Drat Pack

What happens when you toss Tony Scott, Richard Kelly, the true story of a model-turned-bounty hunter, and an eclectic mess of talent into a blender with a heaping helping of meth? Well… nothing conventional, that’s for sure. Team up with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they are pummeled into submission by 2005’s Domino, starring Keira Knightley and directed by Tony Scott at his most manic. We take a look at the aggressive direction, a defiantly non-linear screenplay, and the vague feeling of unpleasantness that hits you when viewing a movie playing fast and loose with reality that’s also based on a real person who died under tragic circumstances during production. It’s a lot to talk about! Thankfully we also made a spicy (and suitably very yellow) cocktail to keep things rolling.

It’s a game! We play another game! Leigh takes slightly-vague top comments from trailers of recent movies on YouTube and Brendan and Chris try to guess what movie the trailer in question is for. It’s fun! We like games! Also as always, our next movie is mentioned and we share a recipe for an appropriately spicy and yellow cocktail to accompany it. Games!

Ah, the early 2000s! A special time in the history of cinema that spawned a plethora of high-concept romantic comedies. One need only look to Mark Water’s 2005 effort Just Like Heaven, in which Mark Ruffalo must deal with that bane of all apartment subletters, being haunted by the ghost of Reese Witherspoon (except she’s maybe not actually dead, it’s a whole thing). Plop yourself down on a comfortable couch with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they discuss the perils of balancing the frivolous with the emotional, the vague rules of the afterlife (or the almost-afterlife), and the question of why Reese’s character seems weirdly racist toward Asian people. All this mess and hot toddy cocktails aplenty, too!

With January 2024 now well underway, we decide to discuss those lies we all tell ourselves we’ll commit to in the new year- that’s right, it’s time for resolution chat, babyyyyyy! But what with this being a podcast ostensibly about movies and other media, we’ve all made some specifically entertainment-related resolutions. Also like, those will probably be more fun than saying you’ll “improve yourself” and all that other crap. Will we read more books? Will we finally finish a particular video game? Will all those Criterion Collection movies bought during Barnes & Noble sales finally get watched? Listen and find out!

As a snowstorm hits the northeastern United States, we prophetically chose to watch a movie that deals with a freak blizzard that keeps two twenty-somethings snowed in after initially looking for a quick hook up. That’s right, as you surely can guess, it’s 2014’s Two Night Stand, a low-stakes sort-of rom-com directed by Mike Nichols’s son. Get snowed in with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they remotely watch this movie (thanks, Covid!) and discuss how rom-coms have mutated over the last decade or so, our thoughts on Miles Teller, and the genuinely unhinged act-three-romantic-gesture (truly, it’s nuts). But, uh, at least there’s a cocktail (actually, we didn’t actually get to drink our cocktail, thanks Covid!). Remember, please mask up and stuff!

Look, we’ve done this seven times now, so we don’t need to mince words. We talk about our favorite movie of the year, our least favorite movie of the year, and then do it again but with the drinks we made. Look, it’s the end of the year! We’re trying to relax! Also our first movie of (shudder) 2024 is thrown into the ether along with a hot wintery drink to accompany it. Now please, it’s Christmas, go eat some cookies or something.

If nothing captures the true spirit of the holidays like being stuck in an elevator for an extended period of time, then 2015’s Christmas Eve is sure the holly jolliest piece of bland seasonal ephemera we’ve encountered yet! Sadly, there’s very little of said holiday spirit actually to be found here, unless you count “Patrick Stewart does a one-man Christmas Carol” or “musicians play some Christmas music” or “doctor and nurse snipe about the existence of God while an orderly tries not to piss himself.” For our annual holiday spectacular, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris briefly touch upon religious cinema, the perils of making a movie from the pitch “what if Love Actually but trapped in elevators,” and how New York looks very similar to eastern Europe. We also manage to capture the true spirit of the holidays (inebriation) with a seasonally-appropriate spritzer. Seasons greetings!

What better way to kick off the holiday season than with a mini-episode-in-name-only that involves ranking all the TV Christmas shlock we’ve watched over the last few years? THERE IS NO BETTER WAY. DO NOT SUGGEST OTHERWISE. Anyway, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris spend a long time mulling over a list of festive made-for-TV ephemera to decide once and for all which ones might actually approach something close to “being a good movie” and which ones are more “shit.” And much like the movies we discuss here, we’ll also be covering a Christmas movie that pretty much no one has heard of (don’t worry, you can find it on YouTube!) for our impending Holiday Spectacular (and natch there’s a drink recipe too)!

For our latest episode, we dust off an old chestnut that’s based on an even older chestnut, both of which cumulatively are such moldy old chestnuts that you’ve probably never heard of either. We dug deep, baby! This time, we go way back to 1951’s The Law and the Lady, a very loose adaptation of a 1925 play starring Greer Garson, Fernando Lamas, and Michael Wilding as the biggest simp ever committed to celluloid. Thrill as he spinelessly pines after his partner in crime as they attempt to steal a necklace from a blustering old American lady! Cheer as both he and his partner refuse to ever act upon their emotions for no solid reason! Laugh as the old rich lady bellows loudly at anyone within ear shot! Is there a way to dust off this weirdly-unbalanced and endlessly-retooled bit of theatrical ephemera? Well, sure, probably, but no one involved here really did it. Also we drink a tea cocktail, and those are always fun.

Nothing is more spine-chillingly terrifying than a look back at the past! SPOOOOOOKY!!! To commemorate doing one hundred movies (yeesh) for this podcast, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris look back on their favorites and least favorites. Everyone has different definitions of these things and some people chose more than one because, you know, we like to shake things up here. Naturally we also briefly cover our next movie that we’ll tackle and we SPILL THAT TEA (or hopefully don’t because that would make a mess) with the tea-based cocktail that will accompany it. To one hundred more (I mean, sure, why not aim big)!