In the Cut

"Prince of Darkness" isn't the first movie you think of when someone says "John Carpenter", but Eran and Jesse pay it a visit and see how a filmmaker's ingenuity can make a bad film, in some ways, pretty great.

A short special, impulsively recorded and released by Jesse on his own upon hearing about Roger Ebert's passing.

Recorded on Dec 26, Eran and Jesse discuss how experts smuggle booze onto a plane, then get into Ralph Bakshi's 1977 epic "Wizards"; its strange appeal, major shortcomings, and its odd production serendipity with Star Wars.

Eran and Jesse struggle to grasp Cabin Boy, the unexpectedly dark 1994 comedy from Chris Elliott. A special mini-episode released on April 1. (Jingle courtesy of Creative Commons musician "The Jackass-Penguin Show")

A superb but sobering film, "This Is England" draws Eran and Jesse into a conversation about themes of adolescence, identity, fatherhood, and Stephen Graham's astounding performance as a skinhead in 1983 Britain.

Eran and Jesse chat about 2011's "Drive" – touching on how it treats violence, the occasionally terrible music, and the enigmatic Driver character – to try to see what worked and what didn't.

Eran wants to revisit Clive Barker's 1990 followup to "Hellraiser", the larger-budget studio disaster "Nightbreed". We talk about what went wrong, and why an ambitious failure is often more interesting to watch than a conventional success.

Cabin in the Woods manages to stay surprising, even after putting the big twist in the first scene. Jesse and Eran talk about this, Joss Whedon's setups and payoffs, and what's different about modern horror movies.

Jesse and Eran take a look at Robocop 2: how it compares to its predecessor, to other Frank Miller scripts, and to "Showgirls". We scratch off some lottery tickets to see if we can fund the show.

In our first-ever episode, Jesse and Jon discuss xenomorph taxonomy, sloppy writing, and whether Prometheus should be held to the same standards as better movies are. Also, what Prometheus and Ninja Turtles have in common.