Recovered

Lllllllllet's get ready to ROLLERBALL! Dan and Keith dig into the 1975 cult classic dystopic sports flick Rollerball, in which James Caan must rise up against the world's corporate overlords by playing the best darn game of Rollerball he can, after about an hour of worldbuilding that only partially builds the world. In the early 2000s, legendary action director John McTiernan attempted to remake it for the Extreme Sports era, a truly epic mess of a process that sank his entire career. Dan and Keith dig into both, to see which era Rolled Balls the best: New Hollywood's heady-philosophical-white man stares forlornly era, or the xXx/Fast and Furious era? Find out!

Beloved friend of the podcast and Video Vulture John Tebbutt is back, and he's got a doozy for Dan and Keith. Schlock king Roger Corman unites Mission: Impossible's Peter Graves, iconic western villain Lee Van Cleef, and B-movie queen Beverly Garland for the sci-fi thriller, question mark, It Conquered the World, in which a Venusian alien lures an Earth scientist into helping it seize control of our world, and only the scientist's wife and best friend can turn him away from his alien pal. The following decade, a much less iconic schlock filmmaker changed the names and VIRTUALLY NOTHING ELSE to make Zontar, The Thing From Venus, which if nothing else serves as proof of Roger Corman's ability to make a movie. And then somehow it gets remade again by a classic Canadian sketch show? Dan, Keith, and John break it all down for your entertainment. Listen in!

John Woo's The Killer: one of the most iconic 80s Hong Kong action flicks, with Chow Yun-Fat leaping through dove-invested areas to fire two pistols in slow-motion. Who would dare to remake it? John Woo. Dan and Keith dig into the original (and how dubbed and subtitled versions differ), the choices excellent and confusing, then jump forward to 2024 to unpack the Straight-to-Streaming remake, and how being made for the Second Screen era has affected Woo's updated take on his classic. Does the new model live up? Listen and find out!

Hit the big city streets and get ready to look for vengeance, kind of, as Dan and Keith take on the Death Wishes. Back in 1994, Charles Bronson found his most iconic role as an architect who lashes out at random street criminals in the wake of an attack on his family. Dan and Keith break it down, how much it differs from the sequels that followed, and why that's Reagan's fault. Forty-four years later, Eli Roth and Bruce Willis give the story a new spin, while hewing closer to the revenge thriller post-70s audiences expect. What do our hosts think? Interesting journeys? Satisfying revenge? Or wishing for death? Find out!

Dan and Keith head to Mega-City One to look into two Judges Dredd! First, back in the 90s, Sylvester Stallone brought Britain's favourite satirical comic Judge to Hollywood, but perhaps put a little too much of him on the screen. Dystopic future, overly aggressive protagonist, Rob Schneider is here for some reason, it's a blend of a Judge Dredd adaptation and a Demolition Man follow-up that fails at being either. Two decades later, Karl Urban slips on the iconic helmet for the simply titled Dredd, and we break down everything they put right that the 90s version did wrong, from plot to costume to the insufficiently famous Olivia Thirlby. Listen in!

As the MCU returns from hiatus, Dan and Keith look back at the film that set up Captain America: Brave New World... that being 2008's The Incredible Hulk. First, in 2003, Ang Lee and a young producer named Kevin Feige attempted a deep, psychological Hulk, with comic-book-style editing, examinations of trauma and repressed memories, and a bit of a whackadoo climax, that may have been all theme, no plot. Five years later, Feige made one of the debut movies of his Marvel Cinematic Universe experiment a safer, simpler Hulk story... that was sandwiched between two much bigger superhero hits and largely slept on. Dan and Keith discuss what works better: a big swing that doesn't connect, or a bunt that doesn't astonish? Listen in and make your choice.

Grab your shovel and prepare to make bad choices as Dan and Keith unearth the Pet Semataries! Way way back in the 1980s, during the heyday of Stephen King adaptations, a former star of Star Trek: TNG and a future star of Time Trax took on an adaptation of Pet Sematary, the one Stephen King book that scared Stephen King. Three decades later, another attempt was made, which didn't start changing things up until the back third, then changed a lot. Which do Dan and/or Keith prefer? Why did Dan insist on mentioning Time Trax in the synopsis like anyone knows what that is? Why does Keith come at John Lithgow? Listen and find out!

Dan and Keith take a deep sigh, say "This may as well happen," and get into two takes on The Crow. First, the extremely 90s original with Brandon Lee and a bunch of cool character actors. How does it hold up? How does the tragedy at the core of the movie affect the viewing? Breaking down the unsafe production that cost us a rising star in Brandon Lee and imagining what might have been had someone safety checked that blank. Thirty years later, a remake limped into theatres, and Dan and Keith dig into what went wrong and how often, starting with why you don't spend half your runtime building up a McGuffin. Listen in!

It's a new year, and Hollywood is still allergic to new ideas, so we have a new crop of remakes on the Horizon! Hooray, question mark? Dan and Keith dig into all the remakes and reboots on the horizon, from Fantastic Four: First Steps and Superman to new takes on Stephen King, Saturday morning cartoons, a weirdly unconnected trio of Universal Movie Monsters, and deep cut remakes you'd never expect that may or may not be released... plus find out what Mega-saga is stalking in the wings, waiting to strike! Listen in!

Ho ho holiday greetings, as Dan and Keith celebrate the season the Recovered way: unpacking movies with the same premise! First up, what else but the internet's favourite non-Muppet Christmas movie, Die Hard! John McClane is trying to save his marriage and Christmas, and we love him for it enough that it spawned a sub-genre. But of all the Die Hard clones out there, only one dared to be EVEN CHRISTMASIER... by having literal Santa Claus go full Die Hard in 2022's Violent Night! So curl up by the fire, grab some cookies, makes fists with your toes on the carpets, and tune in for A Very Recovered Christmas.