In light of One Battle After Another, Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al walk through the range of his films from his 1996 crime film Hard Eight through his much lauded Magnolia, Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love, and There Will Be Blood and his more controversial recent ones like Licorice Pizza, The Master, The Phantom Thread, and Inherent Vice.

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Sponsors: Go to surfshark.com/pmp or use code pmp at checkout to get 4 extra monthsof Surfshark VPN. If you like our show, check out the Moviestruck podcast.

In light of Noah Hawley TV show Alien Earth, Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn and Al revisit the franchise through its seven canon films beginning with Ridley Scott's 1979 classic.

While there's plenty of sheer repetition (alien loose, killing people one by one) throughout these properties, the various filmmakers attempt to avoid sure repetition by shifting genres. On the new show, we get a pronounced shift to focusing on the synthetic humans; is that a good thing?

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It's a special two-hander where Mark and Lawrence reflect on the appeal of horror and how the new Monster: Ed Gein Netflix show has to contribute, given that it is not merely a (very loose) presentation of real events, and itself a horror drama, but also a commentary on the Hollywood properties influenced by the Ed Gein murders, including Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs. We bring this up to date by including discussion of the Terrifier films as well as the work of Rob Zombie.

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Sponsors: Get 50% off Claude AI Pro at Claude.ai/pmp. Go to surfshark.com/pmp or use code pmp at checkout to get 4 extra monthsof Surfshark VPN.

Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al watched Spinal Tap and its new sequel, and we throw these into a mix with K-Pop Demon Hunters and other films and shows involving made-for-TV (and film) bands, including We Are Lady Parts, That Thing You Do, Fear of a Black Hat, CB4, Atlanta, The Blues Brothers, The Commitments, Almost Famous, The Rutles, and The Monkees.

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Sponsors: Get 50% off Claude AI Pro at Claude.ai/pmp. Get 15% off an annual membership at MasterClass.com/PRETTY.

For our Emmys/back-to-school episode, we cover the pinnacle of the current network sitcom landscape: The six-time 2025 Emmy nominated Abbott Elementary, which is beginning its fifth season.

Mark, Lawrence, Al and West-Philly-resident Sarahlyn discuss the show's Philly-ness and how it integrates cringe humor with realistic depiction of how messed up it is for schools to be so underfunded. Is this a "black show"?

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Sponsors: Get 50% off Claude AI Pro at Claude.ai/pmp. Try the Stuck in the '80s podcast at sit80s.com.

What do we expect out of a superhero film? Does it need overqualified dramatic actors? Does it even need a real budget?

Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al discuss the various films modeled after Marvel's Fantastic Four comics initiated by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961. First Steps is clearly the best of them and surpassed our low expectations, with its delivery of a believable family dynamic and a fun retro-futurist production design.

Get an ad-free experience, plus bonus talking for this and nearly every episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop for only the tiniest per-month financial pledge, or you can sign up directly with Apple Podcasts for a subscription for ad-free and bonus material for three of Mark's podcasts together on the Mark Lintertainment Podcasts Channel.

Sponsors: Get 15% off an annual membership at MasterClass.com/PRETTY. Check out the That Aged Well podcast.

What is the state of the stream-of-gags formula that used to stand tall in the films of the Zucker Brothers (mainly Airplane) and Mel Brooks? A new generation attempts to revive that with a new Naked Gun film. How does this new effort relate to the classic films?

Are these kinds of films particularly timeless? Rewatchable? Do young people appreciate this kind of thing? Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and (for the third or so) Al speculate wildly as usual.

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In light of the new James Gunn film Superman, Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al talk about the character, his stories, and past films and shows.

Did Zack Snyder (Man of Steel) miss the point? Are the Richard Donner films (chiefly 1978's Superman: The Movie) as good as nostalgia would have us recall them? How does one write a convincing plot centered around a flawless, basically all-powerful hero? How should the Lex Luthor character fit in?

Get an ad-free experience, plus bonus talking for this and nearly every episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop for only the tiniest per-month financial pledge, or you can sign up directly with Apple Podcasts for a subscription for ad-free and bonus material for three of Mark's podcasts together on the Mark Lintertainment Podcasts Channel.

Purported the first summer blockbuster, Jaws has now hit 50 years, and so we discuss this wonderful early Spielberg film, its ill-conceived sequels, some of the making-of docs, and the legacy of shark/big carnivore films that it spawned.

Is the film as flawless as it's made out to be? Are the sequels as awful as typically described? Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al discuss!

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In light of the new film Ballerina, we discuss the John Wick franchise that kicked off in 2014 with four films plus a (bad) Peacock TV show. We also watched the recent documentary Wick Is Pain.

Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn and Al are joined by Brian Casey to mostly talk about the main four films in the series: They have a formula, but is that bad?

Get an ad-free experience, plus bonus talking for this and nearly every episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop for only the tiniest per-month financial pledge, or you can sign up directly with Apple Podcasts for a subscription for ad-free and bonus material for three of Mark's podcasts together on the Mark Lintertainment Podcasts Channel.