Now Playing Podcast Presents: The Fast and Furious Retrospective Series

These days Pacific Rim director Guillermo del Toro focuses more on The Shape of Water than plugging breaches in ocean floors, but that doesn’t mean his Pan-Pacific Defense Corps has disbanded. Our Precursor enemies have now staged an Uprising, and hijacked the giant robots once used to defend our coastal cities. Can John Boyega and Scott Eastwood inspire a team of teenage pilots to take back their tech and make the kaiju bleed blue?  Podcasters Jerry, Arnie, and Stuart meld minds to make sense of this sequel. Catch their drift when you listen now!

It’s been 15 years since Lara Croft last raided movie theaters, but now a new Oscar-winning actress is picking up the controls and racing into action. Tomb Raider 2018 - an origin story for the scrappy video game heroine - finds Danish Girl Alicia Vikander tracking her missing father Lord Richard Croft (Dominic West) to a mythical Japanese island crawling with mercenaries and booby traps.  Listen now to find out if survivors Stuart, Arnie, and Justin have reached higher ground in the Now Playing Arcade.

Angelina Jolie reprised her role as England’s most scantily clad excavator for her second and final Tomb Raider adventure. Cradle of Life finds Lady Croft diving into sunken ruins with Greek sailors, motorcycling across the Great Wall of China with Gerard Butler, and ascending African peaks with Djimon Hounsou.  All in the hopes of beating blackhearted bio-engineer Ciaran Hinds to Pandora’s Box. Listen and find out if this 2003 sequel is plagued by the same problems that made Arnie, Justin, and Stuart deathly ill watching previous video game adaptations.

Movies with action heroes from the 1980s die pretty hard at the box office these days, but Bruce Willis aims to change all that with a 2018 reboot of Death Wish. The aging tough guy stars as a Chicago surgeon who goes from saving lives in the ER to taking lives on crime-ridden streets, after burglars violate his home and family.  Can Bruno take out the bad hombres and make America great again one bullet at a time? Or do hosts Arnie, Jakob and Stuart wish this vigilante died with Bronson? Listen and find out...

Five years after busty British archaeologist Lara Croft stole the hearts of PlayStation owners, the planets aligned to bring the video game vixen to the big screen in the skin of Oscar-winning bad girl Angelina Jolie. The 2001 Tomb Raider movie finds Lara racing against the clock to reach an ancient time machine before its claimed by future James Bond Daniel Craig and The Illuminati.  But will she avoid the pitfalls of other arcade-to-movie flops and flip the arrows green for fellow treasure hunters Justin, Arnie, and Stuart? Listen and find out! 

Chadwick Boseman bounds to the screen as Black Panther - the latest Marvel superhero to leap from comic pages into his own blockbuster movie. Will the newly crowned African Avenger continue to hide his technologically-advanced kingdom from the exploitative Western world? Or will Oakland militant Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) usurp the vibranium throne and use Wakandan firepower to finally Kill Whitey?  The revolution will not be televised… but colonizers Arnie, Jakob, and Stuart will certainly podcast about it all on this epic show.  Listen now! 

It took 15 years for filmmakers to hit the reset button on Street Fighter, with a second movie ditching JCVD’s paramilitary squad in favor of an origin story for kung fu pianist Chun-Li.  Does Smallville star Kristin Kreuk prove legendary in the title role? Is Oscar-nominated giant Michael Clarke Duncan slumming for work by teaming up with unconscionable real estate developer Bison (Neal McDonough)?  Is embarrassment the reason Black Eyed Peas rapper Taboo won’t remove that mask?  I gotta feeling confused video game players will have a good good night when they listen now.        

Podcasters Justin, Stuart, and Arnie have been taken hostage by Street Fighter, the infamous 1994 movie adaptation of the popular arcade fighting game. How much Van Damme-age can the boys withstand when the "Muscles From Brussels" goes American in a blue beret to beat down villainous megalomaniac Bison (the last movie role for terminal song-and dance man Raul Julia). And does this Shadaloo showdown improve when con artists Ryu and Ken, yellow-skinned mutant Blanka, fake news crew Chun-Li, Honda, and Balrog, and even Aussie pop star Kylie Minogue join the fray? Listen now and find out.

The fly-kicking Lee Brothers were quick to mimic Mario’s leap from coin-ops and cartoons to a live-action feature film… and just as quick to fail. The 1994 action flick Double Dragon finds video game heroes Billy Lee (Party of Five heartthrob Scott Wolf) and Jimmy Lee (martial artist Mark Dacascos) scouring post-apocalyptic LA for the second half of a magic medallion.  Will Justin, Arnie, and Stuart find their battle with Robert "T-1000" Patrick less tortuous than a repeated knee to the face? Listen now and find out.

Pixelated plumbers Mario and Luigi spent a decade warping through various video games, cartoons, and comic books before finally arriving on the big screen as Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo in the 1993 live action adventure Super Mario Bros. Hosts Justin, Stuart, and Arnie dredge up this moldy oldie to assess whether Hollywood’s first attempt at adapting an arcade hit deserved to Bob-omb so badly. Devolve your lizard brain and listen to this super show now.