I think because we were all in a certain mood seeing how the movie we’re doing next is a delightful romp about death and life and all that frivolity. Also we prepare a recipe for a classy cocktail that can hopefully get us all through a movie with a three-hour runtime. You can probably all guess what it is without listening to this. No, it’s not Endgame.

As the weather becomes more pleasant and your social media timelines are full of endless memes about how it’s gonna be May, only one thing is on the mind of America- unquestionably, the prom! Whether you’re a high school senior, some sophomore who really shouldn’t be involved in all this anyway, or a lumpy and uncompassionate adult, the prom is probably the thing around which your entire life has revolved. And frankly, that’s all the reasoning Disney needed to make a movie about it, with very little regard for anything else like plot or compelling characters or stakes. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris gear up for the end of the school year by watching and discussing the 2011 teen comedy Prom and drinking a spiked punch to keep their whole high school dance theme going. Listen, won’t you, and relive your own heady prom night (assuming your prom night was a chaste PG affair in your high school’s gym and absolutely NO ONE had sex before, during, or after it).

Disney took an old film of great acclaim

Can you imagine that?

And made a sequel that’s more of the same

Can you imagine that?

New actors but a similar plot

In some ways charming but sort of not

There’s decent choreography but also BMX

What was with those guys biking on the ramps?

When Leigh saw that sequence on a plane she said we had to chat

So we all watched this Poppins pic

Then we recorded this right quick

Can you imagine that?

For this episode, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss a stirring biopic that tells the story of Ethan Hawke’s mother Leslie and the struggles of raising a young child alone while- wait, sorry, it’s not that, it’s Ladyhawke, a very 80s medieval movie with all the perils of a fairy tale adaptation despite not actually being based on any existing one. We talk about the rules of the world, the many paper-thin characters, and oh god that score, that score. In keeping with the duality of the movie, we also have two drinks to accompany it. You may need them both to help you swallow the soundtrack.

Whether you’re a movie maker, a dungeon master, or just some kid who is haphazardly slapping together some Legos without any sort of regard for the instructions and DAMMIT TEDDY THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE TAJ MAHAL DOES THAT LOOK AT ALL LIKE THE TAJ MAHAL TO YOU???, world building is a big thing to consider. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris talk about world building as it relates to movies, from good ones that do it well, bad ones that do it well, and the different ways to dump loads of exposition on your audience without them tuning out to check their TikTok or whatever it is the kids are doing now. We also reveal our upcoming movie, something that traffics heavily in world building itself, and the TWO drinks we’ll make for it because duality is a thing for this movie.