Reel Phonies

Before Hamilton turned the world upside down, Lin-Manuel Miranda found his first success with the Broadway adaptation of In the Heights. Directed by John M. Chu, this film adaptation brings life to a small New York City neighborhood with music and dancing.

Written, performed, filmed, and edited by Bo Burnham from inside his house over the past year, "Inside" attempts to whittle down the highs, lows, and weird idiosyncrasies of quarantine into a comedic and relatably unhinged combination of songs and performance art.

The Quiet Place sequel is finally here and adds more scares, more action, and more Cillian Murphy. It's a family survival story that adds some surprising new facets to its own mythos and existing horror tropes.

We're catching up on some of the best news and announcements over the last month including an upcoming Highlander reboot starring Henry Cavill, new animated Batman and Superman series coming to HBOMax, Amazon's acquisition of MGM, and trailers for the Eternals, Venom 2, and more!

This week we're returning to one of our favorite guilty pleasures to review the final season of Netflix's Castlevania. It's got monsters and gore and cynicism but it's also full of a surprising amount of rich characters and engaging struggles for power and survival. But is it better than Transformers?

It's 2001: Train releases their only good song, the Ravens win their first Super Bowl, and we are treated to the first installations of both the Harry Potter AND Lord of the Rings franchises. But beneath all the big budget hits are some classics from 2001 that deserve a little more appreciation.

This week we're talking Amazon's animated TV adaptation of Invincible. It's the superhero story about a teenage boy who gets his powers and discovers hero work is not quite what he imagined. It's got a stellar voice cast and a superhero story that was refreshingly original. Just don't watch this with kids!

This week we're finishing up Falcon and The Winter Soldier. We talk about what worked, what didn't, how this sets up the Marvel Universe, and why we keep trying to make cowls happen. They're not going to happen.

This week we're catching up on all the big entertainment news we haven't had time to discuss like the Obi-Wan cast announcements, the first trailer for Space Jam 2: The One With LeBron, and the first look at the 9th Fast and Furious movie. Also, Shang-Chi, Black Adam, Indy 5, and more!

It's a literal clash of the titans where two of our favorite monsters punch each other a bunch and also maybe there is a story or whatever. We discuss how to fix the human problems, proper Pensacola representation, and propose a special guest for the next kaiju smackdown.